After doing films like Pride & Prejudice and Pirates of the Caribbean, Keira Knightley enjoyed being a part of Alan Turing’s tale in The Imitation Game. She says Joan Clarke was a fascinating person and every woman should look up to her
Do you feel more responsible while playing a real characterIJ
I think there are always questions of morality when you make a drama out of something. It’s never going to be completely accurate but it is always something that you go, ‘Can we make it as close as possibleIJ’ You do always try and I think you could get a lot closer if this was The Joan Clarke Story. You could make a film about her because she’s fascinating, but it isn’t that film, so you always have to choose what you’re focussing on. The focus in this is Alan and you have to use whatever mechanism you can to further that.
Morally, I think there’s always a question over it but as an actor you have to be part of the drama. I think the only thing you can do it just be open about the fact that this is a fascinating person, and that everyone should look up to her and learn about her. All characters in this are fascinating. The secrecy around the work that they did during the war was incredible — and the fact is that none of them had spoken about it. It was classified as secret until the 90s. So for Joan and the rest of them, you do this extraordinary thing, you have this enormous impact on the whole world and you stay absolutely silent about the entire thing pretty much all your life. Even when it was declassified, when people went round, trying to get testimonies from them, they found it really difficult to actually make them talk.
Tell us about Bendict Cumberbatch, your co-star in The Imitation Game.
I loved our scenes together in The Imitation Game. But my favourite moments were those we shared off-screen, like when we snuck outside and illicitly smoked cigarettes. Benedict is a lovely actor to work with. He is constantly curious, always up for trying things and looking to make a scene better. The only problem is that if it were up to Benedict we would still be shooting the film. There are a million different ways of playing a scene and he wants to explore them all.
You first worked with Benedict Cumberbatch on Atonement. Was it good returning to that relationshipIJ
It’s always lovely to work with people you’ve worked with before because you just have that lingo and that quick, easy rapport — particularly if you’ve had a lovely time working together. You can instantly snap into something. We’re mates and we’ve sort of been mates since then, so it was nice playing the kind of friendship between Joan and Alan with a friend because you instantly can tap into that energy. He was definitely attached when I got the script and he was a huge reason to pursue it. I thought it was brilliant casting.
Benedict Cumberbatch described the experience of shooting at the real Bletchley Park as ‘ghostly’. Do you agreeIJ
Yeah, it was. If you’re doing anything like that and you go to the actual place, you always feel a bit like that but particularly because it’s not the big tourist attraction that perhaps it should be, in a funny kind of way. Even though it’s so close to london, I’d never thought of going. For some reason it hasn’t quite permeated. I think, again, it’s relatively recently that it’s all come to light and possibly you haven’t had the number of people writing the books and being as interested as you will, but it’s definitely worth a visit.
How is he enjoying his new-found star statusIJ
He has worked hard for his achievements. He is really enjoying his success. He is 38 and has wanted this for such a long time. More importantly, his love for acting is something I haven’t seen in anyone else. He has found the one thing in life he is singularly passionate about and he is making the most of it. As for his many admirers, his so-called ‘Cumberb***hes’, I think he rather enjoys the attention despite being a little bemused.
How did you get involved in the projectIJ
As soon as I heard that they were doing the film of it, I thought, ‘Oh, if there is a part, I’d love to get involved,’ not knowing exactly what they were going to focus on. I just wanted to be a part of it.
When I first got the script, I loved it but actually the role of Joan was a lot smaller in the initial script. I said ‘yes’ to that.
How closely does The Imitation Game stick to the real eventsIJ
The film deviates somewhat, in Joan’s story, from the truth of what happened. I think the truth of it, and you get the essence of it in the story, is that she was absolutely up against it, being a female mathematician at that point, to get a seat at the table that she should have been at.
She was indeed Alan Turing’s fiancée, but actually that wasn’t how she got to Bletchley. They did recruit a lot of people for Bletchley like that, with the crossword, and I think that the writer and all of us felt like that was such an amazing and weird way to get people in. That is absolutely incredible. That’s not how she got there; it was actually her Oxford professor that put her forward for it.
That makes her story even more incredible — she had this top Oxford professor who was saying to the people at Bletchley, ‘You need this woman,’ and it still took her a year of doing much more of the secretarial work to get into the room that she should have been in, with Alan and the other code breakers. Then, once she was doing the job that she was meant to do, with all the guys doing the same job, she was paid a fraction of what they were. That’s still the feminist argument of today — it’s about equality, equal pay and getting a place at the table. As much as it is obviously better now, it’s still a conversation that needs to be had.
Did Joan Clarke receive any recognition for the work she did on EnigmaIJ
She did get the MBE but I don’t think that was really brought to public attention. I haven’t read the very famous book that Enigma, the 2001 film, is based upon, but I am sure she’s within that because how could she not beIJ
It seems surprising that there haven’t been more films about this.
That’s the thing that I remember when I read this article about it. I instantly thought, ‘Is somebody making a film of thisIJ’ Of course, I always think like that but this story was just extraordinary.