- At it's heart The Two Popes is the story
of a progressive and a conservative
and I hope it speaks to the broader conversation
in society at the moment where we have these two camps,
we are not quite sure which will ensure our
future is better than the other
and there's so much anger passing back and forth,
that they are being polarized to move --
being driven further apart.
The middle seems to have collapsed.
To paraphrase Yates, "the center is not Hell".
And this project was about trying to get these
two positions into dialogue with each other in a debate
and they are highly combative at the beginning
but they find peace with each other.
And it's embedded in the truth,
there's a lot of research that went into
what the stated positions were.
My area of confection,
if you'd like,
was that I put those two positions into dialogue
with each other and built a dialectic around that.
- What responsibilities do you have to the factual truth?
So, it's a really tough, complex question.
Because you get to the heart of how much license
should you permit to yourself when you are doing
anything based on a real story.
And I've taken various takes on this over
the last few years,
I've cradle to grave stuff which is very,
very very faithful to historical fact
and in this case it's probably the most adventurous
use of artistic license that I've had.
But I would still,
you know,
put my hand into that fire and say that still
this is more than perhaps of any other
in the service of the truth and it's not necessarily
literally true that they had these conversations,
we don't know what they said to each other.
I know they met three times and, um...
- They only met three times?
- They have only met three times, yes.
- [Stephen] That's extraordinary, the two popes.
- Yeah, so,
it's imaginatively speculating on
what transpires between two people.
But any time you go into this area that's all we have.
It's like a road washed out at intervals,
we have known details but in between
those gaps we have to infuse with our own,
we surmise,
we try and be as emotionally authentic
as we can within the parameters
of the people we are dealing with.
- Anthony you always refused to work for Harvey Weinstein.
Was it easy to say no?
How much do you have ability to say no to projects?
Specially when you are starting.
- It was a kind of -- I don't know what it is --
some sort of compass that just said
"no danger, Will Robinson", and you know...
(laughter)
go over here and it was just my self-defense
mechanism kicked in and I just thought
" I don't want to become a victim
of what I know he's done with other people."
You know,
when you hear that someone who's done one film with him,
then insists on a clause in the contract
- - a non-screaming contract --
that if Harvey screams at you,
you get this amount of reimbursement,
(laughter)
and I thought "no, why do it?" --
(everyone agrees and laughs)
you had an obvious screaming clause and stuff and I thought
"life is way to short" and you know I want
to work with people I wanna have a beer with.
I'm on the threshold of doing something
which is in the can be accused or may be accused
of appropriation which is writing
a black female character.
- Real life or not?
- [Anthony] Real life, yeah.
- Who is the character?
- I rather not say but um...
- [Stephen] Who is the character?
(laughter)
- Well, you see, you are free to ask.
Freedom is the operative word here,
I think fiction means freedom.
And I think we have to fight for that and so --
god bless you for,
you know,
standing up for the fact writers must be free to travel --
we have to have passports into every territory.
If we had ever pigeonholed ourselves and say
"I can only write about being a middle age white man"
- That would be sad.
- Shakespeare would never have written
about anything outside of England,
we would have never had Merchant of Venice,
he is not a merchant,
never went to Venice.
You know so,
we have to fight for it and against some strong hit ones.
Because there's opposition to writers who chance their arm,
imaginatively journey to a world they don't know,
but want to know.
- But don't you agree you can't quite be like,
just a tourist though.
You know what I mean?
- Yeah.
- You have to really do some immersive work.
- I can wholeheartedly agree with you.
Yeah, you can't flippantly go in...
- [Kasi] Right.
- and do something.
You know, you have to do deep research and get it right.
But, isn't that true for every character you do?
- It is,
but I mean,
some are more challenging than others.
But I mean,
I do think that so much great work
has been written by so many people,
I mean,
as a writer you should be able to be --
to explore humanity, you know?
- Borderless, yeah.