USA Today reports about the Lincoln Square Q&A with more insights: There’s a reason why Tom Hanks never worked with Meryl Streep before The Post. “I failed my audition for Mamma Mia!” Hanks joked at a panel Sunday night, following the first New York screening of Steven Spielberg’s new movie at AMC Lincoln Square. Somewhat surprisingly, he “never came close (to co-starring with her). I never dreamed that it would be possible.” The Oscar winners certainly picked a timely film for their first vehicle together. Set in 1971, The Post (in select theaters Dec. 22, expands nationwide Jan. 12) centers on the unlikely partnership between The Washington Post’s Katharine “Kay” Graham (Streep), the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks), as they wrestle to publish the Pentagon Papers, a massive cover-up of government secrets spanning decades. Most of the action takes place over just a few days, with the drama stemming from the Nixon administration’s efforts to stop The Washington Post and The New York Times from printing top-secret information about the Vietnam War. The film’s resonance in the era of “fake news” and journalist bans from White House briefings wasn’t lost on Spielberg, who read Liz Hannah’s script just nine months ago and rushed it into production. “I need a motivational purpose to make any movie,” Spielberg said. “When I read the first draft of the script, this wasn’t something that could wait three years or two years — this was a story I felt we needed to tell today.” The complete article can be read over at USA Today.
“It was a relationship between a man and a woman that wasn’t based on any other feelings. It was a friendship that was so deep, it was like family. The script interested me because it was about the working atmosphere. This is so important right now to think about: the atmosphere in which men and women can deal with each other, especially if the woman is the superior. You see in the scene where she and Bradlee have breakfast, she treats him like he is the boss – and that’s usually how that works. There is an accommodation to the ego of the men.
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