Since first collaborating on 2021’s Spencer, Steven Knight and Pablo Larraín have developed what the former calls “a very Elton John/Bernie Taupin sort of relationship.” Knight, who wrote Spencer and scripted this year’s Larraín-directed Maria, recently spoke with Deadline about his approach to the story thatt reimagines American-Greek soprano Maria Callas in her final days as she reckons with her identity and life.
The movie — Knight eschews the term “biopic” — world premiered to great acclaim at the Venice Film Festival in September, led by a committed performance from Angelina Jolie as the titular opera star.
An Oscar nominee for 2004’s Dirty Pretty Things and creator of global phenomenon Peaky Blinders, Knight, as he explains in the Q&A below, relied on firsthand accounts of people who knew Callas, as well as her performances and interviews with the formidable woman who often was treated harshly during her lifetime before succumbing to a heart attack at her Paris home in 1977 at age 53.
The interview below has been condensed and edited for clarity.
DEADLINE: You and Pablo worked together on Spencer; how did the idea of collaborating again on Maria come about? Was there something about opera that particularly intrigued you?
STEVEN KNIGHT: It was during Spencer. Pablo is a big opera fan, and said he was thinking about doing something about Maria Callas, would I be interested? My knowledge of opera is very odd in that I first listened to Madame Butterfly when I was about 10, in a house where there was no access to opera by any stretch. But for some reason, one of my brothers had bought back an album and I’d listened to it, so I sort of got to know it there. I knew much more about it probably 15 years ago than I do now. But I just thought this is interesting.
My theory is that the noise that people naturally make is the noise that opera singers make, but they discipline it. In other words, if you scream with anger or scream with joy or yell and shout, that’s opera, but opera turns it into something that’s discipline. So I found it very interesting. And then, obviously, read a bit about Maria and found her life incredible.
DEADLINE: What was the research process?
KNIGHT: I tend not to research in the in the normal way. I mean, I’ve read the basics of her life, I read around the story. It sounds weird, but you can get the facts from books — you know, she did this, she was there, she did that, she triumphed, she failed and all of that. The thing that most influenced me was firsthand accounts from Ferruccio, who was her butler. The thing that I find most useful is firsthand accounts, but also looking at her performances, also interviews with her, so that the way she smokes a cigarette, for me, tells you so much about how she was… and trying not to go down the usual route of accounts of her life, but rather trying to find something that would be a small thing — when she was in Athens during the Second World War, her mother used to make her sing for German soldiers.
It’s trying to find, I would call it, the human version of the facts. In other words, imagine what it’s like actually being in that situation. Why would you be prompted to say those words? Why would you tolerate Aristotle Onassis? Why would you go there? Somebody very bright, intelligent and strong… and try and get into those mindsets. The same as with Diana, to get firsthand accounts of actual behavior, look at some behavior and then take the facts and use them as sort of nails to hanging things on.
DEADLINE: What’s an example of that?
KNIGHT: I think the thing that I’ve found, you just take one line from something that someone says, where (Maria) says, “It didn’t break my heart.” You could say, “Okay, that’s not true,” the fact that she reads in the paper that Onassis has married Jackie “didn’t break my heart.” So you have to go to that and say, “If that’s true, what happened, then? What was that feeling?” Because she was in love with him, and he was in love with her, and yet this thing happens and it doesn’t break your heart? Then you have to get the complicated explanation for that, and it’s always more interesting than, “Oh, my God, she was a victim and she had her heart broken.” I just think human beings are really, really, really elusive.
DEADLINE: Let’s talk a little more about the dynamic of the last days of Callas’ life with her servants around her who have become like family.
KNIGHT: There is the very, I would say, familiar family situation — even though they’re not related — where the mother has become the dependent, right? You know, as a consequence, in this case of taking drugs and not being well, where she was always the boss, she was always in charge, and she was potentially quite autocratic, but suddenly there’s a different dynamic going on, and she’s the one that’s being looked after. And there’s a lot of love between the people involved. So Ferruccio and Bruna obviously loved her. And also it’s them confronting the situation of when she’s not going to be there in the middle, which I think, was a huge thing for them.
DEADLINE: Did you end up speaking to Ferruccio before he passed away?
KNIGHT: No, because he was very fragile, and someone was sent to do the interview with him, and transcripts of the interview were shared with Pablo and myself and others. But what’s great about it is it’s all about the domestic life. And I think within the domestic life is the truth of the character, as well as all the stuff you can read about the opera and the performances and the Diva and all of that is just that other stuff, where, in the end, she’s being cared for by these people.
That’s why I wanted to do the last few days of her life where I think she was someone who was observed and reviewed constantly… observed and reviewed quite brutally often by people who are not well intentioned. In other words, are looking for the worst possible explanation for everything, this sort of gleeful approach that I’m going to find this bad thing. I wanted the film to be her review of herself in her last few days, so that she’s the one that’s — there’s a couple of times we see cassettes being rewound — it’s rewind this. Let’s listen to what happened. Let’s think about what happened. Let’s go back there and be in that ballroom with Onassis and decide what was it? Was I Okay? And she decides she is okay. So for me, I wanted it to be the final review that wasn’t by anyone else.
