Conclave screenwriter Peter Straughan grew up in a “devout Catholic household’ and even served as an altar boy as a child. So while he’s no longer an active church member, Straughan says he still greatly respects and appreciates the Catholic faith.
“I was never interested in coming at this from the outside with an ax to hack it down,” Straughan tells Gold Derby about his acclaimed and award-winning adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel. “The thing I found so interesting about the book was that it’s a critique, amongst other things, of the Catholic Church but from within the Church. The characters are believers who are members of the Church. I found that really interesting.”
While some, including conservative commentator Megyn Kelly, have loudly disagreed with Straughan, the screenwriter says at its core, Conclave is exceptionally Catholic in its view. “It’s an eternal narrative that you must inspect your soul to see if you’re wandering off the path of righteousness, both as an individual and as a system,” he says. “This endless conflict between the world and the worldly and spiritual. I’m not an apologist for the Church. Obviously, there are many things you could be critical of about the Catholic Church, but I didn’t feel that was what Conclave would try and do.”
Directed by Edward Berger and featuring an acclaimed ensemble of veteran actors led by Ralph Fiennes, Conclave has been one of awards season’s most consistent performers. The film, which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in August before a fall release courtesy of Focus Features, has landed several key nominations and plaudits, including citations from the Screen Actors Guild Awards (best ensemble and Best Film Actor for Fiennes), Directors Guild of America Awards (for Berger), six Golden Globe Award nominations (including a win for Straughan’s screenplay), and 14 mentions on the BAFTA longlists. The film is widely expected to land a Producers Guild of America Awards nomination on Sunday, were Straughan’s adapted screenplay eligible for the Writers Guild Awards, it seems like the material his fellow scribes would also likely embrace.
Set in the aftermath of the Pope’s death, Conclave is a story about faith and political intrigue. Fiennes stars as Cardinal Lawrence, who convenes the conclave to elect a new pope. He must face doubt in his faith and the institution at every turn and some wildly unexpected Machievillian twists and turns.
“One of the main reasons I wanted to do this was that it felt like it was a way of talking about politics, and it felt like it was a way of doing a political thriller that didn’t feel so familiar,” Straughan, a past Oscar nominee for the spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, says. “I love good political thrillers, and I know Edward, our director, also thought about those great American ’70s political thrillers, like All the President’s Men. But somebody mentioned to me an Emily Dickinson poem, ‘Tell the truth, but tell it at a slant.’ That stuck with me because that’s what Conclave felt like. It was a way of talking about morality. It was a way of talking about how people can be seduced by power, ambition, and politics, but at an angle we’re not used to seeing it from.”
Straughan says he approaches every book adaptation differently, but Conclave presents a unique difficulty because many characters quietly contemplate the events around them. Fortunately, actors like Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini were able to reveal their emotions often without even a single word.
“With adaptations, usually, one of the big challenges — especially with a book that’s well-written or more of a literary book — is that there is a lot of internal narrative. There’s a lot of what’s going on inside the characters’ minds,” he explains. “The challenge is always, well, how do you make that external? How can you make that either a line of dialogue or something else? And the better the actor, the less you must worry about that.”
Conclave ends with a much-discussed twist about the gender identity of a key cardinal, played by breakout actor Carlos Diehz. Straughan says writing to the reveal about Diehz’s Cardinal Benitez was a trial-and-error process in making sure his script wasn’t giving away the ending before Straughan intended. Harder, however, was a scene before the conclusion, when Benitez gives a rousing speech to the warring cardinals that helps unify them after days of strife, disagreement, and conflict.
“That was one of the load-bearing pillars in the film that I was most worried about,” Straughan says of the speech. “Because I think wherever you have a moment in a film where a speed has to change the course of everything in the film, that makes you nervous. I had so many versions of that speech. But there were a few things that helped. One was Carlos’ performance. One was that we decided to do it Spanish, which suddenly released him from this sort of didactic burden. It just felt more natural and, weirdly, more emotive. So that helped. And then we added some scenes to the end of that scene, which gave sort of a little bit of time and a sense of what he just said about sinking in for the Cardinals before they go back in for the vote.”
Conclave ends beautifully, with Fiennes’s character quietly processing what transpired and looking out on a trio of young nuns happily walking across the courtyard. “I didn’t want to leave him the place where he’s just, like, shocked and horrified at what he’s done,” Straughan says of the conclusion, noting it was Berger who came up with the memorable final shot. “We wanted to take Lawrence to the point where he is reconciled and thinks, ‘OK, this is the right thing for the future.’ You want to see him understand and accept.”
Conclave is streaming now on Peacock.
