Now, David, for our listeners and those in the audience who might not have seen the film yet, can you just outline the story of pressure for us?

Well, on June the 5th, 1944, the invasion, the biggest maritime invasion in history, was due to take place.

And the Allied forces were going to cross the Channel and try to at least shorten, if not end, the war.

And James Stagg, who was head of the Allied Meteorological Unit, I don't think that actually exists as an acronym, but anyway, he was in charge, and...

He anticipated, because he and the European meteorologists were way ahead of the game as far as understanding the power of the jet stream, of these powerful, powerful currents coming in from west to east, anticipated massive storms on the 5th.

And Stagg, against all the advice of the American meteorologists, stood his ground, and Stagg was a terse.

slightly taciturn personality, but with a huge and subtle integrity, which is what I loved about him.

What did you have to kind of bring into the story and make it different?

The war would have gone

on for ages, and probably hundreds of thousands of lives would have been lost.

I knew nothing about Stag.

I had a sort of broad, sort of vague understanding that D-Day could have been different days.

It's actually been fascinating.

huge

decision in a tiny room.

So this globally influential decision was made within this small room.

So I thought if I hold the whole of the action within that room in the stage play, that could incrementally increase the tension and pressure.

So the minute you meet the film, I was determined to think of it as an opportunity and not a restriction, how to expand that but maintain the tension that you'd achieved in a small room.

And I think the main elements were the degree of responsibility, the scale of responsibility and meeting some of those people who the powers that be were responsible for and exposing the implications, the monumental potential implications of failure if it had gone wrong.

all of which is very difficult to do in the stage play.

One was, can you tell us a bit more about Stag and his life as he lived with his, hopefully his son and his wife as he grew older? And secondly, was there how much fact and how much fiction? Is there any bits that the films dialed up that were a bit more fictional just for the sense of

There are wide open spaces, there are unknowns, and I'd love to know how, you know, how did you want to shape those, particularly in, in those understandings of character? Like, where do you kind of set off and decide I'm filling in these blanks?

Well, the first contrast was between the power and energy of Eisenhower contrasted with the quiet reserve of Stagg.

And then you complete the triangle with a driver and a PA of Eisenhower who has, um, a conversational intimacy that betrays her role.

So there is an interdependency between those two, and therefore, because she has that access to Ike, she equally has access to Stagg, and it becomes a triangle.

And these two people, uh, um, Stagg and Kay, discover that they have a huge amount they can do for each other as well.

Uh, what do you hope they get out of it in the cinema with a room full of people?

A, a contrast between the intimacy and the importance of the decisions these, this group of people made, the work they put in, these very contrasting characters made in, in, in communicating with each other towards that end, and equally juxtaposed with the scale of responsibility and risk that the world was taking to exercise the biggest maritime invasion in history.

If you can get that contrast and feel that it resonates and is still contemporary, which I believe it is-

So when did you realise that that could become this really compelling drama?

Well, it's a very good question.

It's two questions, really, because I could bore you all by defining those two systems of meteorology and then we'd be here for a very long time.

But at some point during this 40 minutes, I will tell you about it.

But originally what happened was that the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh were after a story about an unsung Scottish hero.

And the English theatre director John Dove, who's an old friend as well, We started researching and he rang me up one morning and said, have you ever heard of James Stagg? And I said, nope.

And started researching and from that point it was completely irresistible because as I've said to people, you know, that I'm a sucker for these heroes on the sidelines of history.

Take it, take it.

Mm

...

they paid her less.

They paid Joy Clark less.

She, she had to pretend she was doing a completely different job to get into the hut that was interpreting the data, uh, you know, um, uh, on the computer.

And, uh, and similarly with Kay Summersby, yes, she could open the bonnet of, of Ike's car and mend, you know, as a very qualified mechanic.

She was a confidante.

David and Anthony, what do you hope audiences take away from this film about D-Day, about uncertainty, about leadership, and of course, about pressure once they've seen the film?