“I think it was important to have so many different female perspectives around this character from writing through to delivery,” she told Variety.
“That’s a very long list! That’s like, ‘Pick your favorite album.’ There are so many incredible women where I think we need to know their stories - the good, the bad, the flaws - that’s when you really feel what makes a person tick.”Īs for how the team achieved that for Israel, producer Amy Nauiokas has some theories. “She barely took any pictures, there’s absolutely no video of her, and at first I thought, ‘Am I just doing it wrong?’ But luckily, we had two producers who knew her quite well, so I just heard story after story after story, read her books, read her writing - her wit always comes through.”Īsked whether there’s another woman from history whose story she’d like to take on after “Can You Ever Forgive Me? ,” she laughed. “The research process was tricky because, true to Lee’s personality, she did not want people in her business!” she said, laughing. To answer that question, McCarthy had to dig deep. Lee’s was to be as prickly, as difficult as possible, but I always thought, ‘What is she hiding?’” We all play with different defense mechanisms. A very challenging character that you still feel so much for and root for is always what I love - because whatever they’re doing on the surface is not really what’s happening on the inside. “I fell in love with Lee so quickly within the script, and it made me stop and realize, ‘I’m not sure why I love her.’ And that’s a very interesting thing. “I just read the script and thought, ‘This comes along almost never,’” she told Variety. Lee’s biggest fan might be McCarthy herself. It was such an act of literary ventriloquism to have imitated all of these writers so convincingly - if only it hadn’t been criminal!” “Some booksellers and autograph hunters got duped, but I think there’s a sort of thieves’ pride in what she’s done. So, does he admire her in spite of everything? “Yeah, because nobody died,” he quipped. Grant, who co-stars in the Marielle Heller-directed drama as Lee’s unlikely companion (and partner in crime) Jack Hock, told Variety that he hopes audiences come away with an “appreciation for Lee Israel as an under-appreciated and great, witty writer.” I was in a downtown, gay activist world - I was in ACT UP - and this is sort of an uptown, literary archivist world.” But he was struck by the way it was constructed in the film: “That moment where she’s going all-in on a life of crime, and they film it going into Argosy Books - it’s so beautiful.” Though Stephen Spinella also lived in New York at the time of the Israel forgeries in the early ‘90s, as he told Variety, “I didn’t know this world at all.
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