Gentlemen, to Your Corners: Casting the Film

There was no doubt from the filmmakers that Frank Langella and Michael Sheen should remain Richard Nixon and David Frost for the filmed version of Frost/Nixon.  “It was a given that Michael and Frank would inhabit the roles,” offers director Howard.  “It’s impossible to imagine two other actors bringing the kind of research, preparation or chemistry that the two of them offer.  For almost two years, they have lived as Frost and Nixon.”

Langella wanted his performance not to be mimicry of Nixon but a dedicated interpretation of a fallible man.  The challenge for him was that, unlike Sheen’s reference, Nixon is no longer alive.  “I was determined not to do an impression,” Langella states.  “I looked in him for the thing I look for in every character I play: What is his soul about?  What is his inner heart and mind about?  You really can’t play a ‘politician,’ a ‘musician,’ a ‘serial killer.’  You don’t play the title.  Everybody’s a human being, and everybody has a soul, a heart and a mind.”

Of his attraction to the role, Langella continues, “Richard Nixon is close to the most fascinating man I’ve ever had the privilege of portraying.  I became obsessed with him and obsessed with the inner demons in him.  I liked the fact that Nixon was not an everyday guy, as I like that about all the politicians of that period.  They were irascible, difficult, funny-looking, bizarre guys, and they revealed a lot more of their idiosyncrasies than today’s do.”

There was something surreal about seeing Nixon come to life through Langella’s performance, acknowledges Academy Award®-winning producer Brian Grazer.  “From the ever-present low growl in his voice to the slight grin that Richard Nixon could flash, it was fascinating what Frank could do.  Under a different actor’s care, the role could have easily become a cheap impression of Nixon.  But he incorporated those iconic affectations we know Nixon had while bringing this deep sensitivity to unguarded moments.  When you watch Frank, the actor vanishes and you simply see a terribly conflicted man who has, essentially, been dethroned.”

Routinely lauded by critics and audiences alike during the play’s run, Langella would receive his biggest compliment from his character’s nemesis.  David Frost agrees: “He doesn’t look like Nixon, but you feel he’s Nixon.  Some of his gestures may not be remotely Nixon gestures, but they feel like Nixon gestures.  So he transcends accuracy; it’s more than accurate in a way.”

Transitioning the role from stage play to film presented another set of challenges for Langella.  He offers, “When you take a character from a play and bring him to the stage, you have to fight a very particular kind of acting monster.  I did it 360 times.  I had an inner rhythm going that was so part of my being that even I didn’t know.  [In front of the camera], it became very exciting to me to throw away and metaphorically open the window and toss out the stage performance—keep all the elements of it that worked but then bring a fresher approach to it.”

As with Langella, the transition for Sheen was a long study in behavior.  As he moved the role to film, however, he grew even more comfortable in Frost’s skin.  “I’ve lived with this character for over a year, and the basics of the way I see him didn’t really change from stage to film,” he notes.  “It’s just about being specific to your audience.  I suppose on stage you play to the audience in the room, and on film you play to the camera.  The big difference on stage is that you have to pretend you’re on an airplane or pretend you’re at the Western White House, etc.  For the film, I only had to be there.

“Playing a character who exists in real life obviously brings two sets of responsibilities,” Sheen continues.  “You have the responsibility that you always have with any character you play—to the writer, to the story.  You’ve also got the responsibility to the real person.  But inevitably, there are elements of the real person that are going to help the story more than others.  If we made Frost look overly competent, then the tension and the suspense of what’s going to happen in the interviews would be lost.  Inevitably, you have to play up certain elements which the real person may find some argument in.”

The long days on stage and set were made easier for Sheen by the help of his constant companion in the work, Langella.  He reflects, “It’s been an amazing journey.  Pretty much every day, nonstop for 18 months, we’ve told this story together.  It’s always seemed fresh, and it’s always seemed no matter what environment we’re in—theater or in front of the camera—there’s a spark that’s there.  We both respond to it and to each other.  That chemistry is a rare thing.”

