Elijah Wood and Stephen McHattie star in Director Ant Timpson’s latest film, ‘Come To Daddy’, which is inspired by his own relationship with his father. The raunchy and heartbreakingly hilarious film debuted last night at the Tribeca Film Festival.
“Man-child” Norval Greenwood (Elijah Wood) reconnects with his estranged father after 30 years of idealizing certain expectations and an image of his father, only to be disappointed when he discovers his father’s dark past finally catches up to them both.
When discussing his experience portray such a complex character, Wood strived to dig deep into his broad, emotional range in order to pay homage to Norval’s character and director Ant Timpson’s rather personal story.
“It was fun! I felt a great deal of pressure being there to deliver for Ant. He’s a dear friend and it was an important thing for him because it is based off, to some degree, a small degree, on his relationship with his dad,” said Wood. “Certainly for the experience he had with his dad, so that was really important to me. It was a challenging role. It was actually a heightened, emotional role. I think I was really anxious about that, and wanting to be truthful.”
Wood and Timpson first met at the Genre Film Circuit. According to Wood, Norval was an immensely multi-faceted character to portray, and he was excited to dive into the depth’s of his complexity and given circumstance throughout the film.
“It’s a rollercoaster for this character; Norval comes to see his dad after 30 years with incredible expectations that are not met, and they’re constantly subverted,“ said Wood. “He has these herring experiences that he’s going through, and it’s extremely cathartic and extremely emotional. There’s a lot. It was a lot for me to sort of tap into and deliver. It made me really anxious, and I didn’t take that responsibility lightly.”
Timpson added that the heart of the film is in the story and the relationship between the two characters. The process of writing it had several revisions, but the main driving force was apparent in all stages of production.
“You go through a bit of process, and the film slightly changes, but this film quite tight right throughout. We didn’t go through a process of finding the movie in the edit, which I was really happy with,” said Timpson.
Timpson described Come To Daddy as “a hybrid film, so there’s a lot of genres mixed in there. You’re dealing with big archetypes and the whole idea of unfinished business between father’s and sons, mothers and daughters, like all that stuff. I had a similar experience and this film came out of that.”
Come To Daddy premiered last night at the Tribeca Film Festival. Check out a trailer for the film below!
