HBO’s ‘Nightingale’ Director Elliott Lester On Working With David Oyelowo

From its grim beginning to its sobering, shocking final frame, Elliott Lester‘s Nightingale never ceases to let up. Starring Selma‘s David Oyelowo (who recently snagged a Critics’ Choice Award for his performance in the HBO movie), Nightingale follows Peter Snowden, an army vet suffering from a debilitating and violent case of PTSD that has triggered him to murder his elderly mother.

In the aftermath and days following, Peter, who works at a local grocery, slowly unravels before our eyes while awaiting the inevitable in someone discovering what he’s done. Written by Frederick Mensch, Nightingale takes a different approach in analyzing personal tragedy and mental illness through the eyes of a sole character in literal and emotional solidarity. That’s right: save for a brief interaction with a neighbor, David Oyelowo’s Peter is the only face — and his home the only location — we see onscreen for the entire duration of the film. The one-man show is intermittently broken up, however, by our protagonist’s phone calls to his former army partner, Edward, who is much more than a friend in Peter’s eyes, but, alas, is married. The rest of the film chronicles the angst leading up to Edward’s supposed visit while the neighborhood grows increasingly curious regarding the whereabouts of Mrs. Snowden.

We spoke with director Elliott Lester about what went into creating Nightingale, the unexpected buzz surrounding the tiny film, and why it has the potential to be a major contender in the TV movie category at this year’s Emmy Awards.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udw5bBitwE4]

Decider: Nightingale integrates lengthier takes following Peter around his house as well as his numerous webcam recordings. What did the rehearsal process entail?

Elliott Lester: That’s a great question. David and I took a very non-traditional approach to this. We didn’t rehearse in a classical sense of blocking out time. We only did one read-through of the script because I wanted to keep it fresh and there was no one for David to act opposite. So, it would’ve been pretty futile going through those rehearsals because there was nobody for him to bounce off of. And I was concerned if we did that, we’d lose some kind of spark in the performance. David’s approach was that he learned the entire script from front to back. We also shot in sequence, which allowed him to free himself up a little bit so the story would unfold as he was performing it. I love that. I love long takes.

I read that that film took just over two weeks to shoot, is that right? Being that David is the only actor throughout the whole film, how long did you shoot for on a given day?

It took about three and half weeks to shoot, and we did a full twelve hours a day. You know, the luxury of making a movie like this is that you take your time. You want to, and you have to, be able to do multiple takes if the movie is going to work. The other part of the film is not just in the performance, but in where are you going to put the camera and how are you going to keep the story going from the viewer’s point of view. The funny thing is, I actually needed that time to work all that out.

The film is a very different kind of post-war movie, featuring a unique, almost too-real analysis of PTSD and mental illness. How important was it for you to keep that authentic tone going into filming?

Peter’s a real character. I mean, he’s as real as anyone you’ll ever meet. In terms of the condition that he had: we hired a psychiatrist named Dr. Tony Rooney. David and myself would talk to the doctor regularly and he went through and vetted the scripts for us. From that point of view, we had to be technically correct. Peter had a condition called reaction formation, which is you could do something horrendous and then completely forget that you’ve done it or be in complete denial of it. We were definitely authentic. What we didn’t want to do was go, “Oh, look he’s a crazy person.” It’s a condition.

It was a pretty bold choice not to show the murder of Peter’s mother, or the immediate aftermath for that matter. Was it written that way in the script?

Yeah, it was. I mean, we were pretty set. Frederick Mensch, who wrote the script, [and I] were both pretty partial to that. Typically, you don’t see that. I don’t know how you felt watching Peter, but there’s certainly a sense of empathy for him. You actually like him in places even though he’s an unreliable narrator. I think that was a function of the writing. Again, I thought it’s a quite brave thing for Frederick to do.

How did you first get your hands on the script? What was your initial collaboration with Frederick?

It wasn’t a collaboration. Frederick had posted his script on a website called The Black List, run by Franklin Leonard. The script had gone on in February and it was up for three days when my producing partner Josh Weinstock read it and said, “You should read this.” I read it the following day and said, “This absolutely incredible.” And then we optioned it on a Monday and we wrapped in August. It was a swift process. The movie had a blessing around it. Only good things came to it. It was so strange. And we ended up with Brad Pitt [as executive producer], and HBO which was even more surprising.

How important it was for you, and for Frederick, to develop those off-screen characters that were very much a part of Peter’s world? Like Gloria, Mrs. Beasley, Edward, and so on?

It’s vital to Peter’s condition. All of the characters are very real for Peter. One thing that might be interesting to note is that you never hear the other side of the conversation. By virtue of the fact that the other side of the conversation wasn’t ever written. We made a decision early on that if we’re going to do it then we have to keep this thing internal because you don’t want to know which conversation is real and which conversation isn’t real. So those characters, they’re all swimming around in Peter’s head.

Nightingale is available to stream on HBO Go and HBO Now.

 

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Photos: Everett Collection