Docu-drama "Lennon Naked" starring Christopher Eccleston to air June 23rd on BBC4

A 90 minute docu-drama called Lennon Naked, starring Christopher Eccleston, will air June 23rd on BBC4 at 9:30.

Writer Robert Jones and director/producer Edmund Coulthard described in an interview yesterday how they decided to research for this drama about John Lennon's solo years—instead of going to the most intimate sources, such as Yoko, Paul McCartney, the way most writers try to do, they stepped back and let their fingers do the walking through the vast resources on the internet. The idea is that the resulting gut-feel would be more accurate than relying on people closest to John, who would have their own subjective opinions from their personal corner of John’s world.

In particular, they were drawn most to the raw emotion John exuded in the Rolling Stone interview in 1971 with Jann Wenner. In that interview, John exposed angers and resentments he felt in the moment, something that came to the surface after Primal Scream Therapy. (He later admitted to girlfriend May Pang that he was just getting things off his chest in that interview and he did not continue to harbor those grudges.)

Here are some excerpts from an interview and press release published in full at Anglotopia.net, yesterday:

Coulthard said, “Robert (Jones) and I spent over two years researching the story of John Lennon and developing the script…There is a huge amount available in the public arena – you can spend a long time just watching interviews on You Tube…It’s a drama which dares to reach inside Lennon’s mind during a very turbulent period in his life.”

Jones continued, “All the research I did was from my desk…I decided early on that opinions amongst those closest to John seemed to differ so widely on the salient points of his life that I wouldn’t base ‘my’ Lennon on any one version. Because of this, I didn’t set out to interview Yoko (Ono) or Paul (McCartney) or Cynthia (Lennon) or Ringo (Starr), etc. I soaked up everything I could on the man, let the material settle in my mind and then went with my instincts.”

“Lennon is fascinating,” Jones continues. “He divides opinion but one way or another people feel strongly about him… And Lennon, marginally more than McCartney, I’d say was the driving force behind them (The Beatles). His contribution is hard to ignore.

“I’m a lifelong fan of Lennon,” continues Coulthard. “But what really inspired this idea is listening to tapes of that interview to Rolling Stone magazine, soon after Lennon had arrived to live in America. Lennon decided to completely open up for the first time – and reveal the truth about how he felt about everyone – and tell the story of what really happened during the time he met Yoko and The Beatles started to break up. This was clearly a time when he struggled to reinvent himself as a solo artist – and once I started talking to Robert, it began to feel like the basis for a film.”

Jones continued: “I hope the audience will take away the idea of a complex man who didn’t always do the right thing but who confronted with dignity, humanity and integrity an existence the like of which would have been unimaginable before he set out and lived it.”

Award-winning actor Christopher Eccleston (Dr. Who) revealed why taking on the role of one of Britain’s enduring and enigmatic icons was difficult to refuse.

“I’d been watching and reading about John Lennon avidly for over 20 years or more. I’m absolutely fascinated by him – he seems to have been kind, brutal, funny, arrogant, insecure, passionate and brilliant, in short – human.

“I wanted to play Lennon because of Robert Jones’s script. He captured Lennon’s character and the world in which he lived with imagination and great originality. I had three weeks from accepting the role to prepare, so I read, watched and listened to everything I could get my hands on,” says the 46-year-old actor, who starred in the relaunch of Doctor Who in 2005.

“I re-read the Philip Norman biography and watched many documentaries and videos, but the chief source was the interview John gave to Jann Wenner, for Rolling Stone magazine,” explains the star of critically-acclaimed dramas The Second Coming, Flesh And Blood and Hillsborough.

The Salford-born actor, who trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, also sought help with perfecting Lennon’s accent. “I had a brilliant dialect coach in Jill McCullough. John had a very distinctive voice, accent and physicality."

The 90-min film which includes the famous bed protest also features the iconic Two Virgins cover in which an unabashed John and Yoko bare all for the cameras. But for Chris and his co-star Naoko Mori this was more of a challenge.

“Nudity – that’s the hard stuff to do, but you just have to get on with it,” says Chris.