Connect with us

Published

on

After this year’s Mercury Prize ceremony had wrapped up, Laura Mvula found herself in tears in a hotel room. Nominated for a rare third time – she has never released an album that hasn’t been shortlisted – the pressure had built up.

While Mvula never really went away, the ’80s pop-inspired Pink Noise was a return of sorts, released through Atlantic in July after she was unexpectedly dropped by former record label Sony early in 2017. A difficult period was followed by yet another when the pandemic hit, and suddenly an accolade that previously would simply have been the cherry on top of an exceptional career had become all-consuming.

On the night, the prestigious Mercury Prize went to Arlo Parks, for her debut album Collapsed In Sunbeams. “I get robbed. A lot,” Mvula tweeted afterwards, following it up with: “Mercury Prize can lose my number.” The next day, she shared a longer message on Instagram: “I really thought Pink Noise might’ve won last night… I needed it for several reasons too complex to dive into here. I don’t expect to be understood fully by the British public but try not to judge my pain… I’m just tired. Please buy the album if you can and come to a show. Many thanks. Love you.”

Laura Mvula is an ambassador for National Album Day 2021. Pic: Danny Kasirye
Image:
Mvula released her third album, Pink Noise, earlier in 2021. Pic: Danny Kasirye

A few weeks later, Mvula is feeling a lot more positive, her energy and infectious laugh lighting up a Zoom call. We are here to talk about National Album Day, for which she is an ambassador this year, and she is keen to praise the artists who have inspired her – everyone from Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and Des’ree to contemporaries such as Lianne La Havas, Little Simz and Nao, as well as the late Amy Winehouse and composer Errolyn Wallen.

She is also candid about how strongly she feels about her own record and the Mercury Prize. There is “no malice” towards Parks but she is honest about how missing out made her feel.

“I was so exhausted,” she begins. “I don’t just mean from the day, I mean from the moment I even thought about making a third record… I’d had two previous nominations so there was a sense of ‘third time round’. I allowed myself to get caught up in the noise, pardon the pun, of it all. That’s what I regret the most, is that for the first time I really started to make so many things matter to me that ordinarily have nothing to do with what I really care about.”

Mvula chuckles as she adds that she’s “mid-30s, still trying to make a living”, but it matters. It’s not often an artist is so candid about their own personal situation, but the way the industry treats female artists as they get older is no secret.

“It’s a weird thing to get used to high critical acclaim,” Mvula goes on. “There’s something bittersweet because it’s wonderful to be acknowledged as an artist who makes things people respect. That’s something I consider to be a high privilege and something I’m proud of. But at the same time, when it doesn’t necessarily translate to something tangible, that can be where it gets complicated. And [there’s a] need or desire to be visible and to have a growing audience, to not want to just have a legacy that is, ‘yes, we know of her, but oh, she never broke through’, or whatever the narratives are in my mind.”

Laura Mvula is an ambassador for National Album Day 2021. Pic: Danny Kasirye
Image:
Laura Mvula is an ambassador for National Album Day 2021. Pic: Danny Kasirye

Of the handful of artists who have been nominated three times or more, the classically trained musician is not in bad company when it comes to those who have not won: David Bowie, Coldplay, Laura Marling, Florence And The Machine, to name a few; Radiohead have a record five nominations, but no win. So clearly it speaks nothing of her talent; she won the equally prestigious Ivor Novello award for best album in 2017 – just months after being dropped by Sony – for the previous year’s The Dreaming Room, on which she collaborated with Nile Rodgers and reportedly had to turn down Prince.

But still, in that moment, it hurt. “I really yearned for it in a way that I wasn’t even ready for. When it went to Arlo, it was almost nothing to do with Arlo Parks and her music and Laura Mvula and her music, and all the other artists and the music, it became about something else.”

Laura Mvula is nominated for the Mercury Prize for the third time, for her third album Pink Noise
Image:
Pictured at the Mercury Music Prize shortlist launch earlier in 2021

She refers to recent comments made by Ed Sheeran about awards shows, which he described as “filled with resentment and hatred”. “There’s something really draining about the whole experience, and the win and the lose aspect,” Mvula admits. Her tweets after the Mercury Prize were tongue in cheek, she says, but came from a place of truth. “I guess, that was the real, unfiltered Laura. It was my rejection of all the pressure and all the nonsense and all the being pitted against one another… Here we are all desperately trying not to care. But somehow you end up caring so much.”

