The focus in the days ahead is on Madonna the musician.
She's set to perform the halftime show at the Super Bowl on Sunday and her new single, "Give Me All Your Luvin'," with the white-hot Nicki Minaj, hits radio airwaves this week.
"I have never been so blown away by a
director's level of preparation before. She'd done so much research,"
said James D'Arcy, who plays Edward.
She's set to perform the halftime show at the Super Bowl on Sunday and her new single, "Give Me All Your Luvin'," with the white-hot Nicki Minaj, hits radio airwaves this week.
But
the 53-year-old superstar is surely hoping that some of that spotlight
will shine on her new movie, "W.E.," about the celebrated romance
between divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson and Britain's King
Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne for love in the 1930s.
"To
me their lives were so diverse, complex and interesting, and there were
so many different points of view to approach the story from," said
Madonna during a recent interview about the film, which opens Friday.
Madonna
doesn't star in "W.E." -- she's the film's director. It tells the story
of Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) through the vantage point of a
modern-day woman (played by Abbie Cornish) obsessed with the fabled
romance between Simpson and Edward.
The
union is often portrayed as the ultimate example of true love: Simpson
was married when the pair began their relationship and was forever
scandalized in royal circles. When Edward became king, he planned to
marry her, but opposition to the union was so great, he chose to give up
his kingdom. The two later wed and became known as the Duke and Duchess
of Windsor.
For some, it was a modern-day fairy tale, but it's a notion Madonna debunks in "W.E."
"I
think a lot of women have that fantasy of about what's going to happen
to them when they meet Mr. Right, Mr. Perfect, Mr. Complete Me, and then
you realize that that doesn't actually exist," said the twice-divorced
icon as she spoke about the film in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria.
"Love exists; I'm still a romantic, but it's not that fairy tale that
we're all led to believe ... where the prince comes and kisses you."
It's
a message Madonna used to instill in her daughter when the star would
read Lourdes the typical bedtime stories featuring a damsel in distress
who is saved by a knight.
"I'd
get to the end of the story and go, `Hey wait a second. Nobody asked
her what she wanted.'... I suddenly started seeing how misleading all of
these fairy tales were," she said.
She
added: "I think ultimately we have to save ourselves. ... You're going
to be seriously setting yourself up for failure and disappointment if
you think that one person is going to save you."
Wally,
the main character of the movie, learns the same message in "W.E." She
finds out the romanticized story of the couple told throughout the
decades wasn't what it seemed after delving into deep research about the
subject.
In real life, it's how Madonna
learned about the couple. She read books, studied their items when they
went up for auction and interviewed at least one of their
contemporaries.
D'Arcy
recalled that Madonna sent him several books to read up on his
character, and most of the books were heavily marked up by Madonna's
note-taking.
"When she spoke
to me, she spoke with such huge passion about telling this story," he
added. "Her whole enthusiasm was infectious."
Madonna's interest in the duke and duchess was piqued after she moved to the United Kingdom during her marriage to Guy Ritchie.
"I
started kind of studying about, like, being a foreigner, being an
outsider, trying to understand this new country that I lived in with a
class system which America doesn't have," she said.
"To
me their lives were so diverse, complex and interesting, and there were
so many different points of view to approach the story from, and I also
realized that people were quite polarized about her as a person, as a
character in history," she said. "People were so opinionated about her."
Though
most of the legend around the couple involves their romance, there are
others who have painted a less than favorable portrait of the Windsors
as Nazi sympathizers. In the movie, the notion is clearly dismissed, and
Madonna insists there's no solid proof to back up those contentions,
saying an early meeting between the once-king and Adolf Hitler came long
before Hitler would become much of the world's enemy.
"Once
he abdicated, they used ... the one meal he shared with him ... as some
kind of proof he was a Nazi sympathizer because it was all part of the
establishment's determination to turn the world against him, and to
diminish his popularity once his brother took the throne, because he
really was beloved by the people," she said.
Simpson
wasn't as beloved. Many people saw her through the lens of scandal.
Some have made comparisons between her and Madonna, both strong women
whose sexuality was used against them.
When
asked who she saw when she assessed Simpson, Madonna said, "Part of my
goal in making this film was kind of to tell the story from her point of
view and set the record straight and portray her not as a saint and not
perfect but a human being."
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