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Over the past 20 years, screenwriter Peter Straughan has become British cinema’s go-to guy for adaptations. That might sound like a back-handed compliment, but his protean talent makes it hard to pinpoint what exactly constitutes a typical project for the UK-based writer: is it Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), his masterly adaptation of John Le Carré’s classic Cold War spy thriller; is it Frank (2014), which stars Michael Fassbender as a struggling indie musician sporting a papier mâché head; or is it Our Brand Is Crisis, a satirical Sandra Bullock comedy based on a deadly serious political documentary?
Straughan is currently sailing into awards season with his take on Robert Harris’ 2016 bestseller Conclave, a darkly witty conspiracy drama starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini. Directed by Edward Berger, following hard on the heels of his award-winning drama All Quiet on the Western Front two years ago, it starts with the death of the Pope and concerns the efforts of his right-hand man, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Fiennes), to find a suitable successor. As with any election, however, there are dirty tricks afoot. Even in the Vatican, as Lawrence soon finds out.
After Conclave hits U.S. cinemas this week, Straughan will return to the small screen with the second series of Wolf Hall, the smash-hit BBC drama he adapted for director Peter Kosminsky from the labyrinthine historical novels of Hilary Mantel, who passed away in 2022. “I can’t tell you when it’s coming out,” says Straughan, “partly because I’ve been told not to, and partly because I can’t actually remember! But it is coming out fairly soon. Peter’s done a fantastic job. It was a long time coming. Hilary took a while to write it, and then I took a long time to adapt it. But I love it. It’s the kind of thing that’s increasingly difficult to get made in this day and age, and maybe only the BBC would make it.”
Deadline recently sat down with Straughan to discuss his work on Conclave.
DEADLINE: How did you get involved with adapting Conclave?
PETER STRAUGHAN: Two of the film’s producers sent it to me. Tessa Ross, who I made Frank with when she was at Film4, and Robyn Slovo, who I’d worked with on Tinker Tailor. They both sent me the book, and I read it pretty much in one sitting. I really liked it. Robert’s a wonderful writer. It was very elegant and intelligent, and it was very gripping. I think he did a really clever thing in taking the sort of political-thriller tropes that we know from those great ’70 movies and making them feel new again. They felt fresh, because we were in a world that we don’t know and that we’re not normally allowed into. It was a wonderful way of looking at politics, which I think to some extent is what the project is.
So, there was that. But when I’m looking at a book, I also ask myself, is this a film or TV series? Really, what that means is that you’re looking for conflict. And in that sense, an election is a gift, because it’s about as close to the surface as conflict can be in a scenario where there isn’t any actual physical violence. I suppose that’s the point of elections — to replace the need for physical violence. Immediately, it felt like the drama was there. It was a world I was interested in. I was brought up Catholic. I was an altar boy, and I went to a Catholic school, so, in some ways it felt like home territory, even though I’m no longer a believer. I had one foot in the world and one foot out, so that interested me.
DEADLINE: Was there a particular moment that inspired you?
STRAUGHAN: I remember the moment when I thought, “Oh, I want to do this.” It was when Ralph’s character — he’s called Lomeli in the book — is giving a sermon before the voting has started, and he says, basically, “Give us a Pope who doubts.” This was a few years ago, but we were already well on the way to the world we’re in now. The world we’re in now is a very polarized world. And I feel as I’ve got older, I’ve become much more suspicious of certainty. It seems to lead far too easily to contempt for others, and to violence, as we’re seeing all the time now. So, there was something about that reluctant hero — a doubting, uncertain hero — that felt very interesting and sympathetic to me.
DEADLINE: How did you approach the process of adapting it?
STRAUGHAN: Every time I adapt a book, it feels like a slightly different process. Books are like woods — sometimes there’s only one path through, and sometimes there are many, many paths you could go on. For Tinker Tailor, there were a lot of paths I could have taken. Wolf Hall, there were a lot of paths I could have taken. So, you have to decide for yourself, “What’s the path I’m going to take?” With Conclave, to be honest, I felt like that there was pretty much one straight path. Edward [Berger] probably came on board by about the third draft. It took a long time to put the film together as a project, but it didn’t take a long time to get the script working.
