This kind of cheekiness was exactly why director Roger Michell wanted Murray to play Franklin D Roosevelt in his movie, which centres on the President’s scandalous relationship with his sixth cousin, Daisy Suckley (Laura Linney). “I couldn’t think of any other actor who would make the story forgivable,” says Michell. “There’s something very sweet about Bill, he’s mischievous and charming like FDR. Plus he worked hard. He was aware that this was a difficult thing for him. A lot of his roles are just versions of himself; this is something else.”
“I think he felt the weight of the importance of this role,” adds Olivia Williams, who portrays FDR’s wife Eleanor. “He’s not the stand-up guy from Saturday Night Live anymore, he’s a serious actor. He was perfect for the role; he’s someone who is comfortable in his skin and charismatic, but you’re also not quite sure what’s going to happen next.”
Despite taking his role seriously, Murray made sure the set was still fun – entertaining with music, doughnuts… “Every once in a while Bill would just take off in the car, and leave the set behind!” Linney adds, laughing. “Everybody would be like, ‘Wait where are you…?’ And Bill would drive for a while and then we’d come back, it was really fun.”
Linney was Michell’s only choice to play Daisy. It’s a tricky role – and there’s the sexual relationship between Daisy and FDR, an uncomfortable subject because of their distant family ties. “I saw Daisy very much like a Jane Austen heroine,” says the director, “somebody who is on the shelf, sexually inert; somebody whose life is over, brought to life by this magician. I needed somebody of a certain age. If [Laura] had been 10 years younger it would have thrown the film into a totally different, Clinton-esque feel, which would have been horrible. The film will shock a lot of people, but it’s gentle and not distasteful.”
Besides revealing Daisy’s relationship with FDR, Hyde Park On Hudson deals in passing with an historic moment when England’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth travelled to the President’s New York country home to strengthen ties between their countries. After the Academy Award-winning The King’s Speech brought King George VI back into the spotlight, the cast and crew of Hyde Park On Hudson admit to being concerned about audiences comparing the two.
“[The Guardian] made an entire article out of the fact that we’re travelling on the shirttails of The King’s Speech,” Williams complains, “when our project preceded [that film] by many years. I heard the radio play that [our film] is based on years before The King’s Speech was even a twinkle in anyone’s eye. I so love and respect [that film], but this is an utterly separate project. I feel they couldn’t be more different in their style and their scope.”
But Michell admits that the popularity of The King’s Speech helped his movie; he could use the audience’s familiarity to his advantage. “It’s like a prequel to our film. It lays the ground for the work that we’ve done. […] so we didn’t retread any of the same ground. We prefer to think of it as a pleasant development and not a cynical exercise in jumping on a royal bandwagon.”
BY ALICIA MALONE
