As The Limehouse Golem brings the gothic Victorian chills to summer’s end, we spoke to screenwriter Jane Goldman on adapting the book for the screen and what to expect from Kingsman 2.
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Jane Goldman, 47, has become one of the reoccurring names behind some of the best blockbusters over the past decade, including Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service.
With sequels and exciting spin-off projects looming, we spoke to the writer about winning partnership with Matthew Vaughn and why Tim Burton’s directing style is so unique.
So The Limehouse Golem was adapted from Peter Ackroyd’s 1994 novel, what were the challenges of bringing that to a 2017 audience?
Jane: I don’t know if it was so much about a contemporary audience. I think contemporary audiences enjoy period-set things and especially if they’re genre period-set – I always enjoy that.
I think the challenges of adapting it were actually, for anyone who has read it, there’s this literary trick the book pulls off that would be almost impossible to do in cinema without basically lying to the audience – which I’m dead against. So the challenge was finding the cinematic language equivalent of adding mystery while not cheating the audience, and making it satisfying and gripping, but also having a really delicious moment when something starts to dawn on you. So the challenge was trying to replicate that feeling I got when I was reading the book.
Did you know about the casting beforehand?
No, with most projects I never know about the casting beforehand. I’ve generally always followed the advice of never casting in my head because as a writer, you can get really wedded to a particular idea. So it’s more important to think of the characters in a general way. Having said that, I think if you’re inventing a character from scratch it’s probably helpful to cast in your head so you have some sort of visual in mind. But I was thrilled with the cast. Olivia Cooke is such a huge talent and as soon as she came up I was like she’s exactly how I pictured Elizabeth. And obviously Bill Nighy, I was over the moon about.
Have you ever had a weird moment where the finished product is drastically different from the script you wrote?
A lot of the time I’m around during shooting or around in post-production. So I don’t think I’ve ever had an experience where I’ve gone to a screening and gone, “What the hell’s that?!”
Different directors have different attitudes to ad-libbing things. It’s interesting, working with Tim Burton he’s incredible because nothing changed from the script and that was fascinating. He’s such an incredibly brilliantly organised director and he just plans everything in advance, and everything’s just shot as per the script. Whereas, most other directors quite enjoy the creative process of saying, “Oh if something’s good on the day, let’s have more of that.” But I think both ways work equally well.
I don’t think I’ve ever had one where I’ve hated an ad-lib line. They don’t happen that frequently unless it’s with comedy lines, but there’s the old saying about things which tend to make the crew laugh, generally aren’t that funny to an audience. If everyone’s laughing on set, it’s probably not that funny.
Interesting. I thought it might be similar to other writing jobs where people can get overly precious over their work.
Oh god no. If someone does a good ad-lib I’m thrilled because someone thinks I wrote it!
But no I’m never precious. As a writer you cannot be precious as part of a big, big team. I think if you’re a writer who has that feeling about the things they write, then you’d probably gravitate towards writing for the stage instead. But not in film. if you’re that kind of writer, don’t work in film.
With Kingsman 2 around the corner – what can we expect?
The second story expands the Kingsman universe in a way which we found to be exciting and fun to invent. We’ll meet lots of new characters and I think people who enjoyed the first one will not be disappointed, as it’s tonally very much the same. I think anyone who knows what to expect from a Kingsman movie will be both pleased and surprised, and I think being surprised is part of the Kingsman tone. It’s everything they could hope for, and some stuff they didn’t know they wanted.
The film sees you reunite with Matthew Vaughn who you’ve become renowned writing partners with – what is it about that pairing you think works so well?
I don’t know. It was just one of those sort of happy accidents where you meet someone you work really well with. I don’t know if I could put my finger on what works about it. But we’re definitely a team who enjoy working together and bounce off each other well. He comes from things from a very directorial point of view which is great, because I come from more a story and character point of a view. I think they definitely compliment each other in terms of what we bring to the table, and we find each other’s jokes funny which I think is always helpful when you’re making stuff up.
But I don’t know. Things worked out really well on Stardust, and we continued working together from there. But I love working with Matthew and hope to continue to do so in the future.
I know you’re confirmed to be writing one of the Game Of Thrones spin-offs. I’m going to try my luck here, is there any chance you can give us a morsel of detail over any plans?
I wish I could, I’m so sorry. It’s one of those things where it’s extremely early days and I’m not supposed to say anything, but George R.R. Martin said some stuff about it which I think gives you a general picture of the development process that’s going on at the moment.
What’s George like? Have you met up with him a few times?
I have and he’s absolutely wonderful. He’s everything you would hope he’d be. A lovely man and a brilliant man who has an incredible imagination. It was an absolute thrill and a delight to get to go spend some time with him and make stuff up.
Is there a lot of pressure knowing you’re contributing to this massive worldwide sensation?
I think with any job you always try and do your best work. It’s probably creatively a bit destructive to let yourself feel any sense of the external expectations. You kind of have to push them out, like with any job I think.
You’ve had X-Men, Kingsman, now Game Of Thrones, is there any other properties you’d like to tackle?
I’ve been really lucky to be able to get to work in the universe of things I’ve always loved myself. There’s nothing I have a burning ambition to get my hands on. I think with any job really, for me, the choice is always about if I’ll be excited about getting up in the morning and be like “I cannot wait to be thinking about this universe.” So to me, anything that makes me feel like that is the utterly perfect job. I can’t believe my luck.
You can catch The Limehouse Golem in UK cinemas on September 1.
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