DEADLINE: Did the script go through any drastic changes?
STRAUGHAN: It didn’t. There were moments we added. On the one hand, there’s a fantastic scale to the conclave. It’s the oldest election in the world. It’s serving a constituency of one and a half billion people, something like that. It’s the most absolute election. So, it has this immense historical and political importance. On the other hand, I was very aware that essentially this was a chamber piece. I mean, we have 109 Cardinals, but there are really just seven important parts that I’m dealing with in the drama. So, what made me a little nervous was the worry that it could feel theatrical. I love theater, but, as we know, theater and film can be a deadly combination. So, the job was about how to deal with that, how to give the story a cinematic quality and scale.
DEADLINE: How did you address that?
STRAUGHAN: I felt that the trick was to actually lean into the theatricality, because the conclave is a theater itself, in some ways, and there’s an audience there. There are thousands of people outside, waiting for the results. There’s a front stage, where performances are taking place, in terms of the actual elections themselves and the sermons, the masses, and the ritualistic elements of Catholicism — which is, as we know, very theatrical in nature. And then there’s a backstage, where the horse trading is going on, where the actors take their masks off, and we learn who they really are and what’s really motivating them. The story basically moves between those areas until there’s a rupture in the world, and what has been hidden is brought into the light.
DEADLINE: Did you have any contact with the author while you were going through this? Is it useful to have contact with the author or not?
STRAUGHAN: Yeah, I love being in contact with the author, and I find that good authors like Robert are very open about the adaptation. Because they know that the slavish adaptation isn’t necessarily the best adaptation. This is actually quite a faithful adaptation, as it turns out. I didn’t need, or have any desire, to make huge changes. But Robert was very open and very collaborative in the process. It was a weirdly happy process from beginning to end.
DEADLINE: Did you do any of your own research for this?
STRAUGHAN: We were given a private tour of the Vatican. They were quite open actually, and they were quite friendly. They weren’t hostile towards the project at all. They hadn’t been particularly hostile to the book either, to be honest. We had a friendly Cardinal who we could check some details with. But Robert had done his homework. A lot of it was already there.
DEADLINE: Isabella Rossellini is getting a lot of attention for her role. How important was it to have a female character in this male universe?
STRAUGHAN: In some ways, it’s what the film is about. I think there’s a sly, subversive quality to the film and that, on one level, it’s taking on probably the oldest, greatest patriarchy in the world, and it does it from the inside. I liked the idea that there was this silent chorus — the sisters who are serving the conclave, and who are not allowed to speak. Except, in the end, something breaks through the surface of that silence. That felt very important. This is just my opinion, and I don’t know if anyone else would share it. I remember a shot in Tinker Tailor, where there’s some graffiti in the background of a scene, which says, “The future is female.” I like to think that some of that spirit is at the center of Conclave as well.
DEADLINE: In that way, Conclave is a very modern film about a very ancient society. I found myself thinking of the upcoming U.S. elections, as well as the recent British elections. Do these parallels occur to you while you’re writing?
STRAUGHAN: We began it a few years ago, so obviously it’s ended up being coincidental that it’s been released alongside the U.S. election. But Robert’s very interested in politics. This feels on one level very much about an exploration of politics in a universal sense. About power, about the uses of power, about the abuses of power and what it does to people. But I think it would be a mistake to say this is just a metaphor for politics in general, because there is obviously a unique element to the conclave, which I found interesting as well. These men believe they are meant to listen to the Holy Spirit and that God’s will is going to be done through them.
DEADLINE: I wasn’t expecting it to be as funny as it is. How do you know how much humor you can put into a story like this?
STRAUGHAN: Some of it is baked into the situation. Some of it’s in the DNA of the conclave itself because, as I say, on the one hand you’ve got the scale and the grandeur of the church and of the Vatican. When you walk through the Vatican, those buildings, they’re there to intimidate and to instill awe. It’s an imperial citadel and was an imperial power, obviously.
