FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES
Presents
In Association With TSG ENTERTAINMENT
A FREE RANGE Film
RACHEL WEISZ
SAM CLAFLIN
HOLLIDAY GRANGER
IAIN GLEN
PIERFRANCESCO FAVINO
SIMON RUSSELL BEALE
VICKI PEPPERDINE
WRITTEN FOR THE SCREEN
AND DIRECTED BY...... ROGER MICHELL
BASED ON THE NOVEL BY...... DAPHNE du MAURIER
PRODUCED BY...... KEVIN LOADER
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER...... ROGER MICHELL
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY...... MIKE ELEY, BSC
PRODUCTION DESIGNER...... ALICE NORMINGTON
FILM EDITOR...... KRISTINA HETHERINGTON
CO-PRODUCER...... ANITA OVERLAND
MUSIC BY...... RAEL JONES
COSTUME DESIGNER...... DINAH COLLIN
CASTING BY...... FIONA WEIR
Rated PG-13 Running time TBD minutes
Publicity Contacts:
Los Angeles / New York / RegionalKrishel Coultrup / Steve Moreau / Isabelle Sugimoto
Tel: 310.369.4327 / Tel: 212.556.8246 / Tel: 310.369.2078
/ /
A dark and layered romance, MY COUSIN RACHEL tells the story of a young Englishman who plots revenge against his mysterious and beautiful cousin, believing that she murdered his guardian. His feelings become complicated as he finds himself falling helplessly and obsessively in love with her.
Fox Searchlight presents, in association with TSG Entertainment, a Free Range Film, MY COUSIN RACHEL. The film is written for the screen and directed by Roger Michell, based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier and stars Rachel Weisz (YOUTH, THE CONSTANT GARDNER), Sam Claflin (THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKING JAY), Holliday Granger (CINDERELLA), Iain Glen (“Game of Thrones”), PierfrancescoFavino (RUSH), Simon Russell Beale (INTO THE WOODS) and Vicki Pepperdine (GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN). The producer is Kevin Loader (THE LADY IN THE VAN)withMichellas executive producer and Anita Overland (FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD) as co-producer.
The behind the scenes team includes director of photography Mike Ely (THE SELFISH GIANT, GREY GARDENS), production designer Alice Normington (SUFFRAGETTE), film editor Kristina Hetherington (“The Crown”), music by Rael Jones (OASIS: SUPERSONIC), costume designer Dinah Collin (THE GHOST WRITER, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY) and casting by Fiona Weir (BROOKLYN).
MY COUSIN RACHELwas writtenin 1951 by Daphne du Maurier, whose outstanding work often combinessuspense, passion and shockingly modern psychological portraits of men and women in intriguing and sometimes obsessive relationships. So cinematic was her writing that Alfred Hitchcock made films from three of her novels: JAMAICA INN, THE BIRDS and REBECCA. Nicolas Roeg’spsychological horror masterpiece DON’T LOOK NOW is also based on a story by duMaurier.
On publication MY COUSIN RACHEL instantly became one of duMaurier’smost popular books and 20th Century Fox snapped up the film rights, going straight into production with two of the hottest stars of the day, Richard Burton and Olivia De Havilland.Released in 1952 the film garnered four Oscar® nominations and a Golden Globe Award for the young Burton as “New Star of the Year.”
Steeped in a wonderfully powerful atmosphere of desire and suspicion, the book tells thestory of a rather naive young bachelor struggling to determine if his deceased guardian’scharming widow is either the woman of hisdreams…or a cold-blooded killer and inheritance-chasing gold-digger. But when Rachel eventually arrives to visit the estate of her late husband, Philip meets a woman who seems nothing like the black-hearted poisoner of Ambrose’s deathbed ravings.
Key to Michell’s adaptation is his decision to fully embrace the novel’s thrilling ambiguity, the spell of whichduMaurier never breaks. The story isthe search for the truth, a search that delightfully torments the reader,torments Philip … and still continues to haunt the film’s final moments.
“I think if you absolutely know one way or the other what Rachel has done, the story doesn’t work,” saysMichell. “It’s exciting to make a film where part of the fun is knowing that people will leave the theatre debating… did she or didn’t she? I hope people love the mystery of that as much as I do. And I hope they enjoy going on a rollercoaster-ride witha this ill-matchedcouple who are thrown into a kind of emotional washing machineand find themselves churned about as they try to puzzle out each other’s motives, assumptions, values, each other’s sense of truth.”
“I think for Philip, Rachel feels like she comes from another world. And in a way, she really does. She’s from a distant and exotic country. Her language, her clothes, her appetites, her understanding of the world are utterly foreign to him. She’s beautiful, articulate, fun, and completely disrespectful of stuffy contemporary convention. The book is set in the 19th Century, but written in 1950. So I think of it as a kind of post-Freudian version of Jane Austen, if you will. On one level it’s a period thriller about falling in love and family estates and so on, but on another, it’s conversation about sexuality, about women’s freedom in a man’s world, about issues of women’s power. I wanted Rachel to feel in part like a woman from 2017 who parachuted into that world … the woman who fell to earth”
Michell’s long-time producing partner Kevin Loader was impressed by the way the writer-director sprinkled seeds of doubt throughout the screenplay and used them to explore the gulf between romantic dreams and the realities of how power, money and social rules are tied up in relationships.
