Could Olivia Colman Play Truman Capote?
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Rob Roth had read the The Andy Warhol Diaries many times before he picked up a new copy to bring on a much-dreaded cruise. Suddenly he got caught on something he’d never noticed before. “It says, ‘Went to Truman’s apartment, got eight good tapes for play.’ That’s it. One line. It just hit me like, wait, tapes? Play? And kind of surprised that it never landed on me before,” he recalls.
That sentence launched Roth, an artist and director, on a search that eventually led him to 80 hours of audio and 8,000 transcript pages of discussion between Andy Warhol and Truman Capote. And from there, he created a play. WARHOLCAPOTE: A Non-Fiction Invention—out now—is the words passed between the two greats, brilliantly constructed by Roth. It captures each as they neared the ends of their lives, well into careers that cemented them as two of the most brilliant minds of the century.
“I listened to the tapes. I chose sections of their conversation that I thought were interesting and I did something that they both did in their art,” he says. “They took real things and made it art. Andy took a real picture of Marilyn Monroe, filtered it through his imagination and it came out as the Marilyns. Truman took the real murder of a Kansas family, the Clutter family, and filtered it through his imagination, and it came out In Cold Blood. And I took their real words, filtered them through my imagination, and it came out WARHOLCAPOTE.”
How did the tapes lead you to write this play?
The first five, or six, or seven 90-minute cassettes were just Andy recording at a dinner party or at a museum opening. And Truman was there. I could hear Truman on the tape sometimes, but there were 100 voices on the tape. It wasn’t them talking about a play, it was just Andy hanging out with Truman. There were some funny things that they said to each other on there, which made me giggle, but nothing that made me think, ‘What were they talking about?’ This isn't a play. The tapes, I should say, were undated, unnumbered. They came to me in no order.
On one tape, it was just the two of them. I could hear the thump, thump, thump of disco music so, I think they were at Studio 54 in the VIP room. Suddenly, Andy says, ‘Truman, we should work together.’ And Truman says, ‘Oh really? What should we do?’ And Andy says, ‘We should write a Broadway play.’ My hair stood up. I was like, oh my God, they're actually talking about it. A they went on to talk about it, they had some silly ideas like saying it should be about gay cosmonauts in a space capsule that crashes to earth. Silly joke things.
Then Truman said, ‘Andy, let’s be serious. If we’re going to write a play, what should it be about?” And Andy said, ‘Well, can’t I just tape you, and can’t the edited tapes be the play?" Truman said, ‘That’s exactly what w’'re going to do because the finished play will be both real and imagined.’ I actually screamed and Patrick, my husband came. I was like, Oh, my God. They gave me the directions on the tapes for what to do, which was crazy.
Why do you think these are two people who we continue to be fascinated with so long after they've died?
What they left behind work wise is stupendous. Andy’s visual sensibility, he was so far ahead of us. In a way, his artwork is the invention of Photoshop. He layered things on top of each other, but he just did it manually. He was just ahead of the game, ahead of us.
Truman left his words. He’d give you such feelings from the way he arranged the words on the paper, Andy said. In addition to what they left behind, the two of them were extremely unusual men, both visually unusual and unusual in their personalities. I think that is another reason why we're so fascinated by them. And in terms of gay culture, they were two out gay men, very, very early in gay people coming out and being seen. And they were very seen.
Is the play being produced?
It’s been produced at A.R.T. in Boston. Now, we’ll see what happens. Whether there’ll be another production. I’m hoping for the West End. I’ve written a television limited series based on the play. I've worked really, really hard to get this far and to get their words out there in the world. Now I’m going to leave them out there for a little bit and see what comes of it. I’m very hopeful that the play will be done in many different productions around the world over time. Andy and Truman aren’t going to be less famous as time goes on, they’re going to be more famous.
Do you have any thoughts on future casting?
Andy and Truman, they were so smart, they were so funny, they were so sad. And their words can be read by anybody, really. I think women could play Andy and Truman. I could see Meryl Streep and Olivia Colman. It could be younger people like Julio Torres and Cole Escola [who performed the play in September at a New York Public Library event]. I think it’s wide open. It doesn’t need to be older white men necessarily, and I kind of love that.
I've read everything Truman’s written and sometimes I’m sad that there isn’t more, but it can always be reinterpreted and there’s always so much more to explore.
I’m endlessly fascinated by the two of them. When I got the books, actually holding a book with my name on the cover with their names was really emotional. I sat down and cried and it was a big deal to have gotten it done.
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