The man behind the buzzy Howards End retelling talks his inspirations and hopes for the show.
Over its nearly seven-hour running time,The Inheritancetackles everything from love to AIDS to loss toBroad City.
It’s a hugely ambitious endeavor from Lopez and director Stephen Daldry (The Hours).
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where didThe Inheritancecome from?MATTHEW LOPEZ:Well, it’s actually because ofEntertainment Weekly.
So I lived in Panama City, Florida, raised in panhandle Florida.
So I had my mom take me to see it.
I was maybe 15 or 16 and she took me one Sunday after church.
That Sunday my life changed as a result of watching that movie.
It was such a transporting experience.
I really latched onto it and I really, really fell in love with the story and the characters.
The characters most especially, I think.
I fell in love with Forster.
I felt a lot of empathy for him as a person.
Gay it up!And gay it up.
He couldn’t write truthfully.
And he didn’t think he could write if he couldn’t write truthfully.
I just sort of wanted to take one of his most beloved novels and f with it.
He felt so alive to me.
He felt so like he deserved to be in this play.
I wanted to includeHowards Endas a truth in the world as I’m doing my adaptation ofHowards End.
The frame of the play is about the writing of the play.
We avoided at all costs getting too cleverly meta about it.
I think of Charlie Kaufman’s script forAdaptation.
In part, what the play is about is the creation of the play itself.
You write a great deal about the lost generationthe men who died of AIDS in the ’80s and ’90s.
I wanted to understand them, I really wanted to.
It grieved me because there was, in my life at least, this divide between us.
In part what I wanted to do was just understand the generation.
I said, “What would I have done in this situation?
What would my reaction be?
What would my friend’s reaction be?”
it’s possible for you to hopefully write honestly about them without having had lived their life as well.
Stephen Daldry, the director of the play, is a gay man of that generation.
The play has allowed me a broader understanding of the community that I belonged to.
It has expanded my definition of what that community looks like.
It’s given me a real sense of belonging when I felt a real sense of alienation.
The play is told in two parts.
Did you ever consider cutting it purely from a marketability perspective?Yeah, sure.
I was told, “Don’t make it two parts.
Do it in four hours if you have to.
Don’t do it in six and a half.”
My attitude is always like, you’re under no obligation to produce this.
If this never gets done then so be it.
What I don’t want to do is present something that doesn’t resemble my intention.
The staging is very sparse and is basically just one big table.
Did you write it like that?
From that moment on, Stephen and I worked hand in hand to make this thing what it is.
His staging has been very influential on the further development of the play.
The play is too enormous.
The roles are too enormous to not do that.
So, I’ve learned you cannot force an actor to do a play at gunpoint.
Before Broadway, the play was staged in London.
Then in Part 2, the story gets messy and it’s consciously messy because their lives get messy.
But it also means that the storytelling is harder to block.
Why is that?Good name.
I couldn’t best it.
It sounds so Republican.
Don’t mess with perfection.
Speaking of Republicans, the play deals with the 2016 election.
The play starts in 2015.
I did have to go back and rewrite the play.
Well, what happened was I had the play written and then Trump won.
I had a talk with Stephen shortly thereafter, and we were like, we can’t ignore this.
There are also a lot of current pop culture references.
I think the play is not going to move with any further time.
What is our responsibility from one generation to another?
This play is about the gay experience specifically nestled within the queer experience universally.
But beyond that, it’s also I hope very relatable universally.
I look at the response to the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s and the ’90s.
It was a community response.
The man I sat next to had seen the show three times.
You have such fervent fans and people react so emotionally to this.
There’s a restaurant in the bar and everybody just hangs out there.
It’s very humbling and it’s very moving.
It’s a responsibility and I love that the actors also take it very seriously.
They don’t take it for granted.
Have you been approached for this to be turned into a limited series?
Is that something you’d want to do?Yeah, of course I would love to do that.
It’s definitely a very compelling idea.
But that’s further down the road and we’re not really seriously thinking about that right now.
What do you think about being compared toAngels in America?Obviously it’s flattering.
That said, they are very different plays.
I think the comparisons ultimately are superficial.
It’s in response basically to run time and structure more than anything else.
I wasn’t chasing afterAngels in America.
The debt that I have to him and the debt I have to that play is immeasurable.
But I’m writing my own story.
I was never ever trying to speak for a community.
I was never ever trying to speak even for other gay men.
I was simply attempting through investigating my favorite novel, to tell my story of my life.
