When Helena Wilson first heard about a new Jez Butterworth play, the Hills of California, the specifics were murky. A prolific actor, Wilson was invited to audition for a workshop of the play in July 2023 and most of the details were kept under wraps.
“Jez is such a huge name in the theater world and his plays are known for being explosive, expansive pieces that are each very distinctive, so there was a lot of secrecy and anticipation surrounding this one,” says Wilson, an Oxford University graduate who has performed at the National Theatre, Donmar Warehouse and the Old Vic.
Wilson was enlisted to play the role of Jill Webb, who has remained in her childhood home in Blackpool, England, caring for her ailing mother, Veronica, while her three sisters have moved away. In fact, the project was so under wraps that when Wilson was offered the workshop, she was not sent a script in advance.
“It was literally hot off the press, warm in my hands as I read it aloud,” says Wilson who made her stage debut as Ophelia alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Joshua McGuire in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. She was discovered when an agent saw her in her university’s production of Sweeney Todd playing Mrs. Lovett.
Sight reading before Butterworth, an esteemed playwright and screenwriter, was nerve-wracking. Plus creative titan Sam Mendes, the play’s director and Butterworth’s frequent collaborator, was also in the room. But Wilson also found the experience exhilarating. “What was brilliant about that first encounter with the play was that it was truly moment-by-moment, discovering the character and the world in the same way that an audience would when they see the play for the first time,” says Wilson. “Although a lot of work has gone in and much has changed since that first moment, I believe I’ve held onto some of the key revelations that I felt when I encountered Jill for the first time.”
What made her fall in love with the play was Butterworth’s use of language. “The Blackpool dialect is so rich and Jez creates aching, hilarious poetry out of it. Evocative and particular turns of phrase that conjure such a specific world,” says Wilson. “But at the same time are so easy for an actor to learn because they speak to universal emotional truths.”
A richly layered, sometimes funny, sometimes devastating play, the Hills of California centers upon the four Webb sisters who spent their childhood trying their best to find fame as a singing quartet in the style of the Andrews sisters. The play toggles between the summer of 1970, when the sisters return home to visit their dying mother, and the 1950s, when, under the her resolute tutelage, the sisters are trying to get discovered as a girl group and escape to something much better.
All specifically and finely drawn, Jill is the sister who is often described as “the quiet one,” yet she also has enormous strength and resolve. She’s the lone sister who stayed behind and devoted herself to her mother.
“Jill definitely can appear quiet, and she isn’t forthright in some social situations, but hers is a quietness that comes from strength and resolve rather than meekness, fear or disengagement,” says Wilson. “I also think she has made an active decision not to compromise in her choice of romantic partner. I truly believe she chose not to marry, rather than not having any options.”
The sisters are guided by their ferociously determined mom, Veronica, who is raising the girls on her own in the Sea View Guest House boarding house that she owns and runs like an army sergeant in this English seaside town. Veronica is so singularly focused on her girls and getting them noticed.
“What is a song?,” Veronica routinely asks them. “A song is a dream… a place to be. Somewhere you can live. And in that place, there are no walls. No boundaries. No locks. No keys. You can go anywhere…”
Veronica is convinced that making it as a singing group will be the answer and send her daughters to places they could not dream of going. But twenty years later when the sisters are reunited we wonder if that was really the answer?
This past February the Hills of California opened in London’s West End with Wilson originating the role of Jill. Nominated for two Olivier wards, the show transferred to Broadway where it is now playing at the Broadhurst Theatre until December, 2024. Laura Donnelly, Leanne Best and Ophelia Lovibond also revived their roles to play the other sisters, as Donnelly also plays Veronica.
Now that she has been with the play since its beginnings and played Jill on two continents, Wilson says that the experience has changed her life in profound ways. “If you’re very lucky, as an actor, not only do you get to pour your life and energy and spirit and memories into your work, but your work guides your life and shapes how you feel about yourself, she says.
“Being trusted with Jill at this stage of my career has really emboldened me as an actor and person. When the four of us are flying in the third act of this play, we are calling something onto the stage that’s bigger than all of us, which has been a reminder of what theater is for. It’s a unique kind of ceremony where we process what we’re all doing here.”
Also, the experience has transformed Wilson as a person. “I am stronger, more grounded, and much more attentive to my intuition than I was before we started this process,” she says. “The joy of working on one project for over a year is that you can tune out some of the anxiety that usually accompanies trying to be an actor, and focus on being as honest as you can night after night. And that can’t not affect how honest you are with yourself in the rest of your life.”
Jeryl Brunner: Jez Butterworth and Sam Mendes create work that is so revered. What is Sam’s process of working with actors?
Helena Wilson: It’s a great honor to originate a role in a play, and so I feel very grateful to Jez for trusting me with Jill and allowing me to get under her skin in my own way. Sam is also the most brilliant director, I’ve absolutely loved working with him. He is an incredibly empathetic director, not only to the needs of actors but with the characters themselves, so every beat of every scene is something he invests his time and energy into understanding and trying to see from every point of view.
Sam doesn’t sit in his director’s chair facing us and observing, he’s constantly up and with us on the set and trying to work through the beats of a scene together. He also gives some of the best notes I’ve ever heard! For example, he helped the four of us to absolutely transform the new third act when we came to it in the dress rehearsal after an intense and quick re-rehearsal process—all with one glorious note.
Brunner: The sisters make up such a united, powerful ensemble. What bonds you?
Wilson: It’s so funny how chemistry works. We have been saying that some jobs just have a bit of magic sprinkled on top of them, and this is one of those. The connection has built organically and through a lot of laughter, and I think it’s mainly been built out of the work. We respect each other’s work so much, we admire each other, and we also trust each other implicitly, so from there you feel a total freedom onstage which is very special.
Then offstage we’re helping each other through the fatigue and the challenging parts of theatre, as well as being very silly and goofy. To be together on Broadway is so exciting, it feels like we’re bringing the Webb girls band to try and break America! And we’ve loved exploring some New York City restaurants and bars together, that’s been great and something you don’t do so much when you’re on home turf.
Brunner: Jez Butterworth completely changed the third act before you came to Broadway. What was the challenge and joy of experiencing a new ending after performing a very different one in London?
Wilson: It was a whirlwind because we read and rehearsed the new third act in ten days, before flying to New York and going straight into tech. I think we were all very proud of what we made in London but this new third act really takes the play to another level. It lights a fire under the relationships between the sisters themselves, and between the sisters and their mother, with explosive consequences. It also tightens the focus on the question of forgiveness that hovers over the play from its opening moments.
The challenge of learning a new act in a relatively short space of time is asking your body to forget its sense memory and muscle memory of the old shapes, trying to create a blank space internally on which you can write new paths through the scenes. The joy is profound and it’s in the continuation of an almost year-long creative process, in which we are working with artists at the top of their game to make this piece of theater the best it can be. Personally, I find the new third act contains more catharsis and resolution for Jill and her sisters, so I feel lighter coming off stage here in New York than I did in London, when Jill was left with a lot of knotty, painful unresolved questions.