This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:07] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theatre Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with the stars and creators of the hottest musicals on Broadway, off Broadway, and on screens this holiday season.

[0:19] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox. On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to Tom Hooper. Not only is he the Oscar-winning director of The King's Speech, but he's also been at the helm of not one but two major movie adaptations of some of the biggest titles in musical theater. First, Les Miserables, the 2012 film version of the Mega Musical that won three Oscars, including one for Anne Hathaway's performance as Fantine. And now Cats, the great big movie musical based on Andrew Lloyd Webber's international smash. How on earth do you make a movie of Cats? Hooper is in the studio with me to tell us. Hi Tom, thanks for joining me.

[0:56] Tom Hooper: Hi Gordon. Thanks for having me.

[0:57] Gordon Cox: I am talking to you the morning after your premiere last night. How was it for you?

[1:02] Tom Hooper: Um, it was amazing, but it really was a premiere in the sense that, you know, we were sitting there watching the final version of the film for the first time.

[1:12] Tom Hooper: Yeah. No one else could have seen it because I finished it on Sunday at eight in the morning after the final 36-hour in a row sort of sprint to the finish line. Um, so it was fabulous, but also there was about 10 minutes in, I was like, oh wow, I'm just really watching my film play for the first time at the world premiere, which kind of struck me as quite a punchy move. But the fabulous thing for me about it was the kind of response you could only get with an audience in a cinema in a true cinematic setting in that there was, you know, really gratifying amazing applause at great moments like in the middle of, I mean, the middle of Jennifer Hudson's song, I thought you were the U Show.

[1:56] Gordon Cox: Sure, yes.

[1:57] Tom Hooper: We all cheered, obviously that's when Skimbleshanks goes out onto the bridge and the very first funny thing that happens when Robert Wilson yawns and covers her mouth, you know, the whole audience laughs, so I kind of started to relax a little.

[2:14] Gordon Cox: And how many audiences have you seen the film in any version by that point?

[2:21] Tom Hooper: Well, no, that's my point is not, I mean, not yeah, we hadn't tested it because we kind of tested it in the version before we'd done the visual effects. Well, you know, whatever we learned from it may not be, you know, sort of relevant lessons. So, um, yeah, it was only really within very small groups within the people I was working with, so it was very exciting to try it out.

[2:45] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah. And in a sense your first test audience was the audience for that trailer that went out, right? I mean, and what that obviously caused a big stir online on both sides because Cats is a thing that people have strong opinions about. What did you take away from that? I mean, I was totally taken aback by the level of reaction.

[3:03] Tom Hooper: I mean, to become the number one trending Twitter topic in the world for, you know, quite a few hours, maybe even over twenty-four hours, seemed totally absurd to me. I mean, we were on the front cover of The Guardian newspaper in the UK. I mean, when does the trailer ever get the front cover?

[3:21] Gordon Cox: Um, right.

[3:22] Tom Hooper: Uh, so, and I think, you know, and I think some of the response was kind of so extreme it was clearly people were having fun with it and then fun with the meme. So some of it was quite entertaining. I mean, I think if I took anything from it, the fact that there was any, you know, any sort of references to it being sort of making anyone feel uneasy was definitely not my intention. So when, when I, even if people were expressing that in highly exaggerated or slightly comedic ways.

[3:48] Gordon Cox: Right.

[3:53] Tom Hooper: I did think about and I went right back to the beginning of what my intention had been with the visual effects and sort of checked the trailer against that. And really the original idea was to use this technology to be able to apply fur and make feline, you know, the actual face of the actor and the actual body of the actor, and it was sort of in support of the original performance. And when I did a kind of analysis of the trailer afterwards, I felt that what had happened is that the actors' faces had got a little too lost in the kind of CGI fur and that had become too dominant. And actually what the trailer reaction did was take me back to clarifying my original intention and that the trailer wasn't quite representing that.

