David Tennant messed with our minds on Jessica Jones, but he's sticking to slightly calmer psychological waters for a new drama, starring alongside Elisabeth Moss, Michael Gambon and Gabriel Byrne in Mad To Be Normal.
Despite the title sounding a little like a dodgy rom-com, it's actually a biopic of world-renowned Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David Laing and his colleagues at Kingsley Hall, East London in the 1960s. He pushed back against traditional theories of serious mental dysfunction, working from the idea that the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client were valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder. So now you know.
Robert Mullan, who has written several books on the man, penned the script and is directing, and this one has been bubbling away in development even before it was announced at the Cannes Film Festival last year. “I have long been fascinated by the life and work of R. D. Laing," Tennant told Screen International when the project was originally being promoted. "This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and discover this important man and I am honoured and thrilled to be involved in telling this story. Robert Mullan’s passion for the subject is inspiring and the presence of the brilliant Elisabeth Moss makes this something I cannot wait to start work on.” He no longer has to wait, as it's now shooting.