DA: David Aukin, producer

SB: Simon Bowles, production designer

OC: Olivia Colman, actress (plays the Queen of England, Elizabeth, in film)

LL: Laura Linney, actress (plays Daisy in film)

KL: Kevin Loader, producer

BM: Bill Murray, actor (plays U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt [FDR] in film)

EM: Elizabeth Marvel, actress (plays FDR’s secretary, Missy, in film)

MR: Morag Ross, make-up designer

SW: Samuel West, actor (plays the King of England, Bertie, in film)

OW: Olivia Williams, actress (plays the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, in film)

EW: Elizabeth Wilson, actress (plays FDR’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, in film)

On the story and characters…

DA: Hyde Park on Hudson is a fiction based on real events, with Richard Nelson’s insightful screenplay brilliantly evoking the period and the people.

EM: We weren’t making a re-enactment of history. It was about humanizing the political.

SW: Or, exploring what these public figures were like in private. Don’t presidents and kings make mistakes or have minor triumphs, at dinner parties or in their bedrooms, like us?

EW: When I read the script, I thought, “They’re not hiding anything.” I admire Richard’s writing, and this story was historic, honest, and humorous. I think the film is about survival.

I was thrilled to be asked to play this part by Roger because I grew up in Michigan in the 1930s and was such a fan of Franklin Roosevelt. I had been raised a Republican. But when Roosevelt became president – I was just as smitten as most of my friends, most of my family. We became Democrats.

It meant a great deal to me to be able to go back into the light of someone I worshipped.

DA: In terms of showing how a politician operates, it’s a story that still feels contemporary, blending the political and the personal.

There was a political bond that formed between Bertie and Roosevelt, but also an emotional one; FDR was older, and treated the King almost like a son. The King responded to that because his own father wasn’t caring.

Historically, this weekend in 1939 is when “the special relationship” between England and America began. After he left, the King sent a telegram to FDR thanking him and saying, I feel we forged a special relationship – that’s how the term came to be. The King’s eating a hot dog showed that England would finally accept Americans as equals, that Bertie wasn’t looking down his nose at them.

KL: It was a key moment in Anglo-American relations. The royals intuited the symbolic significance of the act of eating the hot dog, and they rose to the challenge.

EM: A lot of mutual effort led up to that day; there was a long period of correspondence and diplomacy to make the visit happen, to build that bridge.

SW: We believe in America as a place where you can reinvent yourself. Bertie and Elizabeth came back to Britain in triumph. I think Bertie got out from the shadow of his father, and Elizabeth found that she was very good at meeting informally – which America loved. They both got on with Roosevelt.

EM: My character is called Missy, and her actual name was Margaret LeHand. She was secretary to FDR even before his presidency; they were introduced to each other when she started working for the Democratic Party in D.C.

People would say that she was like a wife to him; they were that close, that intimate. When he was struck with polio and went down to Florida, she lived with him on a houseboat. She helped him resurrect himself. Then, she helped him run the White House; she was a great organizer, and a cosmopolitan woman. She also had depressions, and suffered a lot to do the job that she did; she made her choices knowing that she would be in the room for history-making decisions, these incredible moments.

OW: I believe in over-researching, but Roger didn’t want me to do an impersonation. I would look at her speeches, but those were in her distinctive public-speaking voice.

I had begged, in a slightly undignified way, to be part of this movie. But it was very daunting playing someone of Eleanor’s caliber; she did so much for civil rights and race relations, using her position as First Lady to help others. I wanted to do her justice, and I also got to explore this world figure in a domestic situation – one where she had less power; her bedroom was her mother-in-law’s dressing room.

Eleanor didn’t patronize people. She wouldn’t curtsy to the King and Queen because she didn’t feel that anyone should be curtsied to. This was her principle, and I aimed to carry that off with dignity and without looking petty.

MR: Roger had found one image of Eleanor at the picnic, where her hair was very loose and free, and said he wanted to capture that flyaway feeling and not have all this set hair.

OW: I wanted it to be unkempt; I felt it demonstrated her informality. Even when Eleanor made an effort with the hair, it seemed to be quite out of control.

MR: Norma Webb, the hair designer on the movie, did a fantastic job. Wigs weren’t used; Norma adapted and colored the actors’ own hair. Roger wanted the hair to look as natural as possible. The King and Queen did have to look more put-together and perfect than the Americans. I loved seeing Sam West and Olivia Colman in those iconic period looks and thinking, “It’s working!”

