“The Iron Lady” New York Press Conference

At the film’s press conference in New York, director Phyllida Lloyd, writer Abi Morgan, young Dennis actor Harry Lloyd, and the star herself Meryl Streep gave an interview to a room full of journalists. The group discussed how both the script and the rehearsal process reflected theatrical roots, the experience of depicting a person who is still living, and lots more. Streep is particularly candid, and offers a thoughtful response to those who have criticized the film. Hit the jump for the entire press conference.

This is a question for all of you: How did your background in theatre enhance your experience in this particular film?

HARRY LLOYD: I think it really helped when we were putting it together, the way we rehearsed it was very much like a play. We had all the scenes and every scene we went through over at Pinewoods [studio], and Phyllida kept it very loose, as you do early on at rehearsals—you don’t try to pin it down, knowing you’ve got a long way to go. Often in films you’ve got to rehearse it within five minutes because you’ve got to shoot it. And we gave ourselves the time to play with it and so it was all very collaborative, and I think background theatre helps you work that way.

For Harry and Meryl, obviously you didn’t interact with your older or younger parts on the screen. Did you have interaction behind the scenes discussing your characters, and Phyllida could you describe how you directed them with their old and young counterparts?

H. LLOYD: Well we had a lovely few days rehearsing, and there was a lovely day which I found really helpful, when we had to take lots and lots of photos to [set] dress the house, so we had to pretend to get married and to be on honeymoon. So there was a day where me and Jim [Broadbent], Meryl and Alex [Alexandra Roach] were all wearing different costumes, and just for little moments, capturing little moments. And seeing Jim in character for the first time and recognizing things that I had seen in Dennis, and that he had picked up on [as well], it was very different than just talking to someone about how they’re going to do it—which are always pretty fatuous conversations because actors don’t normally even know what they’re doing (laughs)—to able to observe it and see some common ground in what we had and what was different about it, that was the most useful day in terms of me and Jim.

For Harry and Meryl, as actors, when you play a character like Margaret Thatcher, like Dennis, obviously people know they’re in the public record—they have a memory of them. Do you prefer playing real people or fictional characters where you can do more interpretation of that character?

H. LLOYD: It was my first time playing someone on screen who existed—not only existed, but existed within living memory of the people who might be watching it. So to begin with, that was absolutely terrifying because I thought “I’ve got the wrong shaped mouth, that thing he does! I can’t do it, it’s wrong.” And I’m trying to work out how Jim [Broadbent]’s doing it, so I felt I had lots of hoops to jump through. And as Abi was saying before, you have to take it all and then wait for some of the stuff to stay and then throw the rest all away. And what was great about playing him at the age I played him, I didn’t have to play the Dennis that people you see from the ITN news. I saw the Dennis and was interested in the Dennis people weren’t familiar with, and who there was no footage of. So I sort of felt I had the best of both worlds. I had a little bit more freedom than these guys did.

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This entry was posted on January 12th, 2012 and and is filed under Interviews. Get RSS feed for comments on this post or the TrackBack URI for this article.

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