Michael Douglas on “Franklin” and “Endangered” Democracies

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Next, we turn the clocks back in American foreign policy to someone many know as America’s first diplomat, Benjamin Franklin. A new Apple TV series, “Franklin,” tells the story of his mission to France in 1776 to secure support for American independence. Academy Award winner Michael Douglas speaks to Walter Isaacson about taking on the role of this founding father.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Michael Douglas, welcome to the show.

MICHAEL DOUGLAS, ACTOR, “FRANKLIN”: Hi, Walter, nice to see you again.

ISAACSON: You play Benjamin Franklin in France based on Stacy Schiff ‘s book “The Great Improvisation” for this new limited miniseries and Stacy Schiff begins the book by saying, in December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France and there’s that scene where he’s mobbed, as he is going into Paris, why is he so famous?

DOUGLAS: Doing the homework for this show, it was stunning what this man had accomplished in his life. We know about him as a writer, and as printer, and as a publisher, University of Pennsylvania libraries, post office, then all of the inventions, and I think it probably was electricity, the fact electricity that kind of — was the — for the entire world just was something was so unbelievable from outer space that made him so famous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do they mean to attack us?

DOUGLAS: They need to see me. They have it in their heads that I invented electricity. Who am I to dissuade them?

DOUGLAS (through translator): Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for such a warm welcome. And I am thrilled to be here in Paris.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Follow me, please.

DOUGLAS (through translator): I am impatgient to meet you all, later.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ISAACSON: And in France is where they actually performed for the first time his electricity experiments on the lightning rod. So, they consider him somebody who snatched fire from the heavens. So, it must have been fun to do it. Why would you do a period piece? I don’t think you’ve ever done one before.

DOUGLAS: I never — no, I’ve never done any periodic piece, which was one of the basic reasons why I wanted to do it. This last year in my career, I’ve been trying different things, comedy or green screen. But, yes, Benjamin Franklin was like, wow, so I didn’t really know much more since I remembered from my high school class, except in this whole chapter which I did not know anything about and I thought was so fascinating, which was, you know, at 70 years old, after all that he’s accomplished and finishing up his work on this Declaration of Independence in July, signing July 4, 1776. And seven weeks later, together they’ve decided they got to send Franklin to France because the country was broke. They’re still in the middle of the war with the British. You know, their army is ragtag. They have no weapons, no ships and everything else. So, they sent Franklin to France to get their support. I mean, I found it so ironic that this new democracy would take one of the biggest monarchies in the history of world to support them. And that’s the one question I’m going to have for you, you know, how did he even imagine that he was going succeed? And as Stacy’s book’s title says, “The Great Improvisation,” with all that his had achieved, he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do. And so, he took his grandson, who he’d sort of nurtured with him, Temple. And six weeks after the deciding the declaration, he’s taking a two-month trip across the seas to France to try to rue the French to support the Americans in this new venture.

ISAACSON: Well, to answer your question a bit, one reason he succeeds is because he prints things. He becomes a propagandist almost, and his grandson, Temple, is helping him with the printing press as they print the great documents coming out of America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOUGLAS: It’s not bad, but swift with a lever. The impression must be even. Watch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can’t do it this quickly.

DOUGLAS: You can if it serves as your livelihood. I could print 500 pages a day. But don’t worry, boy. I’ve got other plans for you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I might have plans of my own, you know.

DOUGLAS: Such as?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Never mind.

DOUGLAS: No, I’m all ears.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I intend to live pleasantly, to have entertaining friends and exciting adventures, to reside in a house like this and be regarded as a wit and a gentleman.

DOUGLAS: Perhaps it would be best for you to learn a trade after all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ISAACSON: Tell me a little bit about that relationship with Temple Franklin that I love.

