The Athenian tragedy Alcestis, by Euripides, served as an inspiration for the plot, while its narrative structure was influenced by Agatha Christie's writing. I kept seeing scripts being mangled in the production and this sense of frustration made me decide to sit down and finally write a novel." He rewrote the draft around 50 times before finalizing it. Go.On writing his debut novel, author Michaelides, who is also a screenwriter, said, "I was feeling very disillusioned as a screenwriter. If you care about it or if you think it might be interesting, then now’s the time. And right now, more than ever, it needs audiences to turn up.
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I would also say backing out on theater at the moment would be bad form. If there’s something you want to do, then do it now. You don’t know when people will decide they’re not interested in you expressing yourself anymore. You don’t know when the work will dry up. You don’t know when you’re going to get sick, you don’t know when you’re not going to be able to do things. Because Enda means so much to me, the notion of being in the first version of one of his plays, the fact that he wrote it for us, I mean, God. It’s just that I believe you only live once, right? I had the opportunity to do this thing that, in my life, I want to have done. I read something about you scheduling other projects around “Medicine,” that it’s been a priority for you.
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It feels like it’s spilling out of control. That feeling in the air, and with somebody like Enda, a sense of threat, of possibility - possibility of hilarity, of huge sadness, huge anger, chaos breaking out. That crackle when the work is good, there’s nothing like it. What happens in the theater, the live connection is what’s paramount.
THE SILENT PATIENT PAINTING TV
What does theater do for you that film and TV don’t? If anything. I think my dad would find it funny, so yeah. I probably wouldn’t find it so - maybe I would still find it funny now. But I was in my mid-, late 20s maybe? I was like, this is a hilarious thing to announce in a big movie. At the time, I would have maybe lost one grandparent - who I love very deeply. I think I would feel differently about it now. When you played Bill Weasley, you’re the one who said, “Mad-Eye’s dead.” How was that? And then other days you do feel a little bit like, “Oh, no,” conscious that maybe people have recognized you. I just love soaking up that energy, and I love the cold air. It makes me feel very young and reminds me of when I was back here when I was 22. Being able to walk around and feel like you just disappear into the fabric of that is gorgeous.
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I’m living close to the theater, so just getting to see the skyline and feel New York and all the rest of it, it’s amazing. There are days where you feel much more anonymous, in a nice way. Are you able to go out and be a regular person around here, anonymous on the street? Your character, John, dreams of being invisible. I mean, the lobster costume is a distraction. But it certainly doesn’t let you know that up front. I think that’s at its core what it’s about. And the role of empathy in that and the role of medicine, good and bad, in that, and the importance of care, you know, and love. It’s a play partly about how we treat those that we describe as mentally ill. When people ask what “Medicine” is about, what do you tell them? Enda makes me react in a way that I don’t understand, and I just love that about him. And I was like, I don’t know what this is. Not mouth agog and tears just going as you were still engaged. I’d been moved to tears, maybe, but not like this. In a theater, you hadn’t ever fully cried before?
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I’d laughed so much, but I’d also never fully cried - like fully just wept, twice. They’ve been doing it for like 15 years, 20 years, this farce, and this other person arrives into their midst, and things just go off the rails. And what we’re watching is one day when the farce breaks down. It’s a father and two sons, and he forces them to put on this farce every day. It blew my head off in a way that was totally new.
THE SILENT PATIENT PAINTING FULL
I really didn’t understand Enda fully, I don’t think, or get the full dose of him until I saw “The Walworth Farce.” Which I saw in a tiny room in Galway. Tell me about you and Enda Walsh’s plays.