Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with Nyad, Julia Cox‘s adaptation of Diana Nyad’s memoir that was the diving-off point for directors Elizabeth Chai Vásárhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Netflix movie.
The plot follows the true story of Nyad’s attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida at age 63. Annette Bening plays Nyad, and Jodie Foster her coach Bonnie Stoll. Both recently snagged Golden Globe nominations for their performances.
Nyad attempted the Cuba-Florida swim once at the peak of her long-distance swimming career in 1978, but did not make it. Following her retirement, she covered sports for ABC and NPR among other outlets, but after turning 60 in 2010 she attempted the swim again. She didn’t make it that time, either.
The film shows the several attempts Nyad made to cross the 110 miles from Havana to Key West via the Straits of Florida — it took five tries before she finally made it in 2013. In each swim, Nyad learns of new obstacles that can derail her, from sharks in the open water to box jellyfish whose stings could could cause insurmountable pain or even be fatal. Nyad and Stoll worked with navigator John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans) to plot the right course.
Producer Andrew Lazar read Nyad’s book, Find a Way, and even offered Nyad a chance to write the adaptation. After her draft, the producers were won over by Cox’s take.
“This special friendship became my way in,” said Cox, who also Zoomed with Stoll and Nyad during the process. “Before long, the characters were just talking to me in my head.”
Married documentary directors Vásárhelyi and Chin were chosen for the humanity they brought to the mountain-climbing doc Free Solo. They worked with Cox to depict both the physical feats Nyad accomplished and her character. Vásárhelyi sat they cast Bening, the four-time Oscar nominee, for her maturity and fearlessness.
“It was really important for us to cast age appropriately,” she said. “We wanted an actor who was not afraid to play a woman who is complex.”
Bening read the script during the pandemic and then got to know the real Nyad.
“What interested me when I got to know her was also the softness in her and the part of her that suffers just like any of us, and the part of her that is unsure,” Bening said during an appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles. “I’m curious about what part of her does not feel capable. What part of her is that? As I said, it’s like the soft underbelly. We all have that.”
Click below to read the script.
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