Author Jason Matthews turned to writing following 33 years with the CIA. “It was as much therapy as anything else, starting to write,” he says. Clearly inspired by the adage “you write what you know”, Matthews’ first novel Red Sparrow, published in 2013, was set in a world familiar to him, although the novel’s heroine, Dominika Egorova, is completely fictional.
Following a terrible accident, Dominika must abandon her career with the Bolshoi and is forced into a State-run school that trains her in sexual manipulation, a so-called ‘Sparrow’ school. This type of school was indeed part of Soviet intelligence training. “In the Soviet Union they had a school that taught young women the art of entrapment, the art of seduction, for blackmailing intelligence targets,” Matthews explains.
As the story unfolds, Dominika’s training ultimately leads her to CIA operative Nate Nash. “Inevitably, they fall in love which is dangerous and forbidden for him. Like Romeo and Juliet, it’s a love affair that can’t end well,” elaborates the author.
The novel found its way to the offices of film production company Chernin Entertainment, who snapped up the rights to develop a screenplay based on the book, bringing Justin Haythe on board to write the screenplay. In the meantime, director Francis Lawrence was finalising work on The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 when he read it. “I fell in love with the book immediately,” says Lawrence. “It just felt really fresh in terms of spy stories and I fell in love with the character of Dominika Egorova and her personal journey and her personal story and her dilemma in the story.”
Like Romeo and Juliet, it’s a love affair that can’t end well
Given Lawrence had forged an excellent working relationship with actress Jennifer Lawrence, with whom he made three very successful Hunger Games movies, he knew that Red Sparrow would be their next collaboration.
“Francis had introduced me to the story on the press tour for the last Hunger Games movie,” confirms the actress. “It was a book that he had been reading and he thought it would be an interesting movie. I think the first thing that we were discussing for Dominika is that this was going to be a person and a personality that’s completely different from anything I really knew. She’s really been put into a position of survival from a very young age.”
“When I first read the script and we talked about it, the Sparrow School scenes were terrifying. It was going to be my first time really going… um, the full Monty, if you will,” adds the actress. “But then after doing it there’s something that felt so freeing about it. Because I would never put my character into a situation that I myself am not comfortable being in.”
A move such as this from an actress of her calibre was going to earn criticism, as sure enough it has. Anticipating this, Lawrence goes on to explain that, “as you can see in the movie it’s this moment where she gains power, where she turns the tables on the people who are trying to control her, and I felt that power. I found that exciting. Because the truth is Dominika’s trained to use her body but, ultimately, prevails by using her mind. To me she seems like a complex modern heroine, she uses her own rules and has a tenacity to succeed.”
“We never quite know what Dominika feels,” adds Joel Edgerton, who stars as Nate. “What she’s thinking, or how close she is to crumbling, or lashing out. There is a certain resilience and stoicism to her as a character and in Jen’s performance that keeps us guessing. We always suspect that there is a strength in her the men in her life have underestimated.”
“There has not been a Francis Lawrence movie like this,” concludes producer Peter Chernin. “And there has not been a Jennifer Lawrence movie like this and there has never been a spy movie like this! It’s a gripping and emotional ride, full of twists and turns, you will be immersed in it and leave talking about it. That’s a promise.”
Red Sparrow also stars Matthias Schoenaerts as Ivan Dimitrevich Egorov, Dominika’s uncle, Charlotte Rampling as ‘Matron’, the headmistress of Sparrow School, Mary-Louise Parker as Stephanie Boucher, a US Senator’s Chief of Staff, Jeremy Irons as General Vladimir Andreievich Korchnoi, Ciaran Hinds as Colonel Zacharov and Joely Richardson as Nina Egorova, Dominika’s mother.