Bill Nighy The Limehouse Golem

Set in Victorian London in 1880

Cast: Douglas Booth, Olivia Cooke, Sam Reid
Director: Juan Carlos Medina
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Running Time: 108 minutes

Synopsis: Set on the unforgiving, squalid streets of Victorian London in 1880, our tale begins in the baroque, grandiose music hall where the capital's most renowned performer Dan Leno (Douglas Booth) takes to the stage. The whimsical thespian performs a monologue, informing his dedicated audience of the ghastly fate of a young woman who had once adorned this very stage, his dear friend Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke); for the beguiling songstress is facing up to her forthcoming death by hanging, having been accused of murdering her husband John Cree (Sam Reid).

Lizzie's death seems inevitable, until Detective Inspector John Kildare (Bill Nighy) is assigned to the case of the Limehouse Golem – a nefarious, calculating serial killer, murdering innocent, unconnected victims, leaving behind barely identifiable corpses – and his distinctive, signature in blood.

Partnered alongside the loyal George Flood (Daniel Mays), Kildare is aware that he's been set up as a scapegoat on the seemingly insurmountable case, as he's expendable in the eyes of the Scotland Yard. But he remains determined to catch the elusive killer, and with John Cree emerging as the prime suspect, Kildare knows that if he can prove this to be the case, not only will he have found the Golem – but it could be the lone nugget of information that prolongs the life of the poor, young Lizzie, who the Inspector has grown rather fond of during his interrogations.

Lizzie had always dreamt of being a performer, and following her mother's death she set off straight for the music hall, a wide-eyed teenager who befriends the owner and compère affectionately known as Uncle (Eddie Marsan), only to build up an unbreakable, platonic kinship with the effervescent Dan Leno. She gradually emulates the performer too, becoming a star of the stage in her own right.

It's there she meets John, a budding playwright who falls for Lizzie, much to displeasure of fellow performer Aveline Ortega (Maria Valverde), who bears a grudge that knows no bounds. As John works tirelessly on a new production called Misery Junction, an unspoken pact is formed, for Lizzie takes his hand in marriage in exchange for the leading role. Leading up to his death, by poisoning, the pair had fought with one another, and with Aveline professing that Lizzie prepared her late husband's nightcap that fateful night, any hope of avoiding persecution seems desperately unlikely.

But Kildare has other ideas, knowing that if John Cree is guilty of being the Golem, Elizabeth should surely avoid a death sentence for ending his life. He stumbles across the Golem's diary, with a final entry on a day when just four men entered the library's reading room where it was kept – John Cree, Dan Leno, Karl Marx and George Gissing. Kildare and Flood want handwriting samples from the three surviving suspects to see if they match up, but time is against them, as the noose around the neck of Lizzie is already being tightened.

The Limehouse Golem
Release Date: November, 2017

 

About The Production

'Here we are again" is the catchphrase belonging to the eminent music hall performer Dan Leno. A quip that highlights the consistent farcicality of his vocation, and it's one that is emblematic of producer Stephen Woolley's (The Crying Game, Carol) personal experience dealing with this particular project as one that has lasted over two incarnations, and well over a decade.

The Limehouse Golem is based on the popular 1994 novel 'Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem', also known as 'The Trial of Elizabeth Cree', by the venerable, enterprising author Peter Ackroyd. Set amidst the sordid grandiosity of Victorian London, it's a tale that Woolley felt was fit for the silver screen, but admits it was one he had initially struggled to get off the ground.

'The project began 15 years or so ago, I had an ongoing deal with Dreamworks," he began. 'I read the book with the idea of doing a film with Neil Jordan, but the rights were with Merchant Ivory at that point. I had to wait four years and then I got a call from the publishers to say the rights had now lapsed, so I bought them and developed for three years with a writer for Terry Gilliam, but we never quite cracked the script. The rights lapsed and another producer took the project up. Then I was having lunch with Jane Goldman and she talked about how much she loved The Limehouse Golem and so we started the adventure afresh again."

For Jane Goldman, who is one of the UK's most successful screenwriters globally, following the likes of Kick-Ass, Kingsman: The Secret Service and The Woman in Black - The Limehouse Golem was a dream come true, as she was an admirer long before she had anticipated it to be a project that would fall onto her lap.

