Stephen Frears appears in the lobby of the Hotel Inglaterra in Seville wearing a straw hat and summer T-shirt, in line with the 22 degrees that the thermometer already indicates at ten in the morning. Take part in the second edition of the Hay Festival Sevilla Forum. The director of My Beautiful Laundry doesn’t usually take too long in interviews, unless the recording app has stopped and he’s flying over one of his favorite tracks. A staunch supporter of Arsenal, Frears wants to know what options Barça and Madrid have in this Champions League. Arsenal – “The best team in the world” – faces Bayern in the semi-finals and the filmmaker has blind faith in the Gunners’ coach, Mikel Arteta.
Tonight at the Hay he will review his career, which has often been defined as versatile and varied. Are the authenticity and complexity of the characters common features of your films?
Well, I had never thought of it that way, but maybe. Ultimately, I’m only interested in certain types of writing, and authenticity is definitely an important part of it for me.
That’s why working with actors is vital for you…
You have to believe in the actors. I remember when I cast Michelle Pfeiffer for Amistades peligrosas. I just believed in her. I thought any man would fall in love with her. If you mean it for authenticity, then it is a correct perception. I always thought, too, that Helen (Mirren) was like a queen. And Sally Hawkins (protagonist of The lost king) is both fragile and tough. And Kate Winslet in The regime is the one who invents her character, even her mannerisms. It all comes down to the quality of the script, which should lead you to a kind of authenticity. You have to make things believable.
Are you working on a new “believable” project now?
I’ve been working on this series with Kate Winslet and I’m supposed to be filming a script about Billy Wilder next year.
The protagonist of The lost king, based on the real character of Philippa Langley, is a simple admirer of Richard III who, with great effort, manages to find the king’s tomb, located in a car park in Leicester. It is the story of an obsession. Do you also have to be obsessive to overcome all the obstacles necessary to direct a film?
He is a character who goes beyond his barriers, yes, to escape his own conventional life. A romantic Obsession can, in fact, be a driver of creativity, because making films is a very hard job, you have to be a little crazy. At the same time, I think that the less obsessive you are, the better the film will be. In other words, you have to be very involved in the film and, at the same time, take a little distance.
How do you think artificial intelligence (AI) will change cinema? AI may not threaten directors, but people who do special effects or post-production do…
I don’t know, I’m old fashioned… For me, the stories that the AI ??manufactures are not interesting at all. It’s true that they make a few tweaks to my films, I realize that, but nothing more.
There is also the risk that AI will make the most successful films more stereotypical.
Yes, this is indeed a threat, because, ultimately, what we are really interested in is the scriptwriter’s imagination. I guess there is really a risk of uniformity. But in my case, I’m not worried, because I’ve never made films where box office success was predictable. Box office success has always come as a surprise. A pleasant surprise. Other than that, I’m only interested in people who have very personal ideas. I don’t know how they do Marvel movies, I have no idea. I prefer the unpredictable.
You have addressed British royalty in some of your films, particularly TheQueen. Does the current disarray in the royal family suggest a new movie, perhaps starring Kate Middleton?
I’m completely baffled by this… but I never set out to make movies about the royal family. I don’t find her interesting. I’m a republican. In The Queen I was very interested in the queen, but the institution is idiotic.
But in The Queen one could sense an important previous research on the monarchy…
It’s not like that. I had researched all my life. Think I’m only a little younger than the Queen. Why should I have researched further? Well, it was when the movie came out that I was told that everything that happened at Balmoral was not even remotely true. At first, they did not hunt deer, but birds.
