the danis h gi rl
Is this Redmayne’s second Oscar contender?
Tom Hooper sighs, wearily. “Seven years ago, I was told this is a difficult film to make, to get financed. Now, I’m told it’s a timely film to do.” Such is the fickle nature of the movie business. But there can be no question that Hooper’s The Danish Girl is arriving at just the right time. Dealing with the first-ever recorded case of gender re-assignment surgery, this adaptation of David Ebershoff’s book is just one of several transgender tales to tap the zeitgeist.
“It’s become part of the mainstream, which is very exciting,” says Hooper, over coffee, when Total Film meets up with him at London’s Claridges Hotel. On television, Jeffrey Tambor recently won an Emmy for his portrayal of Maura Pfefferman, the transgender woman who comes out to her family late in life, in the Amazon series
Transparent, while Orange Is The New Black had already blazed a trail with the casting of Laverne Cox – the first transgender woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine.
Others include the recent release of the low-budget transgender prostitute story
Tangerine and, of course, the story of the Kardashians’ father Bruce and his transition into Caitlyn Jenner, all served up in the reality show I Am Cait. “By starting so long ago, we’ve become fashionable!” half-jokes The Danish
Girl’s screenwriter, Lucinda Coxon. “We’re lucky that we didn’t make it sooner because it would’ve ended up being a much smaller film with a much smaller reach.”
First optioned by producer Gail Mutrux in 2000, The Danish Girl is the very definition of long-gestating. Directors including Tomas Alfredson and Lasse Hallström, Neil LaBute and Anand Tucker came and went, while A-list stars fluttered around the project. “It had been a script that had never had any trouble attracting talent,” notes Coxon. Nicole Kidman was, at one point, attached to play the titular role of Lili, while Charlize Theron and Rachel Weisz were in the frame to play Lili’s partner Gerda.
It’s hardly surprising, given Ebershoff’s fêted book. Part-fictionalised, it tells the story of Danish artist Einar Wegener who, in 1931, became the first man ever to be transformed surgically into a woman, changing her name to Lili Elbe. Alongside Lili, supporting her all the way, is her spouse, fellow artist Gerda Wegener; it was this remarkable love story flourishing
against the odds that first intrigued Hooper, when he was given a copy of Coxon’s script by casting director Nina Gold.
Then in pre-production on his Oscarwinner The King’s Speech, Hooper was incredibly moved by the Lili-Gerda relationship. “Really at the core of the film is an exploration of unconditional love, of the true nature of love, which is really putting someone else ahead of yourself,” he says. “And really seeing someone else’s needs and placing them before yourself. That’s what made me cry in the script and that’s what I hope moves audiences.”
Immediately, he thought of casting Eddie Redmayne. They’d first worked together on his 2005 mini-series Elizabeth I, then reunited for his rousing film version of classic musical Les Misérables. It was on the set of this that Hooper gave Redmayne the script. “My initial reaction was one of great privilege,” says the 32-year-old actor. “I feel that whenever I play a part, there’s an element of fear. It’s what drives you. But really the overwhelming thing was privilege and wanting to do her story justice.”
At the time, Redmayne estimates that his casting in the lead probably delayed the film’s financing. But that was before he won an Oscar this year for his remarkable turn as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything. All of a sudden, Redmayne’s red-hot, with bookmakers slashing the odds that he’ll win back-to-back Best Actor Oscars with his performance as Lili. Given Hooper’s track record – an Oscar for Colin Firth on The King’s Speech, another for Anne Hathaway on Les
Misérables – it’s a bet worth taking. Redmayne ultimately took a year to prepare for the role, though his research began while working on the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending, talking to director Lana Wachowski, who had lived as a man, Larry, until 2002. “I mentioned Gerda and Lili’s story – and I think she owns art by Gerda of Lili. Man Into Woman [ an early
account of Lili’s transformation] was also incredibly important to her.” Wachowski pointed Redmayne to some other key texts – Jan Morris’ Conundrum and Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw.
Likewise, Alicia Vikander – cast as Gerda – did her own research; she reached out to
Leslie Fabian, who wrote the book My
Husband’s A Woman Now. “Her book was like a little Bible,” says Vikander. “It was extremely honest. Above anything, [ it shows] you’ll support this person and be there and the love is unconditional, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t a bumpy road. She told me, ‘I feel a bit lonely because people don’t realise I’m transitioning too.’ And that was really a key thing for me to hold on to.”
Shooting in Copenhagen, Berlin and Norway’s Romsdal, the cast was rounded out with a fine mix of European and American talent: Ben Whishaw as Henrik, who falls for Lili during her transition; Sebastian Koch as the doctor who performs the miracle surgery; Matthias Schoenaerts as the “selfless” Hans Axgil, an art dealer and friend from Einar’s childhood who lends crucial support while holding back his true feelings for Gerda; and Amber Heard as the free-spirited ballet dancer Oola Paulson, a mutual friend to both Gerda and Einar.
For all concerned, it was a learning process. “There were many things that I was ignorant about,” admits Redmayne. “The idea that sexuality and gender are two different things was something I’d been ignorant enough to not really understand.” He then proceeds to reveal some shocking statistics: that in 32 states in America, you can still be fired for being transgender; that the suicide rate for transgender people is a staggering 41%. “It’s a civil rights movement and one that needs to be discussed.”
Yet The Danish Girl’s arrival, says Heard, is “proof” that our culture is ready for this discussion. As a society, we’re starting to be “interested in these stories, interested in asking these questions and interested in redefining some previously held notions and long-standing standards. As a society, we’re clearly ready to talk about it. And I think it’s about time. It’s not an accident that most people have never heard of Lili, who was this extraordinary pioneer.”
Coxon concurs. “If nothing else, it puts a story out there that dates back to the late 1920s, early 1930s, that had been lost to history because women’s histories, working people’s histories, queer history – these are histories that get buried.” Indeed, even Lili’s story has been warped over time. Published in 1933, the aforementioned Man Into Woman beloved by Lana Wachowski was partly based on Lili’s writings, though edited by others and, as Coxon notes, “as many great biographies are, it’s a work of some fiction”.
Perhaps now the world is ready for Lili’s story – and thousands like her – but Hooper is careful not to package the plot in the way you might expect. “I think the film is more about revelation and revealing than transformation,” he says. “In a way, Lili was always Lili. She had been required to live as a man, which was not what she felt comfortable doing. Eddie and I talked a lot about revealing his latent femininity, revealing the woman that’s been so severely suppressed.”
With his delicate cheekbones and softspoken voice ideally tailored for the part, Redmayne calls it a “long process of discovery” to arrive at Lili’s look. “The first day I walked onto set as Lili, I’ve never felt such scrutiny. That was by a mostly male crew. And you don’t know whether you’re being judged for whether you’re passing, whether you’re blending, whether you look ridiculous… Many of the trans women I talked to spoke to me about scrutiny and the gaze and the fear that comes as a consequence of that.”
If anything suggests he and Hooper got things right, it was when the director showed an early cut to Jennifer Whyte, a trans-woman and one of his musical directors on Les Misérables, who had played the piano for Redmayne’s stunning rendition of ‘Empty Chairs At Empty Tables’. “First of all, she could hardly speak for five minutes,” he recalls. “She said, ‘I feel like you’ve served up a chunk of my own brain back to me.’ I hope she doesn’t mind me saying, but she felt that it caught moments of her life.” She probably won’t be alone.
The Danish Girl opens on 1 January.
‘The first day I walked onto set as Lili, I’ve never felt such scrutiny. Many trans women have told me about that fear’ Eddie Redmayne