Tina Kakadelis
Michelle Gomez has always been proud of calling Scotland home, but since she moved away, the country has felt distant. All of that changed with Louis Paxton’s The Incomer. The film had its world premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Innovator Award. The Incomer features a small cast of characters who tell a story of isolation and what it means to find home. Siblings Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O’Rourke) have lived on a remote Scottish island by themselves for thirty years. They’ve managed to eke out an existence there, but that life is thrown for a loop when Daniel (Domhnall Gleeson) is sent by his intimidating boss, Roz (Gomez), to relocate the siblings to the mainland.
To celebrate the theatrical release of The Incomer, Michelle Gomez sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to discuss Scottish pride, how to find home while away, and playing a bureaucratic antagonist.
Film Obsessive: I read that you described The Incomer as born and bred in Scotland. What does that mean to you? What does a Scottish perspective bring to the story that maybe an American film couldn’t?
Michelle Gomez: I think the fact that it was written and directed by Louis Paxton, and he clearly is very proud of Scotland. I moved from Scotland many years ago. After being in The Incomer and seeing The Incomer, I’ve kind of fallen in love with Scotland and I’m so proud. I’ve always been proud of Scotland. I’ve always been proud to be Scottish and I’ve never been able to get rid of this accent.
In Scotland, we have an authenticity about us. I think that’s what sets us apart from the rest of not-so-great Britain anymore. I really believe the authenticity and honesty that we have shines through in this film. The Incomer is all about connection and, perhaps, feeling that you’re an outsider. All the good stuff we understand and feel as human beings is packed into this beautiful movie.
It’s almost like I’m having a reawakening to being Scottish again. It’s because of this film and the experience and the opportunity it gave me to be immersed in Scotland again. We were shooting on the rugged edge of Scotland in its majestic beauty. It’s a very different landscape to England. As soon as you cross the border and you’re in Scotland, mother nature has been allowed to be the star.
We opened the Edinburgh Film Festival this year. I open my curtains in my hotel and I’m basically at the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle. It’s just like, oh my God, you know? There’s a guy standing there in a kilt and he doesn’t look silly, he looks amazing. The Incomer is Louis Paxton’s love letter to Scotland.
American movies are something else that we’ve all been brought up with, right? It’s another kind of romance. It’s another kind of talent. It’s another kind of product that you can’t compare. The reason The Incomer is probably making its way into our public consciousness is because we’re dying for something that brings us together in a shared reality. There’s not a lot of that happening right now. To just come together and enjoy the very beautiful things that human beings are capable of—we don’t get to hear about that much lately. I think that’s what this movie really celebrates.
Because so much of the film is about home, what it means to physically leave a place, and if you can still have love for a place after you’ve left it, how has the definition of home changed for you since being a part of The Incomer?
If you’ve seen Interstellar, if you’ve seen The Odyssey…everybody’s trying to get home. I moved from Glasgow to London, where I was for 20 years, then I was in LA, then New York, and now I’m in Massachusetts. I’ve just done a lot of handbrake turns, like big, big moves. What I’ve had to do, and I think a lot of actors have to do, is make wherever they are home really quickly. Like on Saturday, I’m off again. I’m going off to do a Sondheim play, my first ever musical. Nobody’s asked me if I can sing, but I’m going to do it at the Royal Exchange. I know as soon as I get there, I have to plug in and find my new best friend. Find my sister.
Home, if you ask me, if you really push me, is still Scotland. After all these moves and after that big speech I’ve just given, it’s still Scotland. That’s where I think of as being home.
I described your character, Roz, as a bureaucratic antagonist, which is a different type of antagonist than you’ve played before. Would you agree with that description?
I do play a lot of antagonists. I don’t know why. Why did I get these cheekbones and these scary eyes? Why? There’s a line near the end, after they’ve been running around the island, when they’re trying to catch up with Domhnall Gleeson’s character. Beautiful man. Oh my God. The only fuckable redhead in Hollywood. Gorgeous. Then there’s Gayle Rankin, of course, a fellow Scott and just gorgeous. Grant O’Rourke, who’s just to die for. Those three are killer good together.
Anyway, we’re running around and it’s near the end. My character, Roz, has a henchman, and she’s running up the hill to try and stop Domhnall’s character, Danny. She finally confronts Danny. She says it’s for their own good. She’s trying to get them off the island and re-house them because it’s for their own good. It was in that one line where I got to pretend that she wasn’t two-dimensional. That she was driven by doing the right thing.
She didn’t go about it very well, but as far as she’s concerned, this is her job. She needs to get it done. If she’s going to get it done, she has to do it herself. Where have we heard women say that before? She’s taking the bureaucracy and she’s bending it to her will. Calum, her henchman, is no bloody use. I mean, gorgeous Emun Elliott is immune. Gorgeous, but useless. Too busy drinking pee. Just ridiculous. Oh, it’s such a beautiful movie. I’m so proud of it.
