In After the Party, real-life couple Peter Mullan and Robyn Malcolm play two bitterly estranged exes. They talk middle-aged baggage, Scottish independence and ‘aspirational casting’
‘We’re both yappers,” says Peter Mullan, the Glaswegian actor and firebrand. “So we yapped a lot. Actors we admire. Art we admire. Politics, life, love, death, all the usual stuff.” Mullan is telling me how he and Robyn Malcolm, the New Zealand actor and firebrand, first got together. “So we did a lot of yap,” he goes on. “And we’re nice enough to give the other one time to yap.” Malcolm, seated by his side, sweetly interjects: “And we still do.”
We’re here to talk about After the Party, which Malcolm co-wrote with screenwriter Dianne Taylor. Malcolm co-stars with Mullan – although absolutely not in a “lovey-dovey way”. They play exes whose mutual distrust is fathomless. They actually have some previous in this. “We met during Top of the Lake,” says Malcolm, referring to the 2013 mystery drama. “His character was an arsehole to mine. You can do smoochy scenes with an actor you just abhor. And you can do brutal stuff with an actor you adore. We had a ball.”