Back in the hotel room, Mvula’s friend and sister suggested she take her online posts down. “I just went to bed crying. I ignored them and I felt sort of more alone in that moment.” In the morning, they discussed a “pain” that many women will identify with. “We’re not supposed to say things that make us look not elegant and put together and demure and softly spoken, because anything else is just ugly,” says Mvula.

“I’m not going to lie: there was something very liberating about saying what I felt, knowing that I hold no malice in my heart at all towards Arlo or any other artists, but knowing I feel so passionately about what I do, and that me and the people who work so hard around me deserve some kind of break.” She shrugs. “That was it, really.”

Laura Mvula is an ambassador for National Album Day 2021. Pic: Danny Kasirye
Image:
The star says she has become more comfortable being ‘loud and noticed’. Pic: Danny Kasirye

She is sanguine about it all now. The reason the Mercury Prize matters is because it celebrates the album as an art-form, something Mvula feels passionately about. Pink Noise and its ’80s shoulder-padded aesthetic is a fun record, a shift from the more experimental, baroque soul of her first two albums. But making it did not come easily. “In the beginning… even making one song would have felt impossible at one stage,” she says, because she has to “really believe” in everything she puts out. But now it’s here, vibrant, unsubtle and a statement of intent, she couldn’t be more proud.

“I wasn’t always the most confident person, I didn’t always want to feel loud and be noticed or be seen or heard. In fact, the idea of being on a stage as a solo artist was something that used to freak me out. Pink Noise was my celebration of my life in its loud, bombastic, romantic, fragile glory.”

While the colour pink held lazy connotations and once felt “imposed” upon young girls growing up, now Mvula embraces it. “I wasn’t interested in wearing pink clothes and fluffy dresses because that supposedly fit some ideal or that meant I was beautiful and whatever,” she says. “And weirdly, I feel more beautiful [now] than ever.”

National Album Day 2021

  • National Album Day takes place on 16 November and this year celebrates women in music
  • Laura Mvula is an ambassador, alongside Kylie Minogue, Sharleen Spiteri, Ray BLK and Joy Crookes
  • Tim Burgess, who launched Twitter listening parties in 2020, will host events with artists including Spiteri and Minogue as part of the celebrations
  • Fans will be able to buy limited edition versions of new albums, boxsets and classic reissues by artists including Stevie Nicks, Donna Summer, HAIM, Eva Cassidy, Dido, Garbage, Roisin Murphy, Patti Smith, Solange, Lykkie Li, Amy Winehouse and more
  • Various events will be taking place at local music shops throughout the UK

Along with artists including Kylie Minogue, Ray BLK and Sharleen Spiteri, Mvula is an ambassador for National Album Day 2021, which is this year shining a spotlight on female performers. “I think it’s so important to lift women up, and specifically in the arts and making albums because for decades there’s so many unsung heroines.”

When it comes to black, female artists especially there is “always so much work to be done” she says, in terms of making the opportunities available and visible. “But I’m encouraged because I do feel like we’re now living in a time where there’s much more awareness, much more dialogue, and there seems to be a widespread acknowledgement.

“My story began in music because I was taught I could do anything; there wasn’t a room I felt uncomfortable in, whether that was learning to play the violin and piano or putting a neo-soul band together when I was in my teens, or singing in an a cappella group with my auntie. At the time as a kid, I was not aware of how rich that plethora of different experiences was.”

Mvula is positive. “I think we’re living in exciting times,” she says. And that also applies to being able to perform live again after more than a year of venues being shut. So far this year she has performed at the Olympics Homecoming ceremony with Rodgers and played a sold-out show at Islington Assembly Hall, as well as at the Edinburgh Festival. A tour is planned and as well as Pink Noise, she also features on the soundtrack to “new-school Western” The Harder They Fall, starring Idris Elba.

“I now feel sort of ready to refocus on the next thing, which for me is performing and getting back on the road,” she says. “Trying to get that good feeling back that I think the pandemic stole from a lot of us who made lockdown albums. I think there’s a weird exhaustion that comes from that as well.”

It has been a challenging time, “dire for everyone”, she admits, but good things are on the horizon. “I was chatting with my accountant on text, and he was like, ‘yeah, man, it’s rough’, but he said we’re going to get back on the road and, you know, it’s not going to be so troublesome,” she laughs.

