From directorToby Haynesand screenwriterJames Graham, the biographical dramaBrexit(airing on HBO and available on HBO NOW, HBO GO and HBO On-Demand) connects all of the dots to illustrate how Dominic Cummings (Benedict Cumberbatch), the lead strategist of the Vote Leave campaign, launched a micro-targeted social media campaign that played on emotion rather than facts to convince British voters to leave the European Union. The result and the consequences of this referendum campaign are still playing out in Britain today, and will have an effect long into the future.
During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, director Toby Haynes talked about telling a story that’s still playing out in real time, presenting both sides of the argument without judging one over the other, what he enjoys about working with the film’s star Benedict Cumberbatch, who he worked with previously onSherlock, what makes Dominic Cummings an interesting character to center a story around, the subtleA Clockwork Orangereferences, and Cumberbatch’s transformation for the role. He also talked about his next project, an American remake ofUtopia, written byGillian Flynnand about a group of young adults who get a cult underground graphic novel that leaves them with the dangerous task of saving the world.
Collider:I watched this movie before the holiday, and I don’t think I’ve ever had an experience where I felt like I watched a movie, and then got to watch the sequel playing out in real time. It’s been quite an interesting experience.
TOBY HAYNES:Yeah, well, tell me about it. I’ve never had the experience where, when I was going to work to make a film, it was on absolutely every form of media. It was very weird to be working on something that’s so much a part of the national conversation.
When you made this movie, could you ever have imagined that it would be premiering in the U.S. while so much drama is going on currently?
HAYNES:I know. We wanted it to go out as soon as possible because maybe it would influence things. Who knows what it would do? I kept thinking, “Well, the thing about this saga is that it’s not going to stop being relevant. Even if a general election or another referendum happened, it just makes our film even more relevant.” That was the smart thing that James did, in the first place, by picking this moment in time to cover this film. I don’t know how this project came about, but I assume he sat down with producers and they said, “Okay, James, what’s your take on Brexit?” To cover this particular moment makes it one thing because we’re talking about the past, but it’s also incredibly relevant to the present for Great Britain because it isn’t going to go away overnight.
Well, thank you for giving me a better understanding of what Brexit is and what it means, with this film. As an American, that was much appreciated.
HAYNES:It just sounds like it’s a form of breakfast, doesn’t it? Like you have brunch, and then maybe Brexit is something that you have after. It’s a complicated notion. What’s interesting about it is how it didn’t mean what it means to the people who voted for it. For them, it meant getting a Britain back that’s a nostalgic version of Britain that was lost, and their sense of national identity. It isn’t necessarily about being part of a trading block, which is essentially what you are when you’re in the European Union.
Before you embarked on making this, did you feel like you had a handle on what Brexit is and what it means, or did you feel like you needed to dig into that to get a wider understanding of it before you made the film?
HAYNES:I had a view on how I voted and what I wanted to happen, and I felt pretty clear on that. I was a Remain voter. I’m in the arts andlive in London, which is a Remain voting island in a sea of Leavers. I was safely nestled within my own echo chamber and I thought the vote would go our way ‘cause usually on tight-run votes or elections, things tend to go with the status quo. I thought that’s what was going to happen, and it was a huge shock that it didn’t go that way. That felt really upsetting and really disturbing. What I enjoyed was that, usually as a director, you don’t get to immerse in anything other than your subject, but this was a real luxury, to delve into politics for once, which I usually don’t feel qualified to argue about. I always think politics is a very complicated thing, and we have people that essentially work to immerse us in these subjects, so that we don’t have to go into such detail. It was such an inside thing, under the skin of it, and that was really what I wanted to bring to the audience. This was a chance to challenge their own echo chambers. If you’re a Remainer, hopefully you can start seeing things from the point of view of Leave. And if you’re a Leaver, hopefully you can start seeing things from the point of view of Remain and realize that things weren’t necessarily done in a fair manner and a balanced way. That was really the challenge of the piece, to make something watchable and entertaining. Like with all of the drama that I do, I wanted to be able to laugh and cry and feel completely immersed in that world and with that character. My whole goal was to make people feel like they’re in the room when this happened.
Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t produce this film, but he told me that working with you again was definitely a draw for doing this project. What do you like about working and collaborating with him, and have you noticed a change and an evolution in the way that he works, from the times that you’ve worked with him?