And so the work over the summer was a lot of redesign to pair the fur back to reveal the face. I mean, I suppose if I have a gift as a director, it's, you know, maybe it's capturing lightning in a bottle with, you know, with certain, when I'm lucky enough to work with great actors. And if you've caught the lightning in a bottle with Ian McKellen or Judi Dench, you know, why on earth would you want to, you don't want to get through with, so, so, so, and you know, you've got to remember that we'd finished shooting the end of March, the trailer had to be ready by June. So, you know, it was almost a hundred shots, so it was a very punchy thing. It was very early to put out without that much material, so it was really work in progress.

Um, yeah, so I think the good thing was it refocused me on what I wanted the film to be. And I think actually the kind of best, well, there are many aspects about last night that were really exciting, but one of the best for me was coming out, people were generally talking about the emotion they felt about how they cried at Jennifer Hudson or some people cried at Ian McKellen as Gus the Theatre Cat, or they talked about the sense of magic or the beauty of the world, or people were kind of going, oh my god, what kind of dreams do you have if you think and if you imagine worlds in this way? And it wasn't really no one talking about the visual effects, you know, so that was to be a sign that they had become, they were in harness to the vision rather than dominating, which was kind of always what I wanted.

[6:07] Gordon Cox: Yeah. You have a very long history with Cats.

[6:10] Tom Hooper: Yes, I do. Tell us about when you first encountered it.

[6:12] Tom Hooper: Well, in fact, I mean, I only found this out recently talking to my sister Rachel, who, like me, fell in love with what she wanted to do in the world young, and she knew she wanted to be a radio journalist. I mean, she wanted to work in this medium of audio, and in fact, she's a parliamentary correspondent and has been for many years for the BBC. And she had this chance to, as a kid reviewer, like a 12-year-old, 10-year-old, 12-year-old reviewer to go and review shows for Capital Radio and do a kind of give a kid's eye view. And she had been sent by Capital Radio to review Cats and came home and said it's fabulous. And so as a result, mum and dad took all of us, and I fell in love with it. I was, I think, eight years old, and I have such vivid memories of that evening in the theatre and the impact it had on me.

[7:10] Tom Hooper: And we then bought the audio cassette, which we listened to, we practically wore out. I mean, every car trip, anywhere, we listened to Cats. So the songs are deeply ingrained in me. And you know, in many ways, this whole thing is about honoring that eight-year-old's experience and trusting in that eight-year-old's experience. And if I, I think if I could go back in a time machine and visit my eight-year-old self and say, one day you're gonna direct this as a movie, I would have been completely blown away. And it was a great example of how dreams can come true that you couldn't possibly realize could be dreams at the time. I mean, I didn't sit there and go, well, I'd like, you know, one day I would like to do this as a movie would have been absurd.

But what was interesting is how vivid my recall is. And for example, you know, there was a debate internally about whether to keep moments of happiness, which is due to singing a little section from the Four Quartets, which is probably the only bit of adult poetry in Eddie's poetry in the piece. And I remember being affected by Brian Blessed singing moments of happiness, even though I didn't fully understand it. And I mean, I remember specifically the sense that I didn't feel that the show was talking down to me as a child. I felt like I was being taken seriously, almost like as an adult, and it wasn't talking down to me, and it wasn't a kid's show. And I felt a great sense of being allowed to be initiated into a slightly more adult world through Cats.

[8:31] Tom Hooper: And so when I was defending it, I could specifically remember, well, those words affected me at eight, so, you know, because the easy thing would be to go, well, an eight-year-old wouldn't understand it. And there were many things like that where I had a vivid enough recall that I could sort of almost like that eight-year-old Tom was the kind of toughest critic on me because I always kept going, well, it has to work for an eight-year-old Tom.

[8:53] Gordon Cox: Right.

[8:53] Tom Hooper: You know, because that's why I fell in love with it.

[8:55] Gordon Cox: And what do you have a sense of what is it about it that you were, can you characterize sort of in a broad sense what you were fighting, what you were like making sure translated onto the screen that you remember reacting to so vividly back then?

