LOS ANGELES (CA)
Gold Derby [Los Angeles, CA]
March 13, 2026
By Jeff Ewing
Filmmaker reveals how he crafted a film that’s still ranked among the top Best Picture winners in Oscar history
Ten years ago, Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight emerged from a crowded Best Picture field to score Oscar Night’s biggest prize. A dramatization of how a team of Boston Globe journalists broke the story of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal, the film was nominated for six statuettes at the 88th Academy Awards. It ultimately won two: Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture, surpassing fellow luminaries including The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Bridge of Spies.
Starring Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, and Brian d’Arcy James, and cowritten by Josh Singer, Spotlight is a well-told tale that tackles important and powerful subject matter. It’s also a far from typical Best Picture winner — a dialogue-heavy exhibition of journalistic grunt work without any of the expansive (and expensive) trappings of prestige cinema. To this day, it’s often listed as one of the top Best Picture winners in Oscar history.
A decade later, Spotlight‘s win seems even more appropriate in an era when journalism seems under attack from those in power. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the film’s Best Picture win, Gold Derby spoke with McCarthy the film’s enduring legacy, the state of journalism today, and more.
Gold Derby: Spotlight is thrilling and emotional despite also being a dialogue-heavy showcase of journalistic grunt work. How were you and Josh able to accomplish that?
Tom McCarthy: We spent a lot of time researching. At one point, the real reporters were like, “Oh, you guys work like we work!” Early on we felt that because the movie was so much about authenticity, and veracity, and facts, that we had to get it right — much like they had to get it right. So there was a lot of information-gathering and early structuring conversations. Knowing that it was a really big story with a lot of research angles, how could we conflate them? We knew we couldn’t represent everybody; it was just too much. So we focused on the core of the Spotlight team, and really let that be our guide. We had to dare to be boring … and let that be our North Star.
In the course of all that research, did you find anything that surprised you?
Tons! One thing was learning the process of what good journalists do, what good reporting is, and what makes a great investigation. There was a real learning curve for us in terms of how the newspaper worked … and how they did their job. We spent a lot of time riding around Boston with different members of the team looking at different places and talking about them. And then along the way, there were a lot of story elements that were like, “Oh, that’s not how we thought it went.” At a certain point, it felt like we were doing our own investigation into their investigation. It was a really exciting process.
How did cowriting and directing Spotlight change or challenge your perspectives about the journalistic process?
If anything, it probably deepened my respect for what I would call good journalism … especially in this time where we’ve got an administration and a world of ideologues out there systemically trying to bash journalists. It obviously behooves a lot of very powerful people if the public has no respect for journalism and journalists. The [Spotlight team] really were heroes, and they were flawed and had their issues, like all of us. But they were the right people at the right moment to tell that story. We got to really spend a lot of time with them, and like any good journalist will tell you, it’s tricky when you become too close to the subjects. We had to look at it and be like, “OK, but what did they miss, and how did they miss it?” We really had to remind ourselves to be as fair and balanced in the storytelling as we could.
Ten years ago, Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight emerged from a crowded Best Picture field to score Oscar Night’s biggest prize. A dramatization of how a team of Boston Globe journalists broke the story of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal, the film was nominated for six statuettes at the 88th Academy Awards. It ultimately won two: Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture, surpassing fellow luminaries including The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Bridge of Spies.
Starring Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, and Brian d’Arcy James, and cowritten by Josh Singer, Spotlight is a well-told tale that tackles important and powerful subject matter. It’s also a far from typical Best Picture winner — a dialogue-heavy exhibition of journalistic grunt work without any of the expansive (and expensive) trappings of prestige cinema. To this day, it’s often listed as one of the top Best Picture winners in Oscar history.
A decade later, Spotlight‘s win seems even more appropriate in an era when journalism seems under attack from those in power. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the film’s Best Picture win, Gold Derby spoke with McCarthy the film’s enduring legacy, the state of journalism today, and more.https://www.youtube.com/embed/anMa-LM6veM?feature=oembed
Gold Derby: Spotlight is thrilling and emotional despite also being a dialogue-heavy showcase of journalistic grunt work. How were you and Josh able to accomplish that?