HAYNES:Hugely. We worked together on the finale of the second season ofSherlock(“The Reichenbach Fall”), and I had the pleasure of pushing him off a building, which became, in itself, a national sensation in all of the papers, at the time. So, we had a great experience working together and having success with that episode ofSherlock, and we’d always stayed in touch. It was really lucky that, when his name came up, he was able to do it, with his schedule. It was a real reunion, and we were able to capitalize, straight away, on that sense of trust between us. I knew that he was gonna give it his all, and he knew that I’d be there with the camera in the right place to get everything, so he could just really relax into the role. It was a real journey for both of us. I was there when we shaved his head to do it, and I was very impressed by the level of integrity that he had with portraying Dominic fairly, and with as much attention to detail and to who the man was and what he believed in, without allowing his own prejudice, ‘cause he was very vocal about being a Remain voter, to interfere with what Dominic would think or what he would do. He made sure that he wasn’t going to color him unfairly, with any of that baggage, and I found that very impressive.
Also, what I’ve noticed, since he’s donePatrick Melroseand has become a producer and has his own production company, is that he was very considerate towards our production, and had a real sense of where he could push it and where he could go with it, and had a real sense of when we really needed to put the pedal to the metal and get on with it, to get the schedule in. We had a very short amount of time to shoot this film, and we had a very short amount of time to prep the film. It could only have been done with the fact that we had a fantastic producer, with Lynn Horsford, who’s very experienced and who’s also very trusting, who brought in really good people, and who had a really good sense of who would be good for the production. She brought in our editor, Matt Cannings, who was amazing. He put together those incredible montage sequences that you see in the film, which weren’t necessarily in the script. It really had to come together fast, and everybody was very passionate about the subject and portraying it as fairly as we could, and really came on board with the idea of challenging people’s echo chambers.
It definitely seems like it would have been pretty tricky to present this as fairly as you did. I thought it was fascinating that the film shows how everyone was judging Dominic Cummings, but it doesn’t really judge one side or the other, so that it can present both sides.
HAYNES:Yeah, the thesis of this film was, “Let’s not make these huge decisions, in this way.” That was very enlightening for me, to come out of this with. Going into it, I wanted a second referendum. Coming out of it, I’m not so sure, having been immersed in it and seeing what it does to our country, and to see who it empowers and who it takes power away from. It was really informative for that, and I feel like that was the brilliance of James’ script, getting that message across without coming down on one side or the other. That way, Leave voters could watch it and feel enlightened, and same with Remain voters. The other thing that I feel like he brought to it, which I found incredibly insightful, was how these campaigns are even put together and how a message is born. I could recognize, being on the losing side, the brilliance of the message “Take back control” and the clear and positive nature of it, when it comes to a decision like this, whereas they could only come up with negative reasons why not to leave the EU. It’s much harder to sell something on a negative idea. It’s the power of the message, and that drowns everything out. It was also Project Fear, and all of these other things that came up, and that just becomes the argument. You can’t get through that. I guess it’s the same with Make America Great Again. How can you fight that? That’s power.
It seems as though it would be impossible to tell one definitive story about Brexit without it being many hours long and following many different threads about many different people. What do you think it is about Dominic Cummings, in particular, that makes him an interesting character to center this around and to tell the story of?
HAYNES:I think it was really smart of James to pick him because he’s the outsider in Westminster. He is the anti-establishment outside of that, that was able to tap into the outsider portion of our society. He had an understanding of that, since he’d been on the ground and had been talking to people. He passionately believed that leaving Europe could make people’s lives better for them. It wasn’t just an intellectual exercise for him. He really does believe that. And the fact that he was an outsider himself meant that he could relate to the outsider portion of our society.
What were the biggest production challenges, in pulling this specific project off?