[9:10] Tom Hooper: I think, um, I certainly, you know, so I think that this sense of being initiated into a community as a kind of special guest, a community that really didn't much care for humans and, you know, wouldn't normally let you in. And that, and that, and that I thought Trevor Nunn and Andrew created very brilliantly a sense of going through a portal into a strange world, which rapidly became a world where you were, you know, at home and made friends with the characters. But that way they used sort of disorientation at the beginning to create permission for their character designs and the way that we'd be viewed Cats. And in some ways, you know, the film does a version of sort of, you know, letting you into the world before you realizing they're actually quite fun, funny tribe of cats.

[10:05] Gordon Cox: Right, yeah.

[10:07] Tom Hooper: And did you think about full-on? I mean, it sounds like you did a little bit because you thought about the idea of like over-computer generating somebody's face, you know, over-computer, you know, digital furring somebody's face. But did you, was full-on animation ever on the table? And if it ever was, why did you decide not to?

[10:27] Tom Hooper: And it's a good question. I mean, so the journey as an adult began at the end of Les Mis in, I think, 2012 when I was walking through Soho. I suddenly thought, oh, you know, it'd be so sad if I never did another musical again, but Les Mis was my first, and I've learned so much about how I, how are you a musical theatre guy?

[10:46] Gordon Cox: Well, like after Cats, did you go on to be a musical theater?

[10:49] Tom Hooper: My first break as an actor at school was in two musicals, The Beggar's Opera and then Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan. And that's where I fell in love with acting, and I was sort of 10, 11, 12. And so I started, you know, I started in musical theatres, but you can say, I mean, equally I realized by the age of twelve that I wasn't getting the lead roles, and so I probably shouldn't pursue the dream of being an actor. And I was a weirdly tough 12-year-old who said, you've got to let that dream die now because otherwise you'll waste years of your life trying to be an actor when you're not good enough. So I was quite, I was quite kind of clinical about that kind of thing. But, um, yeah, so, and I had an amazing teacher called Roger Mortimer, who was an ex-RSC actor turned English and drama teacher who really inspired me with the love of theatre and drama, and I vividly remember, you know, singing "Memory" in drama class and trying to work out how to kind of express the imagery. And there was, you know, a hilarious moment when I was shooting with Jennifer Hudson where I got a sort of incredibly strong sense of recall of standing in class, yeah, doing my own version.

[11:54] Tom Hooper: And having a very sort of dim, well not so dim awareness that I didn't quite know how to make the lyrics work or make sense of them, and I was trying very hard to picture all these burnt out tents and stuff like that.

[12:05] Tom Hooper: Um but yeah, so uh but uh but anyway, as I was walking through Soho and I thought about well, what would that musical be? The really special thing about Le Miz had been had was that it had never been adapted for the screen before. I mean, as a book, Le Miz has been adapted many times, but the musical was unadapted.

[12:21] Tom Hooper: Right. And I thought, well, is there another iconic musical that's never been adapted? And of course, Cats, in terms of the big musicals, it's uh Cats was rare. Interestingly, Steven Spielberg adopted it in the mid-90s, and I know he'd had a look at how to do it. Um, and you know, clearly hadn't worked out a way that he was comfortable with proceeding.

[12:37] Tom Hooper: Um, and I thought, well, maybe the reason it's never been done is because people, you know, couldn't work out what the cats should look like, and maybe the advance of visual effects might have opened a portal or a door to a way of doing it that might make it possible. So it was really that moment where I kind of go, maybe it wasn't made because the technology wasn't there, maybe the technology is there now.

[13:01] Tom Hooper: But in answer to your question, I never wanted to do, I mean, much as I admire um the Jungle Book, and in fact I've worked with MPC who created the Jungle Book and The Lion King, you know, to do Cats. Um I somehow felt that if they were actually cats in a photo-reel sense, it would be really missing the point because Ed is clearly talking about humans, he knows as much as cats. He's talking about humans through a feline lens.

