The Personal History of David Copperfield" stars Dev Patel, Hugh Laurie and legendary director Armando Iannucci discuss the film, which is a modern take on Charles Dickens's classic, in this interview with CinemaBlend Events Editor Eric Eisenberg. Watch them chat about everything from releasing a film during a worldwide pandemic to the real-life legacy of Charles Dickens himself.
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00:00 never really know how it's going to go.
00:01 But we all, I think, have our fingers crossed,
00:04 and we're excited by it.
00:07 - This narrative is far more than mere fiction.
00:09 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:11 It is, in fact, written memory.
00:12 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:15 - And you have quite the ride on the way.
00:19 - A lot of people have talked about David Copperfield
00:22 as a kind of autobiographical story from Charles Dickens.
00:26 Is that something that you engaged with personally
00:28 as you were kind of putting the character together
00:31 in your head?
00:31 - It was really Armando.
00:32 For me, I related to a lot of the things
00:35 that he was going through.
00:36 The idea of feeling like a bit of a fish out of water
00:39 or an outsider, you know, it's that classic coming
00:43 of age journey of someone trying to figure out who they are
00:46 and learning to embrace their past, their history.
00:49 And that is where their strength lies.
00:51 And there's this wonderful kind of community spirit,
00:56 you know, the idea of, like, you know,
00:57 when you reach a place of success,
00:58 bringing the people that helped you along with you
01:01 and all those kind of beautiful sentiments
01:03 that I was really drawn to, you know,
01:06 there was something very uncynical about it
01:08 and very joyous, which I really liked.
01:13 - You had nothing.
01:15 Then you had something.
01:17 And now you've got nothing again.
01:18 So it stands to right you'll have something again.
01:21 - My question is for all three of you
01:22 is just given that attitude of the movie
01:25 and given everything that the world has been going through
01:27 in the last five months, if you feel that this movie is going
01:31 to have a different impact on audiences
01:33 now as compared to when it premiered at TIFF last year
01:36 or released in the UK earlier this year?
01:38 - I think we're all ready for something.
01:40 You know, we're ready for something
01:41 uplifting and positive and fun and funny and humane
01:46 and intimate and all those things, really.
01:49 It's what prompted me to-- you know,
01:50 when I reread the book about 10 years ago,
01:53 I was reminded by how funny it was.
01:55 But also contemporary it felt. And all the themes
01:58 are about forming connections.
02:01 Who do you love?
02:01 Who are your friends?
02:02 Who looks after you?
02:03 Who helps you?
02:05 Who do you help?
02:06 Irrespective of their backgrounds
02:08 and their own stories and so on.
02:09 It felt such a contemporary story.
02:12 And perhaps having done "The Death of Stalin," which
02:15 is a very different film, a very different theme.
02:17 [SCREAMING]
02:20 - Oh, fuck.
02:21 [COUGHING]
02:24 - It felt like quite a good contrast, really.
02:27 But after what's happened this year,
02:29 maybe there is now a, I don't know, a keener appetite
02:32 for something like this.
02:33 We'll see.
02:34 - I think all we can do is hope.
02:36 I think you can hope for some response from an audience.
02:40 You can never count on it.
02:41 I mean, audiences are, thank God, amazingly
02:45 unpredictable and capricious, you know,
02:48 because otherwise it would all be done--
02:50 the whole thing would be done by an algorithm.
02:52 I think all you could do is hope.
02:54 And I, like Armando, I absolutely
02:56 hope that people are looking for something that has this sort
02:59 of uplifting spirit to it.
03:01 But you know, it's such a--
03:03 it's always a nerve-wracking time to present
03:06 anything to an audience.
03:07 You never really know how it's going to go.
03:09 But we all, I think, have our fingers crossed.
03:12 And we're excited by it.
03:14 - Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
03:16 - Fly!
03:17 - The higher the words go--
03:19 - The clearer my mind becomes.
03:21 - I do want to actually specifically ask
03:23 about Mr. Dick as a character, because he is delightfully
03:26 such a great companion of David in the story.
03:28 He's a mentor and a friend.
03:30 But also, like, in 1850, they didn't really
03:32 have a real understanding of what was
03:34 going on inside of his head.
03:36 And I'm just curious about, Armando and Hugh,
03:38 how you guys talked about just kind
03:40 of psychoanalyzing the character.
03:42 - Well, I think in past adaptations,
03:44 he's been seen as a figure of fun,
03:45 as being mad or eccentric.
03:47 But actually, when you look at the book,
03:49 it's treated with, I think it's the very first honest
03:52 description of mental illness, described as mental illness,
03:56 not described as eccentricity or madness.
03:59 It's described as mental illness.
04:01 And Mr. Dick is-- yes, he's funny, but he's humane.
04:05 He's kind.
04:06 And also, he's in some form of pain, really,
04:09 and has to manage that pain.
04:11 And that, for me, was when we--
04:14 when I was talking with Hugh and with Tilda as Betsy,
04:18 you know, the relationship between the two of them.
04:21 And also, it's interesting that they are David's first port
04:25 of call, really.
04:26 They're-- you know, for all their kind of bigness
04:30 in terms of character, they're the ones
04:33 that he finds kind of most precious to him in the end.
04:35 - What do we do with him?
04:37 - If I were you, I'd wash him.
04:38 - Oh, donkey!
04:40 This is a donkey freezer!
04:42 Morbid!
04:43 - He was a remarkable woman, very kind.
04:46 [MUSIC PLAYING]
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04:53 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:57 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:01 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:04 (upbeat music)