Florian Zeller, playwright, filmmaker and magnet for acting greats: ‘I don’t write what people like, but what they could like’

Florian Zeller, 46, has been triumphing for nearly 30 years in what he does — but he still feels like a beginner. He began writing novels in the 2000s, and soon won the Interallié Prize, one of the six most important literary honors in France. He then made the leap to theater, writing for world’s oldest active company, Comédie-Française, before making a radical shift into drama, addressing different forms of familial trauma with The Father, The Mother, and The Son, one of contemporary theater’s most-performed trilogies. “Every step that I have taken in my career has made me new to something, once again. I like not knowing everything and exposing myself to the unknown,” he says.

That same impulse led him to send a script for the film adaptation of The Father to Anthony Hopkins, an actor he had never met, and who Zeller would wind up directing in his cinematic debut, which won him an Oscar for best adapted screenplay and netted Hopkins his second Oscar for best actor. Thrust into notoriety, Zeller’s work — not just his three most popular plays, but the 15 projects he has written in total — have now been staged in nearly 50 countries.

Paradoxically, Zeller places a high value on keeping everything under control. He plans ahead for interviews, preferring not to have his photo taken, and gently reprimands anyone who breaks the peace of the still-closed bar of Madrid’s Ritz Hotel, where our conversation takes place. “I have trouble letting things happen without controlling them,” he admits. He speaks slowly, pondering his answers, and leans over the table when an obvious passion for storytelling overwhelms him. We’re speaking during a break in the filming of his new movie, Bunker, which stars Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, his first-ever original script written for the big screen. It also includes a significant portion in Spanish, a language he does not speak.

“It’s been an intense, honest and beautiful experience,” says the author. “I truly love them, I really admire [Bardem and Cruz]. They’ve been fearless, exploring intimate territories, emotional territories, and they have been very brave doing it as a couple, because it’s not so easy. Yes, it has been one of the happiest, most intense and emotionally gratifying experiences of my life. They are both extraordinary actors, there’s no doubt, but they are also lovely people.”

It is his third time directing a film, after having followed The Father with an adaptation of The Son — which was much less successful than the trilogy’s first installment. He wrote Bunker specifically for the famed Spanish couple. He followed a similar process in the film adaptation of The Father, during which he changed the name of the character of André to Anthony, so focused was he on getting the U.S. actor for the role, even though it seemed like an “unrealizable dream.”

Actors are one of the pillars of his writing, and he puts a face on his characters as soon as he starts typing. “I begin to write with a very specific actor in mind. I really enjoy the transformation of the desire to work with a great actor into an artistic experience,” Zeller says.

Perhaps because of that commitment, his powerful characters — who move from sanity to madness — offer a feast for performers willing to seize it. They have acted as magnets for some of the greatest actors of their time. In addition to Hopkins, Frank Langella, Kenneth Cranham, Héctor Alterio and Josep Maria Pou have all stepped into the shoes of The Father’s elderly character, who gradually loses himself to dementia. Isabelle Huppert, Gina McKee and Aitana Sánchez Gijón have played the partner, mother and housewife who falls into depression when her children leave home in The Mother. And in the role of the parents dealing with their teenage son’s cruel mental health challenges in The Son, Yvan Attal, Amanda Abbington and John Light have taken turns.

Zeller’s work address social issues, but always from an intimate perspective. Because for Zeller, “good theater is about the human experience.” “I don’t like political theater. Art is a place to posit questions. There are different voices, and it is not the role of the playwright to say who is right and who is not,” he explains. Nor does he feel responsibility for the social impact of his work, despite the fact that it touches on delicate subjects: “The only thing I feel responsible for is to explore up to what point we can feel empathy for others. For me, the greatest ambition is trying to make people feel connected to themselves. And that all comes down to empathy.”

There are two very clear influences in his work: David Lynch and Harold Pinter. Both can be easily traced in his plays — Lynch’s dreamlike quality and Pinter’s use of silence (“silence,” “pause,” “long pause” appear regularly in Zeller’s trilogy). “Pinter taught me that what matters is not only what is said, but also what is not said, what lies behind the words. A character can say no and mean yes,” he explains.

Zeller’s stories plunge into the depths of the human mind. Form constructs the character — or rather deconstructs it. It is common for the audience, like the protagonist, never to know whether what is happening is real or not. “I am the first to be surprised at what happens,” he admits. “With The Father, for example, I wrote without knowing what it would be. I tried to place myself in a mental situation in which I really didn’t know what was going to happen the next minute. And then suddenly, a door would open, and another character would enter who I did not expect. To understand what is taking place, I have to keep writing.”

“I experience writing as a direct connection with the audience. When I write a play, I feel like I am in a theater, in front of a show that is playing out for me alone,” he continues. That’s why he builds what he calls “a system of complex architecture,” which invites the audience to be part of the show.

“I’m interested in placing them in an active position. It is an invitation for them to find their own path, to look for meaning, emotions, and I want them to actively participate in the narrative process,” he says.

That technical virtuosity, however, is not free from criticism. Some critics argue that his style can be repetitive. But he’s clear: “What it’s about is not lying to yourself and constantly thinking about the audience. For me, that’s the point of departure. It’s not about writing what people like, but what they could like.”

That explains why he is understandably possessive of his work. Despite his productions being staged around the world, he always tries to keep them “untouchable” and shielded from outside experimentation, including any changes from actors, however extraordinary they may be.

“I try to be as precise as possible, and I invite the actors to be precise with the language,” says Zeller. “What I want them to contribute is not text, it’s their intuition, their voice and their presence. Sometimes, if you have the luck to work with great actors, you can be witness to the beauty and grace that emerge through a body.”

Still, the unpredictability of theater — which he never tires of saying he loves — also causes him considerable frustration: “One day you have grace and the other day, it doesn’t work. One day the audience receives it well, the other day they don’t. One day the actors do great, the other they don’t.”

That’s not an issue in film. There, he finds greater creative control, or at least “the illusion of control.” “In The Father as a film, one of the biggest reliefs I had was editing it into my ideal version," he says. “It was exactly what I had felt in my heart. That’s what cinema is, it’s not alive and for those, like myself, who have problems with the idea of letting things flow, the illusion is very tempting.”

Zeller also finds refuge behind the screen. “Theater is the only art form in which you attend the reception of your own work. With film, you can lie to yourself. But when a play doesn’t work, it is a physical experience. You can feel, when you’re in the room, that something is wrong.” But that, too, seems to him “the beauty of theater: its truth.”

As for criticism of his films, like what he received for The Son, he prefers to insulate himself from it. “It helps me try to learn not to exist through someone else’s gaze, through someone else’s judgment. Exposing ourselves publicly to reviews and critics forces you to be clear about why you do what you do.”

Zeller says he will return to the stage after finishing his new film. And he will continue to work with a trilogy that, more than 15 years after its arrival, continues to feel “very connected.” He is not worried that it might define his career, nor does he think it limits the creativity of his future work. Is there anything left for those now iconic characters to do? To begin with, there’s the film adaptation of The Mother.

“I haven’t made it because it’s too soon, it’s too similar to The Father, but I hope to do it one day,” he says. Zeller does have one last whim to express: “In these three plays, it’s not that they’re the same characters, but they could be, and I would love to one day see the same actors performing the three plays in the same week. But only for my personal pleasure.”

The hook has been cast; surely someone will bite.

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