Making The Chaperone

(soft music) - I am on this set because Simon Curtis and Elizabeth McGovern asked me to lunch one day at The Botanist in Sloan Square.

And they wondered if I'd read a novel called The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty.

- I was sent the book to read as an audio tape probably about eight, nine years ago.

And as I was reading it I thought yep, this is a good story to really develop.

- She said I would really love to do a movie of this.

- I was aware of Louise Brooks's story, but not of course of this particular incident when she came to New York to study with the Denishawn dancers.

- So at the time, Elizabeth was working with Julian on Downton Abbey, and she immediately talked to him about it and of course he saw immediately what she had seen in it and he did the script for her.

- For any actor, it's just a gift from heaven.

I really don't know what my life would be like without the pen of Julian Fellows.

- I love working with Julian, he's a modern master.

- I'm always drawn to really good women's stories, and this one has two very strong women characters.

- I think what attracted me in this story was the relationship between these two women.

- This was also the start of the flapper, which is an image that women saw which was freeing for them because it was a woman that cut her hair, that took off her corset, that wore clothes that she could move in.

And Louise Brooks was the flapper.

- She had this sense, she was a little girl, growing up with a rather tiresome mother, and somehow she had a sense that there was more in her than that.

She went to New York, she first of all started out as a dancer then she went to Ziegfeld Follies, then from Follies she went to Hollywood, she became a giant star.

- Of course we have our perfect Norma who is Elizabeth McGovern.

- When you first meet Norma she seems to be a very average, middle class house wife.

She enjoys a nice life with her lawyer husband.

- Norma is somebody who has, until very recently before the story begins, sort of accepted her lot in life.

- And as the story unfolds you find that there is a darker, more complex side to the character because it's revealed that she was an orphan.

She decides to go to New York secretly in search of her mother because she feels that that's going to be the answer to all of her questions as to why she's not feeling a sense of wholeness and satisfaction.

- And so her journey to New York, I mean ostensibly she is the chaperone to Louise.

But of course, just as much, Louise is the chaperone to Norma.

- She has no idea who Louise is and at this point nobody knows who Louise is going to become.

It's just really she takes this thing for her own reasons.

- They have lived a comparatively limited existence in Wichita, and now they've come to the big apple and they can find out who they really are and they both do.

- Working with Elizabeth was fantastic because we knew on the schedule we had on this we were gonna have to work very quickly.

- And it's a part that literally was tailor made for her.

- We spent a long time talking about the script and rehearsing.

- Something that's very, very difficult to find nowadays in actors is charismatic goodness, and Elizabeth has got that.

She's very complex as an actress.

She's very thoughtful, she's very considerate.

But she can play goodness in an exciting and interesting way.

- What's interesting about it is it shows both of them at different points of their lives, making a decision about how to move forward in a new way.

- It deals with freedom and the ability to make your own decisions and to follow your own path.

And that's what this story is.

And that's a timeless story.

- I hope it's a film of self empowerment.

- And the fact that they both happened to be there at two critical moments in their lives and show up for each other I think is what's so moving about it.

Two people who could have easily meant nothing to each other.

- She has the intuition and the openness of mind to recognize Louise and her dance and recognize that there's something in it for her.

- And you have to follow the opportunity and you have to shake that tree.

And I hope this film will encourage not just young people, young men and young women, but men and women all over, to get on and write that book.

To get on and take that course.

To get on and learn how to speak Japanese, I don't care.

Just to take control of their own lives.

I believe in that.

(soft music)