Joseph Fiennes says he wants fans to see Dear England, but not the England players. The actor, who plays Gareth Southgate in James Graham’s stage-to-screen story, said the team should stay focused with the World Cup only a few weeks away.
Graham was even blunter. He said he would not want the England squad to watch the production before the tournament, saying he would not want to be responsible for disrupting England’s best chance of winning the World Cup in a long time. He added that he was glad Southgate did not come to see the play during the final tournaments because Southgate and the players are the storytellers, not him.
That warning lands at a moment when the project is about to move from theatre into living rooms. Dear England launches next Sunday, with the adapting Graham’s hit play through Left Bank, the producer behind The Crown. The broadcaster shares World Cup coverage with ITV, and the tournament is approaching in North America after years in which Southgate has come to define the modern England side.
For Fiennes, the point of the drama is not to distract the squad but to help the public understand what the job costs. He said the players would get “so much” if fans can see the show and understand the pressure Graham has written into the lives of the young men at its centre. Fiennes recently met Southgate for the first time and described him as a “remarkable man and an absolute gent.”
Graham named the play after Southgate’s emotional open letter to the public after the pandemic, and the new television version keeps that emotional core while pushing the story further. Episodes three and four include fresh material, with new manager Thomas Tuchel brought into the frame as the drama moves beyond the original stage production.
The timing gives the series an awkward charge. England’s most successful modern manager is now part of a scripted retelling just as the team tries to write a real one, and Graham is asking viewers to separate the art from the event. He said Southgate should take equal credit with Tuchel if England win the World Cup, a remark that underlines the central tension running through the whole project: the story belongs to the people still living it.