Working Title producer Eric Fellner particularly liked the manner in which Sheen dealt with Frost’s fluctuating insecurity and ego.  He provides, “Here is this chat show host trying to nudge his way in for the interview of the century.  You must admit that the hubris Frost showed was astounding.  Michael gives that so effortlessly with his portrayal.  At times, you watch him wracked with insecurity; other moments, he’s brimming with self-confidence.  Few performers can run that gamut the way this man can.  From the minute I saw him at the Donmar, I believed another performer wouldn’t do Frost justice on screen.”

To portray the research team David Frost secured to prepare him for his four-part interviews with Richard Nixon, Howard and the producers cast Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell.

Macfadyen was tasked to play John Birt, the founding editor of London Weekend Television’s (LWT) Weekend World and onetime director general of the BBC.  A powerful figure in British television for more than three decades, he would go on to become special advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2001.  Birt produced the Frost/Nixon interviews and organized the team that prepared the program’s host for battle.

“John Birt was a producer at the time for LWT,” says Macfadyen, who met the real Birt for lunch prior to filming, as well as at the end of the shoot when Birt visited the Los Angeles set.  “He’d worked with David Frost before, very happily and successfully, and Frost sort of poached him from this company for whom he’d just gone to work.  Birt was actually my age, 32, at the time of the interviews, but he was already an incredibly successful producer.  I think Birt had doubts about Frost’s ability to pull off these interviews.” 

Oliver Platt was brought on board to play seasoned journalist Bob Zelnick.  A former national bureau chief for NPR, Zelnick was placed in charge of researching Nixon’s domestic and foreign policy for the Frost team.  A virtual encyclopedia of Nixon knowledge, Zelnick played Nixon in the team’s rehearsals for the interviews.

“How can it be more intriguing than when Ron Howard calls to send you a Peter Morgan script?” asks Oliver Platt.  “That piques your interest.  You know you’re going to be involved in a quality film and surrounded by great people—the two big boxes you always wanna check before you sign on for a project.  Add in actors like Frank, Michael, Kevin, Matthew, Sam…you know you’re onto something special.”

What impressed the performer most was his director’s preparation.  “He has already drilled down through so many layers of the material that it just makes you better.  He gets you involved at every level; he sent me a big box of clippings, books, DVDs of research that helped me flesh out the historical context of the story.”

For the role of prolific nonfiction writer James Reston, Jr., the author of 13 books, including “The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews” (which recounts the author’s time spent as the prime Watergate researcher on the Frost interview team), Howard would turn to Sam Rockwell. 

Like Platt, Rockwell knew there would be much preparation to play the type of academic who would eventually become assistant to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration.  Volumes of research later, the performer offers, “I went to D.C. twice to meet with Jim Reston and interviewed him before we started filming.  He’s still very passionate when he talks about Nixon and the time in which this story takes place.  It’s a really juicy supporting role.”

The Frost/Nixon producers and director spent ample time constructing the opposing team who would assist Nixon in his preparation.  That core team would consist of American film staple Kevin Bacon and British character actor Toby Jones.

Kevin Bacon would portray retired military officer (and Nixon’s chief of staff after the president left office) Lt. Col. Jack Brennan.  As Nixon’s negotiator in setting up the terms and ground rules for the interviews, Brennan was a bulldog.  “Nixon was fascinated with the Marine Corps and, when he was in the White House, he wanted a Marine around him,” says Bacon of his character.  “When Nixon resigned and retired to San Clemente, he asked Jack to come be his Chief of Staff.  So Brennan became his right-hand man.”

For the actor, this film would represent another collaboration with director Howard.  “This is my second Ron Howard film, and it’s been a lot of years since we did Apollo 13.  It was a great experience for all of us, and I was really enthusiastic to come back and work with him again.”  Bacon laughs, “He joins a very short list of directors who’ve actually hired me twice.”
           
Irving “Swifty” Lazar was the legendary agent who represented Nixon in extracting a record fee for his interviews with Frost.  While he handled the biggest movie stars—including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Cary Grant and Gregory Peck—he also represented some of the greatest names in that era’s literature—including Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan and Tennessee Williams—and music icons from Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin to Madonna.  Toby Jones found the role quite interesting.
           
