When Steven Spielberg decided to make “The Post” he knew it had to come out this year.
The Hollywood Reporter sat down with the director, star Meryl Streep, first-time screenwriter Liz Hannah, producer Kristie Macosko Krieger and former Sony chief Amy Pascal for its latest issue.
RELATED: Meryl Streep And Tom Hanks Go Up Against The Government In First ‘The Post’ Trailer
In the interview, Spielberg talks about why he felt the film, about The Washington Post publishing the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s, had to be made in 2017.
“I thought this was an idea that felt more like 2017 than 1971,” he explained. “I could not believe the similarities between today and what happened with the Nixon administration against their avowed enemies The New York Times and The Washington Post. I realized this was the only year to make this film.”
The director also talks about the divides he sees facing America at the moment, and what scares him about it: “That we’ve lost the majority of good listeners, that our conversations have turned into skirmishes,” he said. “At dinner-table conversations outside of California, I’m completely mute or I get into these huge rows. The gray and the blue have become the blue and the red. And it is as vast a chasm as our nation faced before the Civil War. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“We don’t know where north is. People disagree on what actual facts are,” Streep added. “Whether this table is really a table.”
RELATED: Meryl Streep Chats With Anna Wintour About Harvey Weinstein
Streep also addressed the First Amendment rights of modern-day whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
“It has to deal with motive, and I am unclear as to the motive and associations of Julian Assange,” she said. “Snowden — I’m probably not qualified to say this because I haven’t read so deeply into this — but if people were killed and compromised as a result of his action, he has to be held accountable. But he is owed his day in court.”
