CHRISTMAS
New film starring Dan Stevens reveals how Charles Dickens spun the story of Scrooge under a tight deadline
Dan Stevens remembers his father, who was a fan of Charles Dickens, reading “David Copperfield” to him as a kid growing up in England, and the actor recalls being “captivated” by an audiobook reading of “Great Expectations” by Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor Who, when he was about 9 or 10. Now 25 years later, Stevens is portraying Dickens in “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” which was released on Wednesday.
The film from Bharat Nalluri (“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day”) focuses on the six weeks in which the novelist created his enduring holiday tale and one of his most famous characters, Ebenezer Scrooge (played here by Christopher Plummer).
“‘A Christmas Carol’ is part of the fabric of English culture,” notes Stevens, 35, “But I liked the idea that we weren’t trying to do the novel, but trying to keep Dickens the man alive.”
“The Man Who Invented Christmas” finds Dickens at age 31, already famous as the author of “Oliver Twist.” But the writer had experienced three flops in a row, was facing financial problems and had four children with another on the way.
“As someone with three children, I can only imagine what kind of pressure that would be on its own,” says Stevens. “Not to mention the pressure he was under to deliver his next big hit.”
Dickens decided to gamble on himself, writing and self-publishing a Christmas book in time for the holiday. In the film, the novelist’s chaotic life, impacted by his father’s presence, collides with the characters and the story he’s creating.
“In our story, these characters become manifest, but we wanted them to feel quite real so there wasn’t much green screen,” says Stevens. “‘A Christmas Carol’ itself is kind of a sci-fi concept of a character time-traveling through their life and at the time it was a unique idea.”
In the film — based on Les Standiford’s 2008 book, “The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits” — we see the author creating the characters and arguing with them.
“There are accounts from his daughter where she would walk in on Dickens and he would be making all these faces and making these weird sounds trying to invent these characters,” says Stevens.
Nalluri says they based the look of Dickens on a portrait of him made a couple of years before he wrote “A Christmas Carol.”
“He was a young, handsome man with long locks of hair in the Dan mode,” says the director. “We wanted to give the character modernity. So Dickens was a ball of energy and Dan really took to that.”
The director was afraid Stevens might not be interested in another role in a period piece. The actor had, of course, come to prominence as Matthew Crawley, the handsome heir on “Downton Abbey,” set in early 1900s Britain.
When Stevens wanted to leave the series after three seasons, he was written out, killed off in a fatal crash during — oddly enough — a Christmas special.
Earlier this year, Stevens starred as The Beast in the Disney hit “Beauty and the Beast,” and he is currently filming the second season of FX’s “Legion,” the trippy “X-Men” spinoff from Noah Hawley.
“The Man Who Invented Christmas,” which is a holiday film as well as a biopic, was filmed last year in Dublin. “This is classic independent filmmaking,” says Nalluri. “We shot in a six-week frenzy before Christmas, much as Dickens wrote his book.”
The director says the biggest challenge was doing justice to “A Christmas Carol” while telling the story of Dickens, who had a difficult relationship with his father, played by Jonathan Pryce.
Dickens’ father had been thrown into debtor’s prison when the writer was a boy, and Charles himself had been thrown into a workhouse.
“Even though financially they were able to get back from this, it cast a long shadow over Dickens’ relationship with his father,” says Stevens, who points out the film is as much about artistic process as it is about Christmas.
“This eccentric and highly strung man was under pressure to turn out something great,” says Stevens, who says he was taken by Susan Coyne’s script that blurred the novelist’s life with his creations.
Nalluri says Plummer seemed liked such an obvious choice to play Scrooge that he couldn’t believe it hadn’t happened before.
“He turned 87 while on the set last year, and none of us could keep up with him — and he has some very active scenes,” adds the director. “He said he knew he could play curmudgeon, but he wanted to bring some playfulness to the character.”
Stevens observes that the character has been played countless times, but Plummer’s is special. “Every Christmas brings the opportunity see someone else doing Scrooge, but Christopher brings new life into the character, a real sparkle, which I really loved.”
How much Dickens “invented” Christmas may be debatable in some eyes.
“I’m sure there are people who disagree with the title,” says Stevens, “but I think he impacted it in terms of the cultural way in which we celebrate Christmas. He looked at it from a humanist perspective. He urged people to look around them and consider those less fortunate than themselves.”
With three children — ages 8, 5, and 1 — the actor says the holiday has always been important to him.
“Christmas is a great time of year in our house. We habitually sit down on Christmas Eve and watch ‘The Muppet Christmas Carol’,” he says. “‘A Christmas Carol’ has always been big in our house anyway, but even more this year.”