“We’re on the up and up, it’s just gradual. And I think that’s good because my God, am I now savouring everything. I do not miss a moment, you know, I really just drink it in. There is beauty in suffering, I think. That’s what I’ve been taking from this very trying time.”

Laura Mvula’s latest album, Pink Noise, is out now. National Album Day, celebrating women in music, takes place on Saturday 16 October with new albums, boxsets and classic reissues including: Amy Winehouse, Stevie Nicks, Solange, Donna Summer, HAIM, Eva Cassidy, Dido, Garbage, Roisin Murphy, Patti Smith and more

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Harper Lee mystery:  Is there a To Kill A Mockingbird prequel and true crime novel ‘waiting to be published’?

Published

on

By

Harper Lee mystery:  Is there a To Kill A Mockingbird prequel and true crime novel 'waiting to be published'?

One of Harper Lee’s surviving relatives says it’s possible there could be major unpublished works by the author still to be discovered, following the release of eight of her previously unseen short stories.

Describing the mystery around a manuscript titled The Long Goodbye, which Lee wrote before To Kill A Mockingbird, Lee’s nephew, Dr Edwin Conner, told Sky News: “Even the family doesn’t know everything that remains in her papers. So, it could be there waiting to be published.”

Dr Conner says Lee submitted a 111-page manuscript, titled The Long Goodbye, after writing Go Set A Watchman in 1957.

The retired English professor explains: “It’s not clear to me or to others in the family, to what extent [The Long Goodbye] might have been integrated into To Kill a Mockingbird, which she wrote immediately after, or to what extent it was a freestanding manuscript that is altogether different and that might stand to be published in the future.”

Lee researched Reverend Maxwell's death, but no book was ever published. Pic: AP
Image:
Lee researched Reverend Maxwell’s death, but no book was ever published. Pic: AP

A second mystery exists in the form of a true crime novel, The Reverend, which Lee was known to have begun researching in the late 1970s, about Alabama preacher Reverend Willie Maxwell who was accused of five murders before being murdered himself.

Dr Conner said: “The manuscript of a nonfiction piece, that according to some people doesn’t exist, according to others who claim to have seen it, does [is also a mystery]. We don’t know where it is, or whether it is, really.

“That could be a surprise that has yet to be revealed if we discover it and it’s published, which is a real possibility.”

More on Literature

He believes much of the manuscript was written in his family home and says his mother, Louise, who was Lee’s older sister, saw a “finished version of it” on the dining room table.

Dr Conner says there are “others who just as fiercely say no, it was never completed”.

A C Lee (L) - the inspiration for Atticus Finch with his grandchildren, including Edwin Conner (C), in 1953
Image:
A C Lee (L) – the inspiration for Atticus Finch with his grandchildren, including Edwin Conner (C), in 1953

‘She did want to publish these stories’

There has long been debate over why Lee published just two books in her lifetime.

To Kill a Mockingbird came out in 1960. Selling more than 46 million copies worldwide, translated into more than 40 languages and winning a Pulitzer Prize, it’s arguably the most influential American book of the 20th century.

Fifty-five years later, Lee published a sequel, Go Set A Watchman, written ahead of Mockingbird, but set at a later date.

Then aged 88, and with failing health, there were questions over how much influence Lee had over the decision to publish.

Asked how happy she’d be to see some of her earliest work, containing early outlines for Mockingbird’s narrator Jean Louise Finch and the story’s hero Atticus Finch, now hitting the shelves, Dr Conner says: “I think she’d be delighted.”

A previously unseen image of one of Lee's short story transcripts. Pic: Harper Lee Estate
Image:
A previously unseen image of one of Lee’s short story transcripts. Pic: Harper Lee Estate

He says Lee had presented them to her first agent, Maurice Crane, at their first meeting in 1956, “precisely because she did want to publish these stories”.

And while dubbing them “apprentice stories,” which he admits “don’t represent her at her best as a writer,” he says they show “literary genius of a kind”.

Notoriously private, he says the stories – which were discovered neatly typed out in one of Lee’s New York apartments after her death – offer “deeply enthralling new glimpses into her as a person”.

Never marrying or having children, he says Lee maintained a degree of privacy even with her family: “You never saw her complete personality… We thought we knew her, we thought we’d seen everything, but no, we hadn’t.”

George W Bush awards Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. Pic: Reuters
Image:
George W Bush awards Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. Pic: Reuters

‘That’s it, I’m not giving any more interviews’

While describing her as a “complicated woman,” he insists Lee was far from the recluse she’s frequently painted as.

