Taglines: Twenty years. Two people.
After one day together – July 15th, 1988, their college graduation – Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) begin a friendship that will last a lifetime. She is a working-class girl of principle and ambition who dreams of making the world a better place. He is a wealthy charmer who dreams that the world will be his playground.
For the next two decades, key moments of their relationship are experienced over several July 15ths in their lives. Together and apart, we see Dex and Em through their friendship and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. Somewhere along their journey, these two people realize that what they are searching and hoping for has been there for them all along. As the true meaning of that one day back in 1988 is revealed, they come to terms with the nature of love and life itself.
About the Production
Falling in Love with a Love Story
“The wit of David Nicholls’ writing appealed to me,” says One Day director Lone Scherfig. “But what compelled me was just how much of a real love story the piece is – and at a level you rarely come across.”
“It is a love story,” affirms David Nicholls, the author of the internationally praised bestselling 2009 novel One Day and also the screenwriter of the 2011 movie adaptation One Day. “It’s also about friendship and family, nostalgia and regret, and the way that our hopes and dreams don’t quite come true – at least, not in the way that we’re expecting them to. There is a bittersweet quality to it.
Nicholls spent two years working on the novel. “I was writing other things alongside it,” he notes. “Also, it required a lot of planning beforehand, like a jigsaw puzzle; planting seeds in one year of the story that turned into plot points in another. I had to work out what was going to happen on the many July 15ths. I didn’t write One Day as a screenplay in disguise but I love writing dialogue and fiction, so perhaps inevitably there was a filmic quality.
“Writing One Day was a real pleasure. I wrote the first half and then took a break from it for about six months; then went back to revise the first half and carried on to the second half.”
Film producer Nina Jacobson, well-versed in recognizing books’ potential as movies and shepherding them to the screen, was struck by how much One Day affected her as she read it. She says, “I fell in love with the characters. The story is very universal. These characters, Emma and Dexter, and their journey truly speak to the way in which you transform after graduating from college and living your life; who you are then, and who you are twenty years later.
“It takes us time to grow up and until we do, we can’t necessarily be with the person we’re meant to be with. That time is necessary, yet it’s also something you can’t get back. So there is a wistful tone to the story.”
Seeing the novel’s potential as a classic movie romance, she worked to secure the film rights – promising Nicholls that she would keep the story within its original British setting while he adapted the book into a feature script. “Nina has been a great champion of the story,” says Nicholls. “She is a force of nature! I’m amazed that it all came together so quickly.”
Jacobson offers, “At many studios, the inclination would be to Americanize it and not to keep the U.K. setting and keep the characters British. To me, that would have meant compromising the specificity of the book and the singularity of the characters; the setting is part of the appeal.
“We sought out creative partners whose inclination would be to not make that change.” The film was soon set as a co-production in the unique partnership of Random House Inc.’s Random House Films division and Focus Features, with the U.K.’s Film4 co-financing. The security engendered by this confirmed backing early freed up the filmmakers to concentrate on getting the movie made.
The writer had made the page-to-screen progression before, as his novel Starter for Ten became the movie Starter for 10. The narrative of One Day was more ambitious but, as Nicholls reflects, “There’s a challenge involved in trying to condense twenty years of a character’s life into a novel anyway. When you have to condense it even further, into maybe two hours of screen time, you just have to accept the fact that you’re going to lose things. Having said that, One Day is a very faithful adaptation in terms of both the mood and the tone – as well as the storytelling style.”
Jacobson clarifies, “Dex and Em are seeing each other more than that one day a year, but we are seeing them once a year. That’s how it is in the book, and in the movie as well. “With him being the writer first and last you always knew that even if you had to condense, say, three different bits of the book into two pieces of the movie, that the big themes of romance – and Dex and Em’s respective emotional and spatial journeys – would absolutely still come through.”
Talk of directors soon turned to Lone Scherfig, whose film An Education was then becoming one of the most-discussed pictures of the year, ultimately receiving 3 Oscar nominations including for Best Picture. But Nicholls and Jacobson had also seen the director’s earlier features Italian for Beginners and Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, and well remembered them.
Nicholls comments, “It was clear that the qualities she has as a director were ones that One Day was going to need; integrity, and a sense of how to modulate the highs and lows of the story.”
“Lone was our first choice for the movie,” says the producer. “You watch her films, and you see how she has an incredible command of character and of performance, and of the intimate moments between people.
“We knew that she would find the nuances in the characters and their evolution, and communicate all of that while capturing time and place – without losing sight of Emma and Dex as the essence of the story. It would be a matter of conducting the orchestra while making sure the melody didn’t get lost.”
Scherfig was prompt to commit, and just as promptly began envisioning the right lead actors with Jacobson, who was keen that “the casting of the movie should feel right on the money – given how many people read and loved the book.”
