"A Call to Spy" Writer Sarah Megan Thomas Discusses Churchill's Dangerous Female Spies

“[Virginia Hall] doesn’t believe in the word ‘no.’”

A CALL TO SPY is the latest thriller from writer Sarah Megan Thomas (EQUITY). The film tells the true story of the women that were assigned by Winston Churchill during WWII to become part of his new spy agency—the SOE.

 Thomas, in addition to being writer and producer on the film, stars as Virginia Hall, a woman who was nicknamed “the most dangerous of all Allied spies” by the Gestapo. With a wooden prosthetic leg that she had as a result of a hunting accident in her young adulthood, Hall had repeatedly to join the Foreign Service but was always denied as they did not accept women applicants.

When asked how she chose this story to tell, Thomas said:

“. . . I really wanted to do a spy film. But when I watch spy films, from the women’s angle, it tends to be a romance. So, I was interested in dangerous female spies—the real story.”

In addition to focusing on Virginia Hall, the film draws attention to two other significant heroines: Vera Atkins (Stana Katic) and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte). Atkins, who started as a secretary and worked her way up the ranks, was primarily in charge of the recruitment and wellbeing of women in the SOE. She made it her personal mission to identify and bring justice to the 117 agents that were captured and assumed to have been killed in action. Khan, having had a strong background in radio operations, as well as having served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, was a major assist for communication efforts between London and Paris.

 Despite being filmed in less than six weeks, the film looks aesthetically like a blockbuster film alongside the likes of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. When asked how the larger-than-life sets worked to immerse the viewer in the midst of the chaos of WWII, Thomas said:

“One of the key elements was finding places that were ready to shoot as an independent [film]. An example is, I found a place called Ardrossan Estate on the Main Line . . . it is basically like a museum that is fully furnished with period furniture and it is an exact replica of the family’s home in Scotland, which is similar to where these spies historically trained. They let us shoot there for almost a third of the movie . . . we’d shoot the basement for a torture scene; we’d shoot the third floor and then recreate the set . . . it’s just stunning.”

A CALL TO SPY is now in select theaters and streaming on Amazon Prime. Check out our full interview below and leave your thoughts in the comments!