Band of Brothers opens at Upottery Airfield on June 4, 1944, as the Easy Company paratroopers make their final preparations for their highly-awaited Normandy jump. The men of Easy Company are clearly disappointed when the commanding officer, 1st Lieutenant Thomas Meehan III, shows up to announce that the jump has been delayed due to bad weather.
Easy Company, listen up! Gather up around me. Move it up, come on, gentlemen, let’s go! Now, the Channel coast is socked in with rain and fog, high winds on the drop zone. No jump tonight. The invasion has been postponed. We’re on a 24 hour stand down.
As the men grumble about the delay, we meet 1st Lieutenant Richard Winters and 2nd Lieutenant Lewis Nixon. The two men talk about their time together as they expect further announcements. Towards the end of the first episode, there is an exchange about the weather between the two.
Nixon: “I think it’s clearing up. You think it’s clearing up?”
Winters: “No.”
Nixon: “I think it’s clearing up.”
Late at night on June 5, 1944, the airborne troops take off and head toward Normandy. They are the first Allied soldiers to land in Normandy in the early hours of the following morning. At the end of the episode, we see the Order of the Day by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the screen.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the actor who portrays Major Richard Winters in Band of Brothers has been cast in Pressure, a movie that focuses on the complicated weather situation before D-Day. And yeah, this is what the new mustache is about 🙂
Moreover, Damian has now been promoted from Major to Field Marshal 🙂 He has joined the brilliant cast of Pressure as the British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, aka “Monty.”
The script, co-written by David Haig and Anthony Maras, who is also the director, is adapted from David Haig’s stage play of the same name. The movie stars, in addition to Damian, Andrew Scott as Scottish meteorologist James Stagg, Brendan Fraser as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chris Messina as the American Meteorologist Colonel Irving Crick, and Kerry Condon, the only female lead in the movie, as Eisenhower’s personal chauffeur and secretary Kay Summersby. The movie marks a reunion for Damian and Andrew Scott, who also starred in Band of Brothers as Private John D. Hall.
The cameras rolled on Pressure on September 10, and here is the first social media post our “Monty” made from the set!
Bernard Law Montgomery aka Monty is the most celebrated British General of the Second World War. In Band of Brothers, Episode 3: Operation Market Garden, the Americans look irritated that Montgomery ran the operation which turned out to be a failure for the Allied forces. In fact, it was Montgomery who commanded all Allied land forces in France during the Normandy landings and several months afterwards. I will certainly make a post about the man who Damian is bringing to life in Pressure in the weeks to come. But, in my first look at Pressure, I would like to focus on the project itself.
Pressure was originally commissioned by The Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh as a play and, writer and actor David Haig was hired to write the script. The script came out of the research Haig did about Dr. James Stagg, a Scottish meteorologist who did the weather forecasting leading up to D-Day. Haig also starred as Stagg in the original stage production. Following a successful UK Tour, the play was revived in 2018 on the West End. It was performed for the late Queen Elizabeth II and other world leaders in 2019 to mark the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings. The play made its North American Premiere in Toronto in 2023 with Kevin Doyle (you may know him as Molesley in Downton Abbey, he is fantastic!) as James Stagg. Here is a 2 minute video from this production demonstrating how intense a play about the weather can get when so many lives are at stake!
And now, ladies and gentlemen, Studiocanal and Working Title are teaming up to bring Pressure as a WWII Thriller to the big screen. David Haig wrote the movie script with Anthony Maras who will also direct the movie.
I really like the title Pressure because it highlights two different kinds of pressure, one metaphoric and one literal: the former being the emotional pressure of the decision about the timing of the biggest invasion in Europe and the latter being the barometric pressure we always hear about in the weather forecasts that determine what kind of weather the Allied Forces will face during the invasion.
The story takes place in the three days leading to the commencement of Operation Overlord the codename for the Battle of Normandy. The lead character is Dr. James Stagg. As the chief meteorologist of Britain, Stagg needs to deliver the most important weather forecast of his career. And he has a conflict with Colonel Irving Krick, the American meteorologist, about the weather on June 5, 1944 – the set date of the long-planned invasion. While Krick is predicting sunny weather, Stagg forecasts a storm on June 5. And General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser), aka Ike, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, needs to listen to both men, consider their arguments and decide how to proceed: either to go ahead with the invasion as planned or delay it for a day and take advantage of the potential break in the storm that Stagg forecasts on June 6th.
Both the fate of the war and millions of lives are at stake and Ike only has Captain Kay Summersby, his personal driver and secretary, to confide in.
Deadline reports that the movie will focus on the decision-making process under high pressure as well as the scale of the Normandy landings.
Now, one thing that might have surprised you is that I haven’t mentioned Monty anywhere in the plot so far. That is because he is not listed as a character in Pressure the play. I understand the play mainly focuses on the conflict between Stagg and Krick. My hunch is that Eisenhower will have a good chunk of screen time in the movie and we will see him working with the other main Allied commanders, including Montgomery, as they prepare for the largest amphibious invasion in military history.
And to learn a bit about the deliberations leading up to D-Day, I turn to history books. The date of the invasion was originally set at June 5, 1944; however poor weather delays it for a day. Eisenhower arrives at the Southwick House, a mansion that became the headquarters for the top commanders of the AEF.
Eisenhower needs to make the extremely vital decision of whether to go ahead with Operation Overlord or wait for better weather. Besides, there is intelligence that the Germans moved into the 82nd Airborne’s drop zone. And in case of another delay, they had to wait for two weeks for ideal tidal conditions. The decision Eisenhower would make that night would decide the fate of the war. Can you imagine the pressure at Southwick House?
I have to jump in here and say I get goosebumps as I am writing this. I am an International Politics scholar so I obviously know that D-Day is a turning point in the war that helped the Allied Forces win. However, seeing such historical moments on the big screen always gives me the chills. The first examples from the top of my head are Thirteen Days and Argo. I believe Pressure will be no exception thanks to the stellar cast portraying the fascinating real life WWII characters.
Back to the Southwick House. The high command has mixed opinions about what to do. But Montgomery is one of the commenders that unhesitatingly encourages Eisenhower to go ahead with the operation. And I hope we will have the following exchange in the movie!
Eisenhower turned to Montgomery: “Do you see any reason for not going Tuesday?”
Monty looked Ike squarely in the eye and gave his answer: “I would say go.”
This happens before the final weather briefing very late that night where Stagg gives the green light to Eisenhower which helps the Supreme Commander make his final decision:
“Ok. Let’s go.”
Damian was spotted in Monty attire on the set of Pressure on Camber Sands Beach in East Sussex. In a recent interview on The Dish Podcast, Damian reveals he visited the Imperial War Museum researching declassified weather reports from WWII. And he is happy to remind the interviewers that he is not Daniel Day Lewis but Damian Lewis. He is not a method actor. While he reads books and visits museums to review historical documents, he does not dig a fox hole in his garden or eat rations out of a tin 🙂
I am looking forward to seeing Damian bring to life Monty, quoting Winston Churchill, who is “in defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable” in Pressure and have Ike and Monty plotting together. Please watch this space and damian-lewis.com for updates on the movie. And may I just fangirl for a second and say that the mustache is growing on me? 🙂
