James L. Brooks isn’t only responsible for bringing The Simpsons to television screens for decades, he’s also the co-creator of Taxi and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. For the big screen he’s the award-winning director of Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as It Gets. Ella McCay is his return to the film after fifteen years.
Ella McCay starring Emma Mackey as the titular character is about a young woman whose political career becomes fraught within mere days of becoming Governor. It’s also a film about family and being there when other people don’t show up. It co-stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson, Albert Brooks, Jack Lowden, and Spike Fearn.
Nadine Whitney speaks with the generous and wonderful James L. Brooks and Emma Mackey.
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James, there’s a distinct similarity in Ella McCay’s direct honesty, curiosity, and need for authenticity and the truth, and the same went for Holly Hunter’s character Jane Craig in Broadcast News. Can you tell me a bit about writing people who have that very strong ethical core?
James L. Brooks: Yeah. I think each in a certain way is a driven woman. You know, Holly Hunter’ Jane Craig was driven by her profession, professional excellence, and care about the integrity of that. Ella McCay is driven, you know, as she confesses when she gets stoned at one point in the movie that what is it?
Emma Mackey: “Lord help me, I think I can do it. I know how to make people’s lives better,” is that the one?
JLB: Yes. That’s what comes out of her from her core, which she’s never said out loud before, and it’s because she’s loaded that she actually says who she is at the core.
Which is something that she was told on that high school paper that she never got to show anyone.
EM: To be a force for good.
You can change the world.
JLB: I’m so glad you mentioned that. That’s one of my favourite things. Just start it.
I think it’s the last line of narration is for any great plan to work; humans need to help humans. Which I believe. What can work, especially in this country where there’s such division between the people. So, you know, we can’t move on in a positive way unless we cure that. We are all just people.
Emma, you have been gifted, or more specifically, earned, two wonderful versions of really passionate womanhood, one with Emily (Brontë in Frances O’Connor’s film), and Ella McCay, obviously from a very different milieu. How does it feel to be embodying these very specifically feminist and iconic roles?
EM: It feels, I mean, it’s a lot of things, and I think, like you said, Emily and Ella are very different people, but I suppose they have something bigger than them that drives them and propels them forward. For Emily, it’s her imagination, it’s her desire to create a world and to escape through her craft – some sort of path for herself through imagination. For Ella, it’s always been about showing up for people and working hard and developing and nourishing her ideas and her brain as much as possible. Knowledge is power. She’s her own life force. She’s her own motor. And I think it’s very encouraging and awakening to have that kind of character written, first and foremost, and then to be able to bring it to life on screen. And to be given that opportunity is, it’s lifechanging because you can absorb so much from that. It is something that you can really, we can all learn from. And when you get to do that, it’s a trip.
What inspired me was, as Jim has been saying, it was this to be able to play someone who is a truth seeker and an authentic, modern, whole person, woman of today. It was a thrill to read, and it felt very alive on the page from the beginning. And I saw all the potential. I felt very excited by that, by the potential of this person and what she could achieve and how she wanted to go about it and how she moved through life. And the partnerships that she develops with her family and outside of her family.
JLB: To be able to do drama and comedy the way this woman [Emma] does!
I just wanted to very quickly touch on the American accent. How difficult was it not slipping into a British accent when you’ve got Jack Lowden, Rebecca Hall. and Spike Fearn around you all the time?
EM: That’s true. Yes, we have Scottish and English. I just did it. I had to stick to it. I think it’s the first time I’ve had to really, you know, lock in and be focused and not get distracted. I mean, I did speak in my normal voice to Jack and Spike sometimes at home, but never in front of Jim.
You just have to stay in it. It’s fun. It’s a fun thing to do. I like the exercise of it. I really do.
And it takes me somewhere else. It’s not me, so I get to be free with that and fully go for it.