Tom Hooper: I think, quite honestly, a lot of it has been a response to the struggle to find original, fiction screenwriting which presents me with characters as complex, and predicaments that are as extreme as the real stories that I've encountered. And I so like making character-driven work, and the great thing about dealing with people about whom we have historical resources, is that if the writing needs work, there's everywhere to go to enrich it. And it's hard to find characters of the complexity of Brian Clough, or King George VI or John Adams in original writing.