He says: “In company, she was most of the time delightful. She was a lively personality, she was funny, witty, and you would think she was very outgoing.”

But Lee was known to have struggled with her success.

Dr Conner explains: “She never ever wanted fame or celebrity because she suspected, or knew, that would involve the kind of uncomfortable situations in public situations that she found just no satisfaction or pleasure in”.

He says while in the early years of Mockingbird Lee gave interviews, the wild success of the book soon rendered such promotion unnecessary, leading her to decide: “That’s it, I’m not giving any more interviews”.

While he admits she was subsequently much happier, he goes on: “Not that she was a recluse, as some people thought. She wasn’t at all a recluse, but she didn’t enjoy public appearances and interviews particularly. She wanted the work to speak for itself.”

Truman Capote and Harper Lee in April 1963. Pic: AP/The Broadmoor Historic Collection
Image:
Truman Capote and Harper Lee in April 1963. Pic: AP/The Broadmoor Historic Collection

‘Deeply hurt’ by Truman Capote

Famously close to Truman Capote, one of the pieces in Lee’s newly released collection is a profile of her fellow author.

Dr Conner says that piece – a love-letter of sorts, describing Capote’s literary achievements – is all the more remarkable because at the point Lee wrote it in 1966, when she and Capote “were not even on speaking terms”.

He says Lee “probably knew [Capote] better than any other person alive when that was written”, adding, “she did love him as a friend very much, even when he was not speaking to her”.

Friends since childhood – and the prototype for the character of Dill in Mockingbird – Capote later hired Lee to help him research his 1965 true crime novel In Cold Blood.

Despite his book’s relative success, Dr Conner believes Capote was “bitter” over the fact Mockingbird far eclipsed it in accolades and recognition.

“He had been writing for much longer. He felt that he was at least as good as she was, and he was very envious of her success”.

Dr Conner says Lee was “deeply hurt” at Capote’s rejection of her, never speaking about him in later life.

Recalling his own meeting with Capote many years later, Dr Conner says he “got a personal sense of how [Capote] could charm the socks off of anybody, male or female”.

He says it was noteworthy that while Capote asked about his mother, who he had been fond of, he “never once mentioned” Harper.

Sky News has contacted Lee’s lawyer and the executor of her estate, Tonya Carter, for comment.

The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays, by Harper Lee is on sale from Tuesday

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Gangsters, billionaires and love triangles: Behind the scenes of China’s micro-drama boom

Published

on

By

Gangsters, billionaires and love triangles: Behind the scenes of China's micro-drama boom

It was a pretty wild morning.

In the space of just a few hours, we witnessed a gangland killing, a jewellery heist and stepped onboard a private jet.

We observed a billionaire CEO at work, a dramatic family showdown in a hospital and a drunken karaoke party.

It was all part of a tour around a massive Chinese facility producing what are known as vertical micro-dramas. To describe the experience as somewhat dizzying is an understatement.

If you haven’t heard of them, micro-dramas are a new cultural sensation sweeping not just China but the world, a remarkable example of China’s booming soft power.

They are essentially serialised productions split into episodes of roughly a minute, shot in vertical and viewed solely on smartphones.

Think soap operas for the TikTok generation.

‘Secret surrogate to the Mafia King’

The story lines are sensational and melodramatic with titles that border the ridiculous; ‘Ex-Convict nanny and Billionaire single dad’, ‘Pregnant by my Tough Daddy CEO’ and ‘Secret Surrogate to the Mafia King’, just some examples.

Micro dramas are designed to be watched on smartphones only
Image:
Micro dramas are designed to be watched on smartphones only

The action is fast and the characters simplistic, while autoplay and multiple mini cliff hangers are designed to provide an addictive dopamine hit.

It’s a format which has sprung to life in just the last few years, developed initially in China in the wake of the pandemic, and its success has been extraordinary.

Some of the most-watched titles have hundreds of millions of views and downloads of short drama apps were over six times higher in the first quarter of 2025 than that same period last year, according to data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm.

The Chinese government recently revealed that over 50% of all internet users in China have watched a micro-drama, more than have ordered food online or used a ride-hailing service.

‘You can easily binge five or six episodes on the subway commute’

One of the many set designs in the production factory
Image:
One of the many set designs in the production factory

“People’s lives are so stressful and packed these days,” explains Ji Jingdong, a producer of micro-dramas who made the switch from traditional film around three years ago.