DOUGLAS: Well, you know, Temple was sort of the bastard of a bastard. He was — he didn’t ever know who his mother was. He was growing up sort of without any support in the U.K., in England. And because of his conflict with his own son, William, who maintained himself as a loyalist, you know, as governor of New Jersey, and basically allowed his son to be imprisoned as a loyalist, I think that probably there was some guilt in Ben. He took this young man over to be with him. With all the strengths that Franklin had, I don’t think you could call him a really good family man, per se. Certainly, I would not want to have been married to him. But he took him over, and it allowed us, in the eight hours, to do another sort of subplot of a young generation, of a young person that hasn’t traveled, being introduced and integrated into this kind of wild French society, a lot of young, you know, people involved. And so, it became a good parallel to what was going on.

ISAACSON: Noah Jupe plays Temple, and I love those scenes because you watch him trying to have to figure out French society. In some way it’s a metaphor for the whole thing, is us trying to figure out European society then.

DOUGLAS: It was. I mean — and I think the exciting part we had is not knowing who was on your side. Obviously, there’s a tremendous number of spies that existed all around. There are a lot of backstabbing. And I think that Franklin frustrated, certainly John Adams and a couple of other people for the amount of time that it was taking him as Washington was struggling with his army, trying to keep our idea of democracy alive.

ISAACSON: George Washington said the game is pretty much off, that’s in Stacy Schiff’s book, when Franklin goes over there. And he has to do something that we’re not very good at today, which is a show both idealism and realism, sort of this balance of power game. So, he’s very dexterous in how he pulls them in. How do you try to convey that wyliness of Benjamin Franklin?

DOUGLAS: Well, hopefully with a look here or a look there, or people knowing how he actually feels about people and how he treats them, I mean,

his relationship with Vergennes is extraordinary. I mean, he brought him in like they — they must have been like brothers.

ISAACSON: Yes, the French foreign minister we’re talking about.

DOUGLAS: Right. The French foreign minister, who was really his point man in terms of dealing with the French government, and was so supportive of Franklin, you know, in terms of how much money they were able to get. The other thing that, you know, really struck home when we speak about him being 70 when he first arrived, in 1800, the average age for American was39 years old. So, Franklin was already 70. I said, he made Joe Biden look really good. In my opinion. I mean, for him to take on all this at that age and with the gout was very impressive. And I think just the years of experience and his ability to read people, just to kind of get a sense of who they are and his willingness to seem very accessible. You know, people were not threatened by him. He may be famous and a famous star, but he brought everybody in with his kind of — his vulnerability. I think it was a great performance. I don’t think that’s necessarily who he was. But it was one of the most amazing efforts I could ever believe, that why this monarchy ends up supporting a democracy. And I must say, you know this better than me, it wasn’t soon after this. I mean, I don’t know if he totally bankrolled the French government. It’s not a few years later when we have the French Revolution. So, it’s another area where he played a key part, I think.

ISAACSON: And Franklin, you know, when he arrives, he doesn’t wear a wig. He sometimes wears a fur cap as if he’s a back woodsman. And you portray him very well as if he’s having a common touch, but also pretending to have a common touch.

DOUGLAS: Thank you, thank you for getting that, Walter. Yes, I really appreciate that because that was one of the things that I was really fascinated about is how aware he was of his presence. He knew he was sort of a rock star. So, what did he do is he played humility. And especially, I thought it worked out so well. One of the things about production-wise that I loved about the picture was the extras. I mean, we’re having four, 500 extras of the court, all in full wigs and unbelievable costumes. And it really helped give (INAUDIBLE) a milititude (ph), and made him look like this plain and simple man. And I think — I was sort of curious to ask you too, I mean, you really could say Franklin was sort of the beginning of the middle class, you know, He sort of represented a working class that could actually function and make money rather than royalty or poverty. And the cat was sort of picked up by Daniel Boone, I guess, and Davy Crockett, but was his token to a simpler time and the rustic future that America held.

