Why did you want to retell the story of The Beguiled?

The premise of the original film was told from the point of view of the soldier character; I knew I wouldn’t want to remake someone else’s film but I could make a whole other film from the female characters’ point of view. This group of women haven’t seen men in a while and then they bring this wounded enemy soldier into their home. In the original their sexuality was kind of crazy – but I thought, ‘What would it really have been like for them?’ I wanted to treat their desire as something human. I also liked the idea of casting women of different ages.

There has been some backlash over the all-white casting – were you worried about the reaction to the film at all?

No, I left some things out from the original movie and book where they felt exploitative. In the book they have an incest story which I left out, and there was a very stereotypical “sassy” slave character that I didn’t want to spotlight either. I didn’t want to talk about that aspect of the Civil War because it’s such an important story to tell. So I took those out and there’s been a reaction to it, which I understand. I thought a lot about how to treat those characters, but really I wanted to keep the focus on this group of women and not make it about the political side of that time.

I wanted to focus on the dynamics between male and female and not include racial politics – I didn’t want to treat it lightly. I didn’t want to have a token slave character without really going into the story of what that was like and there wasn’t room to tell that whole story.

You must have known it could cause controversy though?

We never wanted to have an all-white cast as such. My casting director and I talked about wanting to have some of the girls in the school to be played by black actresses but it just felt so inaccurate for the history and the time. I don’t want to represent an only-white world and it’s something we talk about and are conscious of. But I also thought it wasn’t nice for young women to see the only ethnic person in a film to be portrayed as the servant – even if that would be accurate. I wouldn’t want my daughters to see the only representation of race in the film like that, even if it’s historical – so I’m conscious of that.

I would like to do that more [in the future], have more diversity [in my films] and see more of that [elsewhere].

The female gaze: Sofia Coppola talks objectifying men and casting controversy