Original-Cin Q&A: Freud’s Last Session Star and Director Discuss Fab Fictional Gabfest

By Bonnie Laufer

Based on a stage play, Freud’s Last Session — starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and Matthew Goode as Chronicles of Narnia novelist C.S. Lewis — features two of the brightest minds engaging one another in a philosophical battle of wills. Talk about a fascinating heavyweight mash up… even if the meeting between these two minds is fictional.

Written and directed by Matthew Brown, the film follows the two men as they cover several topics, focusing mainly on the existence of God. Bonnie Laufer spoke with Brown and Goode ahead of the film’s release January 12 in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, January 19 in Ottawa and throughout the winter in other cities. (Read our review of the film here).

ORIGINAL-CIN: The film is based on the popular stage play of the same name. What prompted you to bring it to the screen and when you wrote the screenplay, did you always have Matthew Goode and Anthony Hopkins in mind for the roles?

MATTHEW BROWN: You only hope you're going to get actors like Matthew Goode and Anthony Hopkins! It was about a six-year development from the time I got an early draft of the screenplay to when we shot or were casting. We were very fortunate. When I first came across the project, I felt like society had become a very polarized place. And now I think it's much worse. This couldn't be timelier. I think that's good for the film and bad for all of us.

O-C: Matthew, what a thrill it must have been for you to play C.S. Lewis opposite Hopkins’ Freud. I loved watching these two genius minds go at it. The irony is that Hopkins played Lewis in Shadowlands…

MATTHEW GOODE: That was the elephant in the room for sure.

O-C: Tell me what it was like not only to take on the character but to act opposite one of your childhood idols.

MG: I've been a huge fan of both Anthony Hopkins and C.S. Lewis. For Lewis, I always loved his books so when I got the role I was immediately intimidated by the material. He's a fascinating guy and I loved doing all that research and finding out stuff I never knew. Plus, Matthew’s script filled in some blanks as well. Then, I met Tony, which was totally bizarre because I had seen almost every film he’d been in. But as soon as we met, a lot of the fear went away. He was so generous, brilliant, and engaging. He has so much energy and we were shooting seven pages of dialogue a day, which is not easy for anybody, let alone somebody in their 80s.

MB: It was astounding to watch Tony work. They say never meet your heroes, but actually getting to work with the man was life changing.

O-C: Was there anything else that really surprised you about him?

MG: I was sitting in the green room. After we left the studio, we had a few scenes to shoot in the house. As I was waiting to shoot my scene with Tony, I heard the loveliest piano music coming from another room. I walked in, looked over and saw Tony playing and all I could think was, ‘That’s depressing (laughs). What can’t this man do?’ He actually composed some of the music for the film. It’s amazing.

MB: He’s so creatively generous, it’s shocking. When Matthew says it's sometimes good to meet your heroes, this was one of those cases. He never ceases to amaze you. Those pages were completely filled with non-stop dialogue. He never complained, he was excited and wanted the opportunity to try to do it. And you know, Matthew (Goode) helped create a safe space for us to do that and he went for it and just nailed so much of it.

As for the music, I never expected a contribution on that end. We were shooting a scene with Anna Freud (Liv Lisa Fries) and Dorothy (Jodi Balfour) on a couch, and I was holding the take for a really long time. Jodi asked if they could have some playback in the background. Tony immediately jumps in with, ‘I've got some music for you’ and he opens YouTube and it's the Vienna Orchestra performing. So, I go with it and then it dawned on me. I was watching the video and saw Tony in the audience, and I said, ‘You wrote that?’ It was his music and lo and behold, it wound up being the music for the whole end of the film. So that's him being incredibly generous and donating the music for us.

O-C: The conversation in the film between Freud and C.S. Lewis about God is absolutely riveting. Did it make you think about your own beliefs?

MG: Yeah, completely. I think I've been thinking about this ever since I turned up at home one day, my father was dying, and he had the Vicar there. We’d never been a religious family. You might not think about death through your life, but as you're coming up towards the end of it, maybe it is a good idea to have a chat with the Vicar. I don't know. I haven't squared it away in my mind yet because I like to think I've got a few years left to think about it, but I don't know. Working on this film did make me think about it a lot more.

MB: I didn't want my beliefs to come through as a writer and filmmaker on this. I thought it was important to stay out of the conversation. I wanted to present a conversation. But I think about it a lot. I've had a tremendous amount of tragedy growing up and I've thought long and hard about whether there is a God. I’ve been going back and forth. One of the things that I took away from it was that faith and science don't necessarily need to be enemies. There are interesting things about both that we can draw on.

O-C: Watching this film, I couldn’t help but wonder: which of these two men would you want at your dinner party?

MG: Hmmm… you’ve stumped me! I’m taking Anthony Hopkins, I mean why not? I still have loads to ask him! And my wife. She’s a class act.

MB: I would take Tony, Matthew, C.S. Lewis and Freud. Now that would be one heck of a dinner party!