Interview [Part 2]: Misan Sagay, Screenwriter, “Belle”
Misan Sagay is a screenwriter whose credits include The Secret Laughter of Women, starring Colin Firth, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, starring Halle Berry. Misan’s most recent writing project is Belle, an historical drama starring Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson and Gugu Mbatha-Raw playing the title role.
Today in Part 2, Misan reveals how the project Belle came to be and her earliest involvement in it:
Scott: Your current movie is the feature film Belle and the genesis of this project is a painting. Could you talk about how you happened upon the painting and how it inspired you to develop a story from it?
Misan: I was visiting Scone Palace in Scotland. I was at University at St Andrews nearby. I walked into one of the bedrooms and came across this extraordinary painting. This beautiful black girl staring out of me. Her companion in the painting was an equally beautiful white girl. They were equals in that painting. I was struck, intrigued but I wasn’t a writer yet. When I saw the painting again, I was ready to write. The story concept for Belle — this Jane Austenesque drama — was very strong for me from the start and while it evolved, you would recognize the story in the film from my first written pitch. I was thrilled to find a period story where the black character was at the center and not suffering on the sidelines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwRo2rXMVV4
I wrote it in 2004 and tried to get financing, but couldn’t. People told me no one was interested in slavery. I wrote first alone during which time the relationship between the girls and Lord Mansfield took shape. Then the script went to HBO where the love affairs of the girls were developed. This included creating the fictional young Davinier and Lord Mansfield’s relationship with him. I also decided to use the Zong case instead of the Somersett case.
In 2009, I formally teamed up with producer Damian Jones and together, we took the project and my screenplay to the BFI. The screenplay I brought back to England, therefore already had most of the actual screenplay elements you would recognize from the finished movie. The BFI came then on board to push our project towards production with both of us on board.
In late 2009, they financed further drafts of “Belle and Bette” from me which I delivered while Damian looked for a director. Belle was a great project with a great script that had development financing all the way through. It never languished and was never abandoned unlike so many lesser projects that fell by the wayside during that financial crisis.
By 2010, the content of the script was there, but it needed a final edit and polish to pull it together which would focus it. The issue was what should be cut out or pushed back? Each producer had a point of view. The girls? The Zong subplot, even slaves in the water? I tried to get consensus, but I was increasingly ill. I had been fighting breast cancer, I was not expected to survive since 2007 and in June 2010, I left. Again my script was not abandoned. In August, 2010 Amma Asante came on board. Our paths never crossed, but she was specifically contracted to do one draft and a polish of my screenplay “Belle and Bette” so there was creative continuity. The numerous sworn notarized chain of title documents in this movie provide absolute clarity on this issue. As does the content of the screenplay. That same script’s name was later shortened to Belle.
Scott: One of the challenges of doing an adaptation of a real life character is knowing what content to omit and what to retain for the story. What was that process like for you? Were there any narrative elements you really tried or wanted to include in the final story, but at the end of the day had to cut due to filmmaking considerations?
Misan: The themes I wanted to explore guided me in what aspects I wanted to keep. The Zong judgment was in 1783 when Dido (born 1761) was 22 years old, Lady Mansfield died in 1784, Elizabeth married in 1785 when Dido was 24 and lost contact with Dido who remained at home, and Dido married in 1793 aged 32 after Lord Mansfield’s. I have conflated these disparate elements into one time period in order to explore all the conflicts that are inherent in the person of Belle more fully. So we look at the role of class, gender, race belonging, love, and the central theme that ties all these together — the worth or value of a human being, both in money and in self respect. I then fictionalize what is necessary to explore this more fully. I like to kick the tires. So I made Belle an heiress and Elizabeth poor. This shakes up all our preconceptions of the race, and class.
The story I wanted to tell guided me in what I wanted to discard. The central love story of the film and it’s hero, John Davinier is a fiction created by me. The real Davinier was a French steward. I wanted a Romantic Jane Austen hero who is an Agent of change. So I discarded the real Davinier and created a young passionate idealistic vicar’s son newly returned to the area. He comes to Kenwood as a potential law pupil for Lord Mansfield. He challenges the status quo, first by questioning why Dido doesn’t eat with the family, then by bringing up the Zong judgment and finally by developing romantic feelings for Dido. Lord Mansfield banishes him from Kenwood. But Elizabeth needs to find a husband so must come out in London and she won’t go without Dido. Dido therefore finds herself out of the safe controlled Kenwood and out in the real world where she meets him again.
There is very little in the historical record about Belle, so almost everything we know about her is in the script and it’s very little. Much of what is now accepted as truth is, in fact, fiction I created for dramatic purposes. The vast majority of what is in the script is fiction. For example, I was looking for a symbol of her exclusion which wasn’t Cinderella-like — cleaning the kitchen, and so forth. I came upon the Hutchinson diary entry which said a black came in after dinner. We don’t know why she didn’t attend that dinner. She might have been kept away because they wanted to protect her from him — he seems to have been a horrible racist. She might have been busy. There is no evidence she didn’t usually dine with company. That is a creative decision I made. This fiction of my screenplay is now accepted as though it was historical fact. It really isn’t.
Tomorrow in Part 3, Misan delves into her Jane Austenesque take on the story for Belle.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
Misan is repped by Independent Talent Group.
Twitter: @MisanSagayFilm.
For an interview with the movie’s director Amma Asante, go here.
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