In Alice Troughton’s tense literary drama “The Lesson,” Richard E. Grant plays one of Britain’s most noted authors, J.M. Sinclair, who hasn’t put out a book in years. He decides to mentor aspiring novelist Liam (Daryl McCormack) after he’s hired as a tutor for his college-bound son Bertie (Stephen McMillan), but the power dynamic between them soon shifts.
Ahead of the film’s limited theatrical release on Friday, TheWrap chatted about with the Oscar-nominated “Can You Ever Forgive Me” actor about his narcissistic character — who would never watch anything as “squalid” as Grant’s breakout indie “Withnail & I” — and how it’s a little like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca.”
TheWrap: You play a famous writer who’s quite mercurial and manipulative. How would you describe him?
Richard E. Grant: Self-entitled old literary lion who is facing writer’s block.
What did you think of the character when you first got the script?
Anybody who is on a sort of self-appointed high pedestal and then comes crashing down, that is interesting to play, and even more delicious to witness. Everybody wants their justice and comeuppance in life.
At one point Bertie says of his father “not caring is worse than cruelty.” And he apparently bullied his late son Felix into committing suicide.
Absolutely. He fails every time. And he knows that. That’s what finally makes him human. That’s his Achilles’ heel. You’re dealing with ego and human frailty, that lethal combination.
There are so many undercurrents going on when Liam, the tutor, gets to the house. There’s just so much that’s going on beneath the surface.
His own son has been so disappointing that he then misguidedly places all his faith in Liam. It then becomes an absolute tussle between old lion and new kid on the block, one trying to outmaneuver the other. So that was interesting to play as well, because Liam seems so incredibly even-tempered and charming, which is how he beguiles and wins over everybody in the family.
The balance of power is always shifting between Liam and Sinclair’s wife Hélène (Julie Delpy). Did you talk about how to play it with your co-stars or did you just play it?
We just played it. Because the shooting schedule was so short for a low-budget movie, there was no sitting around for a couple of weeks rehearsing and discussing everything. We just went in and did it.
Usually, in my experience, you have a small cast chamber piece like this, [shot] on location, especially, everybody’s staying at the same apartment hotel. You would normally have actors socializing with each other, whether by plan or happenstance. Apart from a dinner that we had with the producer and the director before we started shooting, nobody socialized with each other whatsoever.
Unconsciously, the fact that the story deals with people in a state of grief and such social isolation, even within one family and one household, I suppose [that led to us] getting nearer to the story. It was a very lonely working time. And it wasn’t just me. You’d speak to the other actors, and they were all doing whatever they were doing in isolation.
Sinclair is quite destructive. There’s that scene where he destroys one of Hélène‘s vases because he’s angry with her and feeling powerless.
Yeah, I think he is. He’s a narcissist. He’s also married to somebody who is passive-aggressive. The one way that he can get back at her is to smash a piece of art. In the same way that she passively- aggressively derides and puts down his writing. It’s a very toxic family environment, completely overshadowed by the fact that that their son has committed suicide, with each person blaming the other person.
Can we talk about the pond in back of the house where the son drowned? It’s quite mucky and it doesn’t look like a nice place to swim.
It was not a nice place to swim. You’re completely right.
But it’s sort of a symbol for what’s going on with the Sinclair family, with its murky depths and who knows what going on in there. Did that also strike you as being symbolic?
Yes, I think that’s absolutely true. It’s kind of got this magnetic push-and-pull draw for all of them, because they all know that it’s forbidden, but also I think it must be very, very challenging to live in a place that is as beautiful as the place that they live. Knowing that that body of water is where the [their son died].
It’s quite Gothic in a way.
Yeah. twitching curtains. Mrs. Danvers, “Rebecca.” (Laughs).
Early on in the film we see a picture of you and it looks like a movie still from “Withnail & I.”
Oh, I haven’t seen the movie yet.
Your photo is on the wall with some of Liam’s other literary heroes. So in this universe, does the movie “Withnail and I” exist?
I haven’t considered that at all, no. I can’t imagine that somebody like Sinclair would deign to watch something squalid about two failures. (Laughs).
