Four Weddings and a Funeral star and acclaimed playwright David Haig has addressed his decision not to take a starring role in his acclaimed WWII film Pressure. In an exclusive interview with Reach Plc, the publishers of the Daily Express, Haig, 71, said: “Well, I haven’t got the cinematic status required to play Stagg on film. I might have done it if it had been a telly film, I might have scraped in there.”
Adapted from Haig’s 2014 stage play of the name, Pressure follows the untold true story of Scottish meteorologist James Stagg (played by Andrew Scott), who was drafted in by General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) to give the most important weather forecast in history: predicting the optimal conditions for the D-Day landings. The stage play saw the 71-year-old actor and writer taking the lead as Stagg, however, in the film version, the Fleabag and All of Us Strangers actor Scott takes on the part.
Director Anthony Maras revealed that he had wanted to cast Haig in another role, but the actor was “too busy” to appear. Haig hastened to add that this wasn’t the reason he didn’t play Stagg, adding: “Nor do I regret it.”
Haig went on to explain: “I don’t regret not playing Stagg when you’ve got Andrew Scott playing it that brilliantly, because I still have the play and the film there as an achievement.”
The film features an all-star cast including Better Call Saul star Kerry Condon, The Newsroom’s Chris Messina, and Band of Brothers and Wolf Hall star Damian Lewis.
Pressure serves up a tense historical thriller as the Allied Forces have 61 hours in which to decide whether to commence pivotal D-Day landings in France and remain at the mercy of Mother Nature. Speaking about transposing the story from the stage to the big screen, Haig said it was “exciting” bringing Pressure to a new medium.
The stage version was set in a single room, where all decisions and relationships play out. The main challenge for the movie was to maintain the tension and the pressure cooker nature of the story.
Australian filmmaker Maras, whose previous credits include Hotel Mumbai and Aazadi, revealed how he and Haig came together on the film right at the start of the COVID pandemic and “worked for years to really refine it”.
He continued: “It’s really getting into the subjectivity of the protagonists; the audience knows what happens.” Adding: “A lot of the tension rests in getting into the headspace of the protagonist or protagonists, who don’t particularly know that everything is going to go well.”
Maras said the challenge also rested in trying to “remove the inevitability of D-Day” that audiences were aware of. “In the lead-up to the largest seaborne invasion in history, they had no idea whether it was going to be a success or a dismal failure as the rehearsal exercise [Operation] Tiger was a few weeks earlier.”
Maras said that the team “tried to use every trick in the book” to keep the momentum and make a “slow weather system a thriller”.
Pressure is available to buy and rent from digital platforms now
