BWW Interviews: The Cast and Creative Team of ANONYMOUS Flick

To be or not to be the author of 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and numerous epic poems. That is indeed the question posed by ANONYMOUS, the new historical drama opening in theaters nationwide this Friday, October 28th. Set in the political turmoil of Elizabethan England, the film dares to challenge the authorship of the works of William Shakespeare. BWW sat down with cast members Joely Richardson and Rhys Ifans, as well as the film's acclaimed director Roland Emmerich and screenwriter, John Orloff to get their thoughts on this most intriguing theory.

"Well it's not our theory, its an old theory," began ANONYMOUS screenwriter John Orloff. "People first started questioning the authorship of William Shakespeare about 150 years ago. Some of the early people who didn't think Shakespeare wrote the plays were Mark Twain, Henry James, Sigmund Freud - Walt Whitman became obsessed with it. Interestingly, a lot of writers. I don't think that's coincidental. Writers understand how you write and know that we tend to write what we know. We write from experience."

In fact the great American wordsmith Mark Twain wrote an entire book expounding upon his belief that William Shakespeare was not the author of the plays. "Twain's point was that he himself couldn't have written about the Mississippi with any authenticity had he not been a Mississippi boat pilot. He couldn't have known these people, he couldn't have had these experiences," Orloff continued. "His thesis was ‘No way could you convince me, Samuel Clemons, that that boy from Stratford could write about all of these noblemen and the intricacies of court and the metaphors of falconry and lawn bowling and tennis, if he weren't that person, if he didn't have those experiences and knowledge of medicine and law."

Orloff points out that the law references in Shakespeare's plays are so intricate that it would require a profound knowledge of 16th century law. "For a couple 100 years, people thought William Shakespeare must have been a lawyer. We don't think that anymore because there's no record of him going to any law school." Taking it one step further he argues, "There's a reason why four US Supreme Court Justices don't think William Shakespeare wrote these plays. "

If not Shakespeare, then who does deserve credit for what is often considered "the greatest expression of humanity in the English language"? According to the film's theory, the acclaim belongs to one Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Documented evidence shows that Oxford came from a well-connectEd English family. He was a soldier, a scholar, a venture capitalist, a world traveler, a patron of the arts, and perhaps most telling, a playwright and a poet.

Actor Rhys Ifans portrays the Earl in the film and has a strong hunch that de Vere may indeed be the man to exalt. "Reading Shakespeare's work, you have to accept that whoever penned these plays would have had to have been world travelled, would almost certainly have to be a multi-linguist and would, without a shadow of a doubt, have to have had unique insights and knowledge into the workings and political dynamics of the very secretive Elizabethan Courts. Edward de Veer fits all those boxes. William of Stratford, on the other hand, does not. "

Regardless of what you chose to believe, Ifans strongly contends that the film serves an important purpose. "All I'm convinced of is that whoever wrote these works is a genius. I think it is our duty as actors, directors and spectators to question the possibilities as to who wrote these because that can only illuminate the plays. We owe it to him or her or them to answer this question. It would be a crime not to."

Actress Joely Richardson plays young Queen Elizabeth I in the film, while her real-life mother, Vanessa Redgrave, plays the Queen in her later years. Richardson sees the various authorship theories in a somewhat different light. "I think whoever Shakespeare was, even if he was the man from Stratford, which is possible, I think that he would have a good ‘ol laugh about all these theories. The funny thing is that the story now becomes a mystery, much like the Shakespearean plays themselves. Shakespeare was all about telling a story. His plays literally encompass every human story from tragedy to romance to historical plays. This is a story and it is a Shakespearean story - that is the irony."

Both cast members and creative team agree that the purpose of the film was by no means to stir up controversy. "We didn't make a documentary, we made a movie," argues Orloff. "This is a movie about the intersection of art and politics. It's about, ‘Is the pen mightier than the sword?'. It's about ‘Are ideas more important than guns?'... We're just using this story to talk about that bigger truth." 

From the very beginning of his research, Orloff recognized how much the events and characters of the era lent themselves to a fascinating story. "The more research I did, the more intriguing this thirty years of time became. It was one of those events where you didn't have to make too much up because the real people who were there were so interesting.  The villainous Earl of Salisbury, Robert Cecil for example, was REALLY a hunchback. You couldn't make him up as a character - he really had a hunchback! We even talked about ‘people are not going to believe he really had a hunchback - it's too much like the mustachioed villain' - but he REALLY had a hunchback!"

Director Emmerich points out that much of the success of the film is due to his exemplary cast. "It was the most interesting casting I ever did because I didn't want to put people in boxes. So I didn't tell most of the people I met what part I was seeing them for. I just wanted to talk in general about the script first and then I always asked the most important question ‘so which part in the movie would you like to play?' " To the director's surprise, he received some unexpected responses from some of his actors. "Rhys said to me, without one second of hesitation, he said ‘Oxford' and I was stunned because I had secretly put him down for Shakespeare because he's famous for his comedic talent. And then... I started to think , ‘well he is eccentric, Oxford is eccentric. He is probably super enthusiastic about playing this part, because he can in a way, be just a different character because he doesn't have to be funny, and I think it shows. He gave a performance of a lifetime in this movie."

Whether moviegoers will chose to believe the theory presented in ANONYMOUS, the fact remains that the works of William Shakespeare, whomever he or she may be, will live on for all time. "The film does celebrate Shakespeare and his work," maintains Richardson. "The most important thing is that it will get more people talking about it and more people going to see the plays. And more people thinking about the words and the influences and the references. The works of Shakespeare are absolutely a National Treasure, an interNational Treasure, a global treasure for all of us."