Photos courtesy of Stage 6 Films
In the midst of our current Agatha Christie renaissance (following Kenneth Branagh’s grandiose Murder on the Orient Express and preceding several upcoming television adaptations) a new murder mystery arrived last Friday with Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s Crooked House. Originally published in 1949, the story was so shocking at the time that editors told Christie to change the ending. She refused, and what resulted was not only her most scandalous novel but also her personal favorite. Unlike Orient Express, not many people know the big reveal at the end of Crooked House, and it would prove to be pretty shocking even for 2017 standards (a woman sitting behind me at the premiere audibly gasped).Crooked House takes on a typical Agatha Christie set-up: A murder has taken place (this time, of the controlling patriarch of the Leonides family, Aristide) and family members suspect it was one of their own who poisoned him. French director Gilles Paquet-Brenner has adapted the '40s-set story to take place in late '50s England, and is supported by an incredible cast including Glenn Close, who plays the sharp, observant head of the family, Lady Edith; Gillian Anderson, the eccentric actress and mother of two daughters—one of whom is Sophia (Stephanie Martini), who employs the young detective Charles Hayward (Max Irons) to investigate the case; and Christina Hendricks, who plays Brenda, an ex-Vegas showgirl and the late Aristide’s wife many decades his junior. The crooked house is a big one, and any one of its many family members could be the murderer.
GLENN CLOSE: I love the genre. I’d never been in a murder mystery. So I had great fun, especially in the English upper-class dysfunction. I think anything about families is relevant, because frankly, all great dramas are about family. So anything that delves into a family, even if it’s a setup for a murder mystery, I find intriguing. Also, from that whole family, Sophia was considered the smartest and the most able, and I guess at the time that was written, the fact it was a girl rather than a guy was significant.GILLES PAQUET-BRENNER: Everyone in the audience come[s] with certain expectations. You have to give that, but then you also have your freedom as an artist, to bring something different. In that case, I was intrigued by doing an actual film noir, a real one, in the ’50s. I was excited to use that setup of the Crooked House as a symbolic way of envisioning the world basically. That house is the world for me, and those generations are different generations in the world right now. That’s really how I see it. Not to spoil the story, but the clash between these generations, and how they are just at each other’s throats and hating each other, feels very much like today.Definitely. Glenn, how did you approach your character Lady Edith, the matriarch of this crooked family?
CLOSE: I loved the script when it was presented to me, and I just tried to make her as real and truthful as possible given the situation that she was in, being the aunt and choosing to stay in that house with what you have to conclude was a very narcissistic, selfish man who kind of destroyed his children. I guess Edith tried to make it better, and I do think early on she … I can’t say, because I don’t want to give anything away, but she’s very observant, I think, and she holds a lot of secrets in.
CLOSE: It’s lovely to watch, but to be in one was really, really fun, being part of that whole tradition. I mean, I really wanted to be sitting in the room when the will was read and sitting around the table of everybody eyeing each other. It’s a genre that is enduring, and Agatha Christie has endured because she just knew how to spin a great tale and make interesting characters. It’s fascinating, because even though she doesn’t go into deep detail about the characters, it’s all there for you to explore and for you to use your imagination. I think it’s great fun for an actor, because there’s a lot to fill in.PAQUET-BRENNER: I mean, did it ever stop? Agatha Christie is one of the biggest brands in the world. It makes total sense for me that Fox is using Hercules Poirot, and they want to build a franchise around him. This one, it’s a bit different because of course we have a very strong brand, and you know that so many people in the world are going to want to watch it because of that brand. This particular one was never shot before, so it makes it a bit different from the rest of the pack for me.Glenn, what was it like to shoot this with a cast of such incredible women?
CLOSE: It was so much fun as we all gathered in the hair and makeup trailer every morning, everybody putting on their various wigs. It’s just like girls, you know? It was really fun, and I had always admired Gillian Anderson. I think it was just a matter of a good story and good casting.I know it’s a really exhausting environment for women to be working in film right now.
CLOSE: Exhausting or… exhilarating.
