Posting the truth

> Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg join for the first time to bring the story of The Washington Post’s defiance against the government in publishing the Pentagon Papers

THE film, The Post, tells of the tense days leading up to The Washington Post’s decision in 1971 to publish the Pentagon Papers, the government’s secret history of the Vietnam War.

The New York Times had broken the story but was prohibited from running the full series after the Nixon administration won a court injunction. That’s when The Post took up the story.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film stars Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham, The Post’s publisher who came into her own by defying the then US president Richard Nixon’s order, and Tom Hanks as The Post’s legendary editor Ben Bradlee.

It is also the first time these three Hollywood icons have all worked together in a movie.

In a recent interview, Hanks and Streep talked about their roles and what it’s like following in the footsteps of what is arguably the best newspaper movie ever, All the President’s Men, starring Jason Robards as Bradlee.

Did either of you go in thinking: ‘Well, the definitive

movie was made. Are we up against that?’ Streep: “I didn’t think the definitive Washington Post movie was made. It was a great movie, but it neglected to mention Katharine Graham and her central position. She was glancingly there.”

Hanks: “There was a reference to her.” Especially you, Hanks, stepping into a role that was iconically done. How do you go about that differently? Hanks: “I viewed this as the story of the week that Katharine Graham became Katharine Graham. In which case, I had the juicy aspect of playing the only ally she had.

“You know, philosophically, the relationship that they had was based on so much stuff. You might as well just call it love, respect, empathy, understanding, professional moxie.”

Streep: “Mutual admiration.”

Hanks: “It’s also cantankerous, like when he said: ‘Katharine, get your finger out of my eye.’

“From the moment we both read it and said: ‘Oh, I’m not going to let this pass me by’, it grew into the specifics of what the Pentagon Papers were.”

Where do you think she found that mettle to say: ‘Let’s do it, let’s publish?’ Her advisers were against it. Streep: “Where do the hardest things come from? They come from deep. Usually they come from your parents.

“Her father was a formidable figure, and her mother was even more terrifyingly important in her life. Absent, but the absence was important.

“Katharine Graham was someone who was a product of her time. It was the whole culture that undermined all women, especially women that should’ve had the most agency of all – highly-educated wealthy women who had every opportunity to step into important places in life but they sat back.

“The more I read about her, the more I thought: ‘Who do you think you are trying to be – Katharine Graham?’

“She was so thoughtful, deepprincipled and wily in that way that women had to be when they were only the second tier of a society.”

The film is a model for men and women working together respectfully, which is what we need, that good example. Streep: Yeah, but just think if I had been the managing editor of The Washington Post and you had been my publisher. If I said: ‘Get your finger out of my eye’.”

Hanks: “You would’ve been a bitch.”

Streep: “I would’ve been fired. And that’s what I mean about the imbalance ... I think women also have to step up and get able to do that.”

they

At feel that this is a

story. They broke the Pentagon Papers. What are your thoughts on that? Hanks: “I read an article before we even started shooting, which was: ‘How dare they do this movie about The Washington Post when it was us?’

“We’re all reacting off what The New York Times did. They did not have Katharine Graham. They did not have that side of it.” – The Independent

The Post