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