“Playing a character like Irving Lazar…I’ve met lots of people who knew him, so it was slightly intimidating,” he says.  “There’s very little information about him available other than one ghosted autobiography.  My impression is of a man very driven.  He started off in a poor Russian-Jewish family in Brooklyn and basically fought his way up to become the top literary agent in the business.”

British actress Rebecca Hall was cast as jetsetting Caroline Cushing, one of the few women who might tame notorious lothario David Frost.  Ex-wife of wealthy socialite Howard Cushing, she met Frost shortly before he met with Nixon to propose the interview series; Cushing remained his girlfriend for several years thereafter.  A former secretary to columnist Liz Smith, she later became successful Hollywood editor Caroline Graham. 

With an ex-boyfriend in Los Angeles and an ex-husband in Monte Carlo, Cushing was just the sort to tell Frost exactly what she thought.  Upon their first meeting, she recounts for Frost that she heard a journalist refer to him as “someone from humble origins who could reach the greatest heights without possessing any discernible quality beyond ambition.”

Of her thoughts in preparing for the role, Hall offers: “It was important to me to know as much about Caroline as I could—to meet and talk with her.  But there also comes a point where you realize that Peter Morgan’s written fiction, and I have to serve the story as best as possible.  I didn’t want to get too carried away with the reality of this person and think: ‘That’s not actually accurate, and I need to do this.  If we’re going be true about this, then I need to do that.’  You end up losing sight of the story.  What was important was figuring out where she fits in and how to tell the story best.”

Rounding out the rest of Nixon’s team is ANDY MILDER as Frank Gannon, a close friend of Nixon’s and an historian who served as special assistant to the president during his White House years and helped him prepare for the Frost interviews.  He wrote and researched “RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon” in 1978 and, five years later, conducted his own taped interviews of the president.  Though never broadcast, these are considered Nixon’s most candid moments on tape. 

KATE JENNINGS GRANT plays Diane Sawyer, a former press assistant to the president during his terms in office.  The future broadcast star served as one of Nixon’s researchers for the Frost interviews.  GABRIEL JARRET plays Ken Khachigian, chief researcher for the Nixon interview team.  Khachigian previously served as deputy special assistant and chief speechwriter for Nixon, and later as the chief speechwriter for Ronald Reagan during his presidency. 

JIM MESKIMEN was cast as Raymond Price, a former speechwriter for the Nixon White House and part of the Nixon interview team.  Finally, the long-suffering Pat Nixon is portrayed by actress PATTY MCCORMACK (who will always be remembered for her role as the sociopathic little girl Rhoda in The Bad Seed).

It was important for the filmmakers that the exact tone of period authenticity was set from the first day of principal photography.  The historical characters in the play were mostly referenced; in the movie, they were embodied.  Whoever was there during the events of the Frost/Nixon tapings was portrayed either by an actor or, in some cases, by the actual individual who was there.
           
PATRICK TERRALL, the original host of the famed Ma Maison, plays himself in a replica of the restaurant he once ruled over during the time it was the hottest place in Los Angeles to see and be seen.  Terrall knew them all in the heyday and David Frost was a much talked-about guest in the time leading up to the Nixon interviews.
           
The scene at Ma Maison features two actors playing singer Neil Diamond and composer Sammy Kahn, in a duet of a satirical song addressing the upcoming Frost/Nixon face-off.  While it may seem like a fictional device, such a performance, writer Peter Morgan assures, did occur and the song “Frost and Nixon”—to the tune of “Love and Marriage”—really was composed for the occasion in 1977, not for the film 30 years later.
           
LT. COLONEL GENE BOYER plays the helicopter pilot who ferried President Nixon away after his farewell speech.  He played the role in real life as well, after the President’s resignation on August 9, 1974.

The son of another participant in the events of the day plays his father in the film: GREGORY ALPERT, who was also the movie’s real-life location manager, portrays a cinematographer who was present at Nixon’s Oval Office resignation.  His father, Manny Alpert, was a cinematographer who shot for Hearst Metrotone News and covered Nixon on many occasions—though not on the actual day of the resignation.