Backstage With The Director Of The New Sinead O’Connor Doc

Nothing Compares, the new Sinead O’Connor documentary, begins with footage of a 24-year-old O’Connor facing a hostile audience from the Madison Square Garden stage in 1992, days after she tore up a photo of the pope on Saturday Night Live.

Aside from the irony that the vitriol over a rebellious act came from the audience at an anniversary concert for Bob Dylan of all people, 30 years later the scene sets a harrowing, empathetic tone to a re-examination of the artist’s formative years, her explosive commercial success and the intense backlash she endured.

And that’s exactly as filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson intended. While Nothing Compares is the latest addition to the swelling cache of music docs, it’s also a glaring investigation of cancel culture, narrated primarily by O’Connor herself, whose voice can be heard throughout but is shown on screen in contemporary times only during the last few minutes of the film.

The doc debuts Sunday, October 2 on Showtime. Following are excerpts from an interview with Ferguson about her experience making the film, why it doesn’t include the video for Nothing Compares 2 U, and the surprising reaction it received on the festival circuit this year.

You grew up in Northern Ireland, a decade later than Sinead. What drew you to this project?

I was initially introduced to Sinead’s music in the ‘80s by my father, who was a massive fan. Her music would have played on many a car journey as we drove around really trouble-ridden Northern Ireland. Then in my early teens in the early ‘90s I became a bona-fide fan on my own and could really understand what she was saying and standing up for. And then very quickly I was demoralized when I watched how she was treated. The huge backlash and the mass canceling of Sinead happened pretty fast after that, so it made a huge dent on me as a teenage girl. And that was the origin of this project because it had such an impact to see this icon of mine being treated the way she was.

While Sinead narrates the documentary, she doesn’t ever appear on camera doing so. Was there a conversation about that?

To be honest it wasn’t a conversation because we never planned to film her. The main reason for that is because the film is very focused on 1987 to 1993, I wanted it to be an immersive experience that keeps you very much in that era so that you can feel the intensity building with the story and the narration. The other key thing for me with the way we did the interview is that as the media has done such a fantastic job of really reducing her voice and mocking what she’s had to say—I wanted the key takeaway to be her voice. I wanted you to be with her, telling her story about that time. Until the last scene when you see her in 2020 performing.

This film is a re-examination of Sinead’s early life through the lens of 2022.

It felt to me like a story that needed to be re-examined. As we’ve screened the film in the last seven months I’ve had so many teenagers come up with their eyes flashing saying, “Oh my goodness, we were just told by the media that she was bad or she’d done something bad, and we didn’t understand her story.” Which is unfortunately how so many iconoclastic women are often portrayed. You put your head above the fire pit only to be shot down and reduced, which is what it felt like happened to Sinead. With the film, I wanted to put the story straight. And as a woman it felt important. There is so much revisionist history going on at the moment. It’s not a biopic; it’s very much a foundational story so people really understand the cause and effect of what happened, why she said and did what she did.

Watching it now, hearing her narration, it’s clear she was ahead of her time in so many ways.

The intention of the film was to set the story straight but what we hadn’t realized would happen is it’s almost a call to action. Because in America so much has happened in the last six months alone, people are viewing it through a very contemporary lens. I think it makes people absolutely furious when they see it but also very galvanized. We hadn’t quite realized that’s how it would be taken but I’m bloody delighted that is. The issue with Sinead, from our perspective looking back, is here’s an artist who was very counter-culture, very anti-establishment who then gets catapulted into this super-fame arena where you’re expected to be playing a game, to be grateful for your fame. And here’s somebody who never asked to be part of any of that and is very principled and opinionated on things that matter to her. It was just too much for people to hear. It’s astounding to see the backlash she suffers as a result of speaking out about these things. When we’ve shown the film at festivals around the world there are audible gasps against the backlash, the violence of it.

The film also has a mental health narrative. Sinead speaks about the abuse of her mother, the abuse of the Catholic church. The world is also now re-examining mental health.

She was one of the first pop superstars to talk openly about her struggles with mental health. But again, that was deemed unsuitable back in the ‘90s. You have to look at the Ireland that spawned her, which was so riddled with transgenerational trauma because of what had gone on in the country, and the control the church and the state had over its people had gone so deep. It left such a mark, how could she not acknowledge it and speak out about it. That bravery in being able to address the subject is what makes her so exceptional. I can’t imagine she had a blueprint; I don’t think any artists were speaking about mental health like that.

She says, toward the end of the documentary, “They broke my heart and they killed me, but I didn’t die.” Ultimately this documentary paints, to me, the story of a survivor.

I think she is. I’ve been asked many times, Was she the sacrificial lamb? And I really don’t see her like that. I wanted to show her as a survivor because that’s what she represents to me. There’s so many music documentaries made about amazing female artists but they’re often told though a tragic heroine lens and I just didn’t want to do that here. I wanted to show her strength and how much she’s managed to survive.

The film shows a series of outtakes from the Nothing Compares 2 U video shoot. And then there’s a note at the end that the Prince estate wouldn’t give you rights to use the actual video?

Sadly, yes we were denied licensing of the song, which of course was a big disappointment but at the end of the day it’s their prerogative. It landed us with a huge creative challenge but we were able to include all of those classic [outtakes]. The film is 98 percent all of her music she’s written herself. So it is what it is; I say no more.