'I read the book years ago and have always absolutely loved it and when I moved into screenwriting it was in my head as a book I always wished there was a movie version of," she said. 'I casually Googled to see who had the rights and at the time it was in development and I remember Stephen Woolley's name being attached. I was just pleased it was going to be a movie and I was looking forward to seeing it."

'Years later I had forgotten all about it and during a lunch with Stephen Woolley I brought it up, wanting to know what happened. I told him I absolutely loved it and got a call from him not long afterwards to say he had the rights again and did I want to write it. It was a real dream come true. Something I mentioned out of curiosity had actually turned into a reality, and it was so exciting – so of course I didn't hesitate in saying yes."

Having a producer and screenwriter on board with such remarkable credentials is still only half of the job, and the next step was finding a filmmaker to bring this tale to life – and though relatively unknown, they opted for Juan Carlos Medina, who displayed all of the right skills in his debut, and only preceding endeavour, Painless. His vision for The Limehouse Golem was meticulous and resourceful, using classic British filmmakers and prominent artists to help craft this world to his liking.

'Most of my favourite directors are British. I grew up on the films of John Boorman, Alfred Hitchcock, Sally Potter, Derek Jarman and Neil Jordan. I've always found British cinema irrigated in a very suggestive and powerful way by Shakespeare and also by the dark romanticism that comes from Byron, Shelley, Blake and Bram Stoker," Juan Carlos Medina said. 'I was really inspired by the wonderful baroqueness of Ken Russell and Michael Powell, their movies were burnt in my mind when I was a child."

'The Limehouse Golem is a whodunnit, but a very challenging one. The journey towards knowing who the killer is will be just as fascinating and thought-provoking as the mere fact of knowing who it eventually turns out to be. That was the challenge, to make a hypnotic and fascinating journey. Hitchcock said once he did not particularly like whodunnits because they are an intellectual game devoid of emotion, you were only waiting for the ending, to know who the killer was. I've always wondered about this, as I am fascinated by the genre. So that was an important challenge."

'I want you become emotionally engaged, sensorially engaged, as you are taken into the mind of the killer, into his greatest work of art without even knowing it. The ambition was to create a new genre of whodunnit, where the usual mind-games would be transcended into a movie touching several genres, to transport the audience to a different time that sheds so much light on who we are today."

The Allure of Goldman's Script and Medina's Vision

With any actor, when posed with the common 'what attracted you to the project" question you're guaranteed an answer that incorporates both the credentials of the director and the captivation of the screenplay. The cast and crew of The Limehouse Golem are no different, but there is an evident passion for the feature, displayed without any sense of contrivance – with an infectious enthusiasm for the project and the sheer complexity of Goldman's screenplay.

'There aren't many scripts that are this uncomplicatedly good," said Bill Nighy – who plays the role of Detective Inspector John Kildare, tasked with uncovering the identity of the Golem, while fully aware his involvement in this case is to be the public's scapegoat.

'Research isn't necessary with a script of this quality, any information you need is within the text. I'm old enough now to quite honestly say that I have done absolutely no research whatsoever. It gives me pleasure to say that, because for years there was a certain taboo where you're supposed to say you have. But if the writing is any good you don't need to know much more – it should be contained within the piece."

Douglas Booth, who takes on the illustrious part of Dan Leno, the revered music hall performer and suspect in the Golem case, was equally as awe-struck by the screenplay, but given he was tasked with tackling a figure who did genuinely exist, his approach to research differed from that of his co-star.

'I read up on his life, and what made him who he was. He wrote this great autobiography which is fascinating. He makes most of it up, he just rambles and it's great because you get an insight into his deeper imagination and not just his reality. He makes up stories about his past and you don't know if they're true or not but you sort of know it isn't. This is where his mind runs, so it's where my mind must run. There's even a couple of sound recordings I listened to. You just draw on every single thing you possibly can."
'I also went out and created a Dan Leno fragrance, so whenever I do this work I wear it, even when researching and reading, and working on his voice and cadence, and when I come to perform and put the fragrance on it emotionally brings it all back. All of that work I've done is summarised in this one smell."

Actress Maria Valverde, who plays Aveline Ortega, the love rival to Lizzie Cree, who yearns for the affections of the latter's husband John, cited Medina as the key reason as to her involvement.

