All gaslight and natural light, the aesthetic is centred in a salon and restaurant, with a richness and sense of the theatrical that is in tune with Wilde’s life and period. It’s a robust production, immersive in historical detail but never static, rather like a Lautrec come to life. Homosexuality wasn’t an issue, it wasn’t talked about until the death of Oscar Wilde.”Īs well as writing and directing, Everett plays the exiled, ailing Wilde and assembles an excellent cast of co-stars including Colin Firth, Emily Watson and Tom Wilkinson. He died in 1900 and that was really when the LGBTQ road to liberation started. “It’s the riches to rags element of the Wilde story that really compounded his image as one of the greats ideas for the 20th century. The experience broke him and he died penniless, less than three years after his release, at age 46. Wilde was arrested for gross indecency and served two years hard labour. Wilde’s height of fame came about through plays including The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband (Everett starred in stage and film productions of both plays) and his fall came from a court battle with the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. I love that about him and how he dealt with his fate.” He was never a victim, he attacked failure and he just spiralled down with amazing humour and irony. All the other films that had been made about him always end at the point where my film begins so it felt like it was a good story to tell. “This idea of a star falling from grace and living among vagrants and street urchins, a man who used to be friends with royalty and the toast of the Cafe Royal – his fall is the most fascinating part of his life for me. Full of emotion as he spoke to the audience after the premier screening at the Sundance Film Festival. That’s why I’ve always been very attached to him.The Happy Prince, Rupert Everett’s passion project about the last years of Oscar Wilde, centres on a poignant scene in the shabby bedroom in Paris where Wilde spent his last days. ![]() “I think, for me personally, he’s a very important historical figure, who’s a gay person who’s worked in a largely heterosexual world,” he said. That said, Everett also acknowledged the intensely personal aspects of the film-and why Wilde’s story resonates so deeply with him. rights is still far from over-just look at countries like Russia. As a minority, you always have to be vigilant.” Indeed, Everett added, the global fight for L.G.B.T.Q. “Now, we have a very comfortable life, but you never know what’s going to happen in America next, or anywhere. “It’s a film for the Trump era in a way, because it’s a film about what society does to a man-how society can punish a man just for being homosexual,” Everett said at a Cinema Society screening of his film at iPic Theater in Manhattan Monday night. ![]() But Everett, who performed triple duty on the film-he not only stars, but also wrote and directed it-wants potential audiences to know that this movie is more than a typical passion project. ![]() Rupert Everett spent years laboring over The Happy Prince, a film about Oscar Wilde’s difficult final days set shortly before the celebrated Irish author and playwright died in exile, after being imprisoned on charges of “gross indecency.” Now, after a protracted development process that began in 2012, the film is finally about to open in theaters.
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