Backstage with… Christian Bale and The Pale Blue Eye cast on humanising Edgar Allen Poe
He’s known as a master of macabre, for pioneering the short story in the US and is credited with inventing the detective fiction genre.
But perhaps far less is known about the gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe as a person.
Now, a new film about the poet is looking to change that. The Pale Blue Eye – based on the book of the same name – explores the period of Poe’s life when he found himself at the US Military Academy. The movie imagines the young writer teaming up with a detective to investigate a series of murders.
While Poe is played by Harry Potter star Harry Melling, Christian Bale plays the lead veteran detective Augustus Landor, and the starry ensemble cast also includes Gillian Anderson, Timothy Spall and Lucy Boynton.
But as filming started in November 2021, Bale told Sky News’ Backstage Podcast that, despite being part of a big cast, he largely spent his time off-camera on his own.
“It was still right in the middle of COVID,” he explained.
“I think they were being really draconian with me – like they wouldn’t let me see anybody, because everybody was getting ill at some point, but they were like, ‘man, if you get ill the whole production has to stop’.”
“So they were like ‘get back to your room and stay in your room’ – and I did!”
The film is a murder mystery, so only when it’s over does the viewer realise the breadcrumbs that have been left for them along the way in terms of figuring out whodunnit.
Bale, who is also one of the movie’s producers, says, as an actor, it makes for an interesting challenge.
Bale spoke to Backstage – Sky News’ TV and film review podcast. Credit: Scott Garfield/Netflix ..
“I would give Scott [Cooper – the film’s director] some variation, some choices he could have in the edit room,” Bale said.
“Scott is always very meticulous and really very precise in what he wants and he tends to be exactly right, so he doesn’t experiment too much.
“But, with this, because it was such a particular balancing act, I tried to give him a few variations and I think he really nailed it.”
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Poe isn’t the main character, but the film explores the literary trailblazer in a setting most people aren’t aware he was ever in.
Gillian Anderson told Sky News’ Backstage Podcast that’s one of the things that made the film attractive to her.
“It was interesting to dive into something that had such a strong element of gothic thriller-esque, but at the same time, an origin story about somebody who wouldn’t normally be in that kind of circumstance.
“The fact that he was at West Point [the military academy] for a period of time – what does a person who is an artist, who is so different from what you might normally find at West Point and the rigidity of West Point, what do they do under those circumstances?
“I think that that threw into light a whole other side of Poe that I hadn’t really even thought about before, which I found fascinating,” she told the podcast.
Gillian Anderson plays Julia, the wife of Toby Jones’ (L) Dr Marquis. Credit: Scott Garfield/Netflix
The actress plays Mrs Marquis, the wife of the doctor who performs an autopsy on one of the murder victims. The character is a real oddball and Anderson admits that it’s good fun to play someone so strange.
“It’s very freeing – I remember feeling that a few years ago I did Blanche in [A Streetcar Named Desire at the National Theatre] and there’s something about Blanche that you just feel like you could do almost anything. It just feels that you can give all of those bits that you’ve restrained in yourself to another character.
“It was similar with Mrs Marquis, I think, because she’s so unpredictable, and what we see in the film is real eccentricity and quirkiness.
“To be able to push that to varying levels on a day is enjoyable.”
Poe also comes across as odd at times.
Melling, who plays him, says that while preparing for the role he found himself engaged in some curious behaviour himself – rehearsing lines in his local cemetery.
“Very respectfully, I should add,” he told Backstage.
Harry Melling (R) told Sky News’ Backstage podcast about why he decided to learn his lines in a graveyard… Credit: Scott Garfield/Netflix
“But yeah early on, I was reading a lot about Edgar being obsessed with the dead with death and the occult, and I thought, you know, I’m just going to head to the graveyard with my book and see what comes to me.
“And it slowly became a routine of going to the cemetery, and reading a bit, and just going through some of the things he says, and just slowly building up that world for him and how he thought. It was just a very early sort-of building block phase to getting to Edgar.”
Melling says he also set off on a deep dive in terms of researching the writer.
“What I found really useful was his early life – losing both his parents, being adopted, moving to London, then moving back to Virginia,” he said.
“All of that stuff about being a bit of a nomad early on explained a lot in terms of what Scott Cooper’s script was doing with this character, who was constantly trying to invent himself a persona as the young poet.
“But there’s only so much you can take research I think… and also people have such a fixed idea of who Edgar is. It was very interesting to go back and work out, ‘okay, who is this person before we get to this idea of this icon, this American writer of the macabre and the dark?’, and that was a really interesting exercise for me.”
Lucy Boynton plays Lea Marquis in The Pale Blue Eye. Credit: Scott Garfield/Netflix
Melling’s co-star Lucy Boynton agreed the script certainly sheds new light on Poe.
“[The film is] exploring the person behind the reputation and facade that we’re aware of,” she told Sky News.
“I think I’ve realised I hadn’t really questioned what he, what the person behind all of that work and kind of gothic forefront, would be, so it was really beautiful to see Harry’s interpretation of that but also just the exploration of this script of the sensitivity behind the strength of that work.”
The Pale Blue Eye is streaming on Netflix.
Hear our review in the latest episode of Backstage – the film and TV review podcast from Sky News.
Video footage has shown the moment singer and actress Ariana Grande was accosted by a fan at a film premiere.