'When I spoke with Juan Carlos Medina and he told me the world he wanted to create, it all made sense in my mind and I knew I wanted to be in this film. I didn't know what character I would be, I just wanted to be a part of it."

Sam Reid, who plays the aforementioned John Cree – the prime suspect in the Golem investigation – felt similarly to his Spanish co-star.

'I love working with Juan Carlos Medina – he knows exactly how this film is going to go, he's been working on it for years. It's a real passion project for him and I'm very excited to be a part of it, and a part of his vision. You always feel very safe with a director who knows exactly what he wants - everything, to the most tiny detail."

'His vision is much darker than I ever could have imagined and that's fun to be a part of. I don't think any of us realised that this would be as bleak and terrifying as it's turning out to be, but that's exciting. I'm surprised by how macabre and theatrical and surreal this film may become, and that's purely down to his own artistic vision, which is great."

Goldman was quick to heap praise on Medina too, and while understandably protective over the screenplay, she knew it had been left in reliable hands.

'From day one Juan Carlos Medina has been so passionate about it and that's an extremely compelling reason to get somebody on board. I loved his first movie Painless, and I was blown away by his passion for the project and the amount of thought he had already put into it, before even coming to discuss it with us for the first time. He had gathered so many visual materials and mood boards and it was clearly something he was approaching with his heart as well as his head, and that counts for an awful lot."

Woolley expanded on the hiring of Juan Carlos Medina, and how the director's previous film made an impact into that decision – not to mention his nationality.

'We thought about several British directors, and possibly American, but we always erred on the side of bringing someone else in, in the way Dan Ackroyd's eye was very different, we wanted someone outside of the net, an outsider's view that would not be encumbered by the idea of being historically accurate, and thematically we wanted it to not have the confines of a genre that you understand or recognise, so the mix between fantasy and realism was very important."

'Juan Carlos Medina ' first film Painless successfully mixes realism and fantasy incredibly well and I love that element to his work. We've tried to build a team around him, but this is a big stepup for him. We've thrown him into the deep end, but that's exciting."

Juan Carlos Medina was on hand to return the compliments, praising the work of Goldman and Woolley, as two powerhouses in the British film industry he so fervently admires.

'The first time I read the script I thought, wow. It was a fascinating way to make an original, compelling and challenging movie from the texture of this novel, which had touched upon so many things," he continued. 'The genius of Goldman was to structure a police investigation in the form of a unique whodunnit, and when I read the script she had written I was totally blown away because I felt she had found the most powerful way to bring the world of this book to life."

'I'm fascinated by questions of perspective and subjectivity and the script is like an orchestra playing many different instruments at the same time; suspense, drama, love, it's all played at the same time, so it was about finding that harmony and make it sound like beautiful music."

'As for Stephen, I was a huge fan of the films he had produced. He is a legend of British cinema, so when I started to talk to him about the ambitions I had for this film, the vision I had for it, and I realised Stephen and I were connecting, sharing the same dream for this film, I truly felt blessed, I felt like together we could build this, we could bring this vision to life."

The Characters
Though something of an ensemble feature, at the core of The Limehouse Golem lies a story of a troubled young girl, Elizabeth Cree. Accused of murdering her husband John she's all but set for the death penalty, with Kildare's investigation her only potential saving grace, for her deceased other half is suspected to be the Golem.

Olivia Cooke, one of the rising stars of British cinema, proving her worth as the lead in Steven Spielberg's upcoming Ready Player One, impressing in Hollywood tear-jerker Me And Earl And The Dying Girl as well as Katie Says Goodbye and the hit TV show Bates Motel – has been entrusted with this nuanced role, and it's one she felt a certain affinity to from the moment she read the screenplay.

'The story is so grand and dramatic and has so many colours and layers and it's gritty. My character is all that and more – it's like a million characters in one, and selfishly as an actress, to be able to play that was the appeal. She's written so well, she's powerful. It's just nice to be able to play a role like that, to hold this power and to be fearsome."

Lizzie shares a close, platonic bond with her music hall confidant Dan Leno, played by Douglas Booth, and it's a role that signals something of a departure for the talented young actor.

