PRESSURE - the World War II thriller starring Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser and Kerry Condon - tells the extraordinary true story of meteorologist James Stagg, the unsung Scottish hero whose weather forecast decided the fate of D-Day. In this episode of the ScreenUK Podcast, writer David Haig and director Anthony Maras go inside the making of the film.
David Haig spent more than a decade with this story - first as a playwright performing Stagg himself over 300 performances, then through years of screenplay development across Covid lockdowns and industry strikes. Anthony Maras, director of HOTEL MUMBAI, talks about the central challenge of the film: how do you make a slow-moving weather system as terrifying as a gun or a shark? And how do you keep audiences gripped by a story they already know the ending to?
They also discuss casting Andrew Scott in a role built on restraint rather than conventional heroism, why Brendan Fraser was the only choice for Eisenhower, and Kerry Condon's portrayal of Kay Summersby - a woman literally cut out of the historical record. Plus: the extraordinary coincidence that saw James Stagg's own grandson walk into Working Title's offices to help cut the archival footage, and the story of filming the D-Day beach sequence in real autumn storms that cleared at exactly the right moment.
Click below to have a watch!
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