Winners’ Press Conference Interview with Brooklyn winners in the Outstanding British Filmcategory
Q. Congratulations all. Congratulations. Could you all stand in front of the mic and for the purposes of the people using radio, can you identify yourselves before you speak. Congratulations, what does it this mean to you to win the outstanding British BAFTA?
A. It's the best.
A. It's' very special.
A. It was an incredible journey for us making Brooklyn, right from the very beginning of optioning the book and it all coming together. When we first optioned the novel, Saoirse was 15 so sometimes it's great that things take a while, “that we were a bit slow”, as Nick would say, because she became old enough and John became free and we made the film that we always hoped it could be. So it was a real thrill to make this.
Q. What was it about the book that grabbed you from the off?
A. My mother went from Dublin to New Zealand the same year that Eilis went to Brooklyn, then I moved from New Zealand to here. That resonated with me, the more I thought about it, I thought it was a very universal story and we all kind of thought the same.
A. It's a very important, profoundly important story about, Colm Toibin's novel. This is about emigration and it's the first one that tells the story completely. You see somebody leave their homeland, go to America and then come back home, so you see the changes in them and it's also the first film from the point of view of a young woman. Boy, did we have the right writer to take it to the screen because Nick knew exactly what to do and what not to do and didn't overdramatise it, which could easily would have ruined it, because it's a very delicate novel. A lot of the financiers were saying to us in the early days, nothing really happens in it. The game was never really about what happens in it, more about a slow build of emotion.
Q. I've just noticed that Julie Walters is here.
JULIE WALTERS: I've lost my earring, if anyone finds one of these, they're borrowed.
A. It's been a Pyrrhic victory for us. We're an earring down.
Q. Keep your eyes peeled on Stephen Fry I say. Julie, what does it mean to you to be involved with this film?
JULIE WALTERS: Oh, well, I was trained. I'm just a polytechnic school of theatre. What was the question, sorry?
Q. What does it mean to be involved with this film? It means it was huge, Nick. I read the book just by chance years ago when it came out and absolutely loved it, so when the script came in… Often when you've read a book and loved it, you read the script and think oh… but this was just perfect and I loved Mrs Kehoe and remembered her very vividly from the book because she reminded me of my mother and her friends. It was a thrill to do it because it was kind of my mum's story as well. She came to England, Birmingham, not quite Brooklyn.
Q. It begins with B, it's all good. Let's take some questions from the audience. Yes, Michael, thank you. There's a roving mic going round.
Q. Ms Walters, can I put you back on the mic please. Before we go further -- what's happened here?
JULIE WALTERS: I've lost -- these earrings are borrowed and they're probably the same price as my house and as I got on to the stage, I realised one of them was not there. So somebody has found a bit of it -- even that's probably worth my house, that little teeny bit. Yes.
A. Someone has found a bit of it?
JULIE WALTERS: Yes, by my seat.
Q. Can we ask you about Saoirse?
JULIE WALTERS: She was 19 when we did it. She's stunning, she's a phenomenon. I could take acting lessons from her, her poise and her concentration and focus and fun. You know, just fantastic.
Q. Nick, were you writing specifically for Saoirse?
NICK HORNBY: Well, as was said, actually when I started writing, Saoirse was 15 so I wasn't writing for her, we weren't thinking about her at all. Then it was so hard to get funded that she grew up while we were waiting, which was an amazing thing. Because now you can't imagine anyone else in the world who could have done it.
Q. Absolutely. Any other questions? Yes, please.
Q. I just wanted to ask a question about the spin-off TV show.
A. Julie is going to come back as Mrs Kehoe, it's going to be the boarding house, she'll be ruling the roost. And it will be the revolving door of all the people that come and go through the boarding house.
JULIE WALTERS: Yes. Fantastic. Nick is going to write the first 50 episodes and John is going to direct it so it's marvelous.
Q. Is this true, John, are you going to direct every episode?
JOHN CROWLEY: I just heard about it.
NICK HORNBY: Me too.
Q. Any other questions? Yes, please, Michael.
Q. How hard was it, keeping it simple for the film, were you tempted to ‘up’ the drama?
A. It felt dramatic enough to me. One of the things I loved about the book was its potential for drama. That trick that Colm pulls off where he divides Eilis between two worlds and you don't know where she should be or what she should do. I was sort of camping at the bit to try to represent that on screen. And, you know, everything that happens in that film, they're big things. They're not guns and chases but, you know, it's a heart broken homesick girl who then loses a beloved member of her family. She goes to live in a country 3,000 miles away, it takes her weeks to get there. That's drama. That's drama to me.
A. I always liked what Nick said, which is that he turned the volume up just a slight amount on everything that Colm had written which gave it enough of the drama.
Q. One more question here, thank you.
Q. Another question for Julie. Hello. On a lighter note, because Stephen Fry was wielding the kissing cam earlier on, if you could have kissed anyone here at the Baftas who would you have picked?
JULIE WALTERS: My husband of course.
Q. And the Hollywood answer?
Q. On that note, please give it up once again for the winners of the award of Outstanding British Film, Amanda Posey, Nick Hornby, John
Crowley, Finola Dwyer and Julie Walters. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good luck finding the earring.