[13:27] Tom Hooper: I mean, you know, clearly Macavity is a play on Sherlock Holmes's Moriarty, clearly Buster Jones is a play on you know, old Duffers who inhabited the gentlemen's clubs. Um clearly Gus the Theatre Cat is steeped with the sense of um you know a human eye view on the history on the stage, and that's why it resonates with the Ian so well. So I thought the hybridization was the point, and to make it either fully human or fully cat would be to kind of entirely miss the point and to miss the point of Eliot's wit, I think.

[14:03] Tom Hooper: And how then how did you what guided you as you made choices with like some cats have jackets, some cats have shoes, some cats like how did you what was the sort of thought process? I mean, weirdly, you know, it was quite tormenting. I know it sounds strange to say tormenting, but because part of me was like, well, you know, should they just all have digital fur? Um, but then I think in the end, I was guided by the show, because in the show the characters who have songs have elements of clothing and the chorus didn't, and I thought that was an interesting distinction and perhaps was a way of me playing homage to sort of Napier's intention through the thing.

[14:46] Tom Hooper: And possibly it was another way of um sort of treading that line between the humanity of the characters and the cat of the characters. And what did when you were filming on these uh we should say very elaborate uh sets with where everything is oversized?

[15:10] Tom Hooper: Yeah, yeah, oversized. What were the actors wearing? What did they look like? Well, overly, I mean, having sort of said, you know, we will never do, you know, Cats in lycra, they what would be a good one. They were like, because you know, if you're if you're dancing in in a sort of figure hugging suit, it's the best material. Um they and they also needed to, you know, have you know cabling to do with their sound or their microphones, so it was a good way of doing that.

[15:38] Tom Hooper: And also I wanted them to wear something where their body shape was incredibly clear because um when you're applying fur, you know, you don't want to be kind of guessing where the line of the body is, you need to quite have a precise reference to it.

[15:51] Gordon Cox: Right. And for Le Miz, you made a very clear choice to have people singing in the room as opposed to singing to uh to uh recording that they'd recorded at another time. Did you do the same thing here?

[16:02] Tom Hooper: Yeah, it's in all live all the time.

[16:04] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[16:12] Tom Hooper: You know, because there was this blending of the kind of virtual and the real, I think it was even more important to me that the singing was live because it would ground it in the fact that this is live performance than as it is live dance. And um what's interesting is seven years ago, no, I mean I couldn't do an interview without talking about live singing, and now and I kind of quite cheered that seven years later it's now just yeah, you did it all live and it's sort of no big deal.

[16:35] Gordon Cox: Right.

[16:35] Tom Hooper: Yeah, it was cool.

[16:36] Gordon Cox: And we as as the most of the listeners will be theater people, and I myself as a theater person so appreciate seeing it.

[16:42] Tom Hooper: It is so apparent the difference.

[16:45] Gordon Cox: Yeah, and also, you know, your wonderful audience listening now. I mean, you that's what you do. You sing like every night. Like it's no great mystery.

[16:51] Tom Hooper: Right.

[16:56] Gordon Cox: Right.

[16:57] Tom Hooper: That's what you can do in your brain.

[17:01] Tom Hooper: I'll have more with Tom right after the break.

[17:11] Gordon Cox: I'm back with the director of Cats, Tom Hooper.

[17:15] Gordon Cox: So Cats is a dance musical, right? And I mean the stage show is a dance musical, and the movie I saw last night, the movie that will be released on Christmas is definitely still a dance musical. I mean, all these people are dancers.

[17:25] Tom Hooper: Um, and even the people you didn't know were dancers. Um how do you have a philosophy about shooting dance?

[17:33] Tom Hooper: Because it can be, you know, there's a tension between close-up and pulling back. That's such an interesting question. I mean, um, I mean, one of the real excitements about doing Cats was to take on dance as a medium for the very first time. And again, you know, like with Le Miz, I got to take on the musical form the first time.

