Turns out that Wallis Simpson wasn’t always the intended subject of Madonna’s “W.E.”
In a “Q&A” after the film’s London premiere on Sunday, Madonna revealed how researching Edward convinced her it was Wallis’s story she had to tell…
“I was…trying to understand why a person in such a powerful position would give up something like that for love […] Men are power-seeking creatures by nature, and most of them are fighting their way to the throne […] I was trying to uncover what I perceived to be this great romance and, in the uncovering of the story, I saw a whole other point of view. I saw what [Wallis] went through, I saw how she ran away from it, how she saw the writing on the wall […] I think it was important to tell the story from her point of view. That was the conclusion I came to at the end of all my research.”
And researched she did. Despite spending three years swotting up, though, she has been accused of playing fast and loose with history…
“I never set out to make the quintessential historical biopic of the abdication…or the true story about what lies behind the romance of Wallis and Edward. I thought it was important…to remind the audience that this is the story seen through the eyes of a young woman, who’s searching for love and the meaning of happiness.”
Her own search for the perfect Wallis she described as a “long, arduous journey”…
“[…] I had brought up Andrea’s [Riseborough] name several times, and many people frowned at me, because they said she’s too young, and that she can’t play that kind of age range. I saw her play Margaret Thatcher [in the television movie “Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley”] , and I thought she was so brilliant…So I met her, and when she walked into the room, to me, she was the Duchess. She had dressed in the way the Duchess had dressed, and done her hair and her make-up…[Andrea had] the combination of steeliness and fragility that [Wallis] had. I was thrilled, because, in my head, I was thinking ‘Oh my God, I’ve found her.'”
The script, which she co-wrote with Alek Keshishian, who directed the “In Bed with Madonna” documentary, took nearly two years to hone…
“[Alek and I] sat in a room and threatened each other, if we didn’t get off our ‘BlackBerrys’. We…spent weeks together writing, then we’d go away and read the drafts…then email them to each other, and then we’d spend time together again writing. It went on like that for a year and a half. I love the process of writing.”
She described filming, though, as “tough” – unsurprising, given the shoot took in three countries, 43 locations and 83 costumes (some custom-made by Vionnet and Dior, labels the Duchess used to wear).
Technically, she was inspired by the long tracking shots of the Edith Piaf biopic, “La Vie En Rose”.
Asked what she hoped people would take away from the film, she said…
“I think, one important thing is that there is no such thing as perfect love, and if you think so, then you are in for a rude awakening. And that real love requires compromise.”
source: telegraph
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