Anthony Hopkins on “The Father,” and Patricia Lockwood’s First Novel

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2021

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At an age when many actors are slowing down or long retired, Anthony Hopkins has kept up a feverish pace, with recent roles including Pope Benedict XVI in “The Two Popes” and Odin in Marvel’s “Thor” movies. In his new film, “The Father,” Hopkins’s character, Antony, is beginning to suffer from dementia, but he doesn’t want to accept a caregiver when his daughter, played by Olivia Colman, can no longer live with him. The film brings the viewer into Antony’s experience, particularly his confusion about what’s happening around him. Hopkins tells Michael Schulman that he hasn’t dealt with dementia in his own family, thankfully, but that he wasn’t daunted by the role. “When you’re working with a superb script, it’s a road map, and you follow it,” he says. He advises younger actors, “Don’t act too much. Keep it simple.” Plus, the writer Patricia Lockwood, who’s just published her first novel, on how she created literature out of the fractured consciousness of an obsessive Twitter user.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.7	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. At an age when a lot of people are
0:14.7	slowing down or are of long since retired, Anthony Hopkins has started taking on some of the
0:20.4	most ambitious projects of his career,
0:23.1	and he is 83. In the last decade, Hopkins played King Lear for the second time. He's on HBO's
0:30.4	Westworld. He played Pope Benedict in the two popes. He even played God, the Norse God, Odin, in Marvel's Thor movies.
0:39.8	You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy. You are an old man and a fool.
0:47.0	Anthony Hopkins' new film, The Father, is ambitious, but it's still much more down to earth.
0:52.9	He plays a man whose dementia is starting to make itself known, and it's still much more down to earth. He plays a man whose dementia is starting to make
0:56.5	itself known, and it's getting the better of him. He's struggling to make sense of his shifting
1:00.9	realities, and he's fighting with his daughter all the time, and she's played by Olivia Coleman.
1:07.0	Hopkins talked about the film with New Yorker staff writer Michael Shulman. If you think Zoom greetings are usually awkward, you have never tried introducing yourself to a literal night.
1:16.6	Hi, Sir Anthony, I'm Michael. Shulman, nice to meet you.
1:18.6	Tony, Tony, okay. Tony Hopkins gives one of my favorite performances of the year in The Father. The film is directed by Florian Zeller, who also wrote the 2012 French play that it's based on.
1:33.3	Much of the action concerned Hopkins character, who's also named Anthony, resisting his daughter's efforts to hire someone to help take care of him.
1:41.3	So if I understand correctly, you're leaving me.
1:47.0	Is that it?
1:49.0	You're abandoning me.
1:51.0	Dad.
1:53.0	What's going to become of me?
1:56.0	Obviously, this is very important to me, otherwise I wouldn't be going.
2:03.6	I really love him.
	...

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