[17:50] Tom Hooper: And I realize how lucky I am that you know my first dance experiences at you know is on this scale because I mean it you know it it's it's very out there. But um I always felt you know what Jillian Lin had done was very key to the show.

[18:05] Gordon Cox: She's the original choreographer, yeah.

[18:06] Tom Hooper: And I wanted dance to be a key part of it, and you know, the reason I've set the film in Soho's West End of London is to me, well, you know, they're West End cats, they're theatre cats, they're entertainers. I mean that's that's what the jellicle gang is.

[18:22] Tom Hooper: Um but I think that I think the thing that I found so thrilling about working with dancers was to discover how people who can be exceptionally talented in one field can turn out to have incredible talents in others. So, you know, Frankie Hayward, principal of the Royal Ballet, one of the top ballerinas in the world, you know, never acted on the screen before turns out to be this, you know, utterly gifted natural screen actor with an innate sense of what where the camera is and what to do in front of the camera and how to share herself with the camera, in a way that you know held she held herself with Ian McKellen and Judy Dench in front of the film camera, which is unbelievable.

[19:03] Tom Hooper: I mean and improbable. And and she had that great the great gift of a of an actor, which is there is a secret part of Frankie that is only revealed when the camera's turning over. I mean, you know, when you meet her, you won't gain access to that side. Her best self, there's something very precious in her that's only shared in the act of performance.

[19:23] Tom Hooper: And the definition of a true performer is someone I think who has a best self that can only be visible in the moment of creation and the moment of the camera rolling on the stove or being on stage. And it's a very particular type of person that where that act of sharing only happens in those specific circumstances.

[19:41] Tom Hooper: So yeah, and Frankie could sing, you know, and and then we've got sort of Robbie Fairchild again who's got a dance background.

[19:48] Tom Hooper: Yeah, uh Broadway audiences know him from uh from An American in Paris.

[19:52] Tom Hooper: Yeah, you know, who is a great singer and actor, and then Stephen McRae, and you know, I mean, well, he's he's even more fun because he's you know one of the best ballerinas at the Royal Ballet, uh but one of the best ballet dancers of the board at Royal Ballet, plus you know, on the side, happens to be like arguably the best tap dancer in the world, and he could sing as well and act.

[20:14] Tom Hooper: Um and then and then on the other hand, you know, someone Laurie Davidson, who is definitely an actor, played Mr. Mistoffelees, you know, we broke with tradition and didn't cast a dancer, but Laurie was going to bar class with Frankie and Robbie every morning, and by the end, kind of could hold himself as a dancer, and I even got Judy Dench dancing briefly.

[20:32] Gordon Cox: So but in terms of your question about I mean it was you know, how to shoot dance.

[20:38] Tom Hooper: Um I don't know if I know the answer. I know I began a kind of conversation with myself about how to do it, and what you're seeing in the film probably is me exploring how to do it.

[20:54] Tom Hooper: And I think the interesting thing is what I what I just what I sort of felt is um you know, even if you're not from the one point of view of the proscenium, it's still so much about point of view, like where you place the camera is the new proscenium, and if you place it in three different angles, effectively you're dealing with three new prosceniums and um and and and sort of it all becomes about rather than doing it to one point of view, is once you've created something, where's the best place to put the camera in relation to it?

[21:27] Tom Hooper: And I think the thing that I really didn't expect was I thought I was always gonna be like, I just want to be in wide shot because that's the way to film dance, but you know, when you've got Frankie Hope, think about Frankie when she's dancing on it naming a cat doing her solo.

[21:40] Tom Hooper: And I would have thought that would have just played on head-to-toe, but you go in close, and and it's so Esmerican. Also, she's sort of she's dancing with her shoulders with her upper body with her fingers with her hands.

[21:49] Tom Hooper: So I what I got excited by was that there was a way of shooting dance where the dance read through the physicality of the close-up as well as the head-to-toe shot, and that was quite exciting to discover.

