A gritty, tense and redemptive debut from writer/director Dermot Malone, King Frankie is a startling opening gambit. Spearheaded by a sterling performance by Peter Coonan of Love/Hate and The Alienist: Angel of Darkness notoriety, the film is a fine addition to a list of world class Irish features released this year.
Peter was kind enough to talk to us about how he got involved with the film, the experiences of playing two radically different versions of the same man, and how working with family can prove the most demanding of roles.
How did you get involved in King Frankie?
I was doing a play in the Abbey, and a friend of a friend got in touch and said that Dermot had a script he was interested in reading for me. I was doing back to back plays in the Abbey, a show at night and rehearsing during the day so I didn’t have much time. Anyway, Dermot and I met for coffee and discussed the character. He had seen me in something and thought I was right for the part, that I could possibly portray the duality of Frankie. Then we spoke about the script for quite a while. After I heard that he was convinced of the fact that he thought I was the right person for the role, I had to convince myself that I could take on the challenge, and challenge myself.
As you know Irish films don’t get a lot of time to shoot in, and I knew it would be about a month, so I’d have to be fighting fit. It was perfect timing to go into it after the two plays and the Eva Birthistle film, Kathleen Is Here, I was in a good place, work wise. At a point where I was beginning to trust my instincts.
It’s a remarkable debut, how was it working with a first time director?
Dermot was an incredible director to work with. He and I talked for quite some time, and he was open to any ideas I’d have about my character, where he might go and what he might do. It was incredible to work with somebody open to collaboration.
He was coming from a successful background, and could easily have been someone who wanted to dig his heels in. He has an actor for a brother, and also an open mind, and he was very trusting in my experience.
I didn’t realise that I was the age I was until I looked back and thought how much I’d done. How long I had been in the industry. I had to begin to be aware of the work I’ve done, and the experience I have, and not to shy away from it. To embrace it. To take control of it and use it for the benefit of your creative endeavours.
Can you tell me about your experiences coming from working on larger scale productions like The Alienist: Angel of Darkness?
Love/Hate for example, wasn’t massively funded. It did have funding, but it didn’t have the luxuries of The Alienist. We were shooting a large number of pages every day and we didn’t have a huge budget. Obviously, the writing was exceptional, the director, cast, everyone else in front of and behind camera, the ADs, the makeup people, everyone was on top of their game, and we were shooting to a very tight schedule. I think doing that for my first gig gave me a good grounding in being prepared, and also trusting the people around me . And not taking yourself too seriously but taking the work seriously.
The Alienist was a different experience. It was a huge production. We were in a huge warehouse in the outskirts of Budapest, and I kept asking if a part of the set was built from scratch. It was all built from scratch, which is an absolute luxury. I had time to sit around, and have a coffee with some of these incredible actors that I was working with.
With King Frankie it was a tight shoot. We split it into two weeks shooting young Frankie and two shooting older Frankie. It was good, challenging hard work. Every night I was sitting, preparing for the next day, wanting to bring your best to it. Working on the script, constantly trying to keep it alive, which is something you have to do with anything, whether it’s small or big.
It was remarkable how you played Frankie before and after a transformative moment. Can you tell me about how you approached that?
I suppose, Young Frankie, in the past, was a character who was completely unaware of his behaviour, and how it affected people around them. His main goal was to materially succeed, at the expense of everyone around him. Everything was a front, desperately clinging onto a sinking ship. That unawareness, that greed, when we don’t see what we’re doing and how we’re ruining people around us, clutching onto what we think is success. That turning point in his life is the axis on which the story is being told. It often takes something so extreme for someone to realise the mistakes they make.
Here and there, we might have riffed on things that had been written, but all the lingo was Dermot. I did some of the research, particularly for the earlier Frankie. It was all on a whim and quite desperate, using language that’s a front and a part of the mask. You hear people in the financial world using it to deflect from what they’re actually doing. Certainly in the second part, which I thought was written beautifully, we stuck close to the script. My main influence on the film would have been on the character, and that it felt authentic, and that we believed every step he took, which is for me the most important thing. That belief.
And what were you drawing on to prepare for Frankie?
There are enough stories of friends of friends and family friends where men, in particular, had taken their lives due to their financial demise, and where families had been ripped apart by addiction, greed, neglect. All you have to do is look back at the papers from that time, and the aftermath, where people are completely destroyed because of it.
You’re also drawing on your own life experiences. If you’re Irish, most everyone has felt some sort of Catholic guilt. You’re building on that and drawing from those experiences. Everyone has a turning point in their lives where they feel they have to change something, or do something better, say to themselves “I want to change the way I live.”
There was so much to draw on and the character was so well rounded that there was a lot in the script. Dermot had some experiences he shared with me of family friends, there was more than enough. It’s the human story of someone making a mistake and owning up to it. The idea of accepting the past without beating yourself up because we can’t change the past. All we can do is try to make our future better and have a greater impact on the people we love.
As well, it’s the idea that you don’t realise when you’re in the midst of this behaviour that you’re. Unfortunately, it often takes extreme moments. Some people get a terminal diagnosis and realise they’ve been stressed over the wrong things in life. I think that [the film is about] giving someone a second chance. Everyone deserves one. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up over mistakes we made and try to move forward, if we can.
Did you come up against any challenges in the process of getting it from page to screen?
I suppose in one location we were in one location a lot, and there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. Making those moments fresh, and seem authentic can be challenging. I think when you’re working on a feature in Ireland, where you don’t have as much money, it makes sense to pick one location. You can stay there, and you’re not running around trying to get people together, and it can give you more time to shoot, but that was a minor issue in an otherwise excellent shoot. Otherwise, some of the emotion that was involved at times, was a lot, but the actors we worked with were phenomenal.
There was one scene we were shooting in a car, and Lynn [Rafferty] was astonishing. We finished the scene, and I had said to Dermot that we might have to get it again. Lynn had been incredible but I wasn’t sure I had brought it there. He rang me in the edit, and told me what had been done was perfect. It was a lesson that sometimes, we live in our own heads and think we have to get to a certain point. More often than not you don’t. Especially if you’re working with an actor of Lynn’s quality, you can feed off what she’s doing and trust what you’re doing is honest.
What about any highlights during the shoot?
My daughter worked on it with me, and she came down to shoot on my birthday. I’d been away a week and a half and she arrived with a little box of gifts from my wife and kids. She found it tough working with me. Dermot would say to me to improv the scene a little bit, so I’d go off beat, and at the end,she would say to me “Daddy, why didn’t you stick to the script?” Because she had learned her lines, and was embarrassed that I had gone off script.
King Frankie is in cinemas on Friday October 11th.
Words: Adhamh Ó Caoimh
