Conclave has emerged from the festival circuit as an awards frontrunner with buzz around director Edward Berger and the performances, especially that of lead Ralph Fiennes. We sat down with one of the film’s producers Mike Jackman to talk its award prospects, festival presence and the challenges and opportunities that come with setting a thriller inside The Vatican…
How long has the film been in the pipeline for?
So, Tessa Ross our main producer optioned the book from Robert Harris in 2016 when it came out. That really is the engine that got this going and moved along. She hired Peter Straughan, the writer. So that’s about six years for Tessa and five years for Edward Berger. I’m a newbie. I’ve only been on it for about two and a half years.
Edward was attached before All Quiet on the Western Front came out? So, it’s an added bonus, in a sense, that that did so well.
Oh, absolutely we were prepping this while, you know, he and I were both running around. We were at the festivals. We went to London together. I had a film called The Good Nurse, and he had All Quiet, and then that became this juggernaut. So, we were dealing with the logistics of having a director who we needed every single day, who was also needed for marketing campaigns and interviews and awards ceremonies. So, it was really fun watching and we had the crew together to watch the awards, you know, in Italy while he was in LA.
The success of All Quiet bolstered Conclave?
Because of the success of All Quiet, Edward is a director everyone wants to talk to and is interested to talk to. I think there’s heat on him as a director event, because All Quiet was just so great across the board. This is also his first English language movie. He did, Patrick Melrose, obviously, which was a series and wonderful. That is actually what, what kind of got Tessa Ross wanting to send him this script. The heat from before and this being an English language film with, you know, movie stars. And it was, it definitely helps the profile.
You mentioned Robert Harris, how involved, was he in this?
I would say he was involved, and he came to visit on set, and he was just a charming, lovely man, so interesting. From a writing perspective, Peter Straughan, who adapted the screenplay, was incredibly involved. He was a great collaborator. We trusted him. Edward trusted him. So, he was with us on set, maybe two thirds of the time we were shooting. Sitting next to me and Edward, you know, at camera watching the monitors, talking about, how something looked. Was that the right take? Edward always had a sense of it, but he also, you know, would always solicit opinions.
Peter was really helpful, including rewriting things on a moment where either it was not flowing off the top, the actors had a question, or we were, you know, needed a different moment. And there was, there was, you know, there was some great rewrites that happened, sort of on the fly. So, yes, from a writing perspective, from the production point of view, Peter was very engaged. And part of the process, Robert, you know, just wrote amazing foundational material that we, you know, obviously leaned on completely.
What was it about the original novel that made you think that this could be such a good, a good film, I guess?
From my perspective of knowing the original novel, it is a thriller, it’s page turner. You want to know what is happening, and it gives you these great deep details and these wonderful characters that you’re engaged in and you’re watching. You know, you are reading the rise and fall and rise and fall. It is like certain see why you know how cinematic the novel is why it became such a, you know, good, why it became something that Tessa had her sights on.
Obviously, this all takes place within the Vatican in terms of filming allocations. Were you allowed to film anything in the Vatican itself?
We didn’t actually try. We didn’t want to submit the script and have it not approved. So, we shot all over Rome we shot a little bit near Naples, and then we built our own Sistine Chapel, as one does. Then we also built the interiors of the hallways and the bedrooms of the Casa Santa Marta, what marble room for the where the Pope is and where a lot of that action in the hallways and rooms takes place. We built that and the rest we found all over to kind of give us a sense of the opulence of the space that we weren’t in. We just sort of had altered opulence of beautiful buildings in Rome.
We connect with the dots a lot. We had buildings behind some of our buildings that were connecting them, whether it was St Peter’s, which is part of the eyeline of Rome, or whether it was a building that we chose to represent, you know, the Casa Santa Marta, or other buildings. We find them and place them so that the spaces would always feel connected. You didn’t feel like you were going to one place that made no sense to another place that was beautiful but didn’t seem connected. We tried to make sure that there was a feeling of connectivity from all the spaces that was actually very important in our process.
Conclave was a major gala at London Film Festival, you must be enjoying the promotion that gives you.
Oh, it’s super exciting. These are to cherish and enjoy. And, you know, think about the possibilities, and you know not plan on the disappointments or the or the excitements that just sort of enjoy these moments. So that’s, that’s, I think, what we’re all doing is just, we’re excited by the reception that we’ve gotten thus far.
There’s awards potential especially around Ralph Fiennes’ performance, how have you found that?
I couldn’t be happier. Focus Features is just doing an amazing job of supporting it. Black Bear in the UK and all the distributors across the world are really jumping aboard., I think Ralph’s performance is amazing. Someone asked me why did you think of Ralph for this role? Now, Tessa Ross thought of Ralph for this role, but my answer was, why wouldn’t you think of Ralph for any role. He’s done so many interesting things and, but he can. He can express so much with so little, you know, little movements just make you feel an intensity of sadness, thoughtfulness, and then his performance is wonderful. He gives so much. He’s also an actor who gives you options, gives you choices, and he is a very, very generous, kind actor with other actors, which also then makes everyone’s performance better. And then most of our actors didn’t need the help. We had some, we had some actors who are just the top of their craft, and that wasn’t wonderful to see these people together on screen.
