BBC America Interview with Tom Brook
Introduction: In the last couple of years the Broadway stage has witnessed the prestigious acting talents of Jennifer Ehle who this month can be seen starring on the big screen in the film adaptation of A.S. Byatt's prize-winning 1990 romantic novel, Possession. Ehle is probably still best remembered for her betrayal of Elizabeth Bennett opposite Colin Firth in the BBC TV adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice.
Tom Brook (TB) (Voice-over during film clips): Ehle is just one of Possession's illustrious cast. Possession stars Gwenyth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart as contemporary academics in England. They are trying to piece together the relationship between two fictitious Victorian poets engaged in an illicit affair, Henry Randolph Ash played by Jeremy Northam and Christabel LaMotte played by Jennifer Ehle. LaMotte is involved in a lesbian relationship with another woman, but she and Ash become intoxicated with each other and enter into a passionate romance. The relationship changes everything. It upsets the equilibrium for what for LaMotte seems to be a charmed existence.
Jennifer Ehle (JE): She's built a really wonderful life for herself. She's got a lover, she's got a woman that she lives with, who she adores and who adores her. They have a s ort of artistic commune of two women. They spend their days very happily, both creating - and along comes this -she says- serpent, this man who she can't seem to turn away from.
TB: What do you make of the intense relationship, romantic relationship that does exist in this story? Do you think it's actually realistic?
JE: I don't know, I think it's heightened because of the repression of the time, which is, I think, one of the reasons why the two relationships, the contemporary and the Victorian, look so different to us, why they have a sort of different sense about them. Because of, you know for one thing, the two Victorians are both ostensibly married to other people and care about those relationships and don't want to lose them but they can't walk away from each other. So I think all of that is heightened. I think they do, they do respond to each other as a sort of soul mates, I think there's true love there.
TB: What makes it true love as opposed to some pathological infatuation?
JE: I don't know, because A.S. Byatt says so. (laughs)
TB (Voice-over of clips of Neil LaBute directing): This very romantic British mystery is directed by an American, Neil LaBute, a man best known for films' hateful scheming characters often brimming with a role misogamy. Although he has made changes in adapting it for the screen, the basic structure of Byatt's original work remains. The modern couple influenced in their romantic relationship as they uncover details of a passionate Victorian affair, but some Byatt's fans were alarmed when they heard that an American played by Aaron Eckhardt replaced the key British character of Roland.
JE: I know a lot of people passionate about the book were worried about Aaron playing him as an American whereas in the book he's English. It doesn't bother me. I'm not sort of......kind of.......precious about that kind of thing anyway. But actually watching the film, I saw it for the first time last night, I found it does actually open it up. I think it makes it more accessible for Americans and I don't think it takes away from the story whatsoever.
TB: You know, a lot of people still associate you with Pride and Prejudice. Do you think that has an impact on casting directors in a way that they still, because of that, think of you only as someone who only does period films?
JE: Possibly, yeah, I think it's quite possible. It doesn't bother me. I don't have any. There are as many women in the 2000 years before now that there in the year now, and I'm quite happy to kind of gamble along in there, they usually seem to be more interesting than the women in contemporary scripts.