'Dan Leno was one of the most famous Victorian music hall performers. He was for years billed as the funniest man alive, also known as the 'King's Jester' at one point because he was invited to court to perform, which was rare. But despite that he could never quite graduate to becoming a serious actor, or be taken seriously because he was renowned for his 'Dame' roles, for being a clown. He was a troubled soul, but he was fantastic, and influenced a lot of people like Chaplin."

'It's a massive departure for me and so much fun. I've always tried to do very different things in my career - but Dan is completely different and it's exciting for me to play a role like this, and to get into a real character with depth, which comes from Jane's great script."

And then comes Kildare – a character made far more prominent for the big screen, as one that is far less crucial in Ackroyd's original text. Bill Nighy was also tempted by the allure of playing a different sort of role than we're used to seeing him undertake.

'Detective Inspector John Kildare is probably, an unlikely thing in this period, an honest copper. As a result of not being malleable from the moral point of view, he has been sidelined, brought in to investigate this case simply as a scapegoat because there is such a public outcry they figure it is unsolvable and therefore they need someone to take the flack – and he is that flack-catcher."

'I've been very fortunate that I'm not generally confined to one kind of part, I've played zombies and vampires and squids, as well as regular human beings, and I don't mind what genre it is as long as it's of a certain quality. But it is nice to do something different." Perhaps it's indicative of a screenplay that has such a myriad of unique characters, for Maria Valverde – playing Aveline Ortega – also felt this was a part unlike anything else she had portrayed on screen.

'For me this character is challenging because I've never played somebody like this before. I'm always the nice girl, the character who falls in love, and this is the opposite, the character you hate the most. I don't have anything in common with her, which makes it more fun to play her. Sometimes it's easier to play a role you're used to playing, but as soon as you get outside of your comfort area, you realise you have more freedom, so it's interesting to use that. I prefer to be in this position."

Finally there is John Cree, played by Australian actor Sam Reid – and while, similarly to Aveline, he represents one of the less endearing creations within this murky world, he explains that he isn't particularly fond of the character either.

'He's not a very nice guy, he's very vain and he has an innate fear of failure, and because of that he can be pretty pompous; he has a mean streak to him. People say you have to like your character to play them, but I don't think that's necessarily true. I don't know if you always like yourself. I think you just have to believe the circumstances they're in. I don't know if I like John, but I definitely enjoy playing him."

The Cast

Now the actors have had their say on the filmmakers, accrediting Goldman and Medina for getting involved in this indelible project, the filmmakers felt equally as privileged with the cast assembled, believing they had found the perfect collective of performers to bring this surrealistic world to life – perfectly blending the effervescence of youth, with the dependability of experience.

Booth's casting has been a major talking point, given the challenges in portraying a role like Dan Leno, whereby there's an expectation to blend sorrow and melancholy with eccentricity and flamboyance – but for Jane Goldman, it has most certainly been accomplished.

'Douglas has real star quality and screen presence and Dan Leno was, at the time, one of the biggest celebrities in the country so to portray that you need somebody with that aura about them. This isn't the case with all actors and performers, but there are some who can walk into a room and you're absorbed, and he brings that. This isn't the Douglas Booth we've seen before. It's an interesting departure and a wonderful performance."

Medina then offered his own thoughts on this vital piece of casting. 'Douglas really convinced me he was great for the part in a brilliant audition. He is an extremely gifted and profound actor. He brings an over the top theatricality to the role, in the same way an actor like Al Pacino would."

Stephen Woolley did admit, however, there had been initial apprehensions, but was left confident and assured once the decision to bring Booth in was settled.

'We toyed with the idea of Douglas, and while the real Dan Leno didn't have any female features, we felt that we needed a character who had a contemporary feel, and Douglas has an androgynous look, like a young Johnny Depp where he's almost too good looking for words and quite effeminate. It was braver than to go with someone who is more of a character actor. We wanted someone who could play him as a star. Leno was, at one point, the highest paid comedian in the world. He was like the Elvis, or Michael Jackson of his time. We needed someone with that charisma, and Douglas has that in spades."

Bill Nighy's involvement also brought much gratification to the powers that be, with Medina claiming his experience proved dividends on set.

'Bill Nighy is such a gentleman and an example for everyone, people want to be around him – he's one of the nicest people I've met in my whole life. He made all the other actors confident and that helped a lot. Actors are like mirrors, they need a great actor in front of them to also be good, and the better the actor in front of them is, the better they are. They're emotional sponges. So when you have someone like Bill Nighy, who is so powerfully intense, you're sure you will get great performances from the rest of the actors. I have a dream cast, I couldn't have dreamt of a better one. I'm so proud and so happy with them."

