“Last Christmas” director Emma Thompson recently opened up to Entertainment Weekly about her new film and how she came up with the ideas behind the script.
What’s going on: The new romantic dramedy film stars Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”) as a young woman who meets a stranger (Henry Golding) who changes her life forever.
- The trailers for the film include the song “Last Christmas,” a holiday classic originally performed by Wham! and later covered by Jimmy Eat World, Taylor Swift and Savage Garden, among several others.
Inspiration: Thompson told Entertainment Weekly the original song didn’t necessarily inspire the film. But George Michael, the leader singer of Wham! did.
- “(But) George Michael himself (was) a complex and brilliant artist. His poetry, his lyrics are incredibly meaningful. I just thought of an idea to do with the lyric of ‘Last Christmas’ that inspired me, and then I thought, ‘Oh, actually, so much of George’s other music really works with this idea.’ ‘Heal the Pain’ is central to the ethos of the movie. Because ‘Heal the Pain’ is about the fact that if you can’t love yourself, you can’t love anyone. Creative things happen so weirdly and unexpectedly, so you can be led toward something by a piece of music you actually aren’t that fond of.”
- Thompson told Entertainment Weekly she also drew inspiration from “A Christmas Carol,” one of the staple holiday stories of our world.
Family illnesses: She also said she drew inspiration from the idea of family illness. Clarke’s character Kate suffers from an illness in the film, which is something that hits close to home for many.
- “We don’t examine these things because we have been brought up to ignore everything and carry on in the face of whatever it is, but because human beings are so infinitely subtle and complicated, it is worth telling stories about what happens to a family when one member of that family is mortally ill,” she said. “It often really unbalances families. Children become resentful of one another or they feel responsible or there’s survivor’s guilt.”
Personal history: Clarke told NPR that her character Kate’s medical issues connect with her own. Clarke suffered from two aneurysms, as she wrote for The New Yorker. She said struggling with medical issues in your 20s is a daunting task.
- “I wouldn’t say it was the defining thing that brought me to (the movie). Dame Emma Thompson probably was that. But it definitely allowed me to bring quite a lot of truth to what Kate’s struggles were, because for Kate she had her health crisis in her early 20s, and that’s when I had mine too. And that time for any young person is incredibly intimidating.”
Date: “Last Christmas” hits theaters on Nov. 8.