Rebecca Hall on ‘The Listeners’: The Hum That Forced a Creative Crisis at TIFF 2024

The Hum That Changed Everything: Inside TIFF 2024’s Most Unsettling Series

Sometimes the most unnerving stories start with the smallest sound—a low, persistent hum that only one person can hear. That’s the premise of The Listeners, the electrifying limited series that premiered at TIFF 2024 to rapturous acclaim. Sitting down with Collider at the Cinema Center at MARBL, director Janicza Bravo, writer Jordan Tannahill, and star Rebecca Hall peeled back the layers on a project that’s equal parts psychological thriller and existential crisis.

For Hall, the decision to join the project was instantaneous. “I decided I really wanted to do it before I read a single word of the script,” she confessed, sparking laughter from Bravo and Tannahill. “My agent said, ‘There’s a limited series about a woman who starts hearing a hum that nobody else can hear, directed by Janicza Bravo.’ That sentence alone—I wanted the job.”

The story, adapted from Tannahill’s second novel, follows Claire (Hall), an English teacher, wife, and mother who begins to hear a mysterious low-frequency sound. As she struggles to find its source, her family life spirals, and she discovers a student and a handful of neighbors who share her affliction. What unfolds is a wild ride into conspiracy, faith, and the desperate search for connection.

Creating a Crisis: Hall’s Bold Creative Philosophy

Hall drew on a powerful insight from the late Philip Seymour Hoffman to describe her approach. “He said, ‘Sometimes you just want to force a crisis,’” Hall revealed. “It’s not about being challenged—challenge implies courage and valor. A crisis forces you to get right up to humiliating yourself in front of humans. That’s what I’m always looking for: Does this scare me? Is there a chance I’ll be embarrassed on set? Yes. Then I have to follow through.”

That philosophy drove Hall to force a crisis with the material, pushing her performance to raw, unguarded places. She noted that The Listeners “has been one of the more fulfilling jobs of my life, without question.” The chemistry between Hall, Bravo, and Tannahill was immediate—a creative alchemy that Hall called “a special flavor. I’d be happy working with these two for the rest of my life.”

From Page to Screen: Tannahill’s Elastic Story

Jordan Tannahill, making his limited series debut, admitted that adapting his own novel required a willingness to let go. “You have to not be precious with anything,” he said. “The story has lived inside me for eight years, so it felt elastic—it could be told in so many ways. We tried a bunch and found the best one.”

One major shift was relocating the story from the American Southwest to Britain. Tannahill initially worried about what would be lost, but the change proved liberating. “It showed me that the story is something of a parable. It could be resituated anywhere in the world and be unique each time.” He also highlighted the non-negotiable core: Claire’s interior journey. “What the film does, perhaps even better than the book, is center her gradual descent into madness—and a kind of empathetic, revelatory experience.”

Janicza Bravo: Leaning Into Discomfort After ‘Zola’

Fresh off the acclaimed Zola, Bravo was determined not to be pigeonholed. “After Zola, I was craving to differentiate myself from whatever that movie might have decided about me,” she explained. When her manager put The Listeners in front of her, she initially hesitated—until she learned she wasn’t the first or only choice. “I read it and fell for it. What turned me on the most was that it scared me and made me uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if I could land it. That felt right.”

Bravo chose to direct every episode, treating the series like a feature film. “I’m not good at giving 100% to multiple things at a time. And my experience in TV had always been episodic—you’re there for a week, then you leave and rate it. This was an opportunity to immerse myself in the entire arc. We homeschooled, and now we’re going to regular school.”

The Sound of Silence: Crafting the Hum

The titular hum is the show’s central mystery—and its most terrifying element. Bravo worked closely with composer Devonté Hynes and sound designer Steve Fanagan to create a soundscape that feels both real and deceptive. “We wanted to slightly invalidate Claire’s experience, because that’s what she’s going through—no one believes her,” Bravo said. “So we peppered in the hum, making it feel slightly false even to the audience. I wanted everyone to question their own sense of what is and isn’t there.”

Hall added that the hum becomes an extension of Claire herself. “It’s not a situation where you can block your ears and it goes away. It’s clearly outside. What does that do to how you recontextualize your whole environment, all your choices, how you see the world?”

Rebecca Hall: The Sound of Her Own Voice

For Hall, playing Claire came with an unusual luxury: using her natural British accent. “I very rarely get to sound like I sound,” she said with a grin. Bravo teased, “Oh, she’s English! I forgot.” Hall’s grounded performance relies on minimal backstory. “I didn’t do a lot of that work. Claire could be any of us, so she’s going to be a version of myself. I just brought me to it and let myself live the experience.”

Fans of Hall’s directorial debut Passing will be eager to see her next project behind the camera—a new film in which she’ll both direct and star. “It feels like the next frontier,” she admitted. “Ask me in a couple of years.”

Tannahill’s Vision: From Novel to Bold Imagery

Tannahill praised Bravo for pushing him to think imagistically. “She encouraged me to consider bold sequences that don’t exist in the novel. Claire’s emotional and psychic journey gets to intense places, and we wanted to get under the skin of that through cinema, not just passive realism.” That collaboration, he noted, is one of the things he’s most proud of—a testament to how a story can evolve when shared with brilliant artists.

The Listeners is a must-watch for anyone fascinated by the thin line between perception and madness, faith and conspiracy. As the hum spreads, so does the tension—and the profound question: What would you do if you were the only one who could hear it?

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