I love an underdog, and you really root for Lionel as the story goes on
Ed with Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Laura and, right, with his film-producer wife Shauna Robertson
works at, Lionel takes it upon himself to find out why, resulting in a deep dive into troubling political issues across the city.
Along the way, he meets alluring community activist Laura (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and Ed beautifully depicts Lionel’s vulnerability with her. But when he unravels closely guarded secrets about ambitious developer Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin) – the most powerful man in the city – Laura is left in serious danger.
During the adaptation process, Ed made the decision to scrap the original late 1990s setting in favour of the 1950s.
“I’ve long been interested in what was happening behind the scenes in the development of New York in the late 1950s, when the old New York became the modern city,” reasons the amiable star.
“It felt like a very charged place to put Lionel. Thankfully,
Jonathan is as passionate a student of New York as I am, think, post-2016, there were some aspects of this story that took on a special resonance.”
Discussing the adaptation process further, Ed confides it took a while to get the script right.
His own reservations got in the way too; a part of him was happy to keep putting the mammoth project off.
“I would get close to where I thought, ‘Ah maybe I’ll do this now’ and then I would get an offer to get some cool film like Wes Anderson or Birdman or something like that.
“And, you know, you keep going, ‘I’ll do this after I’ve done that’, because it’s easier.”
Arguably, the film’s greatest strength is Ed’s meticulous and striking performance as Lionel, but did he have any fears about portraying someone with Tourette’s?
“Not fears... I think, fundamentally, the story actually focuses on his emotional life as a person; it lets you into his world behind the condition.
“And also in many ways it’s about how, like all of us, he’s got to ultimately grow up and look beyond his own personal issues, and figure out that being heroic means kinda caring about other people too, not just worrying about his own problems.
“The best way to portray anybody is to deal with their complex, full humanity, not to reduce them to that condition.”
Lionel is certainly a character Ed found memorable from the first page of Lethem’s novel. “He’s dysfunctional in funny ways but also that are a little bit painful at times.
“He’s tough, and a Brooklyn orphan street kid, but he’s also sensitive and lonely. He trips himself up, but he’s also got talents, and it’s all that complexity.”
“Ultimately,” the filmmaker concludes, “I think it’s that I love an underdog story.
“And you really root for him as the story goes on.”
Motherless Brooklyn is in cinemas now.