Cary Grant endures, decades after his death in 1986 as one of Hollywood’s most stylish and versatile stars. Yet “Archie,” a 4-part miniseries streaming on BritBox, unveils Cary Grant as the creation of Britain’s Archibald Leach to escape his horrific childhood trauma.
Although initially skeptical, Jason Isaacs (“The Patriot,” “Star Trek: Discovery”) offers an insightful, physically accurate version.
“When my agent said they were doing a biopic of Cary Grant, I thought, What moron would step into those shoes!? But then I got the script,” Isaacs, 60, said in a Zoom interview, “written by Jeff Pope.
“Jeff Pope is known in Britain for a long history of real-life dramas, like ‘Philomena’ and ‘Stan and Ollie.’
“I thought, ‘Jeff Pope’s not an idiot. There must be something else going on.’ Then I saw his scripts and realized it’s not about Cary Grant at all. It’s called ‘Archie’ because it’s about Archibald Leach who struggled all his life to play Cary Grant.
“He created ‘Cary Grant’ as some kind of self-defense mechanism against the inner turmoil that plagued him for most of his life. That sounded like something an actor would want to do. So I jumped in.”
Archibald Leach haunts Grant’s life. Married and divorced five times, Grant’s fourth marriage to Dyan Cannon, a two-time Oscar nominee (“Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” “Heaven Can Wait”), produced his only child, Jennifer Grant. Cannon and Grant executive produced “Archie.”
Did Grant suffer from what we now call impostor syndrome?
“I don’t think any of us can understand what he had because he had a catastrophic childhood. He was abandoned and abused, completely without love or any kind of safety mechanism around him. In fact, sometimes he was physically starving as well.
“The scars from that childhood,” Isaacs said, “remained as wounds that became even wider throughout his life as he sought love from other people to make him feel lovable. And the more the world fell in love with him, the worse he felt about himself.
“Hopefully there aren’t many of us have experiences as extreme as that.
“He was the very opposite of all the things the world expected from him. Behind closed doors when he got upset, the mask dropped — and all of that need, rage, anger, self-hatred and desperation to control the chaos came to play in his primary relationships. Which is why Dyan’s experience in marriage was so devastating.
“Being with Jennifer was interesting — because she so loved her dad. He was a doting and present father, working so hard to give her the childhood he didn’t have.
“I was aware the story we’re going to tell was something very different.”
“Archie” is streaming on BritBox