All throughout this season, Lee Knight’s A Friend of Dorothy has stuck with me. The first time that I watched it, it felt like so much of Knight’s script was catered directly for someone like me–the exploration of queer identity, discovering the performing arts, the Miriam Margolyes of it all. In his directorial debut, Knight has already established himself as a director to watch with a story of empathy, unexpected love, and how art is passed down from generation to generation.
I met Knight this summer at Indy Shorts when he was awarded with the Directorial Debut Award for his work on the film. We spoke for a bit after the ceremony about the state of the world, and how art is something that we need in the darkest of times. It resonates one way in the moment and then will feel entirely different once we get to the other side,
“I think when you’re making art that is very truthful and connected to what’s important to you, people are then drawn to the work,” Knight says. “It feels quite special.”
A Friend of Dorothy centers on an unlikely friendship. When Alistair Nwachukwu’s JJ kicks his football over a high garden fence, he knocks on the door to retrieve it, but not before Miriam Margolyes’ Dorothy asks for his help. She is following her doctor’s orders and eating her daily dash of prunes, but she can’t open the can. When she is in the kitchen, he lingers over to her bookshelf and finds it bursting with plays and books about drama–a painting of a bare-chested, lithe man sprawling backwards hangs over the fireplace as if standing guard over the sacred texts. Day after day, JJ returns to Dorothy’s flat to read and expand his mind while her heart lifts again thanks to the company. At the start of our conversation, Knight explains the first of several coincidences.
“This was inspired by mine and my husband’s elderly friend named Shirley who passed away a couple of years ago,” he says. “In the film, Dorothy says, ‘I’ve been collecting plays for, my goodness, well over 50 years.’ We lived in Covent Garden alongside her, so she supported the Donmar Theatre as a patron. That patronage carried on with me and my husband, so we’d go to all the opening nights. Shirley was obsessed with the director Michael Grandage, so I wrote into the film that the theater Dorothy supported [featured] Michael Grandage when he was at the Donmar.
I went to the Almeida Theatre to see Alistair, who plays JJ in the film, in Alan Hollinghurst’s Line of Beauty. I have never met Michael Grandage, and Alistair introduced me to him and he told me that he loved the film. I told him about Shirley and I admitted that Miriam, in the film, is talking about him. And he looked at me and said, ‘I remember Shirley Woodham.’ He told me that he cast Alistair in the play because he saw A Friend of Dorothy. He told me right to my face, and it was the craziest full circle moment that I got to meet him and tell him that the film was inspired by Shirley’s love of him. How magical is that?”
I mentioned that the film’s kindness burrowed itself into me in an unexpected way. It almost feels like they acknowledge us in a comforting way. There are absolutely no similarities between these two people. She’s older, he’s younger. He’s Black, she’s white. He’s more reserved, she’s more outgoing.
“You find these characters at a time in their life where they need companionship or they need to feel seen,” Knight explains. “That’s exactly why I think it’s so reciprocated and so in unison, because they see each other, despite any differences in their lives or age. They see each other so purely.”
In their first interaction, Dorothy learns that JJ doesn’t know who Judy Garland is–a notion shocking to many of us of a certain age (I’m shaking my cane just at the thought…). So many fans of theater, film, and the arts are aware of her legacy, but you have to think about how closed off JJ’s life at home might be. His experience growing up wouldn’t have The Wizard of Oz only on television at Christmas time like it was for so many of us that grew up in the ’80s and ’90s (or even earlier). Seeing JJ beginning to learn that history is quite thrilling.
“I think that part of the screenplay really links to that theme of inheritance, which goes along with Matthew López’s play, The Inheritance,” he says. “That piece is about knowing our past in order to move forward, and not only is Miriam’s character getting JJ to read López’s text, but she’s showing that he needs to express his authentic self. Her Dorothy knows that it will help him. That lesson who Judy Garland is and that cultural thing is certainly reflective of some gay men JJ’s age. I am surprised at how many people don’t know who the Spice Girls are or who Gloria Estefan is. It is a lighthearted moment of just showing that he is so new to anything and he hasn’t been surrounded by any gay or queer culture at all. His worldview wouldn’t include The Wizard of Oz. Before he knows who Martin Sherman is and what Bent is all about, he has to know about Judy.”