Bringing Peter Ackroyd's Novel to Life Peter Ackroyd is a distinctively visual author, who isn't just adept at creating multi-layered characters, but an entire world for them to inhabit, blending surrealism with reality in a stark manner. The original novel features fictional creations such as Lizzie Cree, but peppers the narrative with real life people, such as Karl Marx, Dan Leno and George Gissing, all three of whom are considered suspects in the Golem investigation.

Juan Carlos Medina explains that he has always been a fan of Peter Ackroyd and hoped to do the English author justice with this endeavour.

'The book was a fascinating trip and one of the most visionary and powerful by Pter Ackroyd. What I found in the book was a profound meditation about identity, about the existence of self in society, about the rebellion against order through the transgression of self, of genre, of morality."

Doing Oter Ackroyd justice is primarily a pressure encompassed by Goldman, tasked with adapting his words into a linear, coherent screenplay which remained faithful to the original tone, and yet was unique and innovative in its own right.

'I wanted to try and replicate the tone of the book in the language of a film, which is tough. It was an exciting challenge though, especially as this is so many different things. It's a whodunnit, it's a riveting and disturbing story of a woman's life and it's also a sort of horror. I felt the book had all three elements, which was a lot of the appeal to me, and I wanted so much to replicate that," she said.

'It was difficult to balance the fiction with reality, and I just had to make a personal policy when I started to just make peace with it. I felt that my first allegiance always had to be the book and staying true to the source material, but it was difficult and uncomfortable at times because these were real people. But there's a surreal edge to it that I hope the descendants of the real people, of which there are three, take it for what it is, which is a strange, wonderful surrealistic tale which combines fiction with elements of truth."

Woolley was also careful and considerate in balancing these themes, but again wanted to simply do right by the book – feeling that if he could achieve that, everything else would eventually fall into place. Most importantly, he wanted to ensure the secret of who the Golem is, remains as just that.

'It's an incredible script and Jane has managed to keep the flavour of Peter Ackroyd and his mad view of the music halls and world of Limehouse, and at the same time bring a great story into focus. Now it's important for us to do in the film what the book manages – to mask the revelation as much as we can, but that's going to be incredibly difficult when we release the film, but incredibly important for us. It's going to be one of the biggest spoilers in the history of cinema that you can't give away and it's going to be hard to keep it, because it really would spoil the film if you knew straight off who the Limehouse Golem was."

Inhabiting Victorian London Though the narrative may be a dark, disturbing one, there's a certain grandeur to the music hall setting which works as a contrast to the horrors within, and Juan Carlos Medina wanted desperately to get the aesthetic right and ensure there's a visual and visceral experience for the viewer that will be unlike anything else they've experienced before.

'There were many aesthetic references that we brought to the movie that for me were very important. We wanted to capture the world of the time, to recreate this very gritty, shocking, dirty, industrial dark vision of London, something that will punch you in the face, you can feel the rain and the smoke coming from the factories and the burning coal, and the hardship – I wanted that to be very strong, to be aggressive to the audience."

'London is a Babylon of the 19th century, as a city where all the possibilities of humankind are encompassed, all the beauty, all the horror, all the good and all the evil. I want to transport you into this crazy and dark vision of London haunted by William Blake, Gustave Doré, the Pre-Raphaelites, John Martin and John Atkinson Grimshaw."

It's one thing to determine what you want the set to look like, but another to then go and actually build it from scratch - and it was a task one entrusted with production designer Grant Montgomery, renowned primarily for his work on the smaller screen with the likes of Peaky Blinders. Needless to say the move into cinema has been a rather seamless one. 'When I met Grant he was a revelation, a match," said Juan Carlos Medina. 'I'd met a couple others beforehand, but when I met Grant I felt that I had met somebody crazy enough to embark on this adventure with me. We really clicked and we had the vision. There's an element of surrealism and baroqueness that I'm really proud of. We wanted to embrace the beautiful falseness of cinema, to not be afraid of excess."

Montgomery explains his own methods and inspirations – and how he came to create this truly unforgettable landscape and portrait of Victorian London.

