Harry Styles Explored “The Sensuality Of Touch” With Co-Stars For Role In ‘My Policeman’, Says Film’s Director Michael Grandage – Toronto Q&A
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Michael Grandage gathered the cast of My Policeman for two weeks of rehearsals prior to the start of principal photography.
The sessions included choreographing intimate moments involving actors Harry Styles (Don’t Worry Darling), Emma Corrin (Lady Chatterley’s Lover) and David Dawson (The Last Kingdom), and Linus Roache (Homeland ), Gina McKee (Notting Hill) and Rupert Everett (The Happy Prince) who were playing the older versions of the younger actors.Grandage brought on choreographer Ben Wright, a frequent collaborator on Grandage’s theater productions, as intimacy coordinator.
He told him he wanted the scenes to reflect something that he felt was “an absolute key theme of the film.” Which, he said, “is about the sensuality of touch, of whether it’s that first touch on the neck between Harry and David, whether it’s the ritual washing as Gina does with Rupert, whether it’s the touch of high levels of intimacy …that’s what I want to really explore with the actors.”Above all, Grandage wanted his cast — especially Styles and Dawson, who do the heavy lifting when it comes to “high levels of intimacy” in My Policeman — to be comfortable with it.My Policeman, which receives its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday night, is based on Bethan Roberts’ novel about Tom Burgess, a young police constable, circa 1957, stationed in Brighton on the south-east coast of England.
Unsure of his sexuality, PC Burgess meets Patrick Hazlewood (Dawson), curator of a local art gallery, while also entering into a marital relationship with teacher Marion Taylor (Corrin).The film arrives, Grandage warned, at a time when the huge gains in making a more open society “are beginning to feel fragile again.”When Grandage and
Read more on deadline.com