As it happens, notes Scherfig, Academy Award nominee Anne Hathaway had read the script “at an early stage. She liked Emma so much that she flew to London to talk to me and tell me why she should have the part! Anne shares Emma’s humor and strength. She is a highly experienced actress who lends huge warmth and fragility to the part, more than anyone else I can imagine.”
Hathaway muses, “If you’re lucky, you can find a story that really moves you. If you’re lucky, you can find a character who speaks to you. With One Day, I found both.”
She reports, “Nina Jacobson had sent me the book, which had been published in the U.K. but not yet in America. I read the script before I read the book. I will always remember the experience of sitting at my kitchen table and reading it – the script seemed like it was on fire, as if lit from within. I was so entertained; all these unexpected things happened throughout. I could envision the whole film so vividly. I could hear Emma’s voice, her northern English accent; I related to her, and I loved her.
“I didn’t think they were going to see any American actresses, so when I found out that Lone would be open to meeting me, I was very grateful.”
Scherfig describes Emma as “witty, insecure, hard-working, and bookish. There’s always the question that we and she are asking; is Dexter too privileged for her, is he too sel-fassured? With her vast range as a performer, Anne captures those doubts but also all of Emma’s more tenacious qualities – and her ability to see through Dexter’s façades. “Her interpretation of Emma is empathetic and nuanced. Anne’s warmth and courage as an actress are extraordinary; these are rare qualities that she shares with some of the great stars of classic British and American cinema.”
One Book
By the time the movie One Day began filming, the novel One Day was already a bestseller around the world. It had been sold for publication in 31 different languages – a rarely reached benchmark for a book these days – and would go to #1 on the bestseller lists in the U.K., Italy, and Sweden; #2 on Germany’s; and #3 on Russia’s.
When the book was first published in June 2009 in the U.K. by Hodder & Stoughton, David Nicholls’ novel was heartily embraced by reviewers and the public. Becoming a must-read, it hit #1 first on the hardcover and later on the paperback Sunday Times bestseller charts. The novel won the Galaxy National Book Award for Popular Fiction Book of the Year. To date, nearly 400,000 copies have been sold in the U.K.
One Day was published in the U.S. as a trade paperback original in June 2010 by Vintage Books, an imprint of Random House, Inc.’s Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Word of mouth had already spread across the pond, and the novel commenced a 12-week stint on The New York Times Trade Paperback Fiction Bestseller list, rising to the #4 position. There currently are 600,000 copies in print of the Vintage paperback and e-book editions.
Writing in The New York Times, Janet Maslin noted that the book had become the “no- Sweden, no-vampire fiction hit of the summer.”
Rave reviews accrued through year’s end, as The New York Times Book Review named the novel among the 100 Notable Books of 2010; Entertainment Weekly named it one of “The [10] Best Fiction [Books] of the Year,” with Henry Goldblatt citing it as “a luscious, beautiful, and ultimately devastating portrait of two soul mates;” and the book also made best-of lists from Barnes & Noble and Amazon, among others.
The latter site hosted numerous reviews from readers who had never posted one prior. Many readers confessed to have read the book in, appropriately enough, one day. Nicholls states that the book “is not autobiographical, though of course I have my own memories of the two decades that we follow Em and Dex through.
“I wanted to convey the intimacy of leafing through a photo album, and the emotions that each snapshot calls forth. In this telling, the snapshot is that one day – July 15th – of a year. You’re much the same at 23 and 43 – and yet you are so very different.”
The book has, he notes, “appealed to people both younger and older than myself. They have identified with it, and that’s been a great surprise and delight to me, as it’s quite a personal book and a personal story. But people have written to me, ‘I have my own Dexter, and the book made me get in touch with him again,’ or ‘I have my own Emma, and I’m married to her.’ I believe that people have responded to this story because there hasn’t been a years-spanning romance like this in a while.
“I hope people who have enjoyed the book will love the film as well. My two big loves growing up were books and films, and it’s always been hard to separate the two.” St. Swithin’s Day
The “one day” of the book, the film, and Dexter and Emma’s love and lives is July 15th, which is also the date of St. Swithin’s Day.
The feast day of St. Swithin (sometimes written as St. Swithun) falls every year on July 15th. Legend has it that if it rains on that day, then it will rain every day for forty days; and that if the sun shines on that day, then the weather will be beautiful for forty days. The legend is rooted in a real man; St. Swithin himself was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop at Winchester Cathedral in the ninth century AD. Although tradition dictated his being buried inside Winchester Cathedral, he was a humble man; on his deathbed, he asked if he could be buried in the churchyard so that the rain could fall on him and so that people could walk close to him. Although his wishes were initially respected, nine years after his death the body was moved to a shrine within the Cathedral. His displeasure was registered when a massive storm broke and continued for forty days. The legend began, and endures to this day.
David Nicholls adds, “I was also inspired by Billy Bragg’s fine song ‘St. Swithin’s Day,’ which I first heard back in the 1980s.”
