MERYL STREEP AND TOM HANKS
MERYL STREEP AND TOM HANKS, STARS OF STEVEN SPIELBERG’S THE POST, SIT DOWN WITH EMPIRE TO LAUGH, ARGUE AND SET MODERN HOLLYWOOD TO RIGHTS
Steven Spielberg’s lead actors from The Post get together to talk about everything under the sun. Some will claim this is the first time Hanks and Streep have worked together, but who do you think played the volcano in Joe Versus The Volcano? Huh?
meryl streep (20 oscar nominations, three wins) and tom hanks (5 nominations, two wins) can’t remember the first time they met.
It might have been at a Shakespeare In The Park production of
Macbeth. Or at one of the countless awards bashes where they probably gave ridiculously witty acceptance speeches. Streep thinks she met Hanks’ wife Rita first, but isn’t sure. The only cast-iron fact is they have never shared the big screen together.
Until now. Fittingly, it took a filmmaker of Steven Spielberg’s stature to bring the titans together. Set in 1971, The Post centres on The Washington Post’s race against The New
York Times to publish the previously suppressed ‘Pentagon Papers’, revealing the level of US involvement in Vietnam. Streep is the Post’s publisher Katharine Graham, a singular woman in a distinctly male world; Hanks is executive editor Ben Bradlee (previously played by Jason Robards in All
The President’s Men), trying to get the scoop of his life. It’s a story awash with modern-day resonances — attempted government censoring of the press, the battle for gender equality — and is far from stuffy awards fare; it’s a tense, funny, suspenseful thriller.
Spielberg’s film seemed like the perfect excuse to bring the two actors together to talk about… well, whatever they want. Holed up in a basement suite in New York’s Ritz-carlton hotel, their wide-ranging chat takes in all the good stuff — movies, politics, feminism, old friends, real-life ghostbusters — punctuated with humour, intelligence, candour and a genuine sense of affection towards each other. But they began with
Empire’s obvious conversation-starter: why the hell haven’t they worked together before?
Streep: There’s a lot of people of our generation we haven’t worked with. You’re younger than I am, so that’s part of it.
Hanks: I’m a youthful 61, if that means anything.
Streep: I’m 68. So in Hollywood years, our pairing would never work. If anything you should be 20 years older than your co-star. My co-stars were always 20 years older: Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman. They are all in their eighties now.
Hanks: There was just never anything with a part for you and a part for me. We never landed anywhere until this.
Streep: I liked that this movie is lots of different things. You go in thinking it’s one thing, which is probably good, because it is a discovery. It’s more fun to not know what you are going to see.
Hanks: It’s a scavenger-hunt film, isn’t it? It’s like, “Hey, something is out there [the Pentagon Papers] — let’s go get it.” When I watched it yesterday I noticed you, [as] Kay Graham, walk through a bunch of women to go through doors, only to be surrounded by a bunch of men.
Streep: It’s the way it was. It’s why we are where we are right now, because we’ve come from that place which used to be separated realms. It’s an apartheid movie.
Hanks: The original draft we read back in February was based on Kay Graham’s autobiography that Liz Hannah turned into a movie by framing it around the search for the Pentagon Papers. I think we all read it independently and said, “Jeez, I’d like to do
this.” Then the next thing I know, “Holy cow, I’m in a movie with Meryl Streep.”
The Post is not the first time Streep has worked with Spielberg. Little-known fact: she lent her vocal talents to the Blue Fairy, an integral player in 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Streep: When I worked on A.I., I went and recorded the voice of the fairy at his place in Long Island. All we did was talk about how his house was haunted and did I know a ghostbuster. And, of course, I do. So I sent him an exorcist. Hanks: That’s a good story. Streep: Everything is clear down there now. In my mind, he had a settled grandeur — a filmmaker who was so important, had this incredible CV and always talks about this well-oiled machine [his crew]. So I was completely unprepared for how improvisatory his work is, how it is created in the moment. Someone was going like this with a pencil
[taps it furiously]. We’d done one take and he decided, “That’s going to be the percussive energy of the scene. Everything is going to rev to that.” I thought, “How?” And the whole thing changed. It was exciting to work with him.
Hanks: It’s so much in the moment. The well-oiled machine he is talking about allows him this freedom and clarity in which I’ve made… This is the fifth movie I’ve made with him. Streep: Wow. Hanks: And there are times when you come in and he will say to you, “I am not sure how I am going to shoot this scene.” So you start playing and you work it out and then he lands on it. And there are other times you come in and he knows exactly what is going to happen.
Streep: But it’s all on film because he doesn’t rehearse. That I didn’t know. Nobody told me that.
Hanks: When you come in for the first breakfast scene, how did the bump with the chair occur?
Streep: It was a mistake. I bumped