Were you involved with any of the casting?
So, when I got involved, it was very clear it was already part of the plan and the goal was Stanley, John and Isabella and they fell in and fell out, and schedules changed. We lost them, and then thankfully, they came back. So that was a constant sort of juggle of how can we make this work? And have to make dates work, and how do we make these deals? So that part of it I was certainly of involved in, and we very, very thankfully, got to go with the cast that we had wanted from the very beginning. So that was Sergio Castellitto. A wonderful Italian movie star. He was very, very difficult to schedule because he was doing a one-man Macbeth think, all over Europe. Oh, wow. So, his dates were impossible, and we couldn’t change our schedule for his dates. We just had to figure out how to how to make it work, which was touch and go into, like, I don’t know, because, like, the week before we started shooting.
As with the book there is so much detail and twists crammed into two hours, did you find that daunting?
I think that it was always what was excited about the storyline was always how you like you follow a character, and then they fall off, and then the next person comes in, and they fall off and it was always exciting to me that in reading it, you got engaged with each of these characters you know, either rooted for or against if you’re, like, interested, and you know, you follow their storyline and so a lot happening is sort of that, right? You know, the rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall. The underlying, you know, journey that Ralph is on about, you know, giving to the truth, helping to select the pope running the Conclave and his own crisis of faith, and then the twists that happen sort of as you go. But it’s a thriller. So, it’s not meant to be, you know, it’s not meant to be a message. It’s meant to be a thriller. So, you’ve got to have at a pace, and you’ve got to follow those stories. But, you know, it can’t be a three-hour movie. It’s not what you want. You want people to sit down enjoy. The credits are like four and a half minutes of movies, you know, whether, well, under level, under two hours.
So, it was a challenge, yes, but I honestly, I think we all had a sense that it really could, if we kept it, kept the pace going, it would keep edge of your seat. that was a challenge, in my mind, because it could be procedural, like we were voting, talking, voting, talking, voting, and talking. There’s no Cardinals sprinting down the street.
So, I think that was part of the promise of it and the challenge of it, but also something that Edward Berger, like he did with everything, had a real clear vision of how he was going to make it work. How are nine different votes going to be interesting? And they are because of how it’s set up. How is a moment of just hearing Ralph Fiennes breathing, adding tension to the scene and upping the ante of what is happening and making you feel his emotions when he’s just sitting and breathing and that’s also the mind of Ed Berger with Ralph Fiennes’ performance.
So I think that there is a lot going on and a lot of information, but I think the original book to the screenplay to Ed’s vision, Tessa, myself, producers involved, the whole the whole team, to what we got, and the Score, of course, and also, because it, I think, really kind of hit the mark on all of the different things that, you know, sometimes lightning strikes.
With this being an unusual setting for a thriller, were there any particular influences for you and the team?
There’s lots of influences. I think Edward sensibility, if you look at All Quiet as a precursor to this is very much the perspective of that main character. This is similar. This is, you know, we are on a journey with Ralph, and we feel his, his journey. So, I think it is really for me. Yes, there’s lots of other movies that one might reference.
It’s almost seen through the eyes of this person in this world we don’t know, discovering these rituals, discovering the underlying story points, finding ourselves unwilling detectives. I think we go on that journey with him, and I think it’s that sort of engaging and not just being empathetic to him, but also feeling like we’re discovering as he’s discovering and that’s kind of interesting and exciting, and I think that that’s kind of the perspective for me that kind of always tied this together, from the screenplay to very much elevated and Edwards vision of how we wanted to shoot it, what shots were chosen, you know, and that evolved throughout, throughout the editing. It certainly evolved because, you know, you can play everything on one person’s face. Sometimes, I mean, Ralph is so amazing. You can play whole scenes on his face. But then, of course, we have all these wonderful actors. You want to see that too. That was the balance for me the key thing that propelled us forward.
Did you have anything else you wanted to discuss on Conclave?
It’s a film that you’re meant to enjoy. It’s a Thriller. It’s sit down, go to theatre, sit down with your popcorn and just, you know, have two hours of fun. It says a lot of things, and there’s a lot of wonderful, poignant points and things that you can think about, and sort of twists that you know, maybe, you know, start a conversation with some wonderful issues, Ralph’s homily at the beginning about faith is, I think, beautiful and sets the stage for the movie. But also, I think is thoughtful.
There’s a perspective I hadn’t thought about before that, you know, you have to have certainty is dangerous. You need doubt, and doubt allows faith. And I kind of loved that, but at its heart, it’s a thriller. Everyone should have permission to laugh, to gasp, to enjoy, and shouldn’t feel like, you know this is you know. This is about the church, and we must sit here stoically and watch this movie and absorb it. It’s a fun, thrilling ride, and I’d say that that’s key to us, that’s we want people to do.
Many thanks to Mike Jackman for taking the time for this interview. Read our review of Conclave here.
Chris Connor
