Netflix’s ‘Thursday Murder Club’ Stars And Director On How Whodunit Differs From Other Mysteries

As Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan and Celia Irmie’s characters in Netflix’s new original movie The Thursday Murder Club prove, just because people retire from work, it doesn’t mean that they need to retire from the things that helped them live vibrant lives when they were younger.

“The characters in this movie certainly had those sorts of lives, especially in my generation,” Mirren said in a recent phone interview. “Like people who’ve been through the Second World War and had unbelievable courage as young people. What they’ve done was so utterly extraordinary.

“So, I think the lovely thing about The Thursday Murder Club is that it’s giving older people that sort of agency and engagement with life.” Mirren added.

In a separate conversation over Zoom, Brosnan said he wholeheartedly agreed with Mirren’s sentiments.

“Life is hard, it’s a challenge and being humans, we do have to deal with a lot,” Brosnan said. “But that’s the joy of this film, that the characters have such an inner life and an energy and a love and a passion for it.”

The key to keeping that joy, Brosnan added, is not to let others define who you are because of your age.

“You can get so conditioned by the world and life and the influence of others,” Brosnan said. “You have to keep your inner life and your own passion for existing alive, and that is by having curiosity, imagination, courage and being fearless.”

Irmie, meanwhile, said in a separate Zoom conversation that she feels not only the characters — but the film’s setting — demonstrates why she’s convinced audiences of all ages will want to join in on the endeavors of The Thursday Murder Club.

“I don’t want people to be put off, thinking this movie is just about a retirement home full of old people, because actually it’s so much more than that,” Irmie said. “I hope it’ll give people you know a sort of optimism for their future, too, because if they are of the age we are in the movie, there’s nothing slowing us down.”

Based on the best-selling Thursday Murder Club book series by Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club movie arrives, appropriately, on Thursday on Netflix. A whodunit with plenty of twists and turns throughout, the film stars Mirren as an ex-spy, Elizabeth, Kingsley as a former psychologist, Ibrahim, Brosnan as a former union activist, Ron, and Irmie as a retired nurse, Joyce.

Elizabeth, Ibrahim, Ron and Joyce, however, don’t spend their time sitting around and biding their time in the retirement community of Cooper’s Chase in the English countryside. Instead, they use the community’s puzzle room not to put puzzles together, but search for the missing pieces of puzzling, real-life cold case murders for a group they call the Thursday Murder Club.

However, when the quaint retirement community faces being torn down by a real-estate developer and its residents relocated, bodies associated with the facility and developer begin to drop.

Suddenly, the Thursday Murder Club seizes an opportunity and leaps from the cold case realm into a very hot murder investigation. Enlisting the help of Officer Donna De Freitas (Naomi Ackie), a police constable stuck in a low level job at the station, the club embarks on a twisty path that takes them to places they never could have imagined.

Chris Columbus Loved How ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ Wasn’t A By-The-Book Novel

The Thursday Murder Club is directed by beloved filmmaker Chris Columbus, who, having directed the first two Harry Potter movies, once again is tackling a book series that has a big fanbase — himself included.

“I read the book first and that’s exactly why I was taken with it. It seemed to be so different than your usual murder mystery,” Columbus said in a Zoom conversation sitting alongside Kingsley. “They tend to be cold and procedural or they tend to be over the top and overblown with big, big performances.”

Columbus said that while he found the original Thursday Movie Club book by Richard Osman to be a captivating murder mystery, it was the additional layers the author built into the story that made him want to adapt the material into a movie.

“I was taken by the humor of it and really the emotional complexity of the material, which is something that’s rare for a murder mystery,” Columbus recalled. “That’s why I was obsessed with wanting to direct it.”

Having delivered one of the film’s funniest lines, Celia Irmie feels the humor is essential to The Thursday Murder Club.

“Shakespeare got it right — you can’t have tragedy without humor,” Irmie said. “You’ve got to have both and we really do have that throughout the film.”

Helen Mirren said she could immediately see in the script for The Thursday Murder Club — which was penned by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote — why Osman’s books are so popular, and those thoughts lingered in the minds of her and her fellow cast members throughout the film.

“It’s no surprise that they’ve been such huge bestsellers and there’s a big responsibility that comes along with that,” Mirren said. “You really have to be in the minds of these characters that are so beloved on the page.”

Note: A spoiler plot detail in “The Thursday Murder Club” is discussed in the next few paragraphs of the story.

While Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Celia Irmie each supply their share of funny and serious moments in The Thursday Murder Club, Ben Kingsley perhaps gives the film its most poignant emotional moment when he delivers a powerful eulogy at the funeral for one of the residents of Cooper’s Chase near the movie’s conclusion.

Kingsley said the eulogy’s power was fueled by the direction of Columbus and the type of set he runs.

“Chris looks after his cast so beautifully and that percolates through the crew,” Kingsley said. “There’s no counter atmosphere. It’s graceful, respectful and it serves the story. Whatever serves the story is good.”

When it came to filming the scene, Kingsley recalled, the loss of the character — which won’t be named here for spoiler purposes — felt real.

“We were a collection of mourners who had been working with a colleague in real life and that colleague, while alive as an actor, was no longer in the scene,” Kingsley explained. “So, in narrative terms, we all served a sense of loss and that was perfectly sustained by the grouping of the people in the front row to whom I could address Ibrahim’s comments.

“The front row completely reverberated and echoed my comments in their reaction, which of course again sustains me and my role to be strong, philosophical and spiritually optimistic,” Kingsley added.

Perhaps the biggest perk for Columbus while working on The Thursday Murder Club was that in much of the film, he got to work with Mirren, Brosnan, Irmie and Kingsley while they were all in the same space. The opportunity gave the director goosebumps because he considers himself just as much a fan of movies as he is a director of them.

“I think as a director by being a fan, and I mean that wholeheartedly. If you don’t, you should stop doing what you’re doing if you don’t love it,” Columbus enthused. “When I walked into the room the first day with the four of these actors, I had a sense of overwhelming intimidation that overcame me and I realized I had to step up my game because these are four of the greatest actors in our generation. So, you have to play on that playing field.

“So, it’s almost a sports analogy,” Columbus continued. “When you’re working with the best, you have to be the best. So, each day was a joy because I got to watch what they were creating.”

The Thursday Murder Club also stars Jonathan Pryce, Daniel Mays, Tom Ellis, Paul Freeman, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Geoff Belle, Richard E. Grant and David Tennant.

Produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, The Thursday Murder Club premieres on Netflix on Thursday.

Note: Some of the quotes in this interview feature for “The Thursday Murder Club” were condensed or edited for clarity.