Ms Grande was in Singapore for the debut of Wicked: For Good when the incident unfolded on Thursday.
The video captured the moment the fan scaled the barricade and pushed past photographers towards Ms Grande.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
He then threw his arms around her, before co-star Cynthia Erivo intervened and security swoops in to stop him.
The man, now identified as Johnson Wen, 26, is reportedly a notorious red carpet crasher.
Wen, who has since been charged with being a public nuisance, goes by the nickname Pyjama Man, and gloated as he shared footage of the intrusion online.
“Dear Ariana Grande, Thank You for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You,” he wrote on Instagram.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
In video stories posted to the site beforehand, he was seen at the Universal Studios venue, revealing his intentions.
In one, he said: “I feel like I’m in a dream, that’s my best friend, Ariana Grande, and I’m gonna meet her. I’ve been dreaming about that.”
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The Australian has ambushed several performers on stage, according to reports, including Katy Perry and The Chainsmokers at concerts in Sydney, and The Weeknd in Melbourne.
It has been reported that Wen intends to plead guilty and that he could face a fine of more than £1,000.
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo at the London premiere for Wicked: For Good
Ms Grande took a moment to gather herself in the aftermath of the intrusion, visibly shocked by the incident.
She didn’t address the incident on her own Instagram, but shared some photos with the caption “thank you, Singapore”, adding “we love you”.
The singer battled post-traumatic stress disorder after her 2017 concert in Manchester was bombed, leaving 22 people dead.
She told Vogue in 2018: “It’s hard to talk about because so many people have suffered such severe, tremendous loss. But, yeah, it’s a real thing.
“I know those families and my fans, and everyone there experienced a tremendous amount of it as well. Time is the biggest thing.
“I feel like I shouldn’t even be talking about my own experience – like I shouldn’t even say anything. I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”
In the same interview she also addressed her own anxiety, saying she has “always” had it.
Ms Grande plays Galinda Upland in Wicked: For Good, the character who becomes Glinda the Good Witch. Ms Erivo plays Elphaba, the character who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West.
The film is released in UK cinemas on 21 November.
Entertainment
A third of daily music uploads are AI-generated and 97% of people can’t tell the difference, says report
Do you care if the music you’re listening to is artificially generated?
That question – once the realm of science fiction – is becoming increasingly urgent.
An AI-generated country track, Walk My Walk, is currently sitting at number one on the US Billboard chart of digital sales and a new report by streaming platform Deezer has revealed the sheer scale of AI production in the music industry.
Deezer’s AI-detection system found that around 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks are now uploaded every day, accounting for 34% of all daily uploads.
File pic: iStock
The true number is most likely higher, as Deezer’s AI-detection system does not catch every AI-generated track. Nor does this figure include partially AI-generated tracks.
In January 2025, Deezer’s system identified 10% of uploaded tracks as fully AI-generated.
Since then, the proportion of AI tracks – made using written prompts such as “country, 1990s style, male singer” – has more than tripled, leading the platform’s chief executive, Alexis Lanternier, to say that AI music is “flooding music streaming”.
‘Siphoning money from royalty pool’
What’s more, when Deezer surveyed 9,000 people in eight countries – the US, Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Netherlands, Germany and Japan – and asked them to detect whether three tracks were real or AI, 97% could not tell the difference.
That’s despite the fact that the motivation behind the surge of AI music is not in the least bit creative, according to Deezer. The company says that roughly 70% of fully AI-generated tracks are what it calls “fraudulent” – that is, designed purely to make money.
“The common denominator is the ambition to boost streams on specific tracks in order to siphon money from the royalty pool,” a Deezer spokesperson told Sky News.
“With AI-generated content, you can easily create massive amounts of tracks that can be used for this purpose.”
File pic: Reuters
The tracks themselves are not actually fraudulent, Deezer says, but the behaviour around them is. Someone will upload an AI track then use an automated system – a bot – to listen to a song over and over again to make royalties from it.
Even though the total number of streams for each individual track is very low – Deezer estimates that together they account for 0.5% of all streams – the work needed to make an AI track is so tiny that the rewards justify the effort.
Are fully-AI tracks being removed?
Deezer is investing in AI-detection software and has filed two patents for systems that spot AI music. But it is not taking down the tracks it marks as fully-AI.
Instead it removes them from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, a measure designed to stop the tracks getting streams and therefore generating royalties, and marks the tracks as “AI-generated content”.
“If people want to listen to an AI-generated track however, they can and we are not stopping them from doing so – we just want to make sure they are making a conscious decision,” the Deezer spokesperson says.
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Deezer’s survey found that more than half (52%) of respondents felt uncomfortable with not being able to tell the difference between AI and human-made music.
“The survey results clearly show that people care about music and want to know if they’re listening to AI or human-made tracks or not,” said the company’s boss Alexis Lanternier.
“There’s also no doubt that there are concerns about how AI-generated music will affect the livelihood of artists.”
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Musicians protests AI copyright plans
Earlier this year, more than 1,000 musicians – including Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Kate Bush – released a silent album to protest plans by the UK government to let artificial intelligence companies use copyright-protected work without permission.
A recent study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers suggested that generative AI music could be worth £146bn a year in 2028 and account for around 60% of music libraries’ revenues.
By this metric, the authors concluded, 25% of creators’ revenues are at risk by 2028, a sum of £3.5bn.
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