CLOSE: Yeah. I was just out in Hollywood, for Hollywood Reporter’s Powerful Women Breakfast or something, and I didn’t know a lot of women in the room, but I knew that all of them were incredibly accomplished. It opened up with Sarah Silverman being so articulate about the issue, and then Angelina Jolie spoke really well and very movingly, putting it in a world context. And you knew that it was something that she’d actually seen out there.So the way I look at it, and the feeling in that room is, hopefully this is a tipping point. Hopefully we will never go back to what it was like before. It’s important to have abuse exposed, but we have to think of it as a possible evolution, because that’s the only way it will become permanent in our culture, and that means both men and women. You take our human nature, which is in our DNA, and then you hope that it will evolve to a place unlike it was before, where the men had most of the power, and there were women who were powerless and preyed on. That will mean that all of us have to be vigilant and articulate and not be afraid to talk about it if we think something’s wrong.But really, I think things get so swept up in social media, and I get skeptical about that, because there’ll be a backlash. It makes it seem so sudden, even though it’s been going on for centuries, so I think it’s very important that we take enough time to think about it to be able to relate personally to it and know what we feel about it and be able to articulate it. Then it will stick, and women need to give each other the permission and the support to be able to say this happened to me.
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Broadly sat down with actress Glenn Close and director Gilles Paquet-Brenner to discuss the enduring quality of Agatha Christie and the current climate of women on film sets.I can imagine Agatha Christie is difficult to adapt. But we’re constantly drawn to her stories because they resonate even in present day.
GLENN CLOSE: I love the genre. I’d never been in a murder mystery. So I had great fun, especially in the English upper-class dysfunction. I think anything about families is relevant, because frankly, all great dramas are about family. So anything that delves into a family, even if it’s a setup for a murder mystery, I find intriguing. Also, from that whole family, Sophia was considered the smartest and the most able, and I guess at the time that was written, the fact it was a girl rather than a guy was significant.
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CLOSE: I loved the script when it was presented to me, and I just tried to make her as real and truthful as possible given the situation that she was in, being the aunt and choosing to stay in that house with what you have to conclude was a very narcissistic, selfish man who kind of destroyed his children. I guess Edith tried to make it better, and I do think early on she … I can’t say, because I don’t want to give anything away, but she’s very observant, I think, and she holds a lot of secrets in.
PAQUET-BRENNER: This particular story was [Christie's] favorite one.How does it feel to have Crooked House come out during the Agatha Christie renaissance?
CLOSE: It’s lovely to watch, but to be in one was really, really fun, being part of that whole tradition. I mean, I really wanted to be sitting in the room when the will was read and sitting around the table of everybody eyeing each other. It’s a genre that is enduring, and Agatha Christie has endured because she just knew how to spin a great tale and make interesting characters. It’s fascinating, because even though she doesn’t go into deep detail about the characters, it’s all there for you to explore and for you to use your imagination. I think it’s great fun for an actor, because there’s a lot to fill in.
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CLOSE: It was so much fun as we all gathered in the hair and makeup trailer every morning, everybody putting on their various wigs. It’s just like girls, you know? It was really fun, and I had always admired Gillian Anderson. I think it was just a matter of a good story and good casting.I know it’s a really exhausting environment for women to be working in film right now.
CLOSE: Exhausting or… exhilarating.
You think so?
CLOSE: Yeah. I was just out in Hollywood, for Hollywood Reporter’s Powerful Women Breakfast or something, and I didn’t know a lot of women in the room, but I knew that all of them were incredibly accomplished. It opened up with Sarah Silverman being so articulate about the issue, and then Angelina Jolie spoke really well and very movingly, putting it in a world context. And you knew that it was something that she’d actually seen out there.So the way I look at it, and the feeling in that room is, hopefully this is a tipping point. Hopefully we will never go back to what it was like before. It’s important to have abuse exposed, but we have to think of it as a possible evolution, because that’s the only way it will become permanent in our culture, and that means both men and women. You take our human nature, which is in our DNA, and then you hope that it will evolve to a place unlike it was before, where the men had most of the power, and there were women who were powerless and preyed on. That will mean that all of us have to be vigilant and articulate and not be afraid to talk about it if we think something’s wrong.But really, I think things get so swept up in social media, and I get skeptical about that, because there’ll be a backlash. It makes it seem so sudden, even though it’s been going on for centuries, so I think it’s very important that we take enough time to think about it to be able to relate personally to it and know what we feel about it and be able to articulate it. Then it will stick, and women need to give each other the permission and the support to be able to say this happened to me.