'The Son' Director on Anthony Hopkins' Return: 'A Sentimental Experience'

Oscar-winning director Florian Zeller's latest movie, The Son, tells the heartbreaking and challenging story of 17-year-old Nicholas (played by Zen McGrath), whose struggles with depression turn his own and his family's fractured lives, upside down.

Starring Hugh Jackman, Vanessa Kirby, and Laura Dern, The Son is an adaptation of Zeller's 2018 stage play, Le Fils (which translates to The Son), and exists in the same universe as his plays Le Père, (The Father) and The Mother.

In 2020, Zeller adapted his award-winning play The Father into a movie, with Olivia Colman and Sir Anthony Hopkins taking on the role of Anthony Miller.

The Father went on to receive six Oscar nominations, with Hopkins winning for best actor and Zeller and Christopher Hampson for best adapted screenplay.

They also received the same accolades at the BAFTAs. The Father also received four nominations at the Golden Globes and at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

For The Son, Hopkins has reprised his role as Anthony from The Father.

Set a few years before Anthony's diagnosis with dementia in The Son, Jackman's character Peter pays a rare visit to his father at his lavish childhood home. There are hints at Anthony's failing health, but nothing explicitly states he has been diagnosed with dementia.

Director Florian Zeller told Newsweek about Hopkins's reprisal of the role, revealing he always had him in mind to play Peter's father in The Son.

He also shared why the meeting between Peter and Anthony was so important to the story of The Son.

Zeller shared: "I wrote the script with Anthony in mind and to be honest when I finished the script, he's the first one I sent the script to, and he read it right away. I really wanted to do it with him because to make a film is really like a sentimental experience and we did The Father together and it was like something very special for both of us. So, I really wanted him to be around and also, so many people came to me after The Father saying, 'Is he ok', as if he was going through dementia and I was like, 'yes, he's in really good shape, he is just like an extraordinary actor.'"

In The Son, high-flying attorney Peter Miller visits his father, Anthony Miller. From the first few seconds of their meeting, it is abundantly clear their relationship is extremely strained.

Anthony is angry and dismissive of his son and Peter resents his father for not being the dad he hoped for. It soon becomes clear Peter is doing everything possible to not become his father, but their similarities are buried deep, slowly bubbling to the surface.

Zeller explained: "It was compelling for us just to do the exact opposite [than Hopkins's character in The Father], because in The Son he is this man, completely in control of the situation, and very cruel. And the joy to have that scene, which was a pivotal scene in the story, when you do understand that this father, Hugh Jackman, is also a son and a son in pain and he was just trying to, as we understand, to be a better father than the one he had, or the father he never had, which is what we all do.

"We come from someplace, and we are all sons and daughters, and we are trying to deal with what we received and to do a better job. Until we understand that there is no better job, it's so hard to be a parent.

"In that story, there are three men, I would say because Hugh Jackman is a father, but he's also a son and he has his father, Anthony Hopkins, and it's about the circle of pain and trauma, how you break the circle, or how you do not break that circle.

"To me, it was a joy to have these actors all together in the same room but it was also what I wanted to tell, how you can deal with your present when you are not taken by your own past and that's the story of a man who is not, in peace with his own past and so that he's not capable to deal with when it's just in front of him his son."

The Son follows the relationship between Peter and his 17-year-old son, Nicholas, who is going through depression. Struggling after his parents' divorce, Nicholas begins to avoid school and socializing and moves out of his mother's (Laura Dern) home and in with his father and his new partner, Beth (Vanessa Kirby).

Despite all efforts from his parents, they fail to understand Nicholas's problems whilst simultaneously, he struggles to express them. The journey also becomes a reckoning for Nicholas's father, who is forced to confront his past and his personal failings as a parent.

Zeller told Newsweek: "Before I did The Father, I already knew that I wanted to do The Son. It's another play of mine but it was a story that I really wanted to tell and a story that I felt needed to be told so I didn't take the time to question that desire. It was like a true conviction that, that story needed to be told probably because, not because it was coming from a personal place, but also because I knew that so many people can relate to this issue, which is a mental health issue.

"So many people are dealing with mental health issues, or anxieties are sometimes suicidal thoughts and so many people are alone with these kinds of problems. So, to me, making that film was a way to open a conversation about it and I know that there is shame and ignorance and so many in denial around these topics. As you know, in that story, it's a loving father, and still, it doesn't work. He doesn't know how to open the doors and so that's what I wanted to highlight in that film."

The Son is out in theaters now.

If you or someone you know needs mental health support, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text "988" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.