Production on One Day began in July 2010; filming progressed through St. Swithin’s Day and into the weeks beyond.
Places df the Heart
Eight weeks of filming One Day took the cast and crew to locations in and around London, Edinburgh, and Paris through the summer of 2010; this was most appropriate, since Dexter and Emma’s story unfolds over summer days. Ultimately, the production shot at over 50 different locations.
Lone Scherfig muses, “We moved around all the time, experiencing so much, yet it was always July 15th…”
“It was a very ambitious schedule on a not-giant budget,” reflects Nina Jacobson. “Fortunately, our crew found their footing quickly. Each department met and exceeded the demands we placed on them.
“The locations we selected were part of conveying where our characters are at that moment in their life. One or both of our lead actors are in every scene, and sometimes it was a race to finish at each location in time.”
For Anne Hathaway, the peripatetic pace was welcome because “shooting on location helps you to embody the atmosphere of the scene and tell the story. I was very excited to be working in London, Paris never disappoints, and we had a great time in Edinburgh.”
In Edinburgh, the production managed the feat of getting an entire shooting crew to the top of Arthur’s Seat – 823 feet above the city – for a couple of days of filming. Some of the heavier equipment had to be transported up by helicopter, but the majority was carried up, Sherpa-style, by all hands on deck. Other Edinburgh locations included Moray Place and Parliament Square.
The England locations were numerous; the production headquartered at Ealing Studios, where such classics as The Ladykillers and It Always Rains on Sunday were made. The production also filmed at another storied studio, Pinewood Studios, the decades-long home to the celebrated Pink Panther and James Bond series; managed to secure Westminster Cathedral for a wedding sequence; filmed at the landmark Big Ben clock tower by dawn’s light; and set up shop at vivid street locations around Waterloo and Dalston.
The combination of the book’s massive popularity and the two leads’ star appeal drew heavy spectator traffic wherever the unit ventured out into the London streets. Jim Sturgess remarks, “People would come up to me and ask, ‘Is this bit in the movie?’ or ‘Who is playing so-and-so?’ This was the first time that I’d played a character who has a strong reference point to others’ imagination.”
Scherfig was intent on making London into a key player within One Day. She marvels, “London is so eclectic and full of life, and I do have a strong sense and recall of the periods we’re depicting. Throughout the 1990s, London was a highly energetic place and because Emma and Dexter live hectic lives in that era, I wanted to render the scenes quite full-on and expressionistically.
“The city and the era itself helped to define the style of the film, with small tonal and visual adjustments for each sequence and each year.”
Key members of the filmmaking team were cinematographer Benoît Delhomme, hair and make-up designer Ivana Primorac, production designer Mark Tildesley, and – reunited with the director following An Education – costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux.
In France, filming took place at the Palais Royal, for a tête-a-tête between Dexter and his mother; at the venerable Gare du Nord, arguably the busiest train station in Paris; and up and down the Canal Saint Martin, among other locations depicting two different years in the story. The first is 1990, when Dexter is spending a year living in Paris teaching English and is visited by his parents; the second is 2001, when he goes to visit Emma, now an established children’s books author who is residing in the city.
Scherfig further quantifies the differences by explaining that “Dexter’s mother’s Paris is the posh Paris; Emma’s is the bohemian Paris.”
Sturgess enthuses, “I’ve always wanted to shoot even just one scene in Paris. It’s so vividly conveyed in the book; to be suddenly standing in the streets that you’ve read about was a thrill.”
A bonus filming location for everyone – particularly the two leads – was along the Brittany coast, in breathtaking Dinard and its environs. The French town provided the locations of harbor exteriors and a shimmering seawater pool, as well as the beach La Guimorais. Although the book’s setting for Dex and Em’s holiday scenes is Greece, Jacobson comments that the production “needed to find somewhere a little closer by to where we were working overall. Dinard is incredibly romantic, and feels as exquisite and extraordinary as Greece.”
Scherfig reminds that “this is an all-summer film, and to be able to play out one of the summer sequences in Brittany added a rare beauty and softness to that particular day in our love story.”
One Day
Directed by: Lone Scherfig
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson, Jodie Whittaker, Tom Mison, Joséphine de La Baume, Patricia Clarkson, Heida Reed, Amanda Fairbank-Hynes
Screenplay by: David Nicholls
Production Design by: Mark Tildesley
Cinematography by: Benoît Delhomme
Film Editing by: Barney Pilling
Set Decoration by: Dominic Capon
Costume Design by: Odile Dicks-Mireaux
Art Direction by: Katrina Dunn, Martin Kelly, Denis Schnegg, Su Whitaker
Music by: Rachel Portman
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, partial nudity, language, some violence and substance abuse.
Studio: Focus Features
Release Date: August 19, 2011
Hits: 90