[22:00] Tom Hooper: Uh Frankie's playing a new character uh named Victoria, a new cat named Victoria, who is uh part of a kind of bolstered up um like there is more of a plot to this cat than the cats that was on stage.

[22:16] Gordon Cox: I mean the bar was low, let's be honest.

[22:18] Tom Hooper: Oh but no, I know we love Cats, but you know, there's it's like loose, it's a loosely sort of hung together show, right?

[22:27] Gordon Cox: And this this is like you I feel like you and your co-writers have worked harder to kind of thread it together stronger and give it away.

[22:35] Tom Hooper: How did you think about that? I think the biggest change, I mean, Lee Hall, who's been a wonderful um collaborator, Lee and I wrote the scripts, and we had this intensive period sitting in Covent Garden um about three years ago for three weeks, doing the first draft of the script together and literally going out the door and walking Covent Garden Soho and saying, Well, what if it was here? What if it was there?

[22:55] Tom Hooper: And I think the first challenge we faced was that in the show the cats mainly sing out to the audience and explain themselves straight out. And obviously you can't have a movie where every number there's you know singing to camera.

[23:09] Tom Hooper: Um and there is this character called Victoria the White Cat who does what's called the White Cat solo in the musical, who's a smaller presence, but it set Lee and I thinking about whether there was a role for a newcomer, an ingenue who was going to be our eyes and ears, who was going to sort of stumble into this community of jellicles and go on this journey of discovery.

[23:31] Tom Hooper: Um and then we came up with the idea of you know that of Victoria being sort of rather uh neglectfully abandoned at the top of the film and coming out of you know in a wasteland, like in like the junkyard of the show, and coming out of or like Eliot's Wasteland, coming out of the sack and and being in a scary situation and meeting the jellicles the first time who are initially predatory but soon can't help themselves to be friendly and funny.

[23:58] Tom Hooper: Um so I think reframing it as a kind of um uh as more of a picaresque journey of uh a new cat through through through London meeting these cats, more in the tradition of you know the everyman stories or the morality plays, or that you know that and that that that very old-fashioned idea of narrative is journey, that you're physically going on a journey to to meet new things, and that is the narrative. Um all that sort of guide us, and then and then it sort of out of that grew this idea that maybe because you know, in many ways the film is about you know the the perils of tribalism and the and the you know the the power of kindness and and this tribe you know has people it pushes to its margin, so Grizabella is excluded from the community and is not accepted, and it takes the the innocence, the clear-sightedness, and most importantly the compassion of the newcomer coming into this group who doesn't respect or adhere to these judgments and challenges the judgments and and gets the that community to learn to forgive.

And you know, forgiveness is a theme that runs through so much of my work, right back to my first film Red Dust, which is about truth and reconciliation in South Africa, you know, all the way to Burcy having to learn to forgive himself for his stammer or Valjean being forgiven by the priest. And I you know, mainly this film is you know, I just want it to be thoroughly entertaining and escapist, but but the but there is a part of me that says it is about the power of acts of kindness, and and and at this moment politically in the UK and the US, you know, any anything that talks about kindness is good in my book.

[25:40] Tom Hooper: And you also sort of embrace magic in a way that I think is really uh fits right in with kind of what cat is that great. Well, I mean the great, you know, the great there was this great moment of magic in the show without creating a spoiler of of the return of a hero character who's been kidnapped. Right. Um and and and I think the other big change Lee Hall and I did was to reinvent the character of Mr. Mistoffelees. So in the original show he was played by Wayne Sleep, and he he was a Deus Ex Machina cat, you know, who came in a crisis, did an amazing dance, and and solved uh you know and and and conjured up the missing person. Um and you know, in film terms, the Deus Ex Machina quality of that arrival felt tricky, and and and Lee and I just fell in love with this this idea of this clumsy apprentice magician who who uh falls in love with Victoria early and you know and and and is clearly a klutz and and and and his journey of you know his his coming of age as a magician is a sort of parallel plot to you know Frankie is Victoria's coming of age um at as a young cat learning about how to uh um make her mark on this community through her compassion.