Sherman’s Holocaust drama, Bent, is included in Knight’s film, and I revealed that I used a monologue from that play to get into drama school when I was in college. Knight has his own connection to the text, but JJ taking that play home reinforces the breadth of queer plays out there that are waiting to be discovered. Knight takes it one step further by considering what that word might mean in the context of JJ’s upbringing. Does he view it like other slurs he’s heard from his mates growing up?
“That work had a profound impact on me, and I came to it quite later in life,” Knight admits. “I read it in the last five years or so, and I worked with Martin Sherman on his re-working of it. I tend to try and weave things in without even realizing it sometimes. It’s that word–the word “bent” is something that JJ would only ever hear in a negative way. When he sees it on a play cover, he suddenly feels seen, but not in a frightening way. It’s something that he would’ve heard in the changing rooms of football practice, and now he’s seeing it in literature.”
Another coincidence for Knight comes in the moment when JJ sees the plays on Dorothy’s shelf. You can feel his heart beating in his ears are he glances at the titles, terrified that Dorothy will catch him. When he feels comfort in her presence, though, it’s like Dorothy opening the door to a Technicolor Oz. A world of possibility is now open before him.
“Let me tell you something that I’ve never told anyone,” he teases. “When we were making this film and having the most euphoric time of my life, I woke up one morning and suddenly remember that when I met my husband, who I met when I was at 19 and in the closet, I was going to a weekend drama school. I wasn’t really comfortable with who I was, and I had ordered prospectuses to RADA but would never, ever dream of auditioning. I’d hidden the prospectuses under my bed. When I met my husband, Syrus [Lowe], he asked me what I was doing about becoming an actor, because he knew that that’s what I wanted to do. He told me that if I wanted to be an actor that I needed to go to drama school–does any of this sound familiar? He gave me a box of all these plays of monologues speeches and he gave me his acting coach’s number. I didn’t think about that while I was making this film, but I randomly remembered during filming like it was my subconscious jumping forward and mirroring what Syrus did for me.”
Dorothy’s home is a haven for the arts, and Knight was careful in the comfortable construction of it. Every time I view Knight’s film, I think about the weight on JJ’s shoulders. His family doesn’t know who he truly is, and one might think about how artificial his living space might be. Sports posters on the wall–maybe a scantily clad girl looking at the camera suggestively–while plays and gay literature is tucked tightly away. Think about his walk to Dorothy’s flat. With each forward step he takes, the more his body relaxes.
“I lived through Margaret Thatcher’s Section 28, so I never had that kind of experience,” Knight says. “I think what JJ sees on those shelves resonates with him so much that if anyone knew that he was interested in it, or that he was interested in a play called Bent, it’s the judgement and fear of being a vulnerable teenager in a certain culture or certain environment that jeopardizes your masculinity. I wanted the camera to really be on him, and I wanted to feel every breath. He doesn’t even want Dorothy to see it at first–there’s even fear of her walking back into the room when he is there for the first time. What does that reveal about him, his interest in specific material? Her house is so full of history and full of things that she’s collected over so many years that no one has shown interest in anymore. If we flip it and think she then has someone in her house who suddenly and completely sees her history, it reminds us why gay and queer men feel so comfortable around older women. It’s not dangerous. I think friendships with men, when you’re in the closet and gay, is a bit dangerous because if they get a whiff of femininity or softness, you’re in trouble.”
Knight got emotional when thinking about an interaction he had in Naples, Florida when he accepted an award ont he film’s behalf. A Friend of Dorothy is about friendship, but it’s also about knowing that you’re being seen for who you are–your most authentic self. Dorothy lights up as much as JJ does, and Margolyes delivers a heartwrenching monologue towards the end about feeling forgotten.
“I met a lot of older people at the festival where we won, and a lot of men and women came up to me to tell me stories about how the film really spoke to them,” Knight says. “There was one lady that worked as an usher at the venue, and she is 87–the same age of Dorothy. Her name is Claire, and she told me that the monologue felt like she was speaking. I held her hand, and I asked her for a photo. I say this with all honesty that that is more important than any award. I introduced her to one of my producers, and it just hit me that she was the same age as Miriam’s character.
A lot of older people are lonely. People aren’t checking in on them when they need them the most. Shirley told me and my husband once that she used to hide gay men in the garden during the war. She said, ‘You will never understand what it means to someone like me to have two men look after me and be there for me.'”
