Matthew Goode stars as C.S. Lewis… Anthony Hopkin’s as Sigmund Freud… on the eve of World War II, two of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, converge for their own personal battle over the existence of God. Freud’s Last Session interweaves the lives of Freud and Lewis, past, present, and through fantasy, bursting from the confines of Freud’s study on a dynamic journey.
We talked Goode and director Matthew Brown about the themes, the process and more.
Interviewed for Family Entourage
Family Entourage: I’m a huge CS Lewis fan and didn’t know quite as much about Freud, so it was neat to see that. Mr. Brown, let’s start with you set up the conversation being had between these two titans and then also maybe how the material developed since this wasn’t a real conversation, but rather an idea of a conversation.
Matthew Brown: It came out of a university lecture series. It was a book Armand Nikolai created called, it was called The Question of God. And he had this class for about 30 years. It became one of the most popular classes up at Harvard. And originally it was just about Freud and atheism, and then they wanted to counterpoint to it and he decided upon C.S. Lewis and he thought there might’ve actually been a possibility of a meeting between the two of them. So he used that and all of a sudden it just became totally dynamic. And so that went on for about 30 years and it became a play. And then we obviously turned it into a screenplay in a movie. I was drawn to it by the themes and what it didn’t shy away from it tackles the big stuff and I love stories that do that. It’s a little bit intimidating, but it was a great challenge and one that I think is worthwhile because I was really hoping that it could start some conversations, which I think at this time are very badly needed.
FE: Matthew Good, getting into the character of C.S. Lewis, how familiar were you with him, with his works, and then trying to embody this individual?
Matthew Goode: I was aware of CS Lewis, the writer, as a child. I read The Chronicles of Narnia, but I was aware of older C.S. Lewis via my co-star in this because he did a wonderful C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands, which is still a brilliant film and still a great performance. It stands up, most of Tony’s work seems to, it’s very difficult to knock him as an actor, but I mean, so a lot of the history, it’s the joy of playing a part like this. It’s been written down. There are timelines. We know when his works were published, et cetera. And he wrote a very nice book in 1955 called Surprised by Joy, which was very beneficial in a way. It’s lovely to hear someone talk about their own childhood through their own words. Sometimes you read a biography of people and it’s somebody else writing it.
So I got an inkling of how his mind works and how he thinks, and obviously just the detail of talking about the traumas in his life, particularly those early years. That’s when that’s what build us as human beings. But then I had a very nice script as well, which is very balanced and you’ve got to throw all your research out, so to speak. And the thing that I was just very, very aware of is that I wanted to try to make sure I got his humanity. I couldn’t really do his voice. He spoke, his voice was very, it was quite different. There’s still a recording of his voice, but in 1939 from his, which is on YouTube, but we had different bodies I think at that time. So physicality that is so I just wouldn’t have been able to do that. But I’ve got the rhythms of his language from that. And the Tamra, I suppose you’d say. So. But knowing it all, you’ve just got to get in room with Tony Hopkins and see what happens. And it was a joy.
FE: Speaking of getting in a room with Anthony Hopkins. There’s tons of dialogue in this. At one point I was like, oh man, Matthew probably got this script and was like, okay, when do I get a break?
MG: Well, yeah, I mean there’s a little bit, I mean, Tony’s incredible because he’s also, I don’t really want to talk about his age, but you can certainly look it up and it’s in his eighties. It’s no mean feat to be choosing to be making something seven pages a day. It’s a lot. I mean, we both learned the entire script before we came in. The only way we could do it required a lot of time and effort and it was great, particularly on his part. But listening brings its own, own different delicacies of strangeness. Yeah, but I guess if you’re going to have to listen to someone do some big speeches, Tanya Hawkin is the one you want.
FE: Matthew Brown, talk to me about directing the two of them. It’s kind of a dance and you did it such a great job. What did that look like from your perspective?
MB: It’s just frightening when you think about it at the beginning. I think it, it’s a tribute to Matthew and Tony and just their collaborative nature and kindness and just patience that this was able to get done. I mean, as he was saying, we did close to seven pages a day at times. And Tony, he’s not a young man, and we needed to have the opportunity to make mistakes and fall down and get back up. And when you’re on a super tight schedule, we’re on, that’s hard to do that unless you have a lot of trust. And so we did. And I was very, very fortunate that way. And then I think the amount of preparation that Matthew did, and he’s very humble, and Tony, they did so much preparation going into this that it helps not only just with authenticity and everything else, but it gave us the ability to take chances because they were so prepared.
So that was pretty amazing. And it was just the joy we had the first three weeks of the shoot were on the stage in Ardmore, which is the studio where Tony hadn’t been, it’s the same stage actually. He was there 50 years ago on The Lion in Winter. And then he came back in 50 years later to do this film on the same stage, which was just remarkable. And actually our production designer had worked with him 30 years earlier on Howard’s End, and she was there and she’s also in her eighties. So that was really interesting. But yeah, it was a real joy for those couple of weeks when we were just able to have the crew stay away and let these guys do their magic.
FE: Like you had mentioned, there are big themes like faith and logic and science and religion, personal growth and listening… these are not easy concepts for anybody to grasp, at any specific time in history… this is set in 1939, but it’s still relevant today. So maybe talk a little bit about that.
MB: It’s shockingly relevant. I mean, that’s so sad about it. I mean, I suppose it’s like how do people not learn from their mistakes, but we just continue to, as a human species, we’re challenged to say the least. So we just have to keep on trying. But it’s sad that it’s so relevant. I mean, we’re looking at tyranny abroad at the beginning of this film. That’s wars. We’re in two war, we’re seeing two wars in the world right now. We’re having, religion is at the center focus of a lot of stuff and it’s at war with science in a certain respect at the moment because there seems to be the loudest voices in the room seem to dominate. And I’m hoping this film actually lets people see that we don’t have to be so polarized and we can have conversation and there’s good things about both arguments to take from them. And there can be respect, which is what I’m hoping.
FE: Matthew, I have to tell you, I’ve been a fan for a very long time since Chasing Liberty, all the way through your career, and Robert Evans of The Offer still stands out to me, probably my favorite character that you’ve dived into. So I’ve got to know, when it comes to selecting projects and scripts, do you look for varied individuals? Do you like a certain personality type? What does that look like for you?
MG: Well, thank you very much by the way. Yeah, we’ve moved on quite a long way from Chasing Liberty. I mean, I guess you are always looking for something varied and that might be because, oh, that’s a really interesting, it might be astronomy or something like that. Something that I like to think I’m intellectually curious. I mean, having Tony Hopkins sometimes it’s not necessarily that it’s about the other actor you want to work with. And I don’t pick and choose. Things are, it’s more like goldfish feed, someone’s thrown it in and in the water and it just happens to come in front of me at the right time because there’s a lot of other fish in there too. Yeah. But I like never knowing what’s coming next. But actually one of the things that might come soon is a revisitation of Bob Evans, which should be, I don’t know, I don’t necessarily know if it’s definite, but I’m kind of interested to see where I could push that character again, you don’t often get to revisit things and sometimes that’s great. I feel like we did in well enough the first time around. But if the idea is good enough, maybe
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