
Conclave is one of the most celebrated films of the year, a box office hit for a film of its size, a fixture on year-end best lists, and has scored dozens of award nominations. Based on the best-selling book by Robert Harris, it is the story of a cardinal who uncovers a scandal involving the late pope and the candidates to replace him in a fraught nominating process. Starring Academy Award Winner Ralph Fiennes and directed by Academy Award Winner Edward Berger and adapted for the screen by Peter Straughan who is best known for his 2011 screenplay for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy among many other excellent scripts. His work here balances some pretty heavy themes while being a very entertaining experience all laid out in a taut screenplay. Straughan recently spoke to Immersive via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
Are you a religious person?
I was born Catholic, so I’m from a Catholic background, but I guess I stepped away in my late teens. It was funny reading the book; it was one of the things that made me want to do it was my background. I sort of feel like I’ve got one foot in that world and one foot outside. It felt like an interesting place to be in relation to the film.
It gives you a good perspective because you can take an insider-outsider view of that world.
I think so. My mother was very Catholic, so it kind of feels like home to me in a way. I felt very comfortable in that world. It felt very recognizable. I guess no longer being a believer also gives you a more objective sense.
Tell me about reading the book for the first time. What grabbed you about the book?
I think Robert Harris is a really beautiful writer, very elegant, smart, intelligent and the book is gripping and propulsive. It works like a political dilemma on one level. I read it in one sitting. You’re in an ancient and spiritual world and then the modern world jumped into it. I found that interesting.

Excellent. What kind of challenges did you have? The written word is different from a movie, so what was your approach to making it more of a cinematic experience?
It’s interesting because I think one of the things that’s built into Catholicism is a kind of theatricality. The film is in some ways like theater. There’s a stage where people are in front of the audience performing and they have their masks on. Then there are the wings for the backstage where people are doing the horse-trading and the massacre where you see who they really are.
I kind of had this idea that the trajectory of the film was to the breaking down of that wall. When that comes down, which I think is probably the scene where Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) is exposed, you think, okay, all the dirty secrets are out open now and it can never go back to the way it was before. There’s a lot of tension between the old and the new and the secular and the spiritual.
I identified with Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) who has a crisis of faith. I thought he was an interesting protagonist…
I mean it was kind of his character. That was big for me. I loved the down but not out element. A little bit defeated, a little bit bruised, a little bit tired, a little bit worn down by life, but he hasn’t given up yet. I always find that attractive.
What kind of research did you do much research on the church outside of the text of the book?
We went to Rome for a little while. We had a religious advisor and some other people involved with the church. There was a literacy advisor who was there on set the whole time as well. Robert had done a fantastic job with the research from the book. So a lot of the heavy lifting had already been done.

Nice. What was it like working with Edward Berger? Can talk a little bit about that collaboration.
This is going to be so boring. It’s always more fun when there’s some drama, but it was a great experience for me. We wanted to do something together for a while. We have the same agents and we’ve been trying to meet, then this opportunity came along and it was just a very straightforward, very happy process from the beginning.
I don’t normally do this, but I ended up being on set and that was thanks to Edward. He was there talking through the scenes with me and even talking with the actors with me, which again, a lot of directors wouldn’t be comfortable with that at all. He’s a fantastic collaborator.
Were you making changes as the film progressed?
Kind of fine-tuning. Nothing major, but it was a nice luxury to have, which we don’t always have. We would rehearse and block the scene, and sometimes we’d think maybe we could lose, move, or alter a line a little bit. It was like fitting the scene with the actors because they’re there in front of you running through them. So that’s a really enjoyable and useful process to go through.
Were there any sort of huge changes from the book to the script?
We made some adjustments… We actually experimented with some different beginnings on some adjustments to the ending and then largely went back to earlier drafts, to be honest. We sort of played with things and then thought it was working before, let’s go back to that. There were a few new scenes that just to kind of help to fill that structure in a way.
From Cardinal Thomas Lawrence’s perspective, although he has troubles with his faith, he’s essentially a believer thinking about what things would he see as possibly being signs. So we put a few of those little beads on the chain. Like the turtle that appears in the Vatican, some would see it as a random occurrence but if you are looking for a sign there it is.

Do you have any favorite scenes in the movie?
The night scene on the staircase where the three cardinals discuss doing tactical voting. I really like that scene. It feels like the essence of the film, which is on the one hand these are religious men and on the other hand it’s kind of like a secular election. There’s a sort of paranoid aspect to it as well. They’re quite nervous the whole time.
How much of a touch point were seventies political thrillers? Edward had mentioned this…
Very much so. Films like All The President’s Men… the kind atmosphere of those films where it’s not like someone’s going to kill someone, but there’s a sense of tension and paranoia. I like that after a certain point in the film, none of these men trust each other anymore and nobody knows who to believe or which side to be on. I think those masterpieces of political paradigm from the seventies were inspiring.
Conclave is available to stream and is playing at select theaters.