“When you watch vertical-screen content, you can easily binge five or six episodes on the subway commute, right? And let’s face it, you’re barely halfway through an ordinary TV episode before you reach your stop.

“Scrolling through vertical screens at a fast pace is actually pretty stress-relieving. Especially those so-called ‘mindless dramas’ – they’re incredibly relaxing to watch.”

That mass appeal, paired with extremely fast turnaround times and no-frills production is translating into massive revenues.

Read more from Sky News:
Tel Aviv football derby cancelled after ‘violent riots’
Eight ‘priceless’ objects stolen in Louvre museum heist

Last year, the industry revenue was an astonishing $6.9bn, for the first time exceeding the value of the Chinese box office.

Its figure is almost 14 times as high as in 2021, just three years ago.

But with this huge reach and revenues comes both challenge and opportunity for a system like China where everything including cultural products is strictly controlled.

An actor is filmed for the latest micro-drama
Image:
An actor is filmed for the latest micro-drama

1,200 series taken down

Indeed in February of this year over 1,200 series were taken down, deemed too “vulgar” or inappropriate, while a wave of new regulations now require projects over a certain value to have government approval.

In addition there are initiatives to encourage production houses to make dramas that promote certain values such as ‘Learn the law with Micro-Short Dramas’ and ‘Explore intangible cultural heritage through micro short dramas’.

It’s a framework they are aware of at the Meigao Micro Drama Super Factory, in the southeastern city of Quzhou.

This 67,000 square metre facility was initially constructed as a COVID quarantine hotel, but it now houses around 200 different sets where multiple crews can shoot their dramas simultaneously.

There is almost any indoor environment you could imagine – from a bank, courthouse and subway to a ballroom, office and multiple home environments.

The CEO Dai Wenxue explains with pride how they made 500 micro-dramas last year.

But there is also a clear acknowledgement that the transformation of this venue was achieved with local government support, and that this massive Chinese success story also serves a political purpose.

The industry revenue was $6.9bn last year
Image:
The industry revenue was $6.9bn last year

Aligning with ‘the nation’s overarching strategic vision’

“The early phase emphasised growth, with the government taking a relatively relaxed but not lax approach,” he explains. “Now, the focus has shifted toward premium production, cultural exports and telling compelling Chinese stories.

“This aligns with the nation’s overarching strategic vision. That’s the current landscape.”

Indeed, while the majority of productions are fun and frivolous, for its critics, the industry is a perfect propaganda tool.

This autumn, in fact, saw a huge boom in government-encouraged patriotic war productions to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two and a huge accompanying military parade in Beijing.

All this mattered because the format is now being aggressively exported abroad.

The Meigao Micro Drama Super Factory in Quzhou
Image:
The Meigao Micro Drama Super Factory in Quzhou

Almost all production houses worth their salt are leaning into English language productions. Meigao is in fact building an entire second location with American-style scenes.

And it’s no wonder when you look at the numbers. According to analysis undertaken by Sensor Tower, in the first quarter of 2025, downloads in the US had gone up 54% compared to the same period in 2024. In Latin America it was 69% and in India a remarkable 113%.

‘A huge uptick’

“So in the past 10 months, right after the Chinese New Year, there was definitely a huge uptick,” says Max Olsen, an American actor living in Beijing. For him and other Western actors there has been a hugely noticeable boom in work .

“A bunch of productions decided that they were going to shoot, you know, they’re going to produce one a week.

“Obviously, with money, with eyeballs, with attention, comes a degree of power.”

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Three things you may have missed from China this week

There are of course questions about how this type of soft power translates and what China could or would do with it. But it is just one of a number of cultural exports playing into a trend of China positioning itself as accessible and relatable, even ‘cool’.

Indeed for such a new format there is clearly still results yet to be seen.

“I don’t think the double-digit growth will continue forever,” says Olsen.

“But I suspect in five years’ time, we’ll have a very established industry.”

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere – a raw portrayal of the young rock star on the cusp of huge success

Published

on

By

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere - a raw portrayal of the young rock star on the cusp of huge success

“It’s a cliché,” says Bruce Springsteen, “but he is a rock star – and you can’t fake that.”

The Boss is talking about Jeremy Allen White, star of The Bear, who is now playing him in the upcoming film Deliver Me From Nowhere.

