'Why you gotta be so mean?' Oscar winner Olivia Colman stars in dark comedy, 'Wicked Little Letters'

HOLLYWOOD -- Long before the advent of social media and the current trend of "trolling," if you wanted to annoy, upset or enrage someone, you actually had to write, then mail them a letter. The new movie "Wicked Little Letters" is based on a true story about a small British town rocked by someone's poison pen.

Oscar winner Olivia Colman stars in the dark comedy. The story follows two neighbors: Edith, a deeply conservative woman, the other, Rose, is a rowdy Irish immigrant, played by Jessie Buckley.

When a slew of "wicked" notes, filled with hilariously creative profanities, turn up in the mail, everyone wants to know who is behind the scandalous words.

For the film, Colman and her husband signed on as producers.

Director Thea Sharrock was thrilled to have Colman's experience to bounce things off... and, to help recruit the cast.

"Well, I feel bad when people assume I did any kind of producing. I really didn't," said Colman. "It's quite 'I can phone up Jessie and go hello?' That's true."

Sharrock assured her all of that was helpful: "The first conversations you and I had were about the world of people that we had in common, some of which you knew, some of which I knew who we wanted to be in the film."

"Is that producing?" asked Colman. "Oh, see? Nailed it!"

"Wicked Little Letters" may be set some 100 years ago. but the themes of people being hurtful to one another resonate today -- just in our new, online form.

"The negativity behind social media, I think is really, it's really sad," said Sharrock.

"It's sort of loss of empathy, you know, a mass loss of empathy, I think, to forget that you are actually hurting someone by saying something unkind...I have to assume if you're going to be cruel anonymously, about someone you've never met, you must be unhappy or hurting in some way. The old adage, 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all,' we should be teaching kids that," Colman said.

"Wicked Little Letters" is in theaters now.