Rhys Ifans, Laura Linney & John Madden Talk ‘Onwards and Sideways’

When Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney boarded Onwards and Sideways, John Madden’s latest feature about two characters whose lives are turned upside down when they are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the burden of responsibility was heavy. 

“I’ve never been so nervous in my life,” Linney tells Deadline in advance of the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend. “There was the initial thrill of being asked to do it, and then there was the horrifying realization that I was going to have to do this in a way that didn’t look ridiculous and wasn’t insulting to everyone who had Parkinson’s.” 

Ifans agrees. “It felt like a huge responsibility because you’re literally representing a demographic that has to live with this disease for the rest of their lives,” he says. “I really felt the weight of that responsibility and the urgency to get it right at every single turn, and we had a lot of help to do that.” 

That help came in part from the script’s writer Paul Mayhew-Archer, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2011. The Esio Trot and The Vicar of Dibley scribe has co-hosted an award-winning podcast about the condition, dubbed Movers and Shakers, and also stars in the film. The personal element to the script was a major driver for Ifans, Linney and Madden.

“It opens you up through laughter, and then it devastates you,” says Ifans, who has been attached to the project for a decade. “I love watching that combination, and I love acting in that friction too. I find it very satisfying. Parkinson’s is never really far away from the door. We all know someone or know of someone who is suffering from it – I do – and I wanted to learn more. I thought this was a wonderful vehicle to showcase a condition that affects so many millions of people.” 

Onwards and Sideways, which plays as a TIFF Gala Presentation on Sunday, sees Ifans play Tony, a deputy headteacher of a primary school in England, while Linney plays Emma, a musician and composer and single mother of two daughters. Neither knows the other until a startling encounter changes the course of their lives and, on the same morning, they are both confronted with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s. 

The film chronicles their friendship, which unfolds unexpectedly in what is a story of humor, courage, music, movement and the transformative power of human connections. Monica Dolan and Rory Kinnear also star.

Shakespeare in Love and The Best Exotic Marigold filmmaker Madden directs and the producers are Hilary Bevan Jones at Hilltop Screen, John Gore via John Gore Studios and the BBC. Kaleidoscope Film Distribution is repping worldwide sales for the film, with CAA Media Finance co-repping North America. Icon Film Distribution is releasing the title theatrically in the UK. 

Madden saw a first draft of the script in 2018 but couldn’t board the project at the time for a variety of reasons. Six years later, he had become much more aware of the Parkinson’s world and its community as one of his family members had been diagnosed with the disease. When he was approached again with a new draft in 2024, he and Mayhew-Archer and Bevan Jones worked through the material and developed it further. 

Laura Linney in ‘Onwards and Sideways’

BBC/Hilltop Screen

“There’s something very specific about Paul’s writing,” says Madden. “He just has a natural sense of wit that’s not forced in any way. Paul had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2011, so by the time I first read the script in 2018, he had lived with it for seven years or so, and this script is his natural response to what happened to him with the illness. It was sort of a defiance.” 

Linney says that upon first read, she was surprised at how “refreshing” the script was. “Paul is the most optimistic of people, and he’s been living with Parkinson’s for a long time,” she says. “Given all that comes with Parkinson’s and how easily one could just fall into a hole and never get out, it did the opposite for him.”

Onwards and Sideways was shot in six weeks in Norfolk, UK. While Mayhew-Archer was on set and, according to Madden, was “at the center” of the whole production, the team also worked with consulting group Neuro Heroes, an expert-led neuro physiotherapy and exercise class group for Parkinson’s, MS and other neurological conditions. As revealed in the film, dancing is good for people with Parkinson’s because it combines exercise, rhythm and social connection to help manage both motor and non-motor symptoms. What’s also revealed is that symptoms differ in each person. 

“Most people know there is a tremor and that’s about it,” says Linney. “But there are about 40 different symptoms that are completely bespoke to each person. It’s a very specific but multi-layered condition. So we had choices to make, but then we had to actually execute it. It’s like a fingerprint – everyone is completely different.” 

That individuality is important because while Parkinson’s is the context, it is not the entire story. At its heart, Onwards and Sideways is a film about two people finding each other at a moment when both are particularly vulnerable. 

“As you follow the relationship of Tony and Emma over five years, you get to know each of them individually and what they do for each other,” Linney says. “So there’s the joy of connection and the depth of that connection. They see something in each other that they don’t quite understand and that doesn’t make sense but is so clearly there. They have an instant bond.”

Ifans puts it more starkly: “They are bonded through trauma in a way. They’re welded together and suddenly have more in common with each other than most people do.”

For Tony, who is a widow, the diagnosis becomes an unlikely route out of the isolation in which he has been living. “There is a paradox of receiving a life-changing, devastating diagnosis where you lose all independence that you ultimately become so dependent on other people,” Ifans says. “But in Tony’s case, he’s very much a guy who is surviving in a bubble of grief and loneliness, but Parkinson’s allows him to stop grieving and embrace the future. I think only someone like Paul, who is living with the condition, would be able to have those kind of searing insights into what it all means.” 

For Madden, he says that the film has a real sense of authenticity, which is the central balancing act and he’s hopeful it will illuminate Parkinson’s and take audiences in “directions you hadn’t imagined.” 

“It’s a strange combination between an anatomy of a disease and an emotional journey between these two people and how they come together and find their way.” 

Onwards and Sideways world premieres September 13 at TIFF.