“The idea of the ‘mysterious outsider’ is so universally resonant, and a great narrative hook on which to build a film,” Loader notes. “What emerged from Roger’s adaptation is ataut psychological thriller that's full of observations on the nature of romantic love, infatuation and sexual relations between men and women, especially in closed societies. And it leads to a climactic moment,shrouded in ambiguity as to who is culpable and who is not."
Loader was also struck by how completely contemporary Rachel seemed in Michell’s adaptation, chafingagainst the constrictions of19th century English manners. “Rachel is a very modern woman stuck in a rather antiquated, provincial world. I think part of the reason Philip and others find her so difficult to comprehend is because she’s not like anyone they’ve met before,” says Loader. “She’s headstrong, she plays her cards quite close to her chest and she takes pleasure in her own sexuality. All of these were quite shocking ideas for 1839. I think that tension is something Daphne du Maurier was thinking about in the 1950s and that’s why it’s just as resonant now.”
Before taking the leap, it was vital to both Michell and Loader to get the blessing of Daphne duMaurier’s estate, and they were gratified to find her family highly enthusiastic about this particular adaptation.
Grace Browning, du Maurier'sgranddaughter, says: “Roger is a well-respected filmmaker, and the fact that he was adapting the book himself was interesting to me. When I found out Rachel Weisz was attached, I felt she couldn't be more right for this part. She brings such truthfulness to all the characters she's ever played. DuMaurier was brilliant at writing women characters; there's such depth to all of them, and I think any actress would relish the chance to play one.”
THE MYSTERY OF RACHEL
Coming to England in the wake of her husband’s unexpected death, Rachel soon has the whole of Ambrose Ashley’s estateflummoxed,enthralled by her behaviour and at times shocked by it. It would take an actor equally alluring and confounding to showcase those contradictions in a believable way.
Academy Award® winner Rachel Weisz is known for giving highly nuanced performances in a wide range of film roles, from THE CONSTANT GARDENER to THE DEEP BLUE SEA and THE LOBSTER. “Rachel (Weisz) was able to bring a haunting quality to the story, which is really the key to the whole film. You just don't ever know for certain whether the character of Cousin Rachelis guilty or not. Rachel (Weisz)carries that off brilliantly. In one moment she’s charming, and in the next she’s furious but still seems as if she is hiding something. Every one of those moments is played with conviction," says Michell.
For her part, Weisz remembers that as soon as she finished the script she urgently called Michell to ask him: is she or isn’t she innocent? His answer was galvanizing: “Roger told me he didn’t know and he didn’t want to know for sure. I thought that would be very exciting to explore and it made me really want to do this project,” says Weisz.
The chance to work with Michell was also a draw for Weisz. "I've always wanted to work with Roger, as I've been a fan for a long time. I found that he’s a director who really searches to find out what makes actors tick. He's always gentle and kind, but he’s exacting. He knows precisely what he wants, and he also likes things to be surprising. There's nothing rigid or boring about the way he works,” she describes.
Weiszembraced both the light and dark facets of her character equally, never giving one sway over the other. On the one hand, she approached Rachel as a woman who arrives in England still reeling from her husband’s death, only to find herself a fish-out-of water in a new culture. But she was also playing a woman caught off guard by her attraction to her late husband’s heir.
“She’s just lost her husband, travels to this farm, his house,that he’s been telling her about, and there she meets this man who is the spitting image of what her husband would have looked like 20 years ago –young and handsome, and at first, there’s something quite magical about it all,” observes Weisz.
At the same time, Weisz plays Rachel as defiantly independent and cagey about her Italian past. Focused on forging a financial future for herself, she toys with Philip’s all-consuming affectionsand shows no interest in doing things the conventional way, even when she knows society disapproves. ‘She’s quite bohemian and exotic and very sexually liberated for her times,” Weisz points out. “She’s aware that to others she comes off as transgressive and provocative because she has her own ideas about the way in which a woman should be allowed to live. She’s definitely not going to be content to be owned by a man and be treated as a piece of property.”
Rachel also has secrets, both financial and personal, that seem to hang over everything. “The whole fun of the film is to trying to figure out whether Rachel can be trusted, and I just love that the story is equally weighted both ways. I think it will divide people on the question of whether or not Rachel is up to no good,” says Weisz. “That’s what makes it such an unusual love story and so compelling and haunting. It asks how much do you really ever know a person and can your impressions of someone go completely, devastatinglywrong?”
For Kevin Loader, Weisz’scarefully shaded performance is the engine that drives the mystery. "Rachel Weisz IS Cousin Rachel,” he says. “We needed someone who would be believable as an Englishwoman with an Italian background, who could be seen as exotic, highly intelligent and fiercely in charge of her own destiny. But she also had to have a visible vulnerability, a deep sense that her material circumstances had changed and she has to have animpenetrable sadness on the inside. There are few actresses who could have combined all those things as well as Rachel has."