It comes after a flurry of biopics on musical greats in recent years, from Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis to A Complete Unknown and Back To Black, but rather than an all-encompassing look at his epic career, this one focuses on a very specific period of its subject’s life; a raw portrayal of the young Springsteen, on the cusp of even greater success following the release of The River album, but struggling with inner demons and childhood trauma while writing the stark follow-up Nebraska, released in 1982.

Bruce Springsteen on stage in LA in 1985. Pic: AP/ Lennox McLendon
Image:
Bruce Springsteen on stage in LA in 1985. Pic: AP/ Lennox McLendon

Speaking at a Q&A held at Spotify’s London headquarters ahead of the film’s release, Springsteen, 76, said he had watched The Bear and “knew that was the kind of actor” needed – someone who could convey his inner turmoil, as well as play a convincing rock star.

“You either got that or you don’t have it, and he just had the swagger.”

Directed and co-written by Scott Cooper, the film is based on the book of the same name by Warren Zanes, and is the first time Springsteen’s life has been depicted on the big screen.

The star was on board straight away. “I figured, I’m 76 years old, I don’t really care what the f*** I do anymore. As you get older, certainly at my age, you take more risks in your work and in life in general.”

Jeremy Allen White stars as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere. Pic: Disney/ 20th Century Studios
Image:
Jeremy Allen White stars as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere. Pic: Disney/ 20th Century Studios

He and White first met at one of his gigs at Wembley Stadium, where Springsteen prepared himself for lots of questions. “I figured this guy is going to be tremendously interested in me.” But White had done his homework, arriving “so prepared that he really asked me very few questions”.

Springsteen was on set regularly, “which I always apologise to [White] for because… it’s gotta be really weird playing the guy with the guy’s stupid ass sitting there.”

Learning five Bruce songs

And White also had to take on the music. When told he would need to sing and play guitar, his jokey response was: “I don’t do those things. Are you sure?” He had about six months and learned on a 1955 Gibson J-200, sent to him by Springsteen, as the closest model to his Nebraska guitar.

“I was getting together with [teacher JD Simo] on Zoom, four or five, six times a week to prepare. And the first time we hopped on, I said, ‘hey, I’m so excited to learn how to play guitar with you’. And he said, ‘we don’t have time to learn how to play the guitar, we have time to learn these five Bruce songs’. So I learned the guitar in a very strange way.”

Springsteen says it “took me a moment” to get used to seeing his story being dramatised, to White playing him. But he was happy.

“I always go, damn, when did I get that good looking?” he jokes. But he says White’s performance was impressive, that he was able to sing songs “that are hard for me to sing, some of them”.

Keeping the sweat going

Mastering the big hits, Born To Run, Born In The USA, was tough, says White. Thinking he would need to keep his heart rate high for his performance scenes, White says he took a weighted rope on set, to skip and “keep my sweat going”. Turns out, it wasn’t necessary. “When you perform Born To Run or Born In The USA, that sweat comes naturally… I did not need to use that rope.”

Part of the film goes back to Springsteen’s childhood, to the house he grew up in. “They did a very, very good job of putting that house back together,” he says. It is the home he visits “in my dreams to this day, at least a couple of times year… so being able to physically walk into what felt like that living space, my grandmother’s house, my grandfather’s house with my parents, we all lived there together. It was quite a miracle and quite wonderful”.

Springsteen with White and Stephen Graham at the Deliver Me From Nowhere London Film Festival premiere. Pic: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP
Image:
Springsteen with White and Stephen Graham at the Deliver Me From Nowhere London Film Festival premiere. Pic: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP

British actor and recent Emmy winner Stephen Graham plays Springsteen’s late father, and the drama delves into their difficult relationship.

Remembering the family struggles

Reliving those experiences was “powerful”, the star says. He watched an early screening with his younger sister, who held his hand throughout. “And at the end she says, isn’t it wonderful that we have this… it honours our family, it honours the memory of the struggles that we went through… To have it on film in the way that it was portrayed, meant a great deal to my sister and myself.”

Springsteen says he hopes people will connect with the film, with this part of his story, the same as the crowds in front of him do every time he walks on stage.

“The E Street Band will be good every night because that’s what we do,” he says. “But how great we’re going to be is up to you… Hopefully there’s an element of transcendence… and hopefully it stays with [the audience] for as long as they need.”

Continue Reading

Trending