Alison Sudol Finds Hope, Joy and Beautiful Music in Bonus Track

The name Alison Sudol has long been associated with elegant beauty, an ethereal voice, poetic songwriting and magic, whether it’s singing and performing under the name as A Fine Frenzy, or acting on screen as Queenie Goldstein in Fantastic Beasts and films. In the indie film Bonus Track, she steps into a different role — the loving yet struggling mother of a queer teenager finding his way in the world.

For Sudol, Bonus Track came at the perfect time. “I had been a little bit off the radar,” Sudol says. “I took some time off to have my first child and I was looking for a project to come back into the acting world that was gentle and heart-led, and something that would feel like a family project and something that I believed in.” When director Julia Jackman sent Sudol the script for Bonus Track, written by Mike Gilbert and based on a story by Gilbert and actor Josh O’Connor, she knew that she’d found the project. The story follows 16-year-old George Bobbin (Joe Anders, 1917), a small-town teen in the U.K., failing in school while dreaming of musical stardom. Max (Samuel Small, The Strays), the charismatic son of a world-famous pop star, transfers to his school and takes an interest in his music. George is stunned — so is everyone else, including his parents, Julia (Sudol) and Jeffrey (Jack Davenport, Pirates of the Caribbean), who are having marital troubles but both remain committed to their relationship and their son. As George and Max’s growing friendship starts to give way to deeper feelings that George hasn’t explored, he finds an authentic voice, joy and purpose that go far beyond his daydreams. “It felt very, very kind-hearted, and it’s actually quite rare to read a script that feels kind,” Sudol says. “We need to tell as many different kinds of these coming-of-age stories for people in the LGBTQ community as we can.” As a mother, and as a former teen who dreamed of being a musician, the story connected deeply with Sudol. “Teenagehood is so horrible, it’s just so hard,” Sudol says. “If there’s anything about you that kids can sniff out as a bit different — whether it’s about your gender or your race or your personality — it can be very, very isolating.”

While Bonus Track came out in the U.K. in 2023, it’s hitting the United States at a pivotal point in time, one that Sudol sees as adding urgency to the story. “It’s a scary time for all of us,” Sudol says. “There’s a lot that’s at stake right now in terms of protecting our fellow human beings. And these stories — stories of being a kid and working out something as sensitive and complex as who you’re going to like — those first crushes, those first kisses, they’re so scary and so hard. If we don’t keep putting those stories on screen, what might happen?” 

“You cannot censor film,”

The ability to provide a light in the darkness through art is a rallying cry for Sudol. “You cannot censor film,” Sudol says. “Maybe at some point, they might try, but let’s make as many projects that resist as possible and keep our humanity.” Sudol’s background as a musician drew her to the film’s musical element of the story, in particular George and Max’s songwriting efforts. “Songs in films often feel too polished, like, ‘Oh, I can already see that this is gonna be a hit song,’” Sudol says. “But songwriting is so messy and uncomfortable. I have spent so many hours banging my head against a wall over something as nonsensical as a riff that sounds like the beginning of a song but isn’t quite there yet.” Composer Chris Hyson — one of Sudol’s longtime collaborators — helped craft the film’s sound. “It was really cool to watch how the song developed from when we heard it on set to what it became in the final version,” Sudol says. “Songwriting is alchemy. It’s magic and it’s messy and it’s frustrating and hard — and great, all at once.”

“You’re part of a close-knit family,” Sudol says. “You get to know the whole crew. Everyone’s invested.”

Though Sudol is no stranger to big-budget productions, she relished the experience of making a small indie film. “I come from being a musician,” Sudol says. “The amount of times I’ve washed my hair in a sink in a Best Western lobby … I’ve always been sort of shocked by how nice things were on Fantastic Beasts, but that’s not something that I expected to be the norm.” The intimacy of independent film was an exciting and invigorating experience that Sudol found to be quite intoxicating. “You’re part of a close-knit family,” Sudol says. “You get to know the whole crew. Everyone’s invested.” That sense of collaboration made working with Jackman particularly special. “She is very, very caring. She is very present. She is very human,” Sudol says. “She knows what she wants, but she’s not arrogant about it. She made us all feel safe, and that shows in the performances — especially in the boys. It’s not easy to do a film like this and bring that kind of vulnerability to the screen.” As for her own music, Sudol released Still Come The Night, her first full album under her name in 2022, and is working on a new project that’s quite different from her past work. “I am in the process of putting out a collaboration with a very good friend of mine. It’s music for sleep and relaxing. And it’s also very good for anxiety,” Sudol says. “We’re still working on timelines, but not in the too-distant future.” 

Bonus Track is available on demand now, and through it, Sudol has found a project that aligns with both her artistic sensibilities and her personal convictions. “It felt like a no-brainer,” she says of taking on the role. And for audiences, it’s likely to feel just as essential — a reminder of the power of kindness, music and telling stories that matter. 

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