[26:51] Tom Hooper: Yeah and uh you've mentioned Judy Dench a couple of times she uh plays Old Deuteronomy and she somewhat famously was going to be in the original Cats and then she hurt herself and then wasn't and in in a story about resurrection and second chances and new lives I mean what a what you know how extraordinary to to have Judy Dench who was going to play Grizabella and Jenny Any Dots in the original production who went through all the rehearsals went through cat school there Cap Tidy and then Scats got to a week before opening and broke her ankle. And then Trevor Nunn said don't worry you can't play Jenny Any Dots you know I think she broke her ankle she was doing Jenny's tap number but you can still play Grizabella and then I think in preview she fell off the stage as Grizabella so finally she finally surrendered and and to come to her I went down to her place in the country and come to her almost 40 years later and go would you come back and be the star of Cats um was you know I could tell she was moved by and and and also for me, you know, to to re-gender Old Deuteronomy as a as a as a woman, you know, uh I mean I I I come from a family where where my mother's been a great sort of creative influence on my life.

She's a writer and she's uh a great thinker and a collaborator of mine and and in some ways I'm sort of honouring my my mother's influence on my work by by re-gendering Old Deuteronomy and saying the God of Cats can be a woman and certainly in 2019 should be a woman.

[28:23] Tom Hooper: Yeah and and and Judy, you know and and Judy I I I've wanted Gordon I wanted to work with Judy for decades. I mean she's such a genius and and um and and finally to be on set with her and she's everything you wanted to be and and just the way even watching last night the way the film settles another level the moment she arrives and you know is uh she she she she lends a brilliant to use the word magic in a different way she lends a brilliant magic to it and anchors it brilliantly um and uh yeah it was a toy and and that moment of filming Gus Theatre Cat with Ian singing really to Judy about his life in the stage and there was Ian in his eightieth year starting on his one man show which was a year long show about reminiscing his reminiscences of a life in the theatre playing to Judy in her eighty fourth year in a cat basket.

Um very you know uh and and then McKellen I saw playing Coriolanus when I was 10 yeah and and again I wanted to work with him for decades so that for me as a director, you know that was very very special.

[29:23] Tom Hooper: You mentioned on the stage you were standing on the stage uh last night at Alice Tully Hall at the premiere, you know, next to your extremely starry cast. And you mentioned that the first person you called was Taylor Swift. Why um because I uh she had auditioned for for Les Mis and uh for Eponine. I I think she's talked about this so um I and I'll talk about it too and um uh and was really brilliant in in in the audition um but in the end, I it was it was hard to understand that if you know Taylor Swift in Eponine, it'd be kind of hard to understand Eponine being overlooked by the way Marius at all. I thought it was slightly undermined, uh slightly undermined the logic of the narrative. Um so she she didn't get it for the best possible reason.

Right. Um and and but I'd always kind of you know I'd known she was interested in acting and and it and and so it was just kind of the I just thought, God, I wonder whether she has any curiosity. And I and I, in my ignorance also didn't realise she she has this great passion for the for cats, the animal, um, as well as the show. Um so yeah, I reached out to her in January and and we met up and I I went through my vision for it, and I had this sort of precious ten-second clip of what an actor might look like as a cat, um, which she loved. Uh, and and she's been a you know a great supporter. And then and then, you know, with her there was this really unexpected dimension. I mean, she she was cast played Bombalurina and sing Macavity, and yeah, and she went round to Andrew's house to uh I think to rehearse Macavity or just have a sing through, and and Andrew played her the new song for Victoria, and she and she immediately started to hear lyrics in her head, and over the course of the weekend, you know, wrote these really quite beautiful lyrics.

