Actress Julie Bruns chatted to Courageous Nerd about her short film Ada, which she co-wrote and plays mathematician Ada Lovelace.
In this interview, Julie also discusses how she started acting and her other upcoming projects.
How did your journey as an actress first start?
Julie Bruns: I think I always had a spark for acting. I remember doing little performances for school when I was small.
I’m pretty sure my stage debut was at about 5 or 6 singing ‘I’m a Little Teapot’. But I got bit by the acting bug when I was about 19.
I was living in Mexico at the time. A tiny town called San Felipe in Baja California with my family. There’d been a little community theatre there that closed down a few years prior. It nearly started back up again. I got the part of a young woman in this rather ridiculous musical comedy.
Long story short, the production never happened, but I was hooked. At the time, I had a job doing web design and advertising for a local website. That play started the realisation that life is short. I wanted to spend it doing what I was most passionate about.
There was an older retiree in San Felipe, Linie, who was a retired actress from New York. She gave me a very old, very battered copy of Audition by Michael Shurtleff. I read it cover to cover. I moved to Vancouver the next year, and just jumped headfirst into classes, indie films, anything I could get into.
Did you know much about Ada Lovelace before playing her?
Julie Bruns: Surprisingly little. Considering I was a woman working in a computer-related field before I was shocked I hadn’t heard of her.
My partner, Steven, and I came across an article about her while he was doing research in the history of science.
We both just stopped and spent the morning digging into her life. I think both of us exclaimed at some point, ‘How is there not a film about this person?’
How would you describe the premise for anyone who may be unfamiliar?
Julie Bruns: The film is based on the true story of Ada Lovelace, a brilliant mathematician, and the woman
who wrote the world’s first computer program in 1843 – this was before the first computer was
even built – only the blueprint for it existed.
Our film is set in London, in 1851, as a young Ada is slowly dying of cancer, and but wholly determined to raise the funds to get the first computer built before she runs out of time. Of course, sexism in the Victorian era was nearly insurmountable.
It’s a film about her rebellion and the final gamble she took to try to complete her life’s goal.
It would have changed the world.
As a co-writer on the project, what sparked the initial idea to explore this topic in a screenplay?
Julie Bruns: I think as soon as we discovered her, we were both shocked that her story hadn’t already been really deeply explored in film. Of course, both Steven and I are filmmakers, so I think we probably automatically see things through that lens.
She just seemed like such an influential figure to not already be known. It’s incredible the number of amazing women in history whose stories have just been buried.
It absolutely lights me up to get to play any part in bringing those stories back into the light they deserve.
As far as the research – there was definitely a lot. When you come to telling the story of someone who actually lived, you want to be sure you’re giving it the diligence and respect that that deserves. Steven put in a massive amount of research into her life – I don’t think there wasn’t a book about her that he didn’t read – and I hope that translates onto the screen.
We really tried to infuse it into the film, right into the little touches. I’m wearing a period-specific corset in the film, even the glasses on the table of the dinner scene actually were from the 1850s – I had to have a ‘stunt glass’ to tap when I get everyone’s attention, I wasn’t allowed to tap the authentic ones.
What would surprise people about Ada Lovelace?
Julie Bruns: I feel like a lot of people have been just surprised to know that she existed and that the first programmer was a woman. She’s such an inspiring figure for women in STEM.
Thankfully there’s a lot more awareness of her these days. But we definitely discovered a lot of little gems during the research phase.
She had a cat, named Mrs. Puff. She was very committed to trying to build a steam-powered flying horse when she was a child. Her estranged father was the poet, Lord Byron, and in her childhood home, there was a portrait of him that her mother had hung hidden behind a curtain and had servants guard it so that Ada couldn’t peek at it.
How much did being the actress playing Ada also inform your part of the writing process?
Julie Bruns: Very much so. As an actor, there’s definitely an awareness of dialogue and flow, and what’s going to feel natural in a conversation between two characters.
Especially in a film like Ada, where there’s so much information and story to cover, it really meant taking time playing in the dialogue to make sure that things didn’t feel too fast while we covered the exposition.
I think we also had a lot of fun finding the flow through the scenes and trying to tell as much visually as we could, because it really is a big story contained in a short film package.
Are there any plans to expand the idea beyond a short film?
Julie Bruns: We absolutely would love to. Ada’s story definitely deserves a bigger piece about it. We’ve been talking about expanding it to a feature, or even a show, and we’d love to play around with some modern storytelling methods.
I think it could add a ton of fun flavour to her story, I mean, she nearly built a steam-powered computer, that almost begs a steampunk-styled adaptation in a way.
Aside from this short film, could you tell us about your upcoming or recent projects?
Julie Bruns: Definitely, I’ve got a few projects on the go at the moment.
Most recently, we just released my web series, The Eviction. It’s a bit of a light-and-dark comedy about a couple who get an eviction notice, and decide to get creative to try to keep their home.
It’s kind of like Home Alone meets today’s crazy housing market. And I also have a horror short film currently doing film festivals called Blink. It opens with a woman who’s just stabbed her husband to death 27 minutes ago… and now he won’t stop blinking.
So, definitely spooky, but with a lot of themes of how trauma can just stick with us if we don’t face it and heal. Plus there’s a sprinkling of Greek myth in that one, so a fun little frightening film! It’ll be coming out around October.
Ada is coming to Shorts.TV in March and is out now on Reel Women’s Network to rent/buy, or with a subscription.
Follow writer Conor O’Brien on Twitter
A lifelong TV and Film buff, Conor founded Courageous Nerd in 2019. He has conducted hundreds of interviews for the site, as well as written comprehensive feature articles on a variety of topics. You can find him on X: @conorrcn.
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