With 10 Academy Award bids, “The Favourite” is tied with “Roma” as the most nominated film, making it … well, a favourite with voters. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, this Fox Searchlight release centers on the rivalry between two cousins (Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz) for the affections of the frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman). Gold Derby spoke with screenwriter Tony McNamara, production designer Fiona Crombie and film editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis about their Oscar-nominated work.
When McNamara was hired to work on Deborah Davis‘s draft of the script he wanted to “re-engineer the period movie.” He explains, “We just wanted it to be about people in a really contemporary way, not in the sense we were looking back at something.” Instead, he wanted “these three women and the dilemmas they got up with every day to be very fresh, as fresh as they are when we get up with our dilemmas.” Though of course, “their dilemmas are different because they’re royal.” McNamara and Davis recently won the BAFTA Award for their original script and earned nominations at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards.
Crombie has won Best Production Design prizes at the Art Directors Guild and BAFTA Awards and competed at the Critics’ Choice Awards, in addition to her current Oscar nomination. Her previous credits include “Macbeth” (2015), “Truth” (2015) and the TV series “Top of the Lake.”
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Along with his Oscar nomination, Mavropsaridis won the ACE Eddie Award for his editing work on “The Favourite” and competed at the BAFTAs and Critics’ Choice Awards. He has worked on all of Lanthimos’s films, including “Dogtooth” (2009), “The Lobster” (2015) and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (2017), earning an additional ACE bid for “The Lobster.”
Click on the names below to be taken to their full interviews:
Tony McNamara, screenwriter
Fiona Crombie, production designer
Yorgos Mavropsaridis, film editor
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