Based on Larry Kramer's acclaimed play, "Glee" and "American Horror Story" creator Ryan Murphy helmed "The Normal Heart," a look at the early days of the HIV-AIDS crisis in 1980s New York City. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Julia Roberts, Taylor Kitsch, Matt Bomer, and Jim Parsons.
Ruffalo plays Ned Weeks, a man who set out to get answers for why the government was ignoring the rapidly spreading HIV-AIDS virus in the gay community, and Bomer plays Felix Turner, a reporter who becomes Ned's lover. At the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour in January, Bomer revealed that the play was his first introduction to the onset of HIV-AIDS: "I read it in the closet of my drama room when I was 14 years old... and the irony of that is not lost on me."
Bomer also lost 40 pounds for the role, a feat that his costars praised: "We took a very small break, and he came back half the person he was and twice the man he was," Roberts said. "It was really amazing to be a witness to what Matt did. It was astounding." Ruffalo agreed, calling the extreme transformation "incredible."
Parsons reprises his role from the 2011 Broadway revival as Tommy Boatwright, a gay activist, and admitted that doing the play was his first real education in the history of HIV-AIDS. His Broadway co-stars Ellen Barkin and John Benjamin Hickey both won Tony Awards that year, with the production also winning Best Revival of a Play.
But it's Roberts' role that was the hardest to pin down — the actress has admitted to turning down the same role twice before.
"I have been asked twice before to play this part and both times turned it down, not only because of just conflicts of time but my inability to fully understand who this character was," Roberts said of playing Dr. Emma Brookner, a polio survivor who treats several early HIV-AIDS patients. In the trailer, Roberts has two haunting lines: "I've never seen or heard of anything like this," she says before telling a room full of male gay activists, "You are all going to infect each other."
So what made Roberts finally say yes? "I ended up watching a documentary on polio — which I’m too young to remember what that experience was like for the country, for the world — and it unlocked the door to who this woman is to me and where her ferocious, relentless pursuit of correctness comes from, and that’s when Ryan received what he always gets, which is the answer he wants. It was just such a beautiful experience to get to play her and to get to pay tribute to a person who never let anything stand between her and the right thing to do for someone else"
Murphy also spoke about the lengths he went to acquiring the rights from Kramer to make the project into a movie. "I really actively pursued the play from Larry, and I bought the play in 2010. It was just a passion project of mine, and it’s a play that I had loved even when I was in college. I flew myself out, and I met with him when it became available, and he liked my take on it, so he sold it to me. I took out a second mortgage for my home. And I worked with Larry on the script for, I think, three years... I would say that there’s probably 40 to 45 percent new material in the movie, and that’s something that he worked really hard on, making a really epic story."
Murphy spoke passionately about the project, presenting harrowing statistics — "Over 40 million people are dead from HIV-AIDS, and every day 7,000 people continue to contract HIV" — to bring home his point: "[The story] ends in 1984, but what it’s about feels very sort of modern to me right now with gay marriage in the news and people just sort of fighting to be loved for who they are and to be accepted for who they are."
"The Normal Heart" marks the first scripted TV project about AIDS since HBO's 2003 miniseries "Angels in America," which won 11 Emmys and five Golden Globes, among other accolades and critical praise. Coming on the heels of this year's Oscar winning movie "Dallas Buyers' Club," which also took place in the early '80s but in Texas, "The Normal Heart" continues the conversation about how our society dealt with and is still dealing with the gay community and this horrible disease that now reaches far beyond it.
"The Normal Heart" premieres Sunday, May 25 at 9 p.m. on HBO.
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