ISAACSON: You know, the opening episode sort of has a theme in which statecraft, you know, diplomacy is actually stagecraft. And there’s been Franklin not only being a diplomat, but playing a role, setting a stage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOUGLAS: Tell me, what sort of man is for Minister Vergennes?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What sort? Yes. You see where we are? Here, one night you might play the lover, the next, the king, after that, a beggar.

DOUGLAS: But who are you really? You are what the rule requires you to be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We understand each other perfectly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DOUGLAS: I think you start at the beginning and you get a sense of the crowds when he arrives in Paris and how his notoriety and he creates this humble being. And then, you know, he had such great wit and a sense of humor and kind of idiosyncrasies of the situation that he was in. I admired his — he seems to be kind of a logician where he kind of balances both sides. He’s always evaluating situations. And I think this served him very well as a man. I mean, as governor, you know, of Pennsylvania for England, he had some ideas of how to handle himself. But it was really fascinating to watch him wind his way through the aristocracy up into the government. And it was. It was very well — he would have been a good actor.

ISAACSON: He was a good actor.

DOUGLAS: Yes.

ISAACSON: And he said, and Stacy Schiff has it in the book, that diplomacy should not be conducted as a siege, it should be a seduction. And I think you see in this series how he does that. And even metaphorically, he has Madame Brillon and Madame Helvetius, two of his, I guess we could say, mistresses. Tell me about them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Why haven’t you paid a call yet?

DOUGLAS (through translator): What a delight that we meet at last. May I present my neighbor, Madame Brillon?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I am familiar with the widow Helvetius.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): But she wishes she wasn’t.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DOUGLAS: Well, I think — well, first of all, I have to say, Walter, that — and I appreciate Stacy’s book. I’ve got a lot of information out of your biography on Franklin, a lot of personal, you know, character stuff. And so, congratulations. It was a great job. He had an eye for the women. He just loved — he loved women, even at 70 years old when he was over there. So, I can’t say everything was sexually related, but he loved the sweet talk to women. Madame Brillon was married and had a more ethereal presence. Helvetius was a little more carnal, I think. But I would imagine, just with the kind of pressure that he was under, this was his way of relaxing, you know. He certainly liked to imbibe. We know that, too. But he loved the ladies, and he enjoyed — he knew how to speak to them. He was very, very friendly, even if it wasn’t a question of, you know, going anywhere.

ISAACSON: It kind of appalled John Adams and John Adams’ his wife, Abigail, because they’re in Paris as well. There’s quite a contrast between them. What do you think about Franklin’s character, how that helped him? I mean, the French had no reason to get in on our side during the revolution. He almost seduced the men.

DOUGLAS: He did. And this was the hardest question to you in the beginning, the hardest thing to understand. John Adams sort of gave me the parallels to some things going on today. And I was thinking as they were knocking their heads, you know, working out this Declaration of Independence. And you really felt like two sides that were going on, almost like two different parties. And you realize, though, how all their focus and concentration was on this form of government, creating a democracy. And working on the show made me really appreciate how vulnerable, how fragile this sense of democracy was. And when you saw the two of them going at each other, you always knew it was for the better. It was for it to create this state. And today, you know, you feel like much more people going at each other trying to kill each other rather than work towards a better democracy, because it’s an imperfect solution. I mean, it’s not an answer to it. It’s always going to be evolving.

ISAACSON: Was this feeling about democracy, and your worry about democracy now, was that some — one of the reasons you wanted to do this as it sort of tied into today?

DOUGLAS: Not actually. Well, it happened, though, as it evolved. And I was working on it and sort of saw those comparisons. Things sort of like the situation between Russia and Ukraine remind me of England and this new country, America. I was a couple of things. So, it’s important as we’re coming in on our 250th anniversary at a time when I’m more aware of the fragility of what we have, autocracies seem to be butting up all over the world, democracies are an endangered process and it’s something that helps hopefully as a side note will help make people aware of.

ISAACSON: Michael Douglas, thank you so much for joining us.

DOUGLAS: Walter, thank you, always a pleasure.