“By telling the story of five older women, I hoped to depict a snapshot of real people rarely seen on screen. Weaving in details from their day-to-day lives, Wannabe tells a story that accurately reflects their lives in austerity-era Britain. Anita, a cleaner who plays Scary Spice, for example, has seen her increasingly precarious job become outsourced more and more while her shifts are cut. As a woman in her mid-70s, chances of finding new work in an economic system that favours young, male and physically-abled bodies are slim. The reality of struggling to make ends meet affects her mental health on a daily basis, and as anyone living in rented accommodation knows, there is little margin for error or misfortune.”
