‘Humanity laid bare’: A ‘Freud’s Last Session’ Q&A
Actor Matthew Goode and director Matthew Brown talk about adapting a stage play, understanding C.S. Lewis, and disagreeing well.
In the new film Freud’s Last Session, based on the play by Mark St. Germain, C. S. Lewis visits Sigmund Freud at the advent of World War II. The resulting debate and friendship are fictional, but many of their arguments and elements of their life stories are taken from the men’s own writings.
CT interviewed director and cowriter Matthew Brown and actor Matthew Goode, who plays Lewis. Mild spoilers ahead. Freud’s Last Session premieres in New York and Los Angeles on December 22 and is expected to release nationally in early 2024. See CT’s review here.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
What do you think about the premise of Freud and Lewis having a discussion together? Is this how the two men would have interacted had they met?
Matthew Goode: I know that some people will feel like it should have been more heated and shouty, but one thing I’m proud about is that the film didn’t become that. It’s nuanced, and complicated, and less about point-scoring.
And it’s about a man who’s at the end of his life, who was pretty angry about the pain that he’s had to endure. He’s lined C. S. Lewis up like a bullseye, and he’s a human dart flying at it. And that was Lewis’s job, to parry these barbs that are sent his way.
We all know that Jesus existed; that’s irrefutable. But neither man can prove or disprove whether he was the Son of God. It’s actually what unites them. And that’s the beauty of faith. So I think that’s exactly how it would’ve gone. I think they’d have had a really great friendship.
How did you work to portray this matchup of minds as balanced, without feeling like it was decided one way or the other?