Tony McNamara On The Challenge Of Adapting ‘Poor Things’ & His “Low Stress” Relationship With Director Yorgos Lanthimos: “We Just Understand Each Other In A Very Easy Way” — Storyhouse
deadline.comTony McNamara likes a challenge but when Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos first presented him with Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel by Poor Things to adapt into a script, even the seasoned Australian writer admits he found the material daunting. “When Yorgos first gave me the book, I read it and thought, ‘Oh, this is great – I’ve never adapted a book before’ and then I read it and thought, ‘Well, this should not be the book,” McNamara told an audience at Dublin’s Storyhouse festival. “I mean, it’s a book about a baby’s brain in a woman’s head – let’s not do this.
But Yorgos and I had a great time working together on The Favourite and The Great and we clearly get along so eventually I said, ‘Alright, I’ll do it’ and I was up for the challenge. “But after writing seventy pages of the first draft, I wrote to Yorgos and said, ‘I can’t do it, it doesn’t work, I can’t make it work and I don’t know what to do.
And he wrote back and, being the kind of person he is anyway, he said, ‘We knew it would be hard and it will be worth it – keep going.’” Poor Things, which is the third collaboration between Lanthimos and McNamara, went on to score 11 Oscar nominations, including a Best Adapted Screenplay for McNamara and Best Director nod for Lanthimos, and solidified a solid shorthand between the writer and director.
McNamara recalled how he and Lanthimos hit it off almost instantly when the pair met years ago. “My agent called me and said there’s a great director who wants to talk to you and there’s no money, but you should see his film.
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