This week on Netflix US one of the trending titles is “The Miracle Club,” a comedy drama with a star-studded cast that includes Kathy Bates, Maggie Smith, Laura Linney and Agnes O’Casey. According to FlixPatrol, the movie is the eighth most-watched movie on the platform.
Linney, a three-time Oscar nominee and Emmy winner, plays Chrissie, an American woman on a prize-won trip to Lourdes with her estranged Irish friends, played by Academy Award winners Bates and Smith. During their encounter, old issues resurface.
The movie, directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, was originally released in 2023 by Sony Pictures Classics, but is now available to stream. The rest of the cast also includes: Stephen Rea, Mark O’Halloran, Mark McKenna, Niall Buggy, Hazel Doupe, Brenda Fricker, and Lesley Conroy.
‘The Miracle Club,’ a fantastic friendship tale set in Lourdes
In an interview with Movies.ie, O’Sullivan revealed that the movie, which was written by Jimmy Smallhorne, Timothy Prager and Joshua Maurer, had been in development for 12 years. “People joke about how long development takes, but I couldn’t believe it was still around. A bunch of women who go to Lourdes looking for a miracle would always have legs,” he said.
Apart from revealing that the shooting only took 25 days, he also explained the process for each actress, whom he said it was “daunting” to work with, as they are all legends. “They had a clear idea of their character because they had been attached for so long,” he explained.
O’Sullivan said that Smith was “very particular” about the props she uses, as she is a “very tactile actor.” Meanwhile, Bates preferred to “ come into a room, go around feeling everything,” and Linney’s preparation “was all in her head because her character was in pain; she was carrying so much of the past, and she didn’t want to give it away too early.”
Linney told IndieWire in an interview that she “spent a lot of time thinking about Chrissy’s history and who she was and why she was the way she was,” after she signed up on the project.
