How hard it was to assemble an amazing casting for the film? Did the actors see the play before taking the job or did you rather they wouldn’t have so they could work on the script you designed for the movie?
Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams had seen the play. Viola Davis had not. Assembling the cast was remarkably easy, with the exception of Viola Davis. Meryl came right on board, Phillip took a day to consider, Amy came to me and requested the role.
Only for the role of Mrs. Miller did we have to do screen tests. Five people read, and Viola affected the camera crew so visibly that the role was incontrovertibly hers.
How did you work with actors, developing their characters, considering that in the movie there are two brilliant performers like Streep and Hoffman and two newbies like Adams and Davis?
I rehearsed the script for three weeks like you would a play. Over the course of those three weeks, the goal was to get all four actors in the same world.
Viola is actually an extremely accomplished stage actress of wide experience. Amy was the greenest of the four, and she isn’t even that green. By the third week we’d formed an extremely tight ensemble.
In Doubt there is comparison between tradition and innovation. In these days to face the economic downturn we should get back real old values?
I don’t think you can ever go back, but nothing ever gets lost. The history of the human race informs every person’s actions. Change always involves loss. What we are experiencing as loss now is an aspect of change.
I think the changes that are going on in the world now needed to transpire, but there will be blood on the floor.
Do you have more plays you intend to adapt for the big screen? I’ve just written a new original screenplay on spec. I’m very much enjoying not adapting a play into film. It’s easier to conceive of a story as cinematic from the outset. Adapting plays is a bitch.
Meryl Streep is regarded as an actor's actor, and is obviously loved by the general public (Mamma Mia!!). What sort of qualities does she bring to a production? Is she too big to direct?
No. She's utterly, eminently directable. She is mischievous, extremely intelligent--an antic presence in the room. Even she doesn't know what she's up to half of the time. For that reason, she likes and enjoys being directed. She doesn't want to end up on the moon.
How challenging was the filming of the final confrontation scene?
It was a brutal act of athleticism on the part of the actors. To cover this properly, we had to ask them to go to an extremely demanding place over and over again for three days. We had to break the scene down into a thousand looks and small, realistically motivated actions in order to justify the number of camera moves necessary to keep the scene vital.
How difficult was the post production process, knowing you could sway the audience’s opinion on Father Flynn’s guilt by the way the film was cut?
As a storyteller, I didn’t know whether Father Flynn was guilty so I know that nothing I shot would definitively answer that question. Having said that, yes, we had to be very careful in editing not to overload the narrative one way or the other.
You won an Academy Award for your Moonstruck script in 1988; as a writer, how does winning an Oscar compare to a Pulitzer Prize?
Winning the Pulitzer is a really mellow, fabulous thing. You don’t sit and wait for them to open an envelope. You already know you won, and you have a nice lunch. Oscars are more stressful. I had to sit for three hours and wait for my category.
I had to fly to Los Angeles. For the Pulitzer I just had to go up to Columbia. But, while the president of Columbia gave me the Pulitzer, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck gave me the Oscar, so that was better.
Doubt is released on DVD 6th July.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw