Stephen Daldry: “Hollywood? I’ve never even been there…”.

The Guardian, February 10, The “audience” might be brief and perfunctory but at other times it will last a couple of hours
2013. and alcohol will be served.

And that is all we know. They sit alone and no notes are taken. The Queen has remained tight-
Despite film hits such as Billy Elliot and The Reader, theatre is ‘home’ to Stephen Daldry and lipped and, more surprisingly, so have the 12 prime ministers she has engaged with over the past
now he’s back in the West End, directing a regal Helen Mirren. Here he talks about communal 60 years. Tony Blair let a few titbits slip in his autobiography, and Jim Callaghan admitted that it
living, depicting HM on stage – and those Olympic ceremonies. was like confiding in a psychiatrist. But, aside from that, almost nothing.

This makes it fertile territory for Morgan, who has previously dramatised Tony Blair and Gordon
Brown’s Granita pow-wow in The Deal, and who provided the script for the 2006 film The
Queen. He reunites with Helen Mirren, the star of The Queen, who plays her once again in The
Audience, but this is the first time he has worked with Daldry. Considering the 52-year-old
director’s resultant 30-a-day cigarette habit, that might be for the best.

Daldry’s back now. Rehearsals are taking place in an upstairs room at the Dominion theatre in
central London, and beneath us a boisterous Friday-night crowd is swarming in for the Queen
musical, We Will Rock You. We sit on chairs still warm from Mirren and Haydn Gwynne, who is
playing Margaret Thatcher. “You have to imagine: are they talking about matters of state or is it
more about the nature of the prime ministers themselves?” says Daldry, between gulps of white
wine. “Margaret Thatcher is on record as saying, ‘Oh, there was no conflict with the Queen at
all.’ Other people have contradicted that. You don’t know if there was an argument, if they just
had discussions. Maybe they got on like a house on fire, maybe they didn’t. Neither of them is
saying.”

The vow of silence extends to the production of The Audience. Daldry will not reveal any key
plot points, although he does divulge that the prime ministers will not come on stage
sequentially, and that not all of them will make an appearance. Looking at the cast list, I say, I
notice there is no Harold Macmillan or Edward Heath, two of the dourest leaders of recent times.
“You can’t bank on that at this stage of rehearsals,” Daldry replies. “That’s all I can say about
that.”
‘I’m a theatre person’: Stephen Daldry at the Dominion theatre. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the
Observer Tony Blair is another glaring omission. Daldry’s face betrays nothing. “Blair is not on the cast
list at the moment but he might be,” he says. “We cast Jim Callaghan today. Every three days we
Tim Lewis cast, so whether they appear or not is yet undecided. If Peter wants a new scene then he just has
Sunday 10 February 2013 07.00 GMT to write it and we’ll work it in. I don’t think it will be decided until the play is actually open. It
will change even in previews. The great fun of doing new plays is that people have no idea
what’s going to happen next,” Daldry continues. “That goes quite soon, as people start talking
about it, and the only way you can keep hold of that is genuinely to keep changing it. If you’re
It’s been a long day at the end of a long week and Stephen Daldry needs a drink. But before that going to do an audience with David Cameron, is it an audience a year ago, or is it last week?
a cigarette. “I’m on a pack-and-a-half a day at the moment,” he says, as he ducks out of an Well, if it’s last week, you’ve got to rewrite it each week to fit with what the audience might
airless, windowless rehearsal room that smells, in the opinion of the Observer’s photographer, have been. That would be great, wouldn’t it?”
“of actor”. He continues: “I blame it entirely on Peter Morgan.”
As Daldry says this, the reality of changing The Audience every week to incorporate, say, the in-
Daldry, the director, and Morgan, the writer, have been stuck in here for weeks working on a out referendum or the vote on gay marriage seems to hit home. He drains his glass and crosses
new play called The Audience, which opens at the Gielgud on Friday. The premise is enticing: the room for a refill…
since the second world war, the British sovereign has met each week with the prime minister.
Daldry is one of our great theatre directors – a former artistic director of the Gate and the Royal came along at exactly the right time. He was approached by Sebastian Coe to be creative
Court in London – but in recent years it seemed the stage had lost him to movie work. This director, overseeing the four opening and closing ceremonies, and he accepted instantly.
started in 2000 with Billy Elliot, which was made for £3m but took £72m at the box office. It “It was like someone asking, ‘Would you like to go and be involved with the Hadron Collider in
won the Bafta for best British film and Daldry was nominated for an Oscar. Cern?” he says. “Yes! That seems to be a really good idea. Or, ‘Would you like to do your
production of The Cherry Orchard?’ Probably not, I’d prefer to go to Cern. Whatever you do,
So began an unprecedented run of success: Daldry has made three films since (The Hours, The it’s always got to be the most exciting thing in the world. Repetition is the fear. You don’t want
Reader and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close) and all have earned a nod for either best to recycle, repeat the same old ideas. That’s why directors have a short shelf life.”
director or best picture at the Oscars. He adapted Billy Elliot into a stage musical, which then
won 10 Tony awards in New York in 2009 and continues to pack out London’s Victoria Palace Initial presentations were taken up with stuffed-shirt politicians attempting to skew the content of
theatre. But it is more than a decade since he has directed a play in the West End. the ceremonies. After one particularly tedious gathering, a minister – whom Daldry declines to
name – said, “That’s fine, but where’s the Battle of Trafalgar?” Daldry brought in an ally, Danny
“It feels like home,” says Daldry. “I’m a theatre person, that’s who I am. I’m happy to make Boyle, to oversee the opening of the Games and they agreed on a single rule: just because a
sojourns into the world of movies but I’m basically a theatre director that potters off and does a secretary of state is saying what he thinks, it has no more validity than a bus driver or a person
couple of movies. I’ve never been to Hollywood. I can count the number of times I’ve been to you sit next to on the Tube. “I never felt it was going to be a disaster,” says Daldry. “I told them,
Los Angeles on my hands. I’ve never made a movie there and I’ve never been there for working ‘The only way it could go wrong is if it’s a committee-led event. If you create it in the same way
reasons. The only reason to go there is for silly awards shows.” you created the Millennium Dome, that will only lead to humiliation.’ And everyone goes,
‘Mmm… Anyway, back to the Battle of Trafalgar.’”
For the last decade Daldry has split his time between London and New York. “In terms of carbon
footprint, it’s obscene how many times I cross the Atlantic,” he admits. “And treating it as if you It was 20 minutes into the first night at the Olympic stadium that Daldry knew he could relax. As
were going to Bristol is slightly insane.” the industrial revolution was transforming our green and pleasant land into a fiery landscape of
satanic mills, blogs and tweets began to chorus their approval. That the effect of the chimneys
In 2001 he married his best friend, Lucy Sexton, an American performance artist. They have a rising through the turf was achieved by a low-tech bank of industrial blowers still makes Daldry
nine-year-old daughter, Annabel, and have adopted an eight-year-old girl called May-May. They laugh now. “The idea that people might imaginatively believe that the mill chimneys were real,
live together in a Manhattan loft with “assorted other people, folk we’ve lived with for a long coming up out of the ground in real scale, that was a shock,” he notes, mischievously. “People
time”. didn’t go: ‘They’re blow-ups, come on! It’s a bouncy castle coming up!’ Fabulous!”

