UNITED STATES
Slant
An Interview with Neal Huff
BY GERARD RAYMOND ON FEBRUARY 23, 2016
It was Phil Saviano’s persistence to bring his story of sexual abuse to the attention of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team that led to a full-scale investigation into the allegations and reports of sexual misconduct by priests of the Archdiocese of Boston and its cover-up by officials in the Catholic Church. This investigation would eventually win the paper’s reporters the Pulitzer Prize, and more than 10 years later become the focus of Tom McCarthy’s critically acclaimed Spotlight. Neal Huff, who plays Saviano in the film, worked with McCarthy on HBO’s The Wire, on which the former played a political aide and the latter a morally challenged reporter. While their working relationship may have allowed Huff to get his foot in the door, it was the physical and emotional intensity of his audition that sealed the deal. The New York stage, film, and television actor’s incredibly deep connection to Saviano is very much evident on the screen, and during our recent chat, he discussed the making of Spotlight and his relationship with Saviano, as well as his urgent desire to play his character in a way that was at once truthful and necessarily representative.
What was it like meeting the real Phil Saviano?
When I read the script I didn’t even know if the character was an actual person. So the first thing I did was ask if they had any info on him beyond the scene itself. It turned out that [co-screenwriter] Josh Singer had done a really extensive interview with Phil in 2012 and he shared that with me. I immediately asked if I could get in touch with Phil, add within days I was in Phil’s house, spending time with him. That began what has become a really significant friendship in my life. He’s a real original, from the way he thinks to expresses himself. He was so generous. I immediately knew that it was going to be a collaboration between us. But I also knew that the character had to serve a certain function in the story. There are a few survivors in the film, and they all serve different functions—even as notes for the audience. And so I spent a lot of time talking with Tom [McCarthy] about what he really needed. We knew there was Phil, but there was also the Phil Saviano character, which was what they needed for the purposes of the scene. Phil knew this wasn’t exactly about him—that he was representing a lot of people.
How did you gain his confidence?
He said he could tell my heart was in the right place and that he knew I had a very personal stake. I had friends who’d been abused from childhood and high school, so I was very curious. And the thing with Phil is his remarkable generosity. I have never met anybody like him in that regard. He’s very open about what happened to him and he never repressed any of it. He just thought he was the only one, which is why he never talked about it.
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