Casting Dorian Gray

Staff Writer: Grave Digger

Barnaby Thompson talks about how the adaptation was cast. What he looked for in an actor. Ever wonder why people get the parts they do? An interesting read for fans as well as actors.

Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a literary classic and anyone who has read the novel, has an image in their mind’s eye on what Dorian looks like, “Everybody has their own idea of perfection” notes director Oliver Parker.

This could have posed an almost impossible task in the casting process but Parker took the view that times change and that “If one was to choose the most glamorous man of the age today, he would be very different from when the book was written”.

Enter British actor Ben Barnes. Producer Barnaby Thompson had previously cast Barnes in Ealing Studio’s Easy Virtue and it was on the set of that film that he looked at the young actor as a possible Dorian, having arrived at the location straight from a script meeting on Dorian Gray. “I became aware of Ben’s interesting dark eyes and there was a moment when he turned to camera slightly and I found myself thinking ‘Oh my God he’s Dorian’. As a result, Thompson introduced Barnes to Oliver Parker and the two spent a couple of days working together. “I gave him a fairly rigorous audition, which he passed with flying colours. I became very excited about what he could bring to Dorian”.

“I think Ben’s done a great job; he has matinee idol looks, he’s utterly charming, but he can go from sweet charm to steel in just a flick of the head. This role is a real challenge: he starts as gawky naïve, he becomes rock ‘n’ roll superstar and then has to play himself looking exactly the same 25 years later and he’s done all those three things with aplomb” praises Thompson.

Parker and British actor Colin Firth are no strangers to collaboration, having worked together three times previously. “I think he’s becoming more and more exciting as an actor” notes Parker. “He keeps moving forward in an almost relentless way, looking for new ways to challenge himself. Henry Wotton is a fabulous role for him and not necessarily an obvious one considering the way people perceive Colin. But I actually know he’s a dark bastard at heart with evil thoughts so it was an easy choice in the end!”

Producer Barnaby Thomson’s thoughts echo those of Parker, “Colin saw an opportunity to play a character he rarely gets to play. In a curious way if there’s a similar role he’s played it would be Valmont, where he had this real sparkle and sense of the Machiavellian and he gets to be the bad guy. Very often Colin is cast as Mr Reliable and anyone who knows him knows he is anything but!”

Source: Momentum Pictures

Talking Dorian Gray Adaptation

Staff Writer: Grave Digger

Director, Oliver Parker talks about his role in creating the new film: Dorian Gray, with the producer and cast.

“I didn’t really want to corner myself having done two Wilde adaptations already, but I loved the book “The Picture of Dorian Gray”” explains director, Oliver Parker, “so Barnaby (Thompson) got the idea rolling and originally my role was as co-producer. It took time to get the script really coming off the page, I’ve had a chance in the intervening years to do a few more movies, cleanse the palate. By which point I was ready to have another shot at Wilde and of course I didn’t want some other bastard doing it!”

Parker and producer Barnaby Thompson have as Thompson puts it, “Known each other forever”. The team’s filmmaking collaboration has also been a long one, “Making films is very hard; making films with people you know very well makes it much easier because there’s a freedom and a sense of relaxation in the way that you deal with each other” comments Thompson. “Also Olly’s strength comes from drama and because he was an actor he’s very good at handling actors. I tend to be broader in terms of comic approach and more concerned with how you present a movie as an event to an audience. I think we have a nice friction in the way we look at things; we have two very clear points of view”.

With ‘Dorian Gray’, Parker decided he didn’t want to do the adaptation himself; “If you’re writing and directing you often feel you have a responsibility to the words especially if it’s a classic, but if you have a relationship with the writer, there’s the chance for some valuable dialogue”. So, two years ago rising young screenwriter Toby Finlay became involved. “Toby made a great impression on this piece” explains Parker, “he brought a very strong identity”. Finlay was introduced to the project by Sophie Meyer, head of development at Ealing Studios who’d read some of his work and thought he was worth a shot. “I think it was a great hunch – he’s certainly attacked it with a lot of vigour and has a visceral quality to his writing” notes Parker. “With Toby, the script would breathe and expand and he was absolutely relentless in going back and reworking it and continually refining it”.

“One of the things that made this project more interesting to me was it wasn’t quite so hidebound by the structure of a play. This particular story has enormous potential for expansion and investigation which is very liberating” concludes Parker.

“The book still resonates today because of the fundamental theme of ‘what if you were allowed to do anything?’” explains producer Barnaby Thompson. “I think that’s a notion we can all grab onto because we’ve been taught there’s right and wrong and if you do things wrong you pay for it.”

“In modern terms, the first person I thought of with this piece was Mick Jagger” continues Thompson “he was a young man who became a rock ‘n’roll star and was able to do whatever he wanted and in some ways was above the law. We live in an age of celebrity, we live in an age where good looks and pop culture have become more and more powerful elements in our life and the idea of the power of beauty and what that gives you is as relevant now as it ever was”.

“You could analyse for hours why myths endure but I think we’re all fascinated by the physical appearance of things, certainly of each other and our own physical appearance and Oscar Wilde seemed to make a religion out of beauty” observes actor Colin Firth who play Henry Wotton. “It was almost as though aesthetic beauty was more important than morality, so he was writing about something he cared about. The germ of the idea must have come from Oscar Wilde thinking ‘would I sell my soul?’ Everybody who has ever thought about appearance has grown up with all the clichés about beauty being skin deep and how its beauty from within that counts. There’s nothing extraordinary being dealt with here it just happens to be a myth that the story deals with in such a dramatic, concise and rather chilling way” concludes Firth.

“Today’s culture is very obsessed with cheating clocks and trying to stay young” notes actress Rebecca Hall who plays Emily Wotton, “I think human beings have always been obsessed with that. The fact that Oscar Wilde was writing about it then just goes to show. In any era there are different ideas of what is beautiful and what still looks young. - today it’s Botox and maybe yesterday it was dressing a certain way. It’s always going to be relevant and there are always going to be ways to try and stop it”.

“The theme of eternal youth is always fascinating” says Ben Chaplin (Basil Hallward). “Dorian Gray” is Faustian for a start and for some reason that fascinates people. Do we have to be responsible for our actions? Do we have to just live for pleasure and not pay the consequences physically and spiritually?”

For Parker, who started his film career in the horror genre with the legendary maestro Clive Barker, this adaptation of “Dorian Gray” posed an opportunity to dip his toe back into that water “It’s great fun to be touching on something that has an element of horror. This isn’t an out and out horror movie but it certainly takes me back to my early years in the business, which is a surprise to a lot of people. Having worked with Clive Barker as a young man this is really interesting for me and I’ve been able to join some of the dots in my career”.

“It’s great that Olly’s been given a chance to revisit his horror roots” comments producer Barnaby Thompson. “He set up a theatre company with Clive Barker and they did all sorts of horror shows and I remember going to see them when we were just out of school. You’d never guess it from anything else he’s ever done but he’s a big blood and gore man; his first film appearance as an actor was in Clive’s film Hellraiser”.

“With this film we have a great gothic horror legend and the fact that it comes from Oscar Wilde gives it another twist” says Barnaby Thompson. “We hope you’ll get the excitement and shock of a horror movie with the quality of dialogue and depth of emotions you’d hope to get from a writer such as Oscar Wilde”.

Source: Momentum Pictures