DEADLINE: You’re not fond of the term biopic…
KNIGHT: Biopic to me sounds like some biological experiment. I don’t think that you’re trying to take the organism and reveal the entire truth about that organism. I think it’s more trying to find who the person is through a sequence that is manageable within the frame of a movie. You know, it’s not eight hours of TV, it’s 90 minutes, two hours, where you’ve got to take a slice, a picture, a snapshot of this person — the same with Spencer — and then look at the picture and say, “Okay, this is who I think this person was.” I think it’s important to do it within your mind the idea that you want the approval, or what would have been the approval, of that person. So don’t go in with bad intention — because so many people went in with bad intention for her — and try to find a happy outcome. There’s nothing wrong with that.
DEADLINE: Spencer feels different because Diana remains one of the most famous people in the world and is still discussed, still investigated, there are still people around who knew her. Whereas, Maria Callas seems more a part of history. Did you come away with a different opinion, or what do you think you learned through the process?
KNIGHT: What I think is, I know who that person was now. I feel as if through the process — short of actually sitting down with someone, being with someone, knowing them — there’s a way of sort of artificially getting to know someone through this, through history, through facts, through observation, through small detail, that you sort of get to know and build a picture of someone. What I try to avoid is to form the opinion of who this person is, and then make the behavior fit… I think human beings are different minute-to-minute, different from one situation to another. So to try and make it as real as possible. I think fiction, when it tries to portray someone who really existed, is desperately looking for the simple portrait, the simple picture that then dominates everything that they do. But I don’t think anybody is one person at all.
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DEADLINE: How did you collaborate with Pablo?
KNIGHT: It’s a really simple, non-verbal, mostly, relationship where, for Spencer, we met for breakfast… and he said, “The reason I wanted to meet is because I think I want to do a film about Diana,” just out of the blue. I thought about it for a bit, “Yeah. Okay.” And then there was virtually nothing beyond that. So I wrote the script and he said “Yeah, that’s okay.” I’m not joking, there’s not, like, intense discussions into the night with notes or anything — which I love, because I think you can have something good and then dismantle it with conversation. And that often happens, and it drives me mad.
With Maria, it’s the same system where he was saying, “Let’s do the last days of her life,” because the last days of her life were very specific. A lot of things in the film actually happened. And so I did the research into that, tried not to do too much research, to kill it, and then use the Ferruccio stuff, and then write it and then deliver it. And the great thing is, he does it. Obviously, he works the magic that he works, and he makes it beautiful, and he does the changes that need to be made. But you know, it’s a very Elton John/Bernie Taupin sort of relationship.
DEADLINE: With the merging past and present and dream and reality in Maria, how did that come to what is and what isn’t real, from her perspective or from the others’ perspectives?
KNIGHT: Everybody knows that in the last years of her life, she was taking a lot of narcotics, which began with issues about weight, but then by the end, it was an addiction. But I didn’t want the idea that this poor woman is now the victim of this addiction. What I wanted to do was turn Mandrax, which was the main drug, into a character who she consults.
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I’ve turned him into a journalist who’s interrogating her about life. So imagine that the drug you’re taking is the thing that’s making you analyze your life honestly and giving yourself a review via that… There’s a line where she says, someone says, the doctor wants to take control of your drug intake. And she says, “No.” The doctor says your drug taking is out of control. And she says, It’s not out of control, it’s in my control. Doctors hate that, and the point being that in that she’s sort of aware that these are the last days of her life, and consciously decides that she’s going to use these narcotic experiences to analyze her life…And so those things give her the ability to walk into a hotel and Aristotle Onassis is there, and she can analyze what happened and how she was and her feelings. So it’s almost like giving the drug she was taking their respectability. It’s trying to see things from her perspective at every point, which is, you know, as far as she’s concerned, she’s in control. She’s taking these drugs. They’re giving her access to mystical, she would say, experiences. And this is great, because she’s going through her life herself.
DEADLINE: Did you write knowing Angelina Jolie was going to be in the movie?
KNIGHT: I was halfway through the first draft when her name was mentioned. And then I thought, “Well, that’s obvious, perfect.” That helped me to then shape the script, knowing that you’ve got someone like her who is going to just fit into the shape. Not the physical shape, but the mental, spiritual shape of someone like Maria, someone who’s been judged and battered, in her life. And so there’s a shorthand.
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DEADLINE: Did you go to the set? Do you like to be around during filming?
KNIGHT: No, I wasn’t around with Pablo. You don’t need to be around. I think it’s one of those things where I know I can trust that what he’s going to do is not start ad libbing on the day or going in different directions. It’s going to be pretty much what you’ve written. And I don’t think there’s any point the writer being around all the time, or rather, the writer should be around all the time, or not all. There’s no point turning up like, you know, on a royal visit now and again. I think it’s better to to make that choice. It’s just an amazing process with Pablo, but I don’t think there’s any benefit to being there. With Stephen Frears, he wanted you there all the time, at the monitor. But with Pablo, there’s no need for that.
Every director is different and they want different things. I feel that it’s two distinct disciplines. You know, you write it and you’ve got it in your head, but then it’s not going to be the way looks in your head, because somebody else is going to take it on and shoot it. So you can only break your heart if you turn up on the set and see that it’s not how you imagined it in your head. What are you going to do, start moving the chairs or change the clock? You can’t do it. It’s insane. So you have to just say, Okay, I’ve handed this over now.
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DEADLINE: Will you guys work together again?
KNIGHT: I hope so. I think there’s more stories to tell. We’ve got a couple of specific things that we might want to explore.
DEADLINE: Do you think you’d go back to directing?
KNIGHT: If it was something like Locke that was completely, one can control it, and you’re not having to do all the stuff that directors have to do, which is quite brutal. But it’s just, I’m a writer, not a director, and sometimes, if no one else will direct it, then I will direct it.
