Anthony McCarten’s scripts for The Theory of Everything , Darkest Hour and Bohemian Rhapsody may not have won him an Oscar, but Eddie Redmayne, Gary Oldman and Rami Malek took home Academy Awards for Best Actor for their leading roles in these movies respectively. “The great playwright Noël Coward said the key to his success was that he wrote lines that actors would kill to say. Actors respond when you give them something that allows them to run the gamut: the highs, the lows, the bombastic, the vulnerable, and to show their flaws and strengths,” says the New Zealand born multi-hyphenate.
It’s this exploration of humanity that also drives the novelist, playwright, television writer, and filmmaker to write about famous people. Initially a journalist, he credits his time in the newsroom for learning how structure and narrative could engage a reader. “My personality demanded an escape from the privations of being a novelist, so I began to look for more social ways to tell stories,” he says, adding, “Of late, I seem to have found something of an obsession in what makes ordinary people able to achieve extraordinary things. I’m always looking for the aspect of famous iconic figures that humanises them — an interesting, perhaps new perspective.”
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Researching Winston Churchill for Darkest Hour was one of the most revealing for him. At one point, McCarten realised that three of the British prime minister’s greatest speeches were written within a month of each other. “I was amazed to find many of the discussions that were conducted in the Churchill war rooms online, thanks to the National British Archives. What was surprising to me was how seriously he considered doing a peace deal with Adolf Hitler. That is not something that is very well known. But we have the records of him stating that he was open to discussing one to get out of their mess,” he says.
This was so much at odds with the usual depiction of Churchill as a man who brooked no doubt and was tenacious and determined. “It was a refreshing aspect to bring to his personality that had not been addressed before,” says McCarten. In translating this to screen, he notes that each director has always “delighted” him by how they have handled it.
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His recently launched book, The Pope , is already being filmed as a Netflix Original, set to release in December, with plans to make the festival circuit before that. The screen adaptation features Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis. It was on a trip to Rome that McCarten learnt that for the first time in over 600 years, there were two living Popes. “I wondered why we had found ourselves in this situation. So I began the research into the abdication of Benedict, and became very interested in what motivated this most traditional man to do the most untraditional thing,” he says.
While a lot of McCarten’s book-to-screen work stems from his own work, he says the ease of conversion depends on whether the narrative has a three-act structure. “In that case, the book is a great asset. If it’s is like a James Joyce novel, like a stream of consciousness, then it is much more of a challenge, and it would be easier to write something from scratch.” As for the future, he has his hands full. “There are films on George Washington and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I’m also writing the feature film adaptation of the documentary, Three Identical Strangers . There’s plenty to keep me occupied.”
Darkest Hour premieres on Sony PIX tomorrow at 1 pm.