But Roger also didn’t want dead ringers to be created; it was about trying to catch the essence of the real people. FDR’s face is well-known, so I had tiny prosthetic molds made for Bill Murray of the melanoma above the left eyebrow and the mole on the right cheek. Bill asked that he look like someone who had been in the sun a lot, because FDR loved to sunbathe as often as possible.

On the production/set…

SB: The pieces in the house show the family history, and point to the character of Sara and her influence.

Roger and [cinematographer] Lol Crawley and I would always have to check on how spaces would work for the actors and crew to maneuver through, including for possible 360-degree coverage.

We added shutters to the windows like you would find in that region of upstate New York, a classical balustrade atop the porch, flags and flagpoles at the front, and replaced the gravel in the driveway.

BM: The thing about rich people’s gravel is, you can walk on it without hurting your feet. It’s like reflexology.

KL: We knew we couldn’t recreate the house brick by brick, so we concentrated on the scale and the atmosphere.

BM: As the first president to use radio as a force, Roosevelt would give these very conversational addresses from home, at the dinner table with the mikes moved in after the family had eaten. He’d talk to America as if he was a father speaking at the head of the table.

SB: For the “Fireside Chat” scene where FDR gives his address to the nation while sitting at his desk, we brought microphones over from the United States. Also on his desk, my wonderful props department did a lot of research into finding out exactly what the stamp collection looked like, since it’s a key part of when Daisy first comes to see FDR, including what the book was that the stamps were kept inside. There was some photographic evidence, but FDR’s collection was sold at an auction house some time ago, and apparently the stamps weren’t worth very much because he didn’t collect specialized ones; it really was more of a hobby.

We needed to have the large oil portrait of FDR that hung in his study, so [stills photographer] Nicola Dove posed Bill as identical to the painting as possible. He would often talk and act in character when being photographed at length, and this took a lot of patience but he was game. He made his own suggestions to help get it just right. We then got the finished photo and made it into a canvas; it looks like the real thing.

To recreate Top Cottage, the President’s retreat where he wanted to write detective novels, we built a house entirely from scratch in woodland clearing in the Chilterns [Hills in southeast England]. We had sketches and models, including with little plastic people, for the process. It was an impressive set; Roger would sit on the porch and read a newspaper.

KL: We had 100 extras for the sequence. The Chilterns were a pretty good ringer, with their gorgeous beech woods. There was a cultural convergence even before it happened on-screen.

SW: The photos from the picnic showed how at some point Bertie took off his tie. To do that at an official engagement was a statement. So we could get that in, his catching the American vibe and thinking, “Perhaps I don’t need to wear this.”

MR: It was very satisfying to walk onto the finished set that day; there was a great sense of achievement. You saw everyone’s contributions, dozens of people’s work, coming together.

LL: When I heard the movie would be shooting in the U.K., I thought, “I see how that could work.” We would be re-creating a different era and time. Also, it looks like Hyde Park; there’s the occasional odd tree. After we finished shooting, I missed England; everyone was terrific over there.

KL: We were only sorry there wasn’t more sunshine. But people enjoyed themselves; they socialized after work, going to see shows.

Roger and I have made a lot of movies, but here we were bringing American actors over to work with British ones. It was an inversion of the movie’s story.

Cast and crew…

EW: I think Roger enjoys his work, because he smiles a lot; many directors never smile. His technique is to do a lot of takes, which is terrific. I trusted him.

SW: When he gives you notes, like “Try this on that line,” you want to use them.

LL: I had such good notes from Roger while I was working. He’s so good about watching a take; he will literally write down notes and come over to you. Most directors don’t do that. He sees what you’re doing, or trying to do, and helps you make it better.

DA: Laura brings such positive vibes to a set, such warmth and friendliness, that I would recommend having her around whatever the film.

OC: Her character of Daisy is at the heart of the story. She shows the hurt in Daisy’s eyes, and the adoration as well.

LL: Richard knows how to write for actors. The story explores how people deal with fame, and power. What is the psychology of fame? How does it affect someone’s day-to-day life, their decisions, and the way they treat people? In the movie, Daisy is often quiet. In many ways, she is Alice in Wonderland. She’s brought into a world of big personalities, and observes.

MR: Laura’s look in the film is a bit more free-looking than the real Daisy. Our Daisy is more ephemeral, whereas the real Daisy was neat with never a hair out of place.