HAYNES:I don’t think it’s that hard, when you’ve got talented actors and you can film people saying stuff. What is hard is making that entertaining, and making it compelling. Essentially, it’s just a lot of men in rooms, talking and explaining stuff. What I didn’t want it to be was just an hour and a half of mansplaining. I wanted to make sure that it felt like it was more than just exposition, and that it felt involving and immediate, and that it felt like it was actually happening. When you look at the camera work and you look at some of the choices of lenses, they’re much bolder. The camera gets involved with the drama. It doesn’t sit on the outside. It’s not filming from afar. It’s right in the middle of it, right in the room, breathing down some of these characters’ necks. And then, at other times, it’s making caricatures of people, like the older Brexiteers and the old MPs. We really had fun with them. We were not afraid to make it funny and to laugh at it. There’s a real tendency, with British political dramas, to just be very serious. What’s brilliant about what James does is that he sees the funny side, and I really wanted to lean into that and embrace that humor. Just the fact that it had the EU theme tune of Beethoven’s 9th, which is also the theme tune toA Clockwork Orange, is a great satire on the state of Britain, back in 1973. I thought that was a really good starting point for an anti-establishment character study. There are a lot of really subtle references toA Clockwork Orange, littered through the film. There are also quite a few things that I don’t think anybody has noticed yet. When Dominic Cummings is talking to Zack Massingham, and he tells him about the three million voters, for the first time, which basically gives him the keys to winning the election, they’re standing at the Albert Memorial, opposite the Albert Hall, and the Albert Memorial has the four corners of the British Empire, which is the Middle East, India, North America and Europe. They’re standing in the Europe corner, and the moment is hinging on that. I love having little messages in there and having fun with it, and not just making it a film about men in suits in rooms. That would be stuffy and so dull.
The film also has something of an imagined future because Dominic Cummings hasn’t answered any questions and has been MIA since all of this happened. Were there ever discussions about whether to keep that in the film?
HAYNES:Yeah. In the edit, we really struggled with that. There was a lot more of it. It used to be the structure that we flashed back and forth from, throughout the film, but we found that it was very distracting and that it was much better to stay in the moment, and then get to it, at the end. The other thing was that, having Benedict in the role, it was very easy for him to make Dominic into too much of a hero because Benedict is a very hero type of actor. He’s very persuasive. So, in the edit, we had to moderate how heroic he was coming across, and look for ways of making sure that he’s suitably undermined. The fact remains that, for the brilliance of how he handled the campaign, how they handled the victory left him out in the cold, without any opportunity or ability to instigate any of the things that he “promised” to the British people. This is a man who basically changed the world, but then was left out in the cold, completely powerless, as a result. It’s an incredible journey, for one man.
It’s very striking and shocking to see the transformation that Benedict Cumberbatch went through for this role and how much tweaks of a hairline can really make a difference in someone’s appearance.
HAYNES:Yeah, he was really insistent on it being a really transformative role for him. He wanted to transform and verify that he looked different. I had producers saying, “Don’t cut his hair. Don’t do changes. Don’t make him do a funny accent.” But Benedict was gonna do what he was gonna do. We nibbled away at his hairline. We tried to be subtle, but in the end, me and him looked at it and it looked weird. He just said, “Let’s shave it off. Let’s just do it.” The make-up lady was nervous about doing it, so I had to do the first stripe of hair on his forehead to get right into it. We committed to it. It was my responsibility, so thank goodness it paid off. It was nerve-wracking. We did that three days before we starting shooting, so there was no going back.
Do you know what’s next for you?
HAYNES:I’m already neck deep in my next project. I’m doing the remake of the seriesUtopia, with Gillian Flynn. I’m coming out to Chicago on the 4thof February, and I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll be my first big American gig.
What was the attraction of that for you?
HAYNES:I’ve always loved the central conceit of a conspiracy thriller where the secret is hidden inside a comic book. I think it’s a brilliant idea. I’ve read her scripts, and they are amazing. It’s really exciting. She’s an incredible talent. I’m a huge fan ofGone Girl, so I was pre-disposed to this project, long ago, really. And there was the chance to work in the States. The way that she’s made it feel very relevant to America right now, I thought was very impressive. It’s not just a genre exercise. It’s also a state of America piece that feels exciting and engaging. She’s a big draw, and she doesn’t let you down. The scripts just get better and better, as the series goes on, so I feel very lucky that I’m getting to do as many episodes as I am. I’m also an executive producer on the series, too, so I’m hand in hand with her, all the way through, which feels like a huge privilege. I had a film tutor, with Stephen Frears, when I was at film school, and he said to me, “The best piece of advice I can give you is to find the smartest person in the room and stand behind them.” He said, “I’ve always done that with my writers.” It’s worked out very well, with Charlie Brooker, James Graham, and now Gillian Flynn. I feel very lucky. I think you’re gonna love it. She’s got quite a pulpy side to her. She’s a big comic book fan, and she loves pulpy movies and pulp stuff, so it’s really nice to see that side really expressed, and to see what she does with that. It’s really exciting.