I’ll let Daldry explain. “It’s like a little commune and it seems to be a very good way of bringing Evidence that the London Games has caused some profound and enduring shifts in British
up the kids,” he says.” It’s an old idea: it takes a village and all that nonsense, but I think it helps attitudes can be found even in The Audience, Daldry believes. Certainly, now that we have seen
the kids having childcare that’s within the group. It’s just an easier way of living for us. Some the Queen as a Bond girl, it makes it easier to believe she might shock us in other ways. “In
people wouldn’t like it; we find it very easy.” Danny’s [007] film most of the audience thought Helen Mirren was going to turn round,” he
says. “Then it was really her. She’s actually got a sense of humour! Who knew she’d do that?
Daldry will return to making films – he is working with Richard Curtis on “a political thriller set In the last few years the Queen has made the transition from the nation’s mother into the nation’s
in a rubbish dump in Brazil” they would like to make in Portuguese: “Are we crazy? Maybe” – grandmother,” Daldry continues. “That means for the play that you cannot – or it would be very
but he appears to be enjoying a break from the medium. His most recent movie, Extremely Loud hard to – get away with an anti-monarchist piece because whatever you do the audience will be
& Incredibly Close, was nominated for an Oscar last year but was enthusiastically bashed by wanting it to be something else. So if we made her into a monster, I think the audience just
critics for being schmaltzy. The Guardian even ran an article asking: “Is Extremely Loud & wouldn’t buy it. People project the best of themselves on to her now.”
Incredibly Close the worst Best Picture nominee ever?” (If you need proof that it’s not, just stick
a pin in the 2013 contenders.) Our time is up and, more pressingly, Daldry needs another fag break. But, before he disappears,
he tells me that if there’s anything I’ve forgotten to ask I just need to get back to him. “You
“Some people liked the film and a lot of people didn’t, and that’s just life,” he says. “It’s know, you might say, ‘I want to know more about why Michael Gove is a… [he then uses a
disingenuous to say that criticism doesn’t get to you or you don’t hear it or that you ignore it. word which will never find its way on to the curriculum].’ For example. And I go, ‘Of course
When everybody says, ‘That’s crap. I hated that,’ you hear it. But it’s much, much worse when he’s not, he’s a charming man, very intelligent.’ But you never know.”
they’re right: when you feel that it is an absolute piece of tosh. I made the film I wanted to make,
so you just have to find a way of getting over it.” This is the first time the education secretary’s name has come up, but perhaps the Battle of
Trafalgar is still being fought.
If Daldry had been looking for positive validation then last summer’s Olympics and Paralympics