Stephen Frears appears in the lobby of the Hotel Inglés in Seville with a straw hat and summer t-shirt, in line with the 22 degrees that the thermometer already indicates at ten in the morning. He participates in the second edition of the Hay Festival Sevilla Fórum. The director of My Beautiful Laundry does not usually go into detail in interviews, unless the recording app has stopped and hovers over one of his favorite topics. A staunch Arsenal follower, 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 Gunner coach, Mikel Arteta.
Tonight at the Hay he will review his career, which has often been defined as versatile and varied. Is one of the common features of his films the authenticity and complexity of his characters?
Well, I had never thought about it like that, but it could be. 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 in Dangerous Liaisons. I just believed in her. I thought any man would fall in love with her. If you mean that by authenticity, then it is a correct perception. I always thought, too, that Helen (Mirren) was like a queen. And Sally Hawkins (star of The Lost King) is both fragile and tough. And Kate Winslet in The Regime is the one who invents her character, including her mannerisms. It's all due to the quality of the script, which should lead you to a kind of authenticity. You have to make things believable.
Are you now working on a new “credible” project?
I've been working on this series with Kate Winslet and I'm supposed to film 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 parking lot 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 one. Obsession can indeed be a driver of creativity because making films is very hard work, 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. That is, 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) is going to change cinema? Maybe AI doesn't threaten directors, but it does threaten people who do special effects or post-production...
I don't know, I'm old-fashioned... For me, the stories that AI makes are of no interest. It's true that they make a few touch-ups on my films, I realize that, but nothing more.
There is also the risk that the dangerous use of AI to try to make films successful makes them more stereotypical.
Yes, that is a threat, because, ultimately, what really interests us is the scriptwriter's imagination. I suppose there really is a risk of standardization. But, in my case, it doesn't worry me because I have never made films in which box office success was predictable. Box office success has always come by surprise. A pleasant surprise. Otherwise, I'm only interested in people who have very personal ideas. I don't know how they make Marvel movies, I have no idea. I prefer what is unpredictable.
You've tackled British royalty in some of your films, most notably The Queen. Does the current disarray of the royal family suggest a new film to you, perhaps with Kate Middleton in the lead role?
I'm completely baffled by it... but I never intended to make films about the royal family. I don't find it interesting. If I am anything, it is a Republican. In The Queen I was very interested in the queen, but the institution is idiotic.
But in The Queen one sensed an important prior investigation into the monarchy...
It is not like this. I had researched all my life. Consider that I am only a little younger than the Queen. Why should I have investigated more? Well, it was when the film came out that I was told that everything that was happening at Balmoral had nothing even remotely to do with reality. At first, they did not hunt any deer, but rather birds.
