- Mr. Ianucci, would you like to give us
the elevator pitch--
- The elevator pitch. It's a mechanism that
can take you without using stairs,
either up to the top of the building, or down.
A variety of doors.
(laughter)
(overlapping chatter)
- You can have a kind of concertina type gate thing
that you can clank open, or more commonly there's
the just the sliding doors--
(laughter)
- That part from the middle.
That's it, two hours long--
(laughter)
- It's an unbelievable ride.
(all laugh)
- [Interviewer] And that's a wrap.
- (claps) Excellent.
- I so admire you for for doing that.
(laughter)
- [Interviewer] That's so good.
(chill music)
- It's about anxiety.
It's, although it was written in Victorian times,
it speaks to the modern condition,
which is why it was so appealing.
So it's a film about someone who spends most
of his life worrying if he fits in,
and then works out how to.
I could only think of Dev playing David,
I didn't have anyone else on my list,
so I got in touch with him when I knew
that it was the film I was going to make next.
First person I spoke to is Dev and I said,
"Look, you're David Copperfield."
And I'm glad he said yes, because there really wasn't
a plan B.
- [Interviewer] You went to this meeting hoping
to hear more about sawing people in half,
but it was a different David Copperfield,
can you walk us through how that went down?
- Yeah, I totally skipped this classic, growing up,
so I didn't know anything about it,
and then I sat with Armando,
and then he laid out this incredible story,
and his vision for it was so,
he was so funny,
and he was like a child in the meeting,
he was such a big fan of this book,
and I kind of hadn't read the script
and said yes already at that point, because I was
just so eager to work with Armando,
I totally trusted him.
I really related to David.
I relate to someone
you know, trying to find themselves,
and there's a general awkwardness to him
that I can strongly key in to.
But it's a coming-of-age story about identity,
and about accepting your past,
and embracing where you came from,
and that, in turn, for David, is where
his biggest success lies.
And for me it's, for any young person I think,
growing up in life, trying to figure out who you are,
and you're constantly shifting looks and styles
around different people and that's David's life story,
is he's constantly trying to overcome
these great adversities, and he couldn't have done it
without the amazing people around him,
and that's the story's strength, is it's about
acknowledging the people that got you there,
and trying to bring them along with you, in success.
- [Interviewer] Well one of those amazing people
is Hugh Laurie.
You know it's one thing to be able to say lines,
from Dickens, but also from Armando Iannucci,
it's not the easiest thing for an actor either,
but what was the most challenging part for you?
- Doing it justice.
Doing him justice, you know.
Justifying the man's faith.
Playing a character who is one of the earliest,
I think you would agree, one of the earliest
representations of mental illness
has afflicted this character.
And this was not a good time to suffer
from mental illness.
It probably never is, but that was certainly
a pretty rough time.
And this was a character who finds a kind
of peace and joy through his relationship with David,
and particularly his relationship with Betsy Trotwood,
who sort of rescues him from
the big institutional machine which would have been
his fate if he'd been on his own.
- [Interviewer] Can I ask you quickly just
because it's so important, the color blind casting.
Why was that so important to you and--
- Well it's, I mean it shouldn't be important,
and it should I think, by the time you watch the film,
it should be entirely irrelevant, I just wanted
to cast the best people for the part,
and I also want the film to speak to now.
You know, for the people in the film,
even though it's in 1840,
for those characters, that's today.
That's their present day.
And I wanted the audience to feel
that you're watching people living in their present day.
And therefore we wanted to avoid all the mannerisms
of how people behave when they put costumes and bonnets
and big white dresses on.
And the stiffness of that.
But it was also due to the fact that I wanted
it to be reflective of...
And also there's, the theme of it is
all about, "Am I fitting in?" you know, background,
in the book it's all about status in society,
and will rich people get on with poor people,
will David try and hide his past when he kind of
befriends people from a different social circle,
so it's always about people being questioned,
and then realizing that that's all irrelevant.
And also, I thought, why can't I draw from 100%
of the acting community for these roles, you know?
Why should there be a limit?
(chill music)