“I don’t suppose I have to say all of this,” Jodie Foster stated whereas rehearsing a scene on the set of Nyad. The movie stars Foster as Bonnie Stoll, finest pal and coach to Annette Bening’s Diana Nyad, who supplied essential help on Nyad’s mission to swim from Cuba to Florida on the age of 64. “Jodie was superb about policing my wordiness,” the movie’s screenwriter, Julia Cox, tells Self-importance Truthful now. When Cox expressed worries about making the proposed cuts, Foster replied: “I gained’t say it, however I will suppose it.”
The scene in the end didn’t make the ultimate lower of the movie, directed by Academy Award-winning documentarians Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. However one other of Foster’s solutions did: a climactic second when Bonnie dives into the water alongside Diana throughout her fifth and last try on the record-breaking swim. It took the marathon swimmer practically 4 a long time to satisfy her long-held dream. Cox is aware of how that feels: she’s spent nearly a decade herself eager about Nyad’s story. “I heard about Diana Nyad’s story when she lastly made it to the Florida Shore—spoiler alert,” she says. “There was a lovely profile of her in The New Yorker. And I bear in mind pondering, ‘This might be an awesome film.’”
Forward, Cox dives into her function movie debut—from spending time with the real-life Diana and Bonnie to addressing controversy surrounding Nyad’s swim.
Self-importance Truthful: What was it about Diana’s story that almost all fascinated you?
Julia Cox: It’s this unimaginable journey filled with thrills and particulars that had been so unusual you couldn’t make them up, from the jellyfish to the particulars of how she completes this swim to what the thoughts goes by way of on these lengthy swims. However what actually spoke to me as a author was the potential to do a very fascinating character portrait of a girl who’s ferociously self-confident, who’s difficult, who’s charismatic and bigger than life and nearly has a life drive that’s outsized for this world. Who pulls us away from bed and onto an journey and pushes us ahead in life.
After which additionally this relationship between Diana and her finest pal and coach Bonnie. They’re so fascinating as a result of they’re opposites, and but peas in a pod. They share this drive as athletes. With the ability to inform a narrative a few lived-in, grownup friendship amongst two ladies that has its ins and outs, has its factors of battle, however can be constructed on this unconditional love and this deep understanding of the opposite individual in your bones—that felt as thrilling as any of the thrilling components of the story.
The movie toes this line between being a traditional sports activities biopic and feeling actually contemporary, given who our hero is and the singularity of what she achieved. Have been there any sports activities biopics that you just regarded to for inspiration, or tropes that you just wished to keep away from in writing your personal?
I watched all the pieces from Chariots of Hearth to The Wrestler, from standard to extremely unconventional. And the best way that I used to be in a position to crack it in my thoughts was to deal with the connection, nearly the best way you’d construction a love story.
