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'August: Osage County' is all American - mostly

From Steven Rea's "On Movies Online" www.inquirer.com/onmovies Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, opening in Philadelphia next Friday - and already playing in a few theaters in New York and Los Angeles - is set in the American heartland, exactly where its title says: Osage County, Okla. So when it became time, a year

Julianne Nicholson (left), Meryl Streep, and Margo Martindale in the dysfunctional-family free-for-all opening here next Friday. A couple of British dudes show up, too.
Julianne Nicholson (left), Meryl Streep, and Margo Martindale in the dysfunctional-family free-for-all opening here next Friday. A couple of British dudes show up, too.Read more

The all-American 'August' cast is infiltrated - slightly

From Steven Rea's "On Movies Online"

www.inquirer.com/onmovies

Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, opening in Philadelphia next Friday - and already playing in a few theaters in New York and Los Angeles - is set in the American heartland, exactly where its title says: Osage County, Okla. So when it became time, a year or so back, to consider casting the film adaptation of the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning dysfunctional-family free-for-all, Letts met with famously hands-on film mogul Harvey Weinstein to discuss the matter. And one thing Letts made perfectly clear: No Brits, please.

"All these Englishmen and these Irishmen, I think they're great," says Letts, "but I do think American actors are getting short shrift. There's a kind of loose-limbed quality to American acting, and I think we're starting to lose it a little bit."

At his first meeting with Weinstein, Letts said as much.

"I said, 'Please don't put a bunch of Englishmen and Irishmen and Australians in this,' " Letts recalls. "I told him that I thought one of the reasons the play was celebrated was that we were so accustomed to seeing British drama come over here and play on Broadway, and it was so nice to see an American drama, with American actors, onstage. . . . And I said, 'What, you're going to have Judi Dench playing Violet and Nicole Kidman play Barbara?' And I said, 'I think that would be a mistake. I think we would be sending the wrong message with that.' "

To a large extent, Letts won his argument. Meryl Streep accepted the role of the pill-popping, cancer-consumed matriarch, Violet, Julia Roberts plays Barbara, the eldest of her three thoroughly messed-up daughters, and American-as-they-get actors Chris Cooper and Sam Shepard have pivotal roles. But along with the two Golden Globe-nominated actresses - and Abigail Breslin and Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson and Misty Upham and Dermot Mulroney and Margo Martindale - a pair of across-the-ponders did sneak in and take their seats around the Weston family table: Ewan McGregor and Benedict Cumberbatch.

"Yes, well, Ewan and Benedict, of course," says Letts. "I guess I lost the fight, in terms of that, though I am quite pleased to lose the fight . . . the truth is they're lovely fellows and they do a great job."