Um that that that to me I was very moved by because I mean it this I was sort of into production by this point, and it was as if someone had come in, gone on set, spent time with the actors, looked at what I was shooting and sort of reflected back to me what I was trying to do, but in words far more articulate than I could have possibly come up with. And and you know, I don't want to embarrass her, but to but to but to write lyrics that sit in a T.S. Eliot world um is uh I think a phenomenal achievement was when you watch it, you know, it it feels completely of that of that language. Um and and and so she's a truly brilliant wordsmith, and she also worked with Andrew on the music and and um and then was on the floor with me at the monitor when Frankie um you know started to sing the song and and and and so that so that aspect of collaboration was very special.

[31:59] Tom Hooper: You've been working on the this film for you know years now um and it is uh soon to be released what's on your plate after this um I I have literally no clue because uh um I've been you know I've been so intensive on this I I haven't even wanted to think about it but um uh yeah so uh probably a holiday would be a good start.

[32:21] Gordon Cox: You directed a couple of episodes of His Dark Materials right for HBO will you do more of that with the coming seasons do you know?

[32:27] Tom Hooper: Um I think I mean I think the m I you know I had a really I would always always happy to go back and do more and I was I I mean them it was really fun to sort of set the world up for the first two hours and to do the cultural episodes that's right.

[32:41] Gordon Cox: Yeah and and and I you know I thought Daphne King was such an exciting yeah um discovery um so and it and it's it's been interesting to have a year a couple of years that was I shot it last summer um uh talking about our relationship to our animal selves in two different ways in Dark Materials you know our soul is externalized as in animal form as a demon and you know when you have conversations with your inside your head and some and and you know there's a part of your head that speaks back right it's like the demon is the part of you that answers back. So and um and and uh and and Cats, I suppose is is is is you know about the sort of fantasy of being your favorite animal, or it reconnects us with our animal roots, or uh the the part of us that um is is still locked in our animal memory and past. So so it's been kind of an interesting thing to do in tandem.

[33:39] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[33:40] Tom Hooper: And what's the next musical for you?

[33:43] Tom Hooper: Um good question.

[33:46] Tom Hooper: I mean I mean if you're going on the if you're going on the sort of you know mega musical from the from a certain era. I mean, there's Phantom, though you could do a Phantom, there could you redo the Phantom.

[33:57] Tom Hooper: You can't.

[33:57] Tom Hooper: I think I think I'm really drawn. I I I'm particularly drawn to musicals that have never been done because that that's the fun. Because I I you know uh yeah, I don't I mean, particularly if a musical's been done in an iconic way. I uh that I feel like why why do you need to do it? But this is um uh yeah, so so let's see.

[34:16] Gordon Cox: Do you have any interest in directing for the stage? Anything on stage?

[34:19] Tom Hooper: Yeah, I d I do.

[34:20] Tom Hooper: I mean when I was at Oxford, I directed theatre.

[34:23] Tom Hooper: Um I did A View from the Bridge um uh with Kate Beckinsale starring in it.

[34:28] Tom Hooper: Uh who was a student with me, and uh and Kafka's The Child and the Stephen Burkoff adaptation with um Emily Mortimer and uh Eve Best.

[34:37] Gordon Cox: Um wow.

[34:37] Tom Hooper: So you've been working with great actors all your life, is what you're saying.

[34:40] Tom Hooper: And um so yeah, I'd uh at the right moment I'd I'd love to come back to the stage and do um and do something.

[34:47] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[34:47] Gordon Cox: Well, we look forward to seeing what it is, when it happens.

[34:50] Tom Hooper: Thank you, Tom.

[34:50] Gordon Cox: Thanks for being here. Congratulations, happy opening.

[34:52] Tom Hooper: Thanks, Gordon.

[34:53] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[34:57] Gordon Cox: That was Tom Hooper, the director of Cats in movie theaters, December 25th. If you like what you've heard on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, I'd so appreciate it if you took the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and subscribe on your podcatcher of choice. Coming up, Stagecraft is taking a couple of weeks off for the holidays, but I'll be back January 7th with another new episode. Until then, happy holidays, and see you at the theater.