The process of the way Mike Leigh, the director, works is that it is always an investigation. Part of the rehearsal process is an investigation in researching everything you possibly can about the character that exists. Also, at the same time with Mike Leigh, you are growing a character, that you are building organically for the use of improvisation. You go off and you work this out and you create this human being. So, that is, in a nutshell, is what you do with a Mike Leigh filming. He always works with improvisation and building a character from nothing. But in this case, the two times that he worked on films that characters have existed, you have to join up the research and what your finding out with what the actual material is presenting and building a character to fit that. So, the film is made in the rehearsal process.

Yeah, I think it was discovering – really Mike Lee would be the man that would break through something like this – was discovering that we were dealing with a character that was a mass of contradictions. A character that could be both kind and mean. He could be both very amusing and then non communicative. He could be unpleasant, he could be a grumpy old grouch, and then he could be a very kind person So, all of these amazing contradictions rather then them being a barrier or an impediment. Once we broke through and realized that that was his essence – only with a man of Mike Leigh’s breadth of imagination would you be able to pursue that and take it to the 8th degree. I mean, and also if anything, one specific moment that I shall never forget was it turned out that Turner, in his 60’s, had himself lashed to the mast of a sailing ship in a storm so that he could see what the sea looked like and what the experience was. He then went on to paint one of his great paintings. So Mike had me lashed up on a mast and of course it wasn’t at sea because it would have been too dangerous. They did fire out of water canons massive amounts of snow and buckets of water so we can recreate that moment. That is a moment I shall never forget and I don’t advise it as a pastime. As they say on the television, “We encourage you children, do not try this at home.”

Well, I think you always - if you are investigating a character from history that only told you so much about his life - you are always going to have to use imagination and dramatic license, to push the envelope and take the little pointers from the information you’ve got to create the psychological makeup and the emotional character of it. We were always very mindful in adhering to what it was delivering. It’s not a documentary; it’s a drama so we went with the creative process of fleshing out that massive important part that isn’t in the biographies. There is a lot of conjecture of what he was like, but no specifics. So it was our job to present a human being rather than an academic polemic.