After “Conclave” screenwriter Peter Straughan earned the Golden Globe for best screenplay on Sunday evening, he took a moment to address Megyn Kelly’s viral rant about the film.
While Straughan hadn’t directly heard Kelly’s comments, he rejected the claim that the film is “anti-Catholic,” telling Variety in the Golden Globes press room, “I don’t think the film is anti-Catholic. I was brought up Catholic. I was an altar boy.”
“I think the core message of ‘Conclave’ is about the church always having to re-find its spiritual core, because it deals so much with power. That’s always been a careful, difficult balance,” Straughan continued. “To me, that was a very central Catholic ideal that I was brought up with. I stand by it.”
Straughan adapted “Conclave” from the book of the same name by Robert Harris.
“Just made the huge mistake of watching the much-celebrated ‘Conclave’ and it is the most disgusting anti-Catholic film I have seen in a long time,” Kelly wrote to her 3.4 million X followers. “Shame on Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci & John Lithgow for starring in it & shame on director Edward Berger (among others).”
Kelly took offense to the film’s twist ending, in which the newly elected pope, Vincent Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), reveals he is intersex. Fiennes’ character agrees to keep the news a secret as his election is made public.
“They make THE POPE INTERSEX! This is the big exciting twist at the end. I wish I had known so I wouldn’t have watched it,” Kelly wrote in her post. “There are almost no redeeming characters in the movie – every cardinal is morally bankrupt/repulsive. The only exception of course is the intersex pope (who – surprise! – has female reproductive parts) & the cardinal who keeps her secret – bc of course that kind of Catholic secret-keeping must be lionized. I’m disgusted. What a thing to release to streaming just in time for Christmas. They would never do this to Muslims, but Christians/Catholics are always fair game to mock/belittle/smear.”
Variety parent company PMC owns Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Prods. in a joint venture with Eldridge.
