The Singapore Grip Production Notes Low Res FINAL
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE SINGAPORE GRIP PRODUCTION NOTES Contents *** The content of this press pack is strictly embargoed until 0001hrs on Thursday 3 September *** Press Release 3-4 Interview with Jane Horrocks 29-31 Foreword by Sir Christopher Hampton 5 Interview with Charles Dance 33-35 Character Biographies 6-9 Interview with Colm Meaney 36-39 Interview with adaptor and executive producer Sir Christopher Hampton 10-12 Interview with Georgia Blizzard 40-43 Interview with producer Farah Abushwesha 13-16 Episodes One and Two Synopses 45-46 Interview with Luke Treadaway 17-20 Cast and Production Credits 50-52 Interview with David Morrissey 21-24 Publicity Contacts 53 Interview with Elizabeth Tan 25-28 2 Luke Treadaway, David Morrissey, Jane Horrocks, Colm Meaney and Charles Dance star in epic and ambitious adaptation of The Singapore Grip produced by Mammoth Screen Adapted from Booker Prize winner J.G. Farrell’s novel by Oscar winning screenwriter and playwright Sir Christopher Hampton (Atonement, Dangerous Liaisons), The Singapore grip stars Luke Treadaway, David Morrissey, Jane Horrocks, Colm Meaney and Charles Dance. Former Coronation Street actor Elizabeth Tan and rising star Georgia Blizzard will also star as leads in the highly anticipated series. An epic story set during World War Two, The Singapore Grip focuses on a British family living in Singapore at the time of the Japanese invasion. Olivier Award winning actor Luke Treadaway (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Ordeal By Innocence, Traitors) plays the reluctant hero and innocent abroad Matthew Webb. Award winning actor, David Morrissey (The Missing, Britannia, The Walking Dead) takes the role of ruthless rubber merchant Walter Blackett, who is head of British Singapore’s oldest and most powerful firm alongside his business partner Webb played by Charles Dance OBE (Game of Thrones, And Then There Were None). With Webb’s health failing, Walter needs to ensure the future of their firm is secure. He decides Webb’s son Matthew is the perfect match for his spoilt daughter Joan (Georgia Blizzard). Matthew’s idealism leaves Walter increasingly suspicious as Matthew himself falls under the spell of Vera Chiang (Elizabeth Tan), a mysterious Chinese refugee. Jane Horrocks (Absolutely Fabulous, Trollied, Little Voice) plays Sylvia Blackett, Walter’s wife and Colm Meaney (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) plays Major Brendan Archer. Also joining the esteemed cast are Luke Newberry (In The Flesh) playing Walter’s son Monty, Bart Edwards (UnREAL, Peep Show) as Captain James Ehrendorf and Christoph Guybert (Sakho et Mangane, Falco) as Dupigny. The series is co-executive produced by Sir Christopher Hampton alongside Mammoth Screen’s Damien Timmer and Karen Thrussell. Mammoth Screen are responsible for recent dramas including Poldark, World on Fire, The War of the Worlds, The Pale Horse, Noughts and Crosses and The Serpent for BBC One and Netflix and Endeavour for ITV. Farah Abushwesha (The ABC Murders) produces the series and Tom Vaughan (Press, Victoria, Doctor Foster) directed all six episodes. Christopher Hampton is one of the UK’s most distinguished writers, with a career spanning six decades. His plays, musicals and translations have won four Tony Awards, three Olivier Awards, five Evening Standard Awards and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award; prizes for his film and television work include an Oscar, two BAFTAs, a Writers' Guild of America Award, the Prix Italia and a Special Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Stage work includes Tales From Hollywood, The Philanthropist and Total Eclipse, plays adapted from novels include Les Liaisons Dangereuses, translations include Art and God of Carnage from Yasmina Reza, and musicals include Sunset Boulevard. Feature films include A Dangerous Method, Atonement, The Quiet American, Carrington (which he also directed) and Dangerous Liaisons, for which he won an Oscar. 3 J.G. Farrell (1935 – 1979) wrote the Empire Trilogy of novels: Troubles (1970), The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) and The Singapore Grip (1978) all of whiCh dealt with different faCets of Colonial rule. He reCeived the Booker Prize in 1973, and was retrospeCtively awarded the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. He died aged 44, drowning on the Coast of County Cork while fishing. ITV Studios Global Entertainment are responsible for the international distribution of The Singapore Grip. The series filmed during 2019 entirely on loCation in South East Asia. 4 FOREWORD BY CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON The fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942 was, for Britain, one of the lowest points of the Second World War. Its big guns pointing obdurately south, out to sea, when the