So, there’s a magnificence in that, and there’s a magnificence in the Sistine Chapel. And then, on the other hand, you have 109 elderly men who are on the walker in the gym, or having their mobile phones taken off them, or nipping outside for a cigarette. There’s the pathos inherent in that, and that was always there from the beginning. And to some extent they’re aware of the absurdity and they’re aware of the comparisons with more worldly politics. When Stanley’s character says, “I’ll be the Richard Nixon of Popes,” there’s a sense that they know the horse trading is aping a much more secular election process.
DEADLINE: Immigration becomes a talking point in the movie. Without going into spoilers, how did you handle that aspect of the story?
STRAUGHAN: I felt very sensitive to that aspect of it. I felt very sensitive that we shouldn’t be othering or demonizing the non-Christian world. But, again, there’s a kind of irony baked into the film, because the conclave is supposed to be separated from the outside world and only be concerned with spiritual matters. Outside information isn’t supposed to be allowed in. So, as events are unraveling or unfolding outside in Rome, they’re supposed to be kept protected from it, but of course they’re all slightly aware that something is happening. And the irony is, of course, that the conflict is starting to rage outside is actually already raging within the conclave.
DEADLINE: What attracts you to projects like Conclave? Do you see any motifs recurring in the projects you tackle?
STRAUGHAN: It took me a long time to notice it, but there is. So, this is very interesting. I realized that there’s one story I’m telling again and again and again, even when I’m adapting other people’s books, which is fascinating and reminds you that, with a good book, different adaptations could give you completely different films from the same source. And the story I’m telling again and again seems to be something to do with those who remain loyal and those who betray. It’s what Tinker Tailor is fundamentally about. I don’t know why that’s the story I keep telling. I don’t know if that’s because of my Catholic childhood and the Christ-Judas myth at the center. I don’t know. [Laughs.] The interesting thing is it doesn’t make any difference or do any good knowing that. I mean, I’ll be writing something and think, “Oh, I like this.” And then six months later I’ll look back and “Oh, of course you do. You’re telling the same story again.”
DEADLINE: What else are you working on at the moment?
STRAUGHAN: I’m doing a biopic with Sam Mendes. Sam’s doing four Beatles biopics, and I’m doing George Harrison. I’m working on that at the moment and developing a few TV projects. I’m doing a film about, which is kind of about the theater actually, and about actors. It’s got a working title of Folio. It’s about two actors, Heminges and Condell, who put together the first folio of Shakespeare’s plays after he died. He was a friend of theirs, and there’s a sense that we would’ve lost about half of Shakespeare’s canon if they hadn’t done that. They’re trying to save the world of their youth, the world of Elizabethan theater, which is coming to an end, although they don’t know how to do it. It’s a kind of historical black comedy, I guess.
DEADLINE: How is the Beatles project working out? Is that a different writer per Beatle?
STRAUGHAN: Yep. [Laughs.] We’re being firewalled off from each other, and Sam is in the middle. I don’t really think any of us know exactly how it’s going to work. I think the idea is that, because we’ve been isolated, we will tell the story in four very different ways from the point of view of our characters. I think Sam is interested to see whether there might be some sort of Rashomon element to it. For example, there are certain famous scenes from their lives, like The Beatles meeting Elvis or The Beatles playing Shea Stadium. Maybe each film will have that scene in it, but from a different angle. Or maybe only one film will deal with those scenes and the other films won’t. I mean, George very much has his own story, which is in some ways unique in the Beatles, a very spiritual search.
DEADLINE: Did you get to choose your Beatle or were you assigned one?
STRAUGHAN: When we talked about it, he said, “Is there a Beatle you’d be most interested in?” I said, “John”, and he went, “Uh-huh.” [Laughs.] But I’m very happy with George, I think the reason he thought of me for George was my brother. I’m from a working-class background in the northeast. My brother’s a Buddhist monk, and that’s quite a strange — to go from a council estate to being a Buddhist monk. I always found it very interesting that my brother made that journey. And the same thing is true of George. A working-class boy from Speke in Liverpool, who ends up, before it was fashionable — before anyone else really was leading that way — becoming interested in spirituality and Hinduism and Indian culture and Indian music. I find that quite fascinating.
Conclave hit U.S. theaters on Friday and on November 29 in the UK. Peter Straughan is repped by Casarotto Ramsay & Associates and CAA.