Tom McCarthy: We spent a lot of time researching. At one point, the real reporters were like, “Oh, you guys work like we work!” Early on we felt that because the movie was so much about authenticity, and veracity, and facts, that we had to get it right — much like they had to get it right. So there was a lot of information-gathering and early structuring conversations. Knowing that it was a really big story with a lot of research angles, how could we conflate them? We knew we couldn’t represent everybody; it was just too much. So we focused on the core of the Spotlight team, and really let that be our guide. We had to dare to be boring … and let that be our North Star.
In the course of all that research, did you find anything that surprised you?
Tons! One thing was learning the process of what good journalists do, what good reporting is, and what makes a great investigation. There was a real learning curve for us in terms of how the newspaper worked … and how they did their job. We spent a lot of time riding around Boston with different members of the team looking at different places and talking about them. And then along the way, there were a lot of story elements that were like, “Oh, that’s not how we thought it went.” At a certain point, it felt like we were doing our own investigation into their investigation. It was a really exciting process.
How did cowriting and directing Spotlight change or challenge your perspectives about the journalistic process?
If anything, it probably deepened my respect for what I would call good journalism … especially in this time where we’ve got an administration and a world of ideologues out there systemically trying to bash journalists. It obviously behooves a lot of very powerful people if the public has no respect for journalism and journalists. The [Spotlight team] really were heroes, and they were flawed and had their issues, like all of us. But they were the right people at the right moment to tell that story. We got to really spend a lot of time with them, and like any good journalist will tell you, it’s tricky when you become too close to the subjects. We had to look at it and be like, “OK, but what did they miss, and how did they miss it?” We really had to remind ourselves to be as fair and balanced in the storytelling as we could.
I really appreciate the emphasis placed on highlighting their examinations of past mistakes. When did you know that had to be part of the story?
When you start working on a movie, you’re like, “OK, what’s the story I’m telling?” And then you start to figure out what’s above or below the story. After maybe half-a-year or more of research, we hit on this idea of institutional complicity. Once we tapped that theme, the movie reached a new level for us. We realized that if it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to abuse one.
When we hit on that, we had to look at every institution — including Spotlight. Everybody knew about the story, including them. So why did it take so long [to tell that story]? I don’t think you can pin it on them, but you can certainly say, “Hey, what’s your part in that?” For me, that just felt honest and human, and I think the reporters would own that.
From a directorial standpoint, the film could be drab and monotonous, but you avoid that very skillfully. How did you decide to approach Spotlight‘s visual language?
It’s a movie that celebrates process, so we felt we could never be too fancy. We had to really let the story and the work lead. We also wanted the camera to be moving quite a bit because there’s a real freneticism to the newsroom. We wanted to feel that energy, especially as the story started to break. We wanted [the audience] to really feel that propulsion that reporters feel.
As a screenwriter, there’s a kind of similarity in the work we do. You spend a lot of time hitting walls, and then suddenly pieces start to fall into place. We felt like we could capture that, and if we did that correctly, the audience would feel that. Obviously, the stakes in the story couldn’t be more real — the safety of our children. What’s more meaningful in any society?
Thematically, there’s a kernel of optimism in the film in the sense that their work brought justice to power. That’s an especially powerful reminder right now.
Super-powerful. There’s a lot of great journalism out there, a lot of great reporters, and a lot of great publications. The problem is: who’s consuming it and who cares? So much of our republic has been convinced the work [of great journalists] doesn’t matter. To think that when Spotlight printed their story, the entirety of Boston and Massachusetts’ Catholic community responded the way they did is really meaningful. They read it, and the reporting was so airtight that they believed it. What’s terrifying about this moment is … as someone said many years ago, we have our own facts now. To think that we’re at that place where people can always find a way to say, “Oh, don’t believe it, don’t believe it,” is really terrifying.
If someone were to revisit Spotlight now, what would you like them to take home from it today?
What befuddles me the most about this moment is that so many citizens are willing to believe, “Hey, journalists are bad — they’re out to lie and manipulate, and control you.” to see the movie and to think, “Wow, these journalists are people. They’re very human, and they really care.” If anyone had the chance to sit with some of these journalists and get to know them, they would probably feel better about the work and the process.