Q : What appealed to you about this script?
SF : I liked the fact the two of them were presented as human beings. I found it very, very interesting, witty and intelligent. I find the idea of the relationship between power and friendship rather interesting too.
Q : Was there any creative tension between your research team, that were anxious to get as many of the factual elements of the story absolutely right, and the licence that you needed in order to make the drama?
SF : Not really. The lawyers would sometimes say that's stretching it a bit or it wasn't quite like that. In fact, as a rule, the more precise we were, the more it suited the drama. In other words, it was when you tried to generalise that it got lost.
We absolutely did not set out to make a film that 'revealed' hitherto unknown facts about what happened between the two of them. What is much more interesting is to examine the inherent drama in the relationship between these two men.
Q : Do you have any more or less respect for Blair and Brown now?
SF : It's interesting. Sometimes you sit and watch and think that Blair was right to do what he did and sometimes you feel sorry for Gordon. It seems to be a very complicated issue. Now the situation has changed though. What's going on now is quite different.
Looking at footage from '97, Blair projected such optimism. What we have tried to do with The Deal is to remove the hindsight - anything smacking of prescience – that we now have looking back.
Blair is a riveting figure because he is so hard to read. When he became leader of the Labour Party, the first year he was called Bambi and the second year he was called Stalin.
I think they're both very neurotic but I can't see how you can be in that situation and not be neurotic. I don't have any particular insight into why they're so locked into each other. It's just like a marriage. I imagine it drives both of them senseless.
Q : Did you feel any sense of responsibility while making the film?
SF : Yes I did. I felt a degree of responsibility in that an awful lot of people voted for Blair and did not want to infer with our portrayal of him that they were idiots. I was determined the film would not allow people to feed their prejudices. That was the main thing.
I could see that people wanted to have their prejudices confirmed - that Cherie is Lady Macbeth or that Tony's eyes swivel or that Gordon is barking. I was always trying to avoid that.
I've never met Blair but I did meet Gordon Brown once and he seemed very funny and clever. He made a speech which included some jokes and you thought what a witty man. Then when I was doing research for this film, I discovered the same jokes in Tony Blair's speeches… which was a little disillusioning.
Q : Was the casting process straightforward?
SF : We had to wait for Michael and had to postpone shooting. I didn't know David’s work, and people had to argue for him but he really convinced me. I knew Michael because he was in Mary Reilly and I knew he was brilliant. The truth is I never found another person who could do it.
Q : The audience will get a real sense of Mandelson's dilemma in the film, would you agree?
SF : The film is certainly sympathetic to his position. It's quite peculiar. This man was put in this position of having to choose, and it's odd that he didn't emerge with sympathy. You get into a mess and people are normally sympathetic but Mandelson is perceived as rather a betrayer, a rat, rather than a man who got into a jam.
Once again though, we did not want to pander to the obvious stereotype ideas and images of Mandelson in our portrayal.
Interview with writer Peter Morgan
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