This project came to me via Eileen Atkins who a few years ago I was doing a play and she was doing a play in the same theater, and she came to see it, but she wrote me a note saying, you know, “I've written this play and I've played Virginia many times and making it into a film and I think you be right for Vita”.So I read it and I loved it. That was a few years ago now. And then ever since then, you know, it went through various stages, and, but I believed in it so much I sort of stuck with it. And finally sent it to Chanya who's a friend of mine. And,then I started kind of, I was so involved in that, I thought I'd like to be involved in it in a kind of as a producer as well. And so that's how it came to me so quite organically really.
一開始是Eileen Atkins告訴我的，幾年前我在演出舞台劇時，她的演出正好和我在同一個劇場。當時她看了我的演出後留了張小紙條給我，她說：「我寫了這齣戲[註1]而且演過Virginia很多次了，我想要將這齣戲拍成電影，而我認為妳很適合來演Vita。」當時我看完後馬上就愛上了這個計畫，從那次之後雖然中間經過很多變動，但我始終對這個計畫抱持著很大的信心。最後它來到我的朋友Chanya[註2]手上，而我也想以製作人的身分參與其中。這就是我參與進來的過程，整個很水到渠成。
[註1]同名舞台劇Vita and Virginia
[註2]本片導演Chanya Button
So, Virginia Woolf was obviously in the Bloomsbury group, and Vita Sackville-West was actually more well known than Virginia Woolf at the time she was a socialite she was a writer of, you know, quite a successful novelist and poet. And she was also well known for her personal life as well. And they became friends, they're very very different but they became friends, and eventually lovers for a short time. But this film sort of is about that intense period, when they from when they met to the writing of Orlando which was Vita Sackville-West was the inspiration for Orlando. So, and their friendship really was one of the kind of shining lights in Virginia Woolf's life, and they remained friends until Virginia died. Actually on Vita Sackville-West's desk they were still a photograph of Virginia Woolf which shows that how important they were to one another so their friendship was really unique and and lifelong, it was, and I think that often, if people do know about Vita and Virginia, they kind of think of the kind of you know that they said sort of sensationalize it, and actually there was so much tenderness there and genuine friendship and warmth and Vita had a really positive effect on Virginia.
眾所皆知Virginia Woolf是布倫斯伯里文化圈的成員，Vita Sackville-Wes在當時的知名度其實更勝於Virginia Woolf。她是社交名媛、作家，同時也是位成功的小說家和詩人，而她的私生活也很引人入勝。她們成為朋友，儘管兩人非常不同但還是成為彼此的朋友，最後甚至有了一段短暫的戀愛時光。 但這部電影也講到那段關係緊張的時期，當時Virginia以Vita為靈感創作了《歐蘭朵》（Orlando）。她們的友誼像道耀眼的光芒出現在Virginia的人生中，兩人分手後還繼續保持著朋友的關係一直到Virginia過世。事實上在Vita的書桌還擺著一張Virginia的照片，這顯示出她們雙方對彼此來說是有多麼重要，所以她們的友誼是非常特別而且久遠的。我常想如果大家如果知道Vita和Virginia之間的關係，他們可能會覺得很轟轟烈烈，但事實上這段關係充滿了溫柔和真摯且溫暖的友情，而且Vita對Virginia的有著非常正面的影響。
So I read a draft which was an early draft which Eileen Atkins had written, which was because it was a play originally based on the letter so obviously play format is slightly different, and but I loved it.I mean their letters are so vivid and romantic and caring and, you know, and I just loved the characters as well, and Lady Sackville and you know all of the Bloomsbury group there's such brilliant characters it's such a, and the period as well as a really exciting time pre Second World War, where there was all this sort of creativity and possibility. So I loved that. And then obviously then Chanya came on board and then she collaborated with Eileen to kind of develop the script further. And I feel like you know that they, they're quite, they have different generations of women and I really feel like that you have that within the script now that there's two kinds of really strong voices very different voices but very strong voices in the script, so it's just become a really rich script.