'The script made for a very vivid read, Jane's words leap out of the page and I could see the world clearly," he started. 'Juan Carlos Medina and I talked about taking inspiration from Francisco Goya, so it was mainly from painters I went to. William Blake was highly influential with the music hall too. But the one thing I noticed that a lot of London from this period was black and gold, and I thought if you start from that premise, that London was this smog-filled metropolis, you can get that realism in there. You can then use that as a base to go off kilter, because London is an extraordinary city that is a melting pot, even in that period. Once you've done all of that research you can extrapolate from there – but as long as you start from a factual point, you can work off that imaginatively, that was always my approach."

The actors were more than impressed with Montgomery's work too, and believe that when a world has been crafted in such a meticulous fashion such as this one has, it helps them embody the characters, and embrace the narrative at hand.

'The set design is as important as anything, and particularly the costume," said Bill Nighy. 'A lot of actors would tell you that, it makes an enormous difference. If it's specifically designed for a certain character it has that power to influence the way you move and think about yourself. It helps as much as anything else helps."

Olivia Cooke agreed with this notion. 'It's so helpful, because you only have a few films and pictures of that time to go off, so you can imagine all you want how it will be to step into this character and this era, but it only becomes a reality when you step on set – your imagination can only take you so far. It feels so gothic and so luxurious at the same time and seedy and dirty, and it feels like we're embodying the period and characters as best we can."

Meanwhile for Reid, he admitted that this particular setting and overall aesthetic was what drew him into the project, as an era he has a vested interest in.

'I adored blood and gore and Victorian England as a kid, Jack the Ripper stories. London Dungeons was my favourite place to go whenever we came to London. I was completely transported back to that time. I love this period of English history, the birth of the industrial revolution, how filthy everything was. There's a shift of the growing empire, it's such an interesting time, and I totally loved it for that reason."

Producer Joanna Laurie explains 'One of the reasons we chose to shoot around Leeds, particularly in Dalton Mill, was that it offered a fresh angle on a period so often depicted on screen. London has modernised whereas we found many more pristine locations in the north. So Juan Carlos and our designer Grant Montgomery have given the film an edge, as well as providing the audience an opportunity to discover a new 'old" world. We built sets to rival any big Hollywood production in their scale and detail: Grant's knowledge of the area and passion for the period enabled us to realise our ambition to make a spectacular looking film. Walking on set was like walking into Pabst's Threepenny Opera!."

Another key factor in bringing this world to life was prosthetics designer Davey Jones, who was left to create the more subtle elements, and also, the more gory – such as the severed genitals he carefully constructed.

'We had this clay which is like plasticine, and it melts in the oven so turns to a liquid, so we used that. There were so many knocking around at the workshop I was glad there were no mums or students coming in for a visit," he laughed. 'It's nice when the crew say 'that's disgusting' because you know you've done a good job, that's a compliment."

Woolley was thrilled with the diligence and creativity of those working tirelessly behind the scenes, particularly given Limehouse is a setting he is so fond of, which he believes to carry so many contrasting elements.

'Limehouse was like a little bubble, a weird microcosm of a weird universe that existed in London that was crammed into one area. Chaplin and Hitchcock both grew up in the Limehouse area, it's a notorious area in London in terms of criminality and childbirth, child deaths – it's a place the police would dread going to. But at the same time it was also very free in that things happened in Limehouse that were outside the rules of society, and particularly in the music halls," he continued.

'As a result this won't play to a family audience in the way The Woman in Black did – this will have a more grown up audience, in the way Silence of the Lambs and Se7en and The Exorcist did. It's not London Dungeons, it's a movie for adults."

The Limehouse Golem is a film that has undoubtedly tapped into the imaginations of all of those involved. Bill Nighy, the most experienced of all leading cast members, is more than confident it will have equally as profound an effect of the audience.

'You can tell on most films how it will turn out, and whether it is proceeding in a way that will result in a good film. You can't know for sure – but in this case, I have a pretty good feeling."

As Lizzie Cree pensively comments when leaning over to Dan Leno, 'We're Clowns, Dan, we'll be forgotten." Well, thankfully – here lies a project that will almost guarantee that to not be the case, as through the medium of cinema, the Golem lives on.

The Limehouse Golem
Release Date: November, 2017