For actor PierfrancescoFavino, who plays Rachel'sItalian confidant Rainaldi, Weisz has a rare ability to act like a mirror,allowing different audience members to see her actions in different ways, which was the heart of the challenge in playing Rachel.
“You can so easily project your own feelings and perceptions about what Cousin Rachel is doing onto Rachel Weisz, which gives the audiencetremendous space for mystery,” Favino concludes.
FROM REVENGE,TO MAD LOVE,TO FEAR
As a sheltered orphan most of his life, with no mother or sisters to guide him, Philip Ashley is a man with little experience with women when he meets Cousin Rachel. He’s lived a life of isolation on his adoptive cousin’s estate and though he initially intends toseek retribution against Rachel, she instead ignites in him a longing he’s never even known possible, a longing so intense he then becomes unsure he can trust it.
To play the part of Philip, Roger Michell was in search of one of a new generation of emotionally complex British actors, someonewho could traverse seamlessly from vengefulness to romantic ecstasy to the most doubt-ridden torment. “We watched a lot of films and Sam Claflin just popped out as exceptionally appropriate,” the writer-director remembers. “We asked him to do a couple of screen tests and he was incredibly persuasive. He's sensitive, he's smart, but he's also youthful and vigorous. He's got the lot."
Claflinhas been rapidly rising since he came to the fore in ME BEFORE YOU, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES and as FinnickO’Dair in THE HUNGER GAMES series. For producer Kevin Loader, he brought two conflicting qualities essential for Philip Ashley: "He had to have an almost puppy-likeboyishness butalso a charming manliness, and Sam has thefacility to play both. A husband and a father in real life and a very together young person, he can be very strong and magnetic but he also has a natural boyishness about him. He was just perfect for this innocent and naive young man who knows nothing about women.”
Claflin found the character full of fascination. “I’ve loved playing Philip and entering his very ambiguous world,” he says. “I feel I’ve been pushed and challenged in new ways.”
He especially enjoyed taking Philip through 180-degree shifts in his thinking about Rachel. “Initially, Philip suspects Rachel of foul play, and he comes in with a lot of judgement against her,” notes Claflin. “He's made his mind up that he despises her before he even meets her. But he’s slowly bewitched by her, due to her mysterious nature, and because she’s different to any of the women that he knows, though he doesn’t know many women at all. Soon, she has this incredibleintriguing hold over him.”
Claflinadmits he developed his own ideas about the truth of Rachel, but notes that Michell did not want to discuss them even for a second. “Right from the beginning Roger said ‘I don’t even want to know your theories. I want to leave it to the audience to decide.’ And that’s really what drew me to the film. I’m so excited to hear other people’s thoughts about what really happened. I hope it’s the kind of story where you can get lost within it and leave the theatre asking questions.”
While he was exploring the many facets of Rachel, Claflin was also diving into the life of a country farmer, taking lessons not only in horseback riding but also wielding a scythe and ploughing fields. Says Kevin Loader: “Sam showed incredible dedication to fully inhabiting every aspect of Philip.”
Daphne duMaurier's granddaughter, Grace Browning, also found herself moved by the way Claflin’s performanceacutely captured du Maurier’s Philip, a naïve young man swept up by emotions he’s never experienced. "I think Sam brings the innocence that is essential to the role of Philip, and you completely believe that he could be manipulated by Rachel,” she concludes.
QUESTIONING RACHEL: THE SUPPORTING CAST
As Philipis swept off his feet by Cousin Rachel and starts to support her financially from Ambrose’s accounts, those who were close to Ambrose and are protective of Philip watch his behaviour with mounting dismay and anxiety. Among those most upended by his sudden obsession with Rachel is Louise, Philip’s confidante since childhood, who has long harbored her own unrequited crush on him.
Rising star of both screen and stage Holliday Grainger – known for her roles as Lucrezia Borgia in Showtime’s THE BORGIAS and as Estella in Mike Newell’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS – plays Louise as a loyal friend who tries to protect Philip even as her own heart is breaking.
"Louise is secretly, desperately in love with Philip, and she’s really been his one truefriend on the estate, until Cousin Rachel turns up and changes everything,” says Grainger. “There's always been trust and affection and a fun camaraderiebetween Louise and Philip, so when Louise sees that Rachel is having so much influence over him it’s very upsetting and concerning to her."
Grainger notes that Louise is another person confoundedby Rachel, finding herself unsure of how much of her feelings are based in envy and how much in the perceived danger Rachel poses to Philip. “I think Louise is insanely jealous of Rachel,” Grainger confesses. “Rachel is so beautiful and alluring – and she doesn’t play by the same social rules that everyone else feels they must in their village. Rachel has this kind of wry, knowing smile and she makes fun of their traditional English ways. I think that’s what everyone falls for. But Louise is the one person who doesn’t allow herself to fall for Rachel’s charmsbelieving that her charms could be a form of manipulation.”