attack was coming overland from the north; its troops deployed, in defiance of all intelligence briefings, in the wrong sector of the island; its befuddled military leadership transitioning directly from complacency to panic with no intervening stage of common sense: the Colony was poised for an inevitable debacle - and in spite of Churchill’s direct orders not to surrender, it had no choice but to do so. This was, I would suggest, the first of three irreparable British disasters - the others being the Suez crisis in 1956; and Brexit - brought about by a combination of post-Imperial arrogance, misplaced feelings of superiority, inbred incompetence at the top and, of course, a kind of casual racism. I’ve always had a personal interest in this particular catastrophe, as one of my uncles, an amusing man so mock-lugubrious that he was known as “Happy” Hampton, was working at the time for Cable and Wireless in China and Penang, and managed, with a colleague, to secure a berth on one of those ships which, packed with refugees, made its escape from Singapore harbour days before the Japanese invasion. So when, in the late seventies, J.G.Farrell, one of my favourite writers, published THE SINGAPORE GRIP, I devoured it immediately and was able to tell him, slightly dissenting from general critical opinion, that I thought it very possibly the best of his great Empire trilogy. Jim died, appallingly young, in 1979: and it was an especially great pleasure, forty years on, to be able to film a version of his wonderful novel with a brilliant cast and crew in Malaysia, tirelessly and spectacularly directed by Tom Vaughan. I was deep into adapting the novel when it dawned on me that Jim Farrell had had another book in mind: with its idealistic, somewhat clumsy and naive, bespectacled hero torn between two women, and its rich, over-confident characters, partying, oblivious to the threat of approaching war, the model was clearly WAR AND PEACE: and from then on, I thought of it that way, a WAR AND PEACE leavened with Farrell’s irresistible wit and wryly subversive insights. It’s a formidable template, but one to which J.G.Farrell, undaunted, and inspired rather than oppressed, does, I believe, full justice. 5 CHARACTER BIOGRAPHIES Matthew Webb: A rather naïve and innocent moralistic young man, he travels to Singapore from Europe to visit his ailing father. Having spent his years working for international charities, he is unprepared for the harsh landscape into which he is thrown. He is drawn to Joan and her beauty and the way she is smitten with him but then he meets Vera Chiang and is utterly captivated by her noble integrity . He is determined to right the exploitative wrongs being done to the locals by the Blackett and Webb company – their tax evasion schemes and attempts to put native companies out of business. But he is thwarted by the impending threat of war and, being terrified of offending his father’s long-term business partner, the commanding figure of Walter. Walter Blackett: Married to Sylvia and father of Joan, Monty and Kate, Walter is the ruthless chairman of the illustrious rubber merchant and agency house of Blackett and Webb Limited, whose success is founded on the exploitation of the native communities and economy. He is keen to secure an advantageous marriage for Joan in order to enhance and secure the fortune he has so carefully built. Recognising similar qualities to his own in her, he brings her into the business world from which he has excluded his troublesome son, Monty. His doggedness blinds him to realities however, and he is one of the last to acknowledge the Japanese threat for what it truly is. Vera Chiang: Vera is a mysterious Chinese woman with an unknown past. She claims to have been born in Russia to a Chinese tea merchant father and a Russian princess for a mother. She speaks perfect English – having fled to Manchuria and been educated by Americans. When we first meet her she is caught up in the death of a Japanese Officer in Shanghai. When Joan meets her again she offers her father’s card, not knowing of the consequences, should she ever need help in Singapore. Later, Vera arrives into their lives and Mr. Webb agrees to vouch for her. She is a survivor, and fiercely independent, having travelled the world and managed to get out of every situation unscathed. She falls in love with Matthew, but the odds are against them with Matthew’s naïve nature and of course, Joan. 6 CHARACTER BIOGRAPHIES CONT’D Sylvia Blackett: Wife of Walter and mother to Joan, Monty and Kate, Sylvia is a respectable pillar of local society. Used to the colonial life of ease and luxury that Walter and their rubber business has provided, her main concern is the string of unsuitable men Joan seems intent on flirting with. She wants nothing more than an advantageous match for her. She laments her poor choices to Walter, who, believing patience will win the day, takes a softer approach.