Everything Is Connected George Eliot's Life.
I was asked to do Eliot specifically because I’m from the Midlands, I think, but I found a connection with her quite quickly in her books, particularly in Middlemarch. I loved her interest in giving a voice to so many different people.
She began life as this judgmental, pious young girl who found fictional books frivolous, then met people in Coventry who had very radical ideas, which led her to leave religion behind completely. That’s quite a change already.
Gillian Wearing for the Guardian
Gillian Wearing celebrates George Eliot’s legacy in this new Arena documentary with an original score by Adrian Utley from Portishead. Just as George Eliot’s Middlemarch explored the lives of everyday men and women, Gillian Wearing’s experimental film is made up of a diverse cast of people from different backgrounds, and features Jason Isaacs and Sheila Atim as the narrators. Together with writers, actors and local people from Nuneaton, Coventry and London they read extracts from George Eliot’s novels, letters and the first-hand accounts of those who knew her. This fascinating documentary paints a polyphonic and unique portrait of the novelist’s unconventional life and reveals the woman behind the literary mask.
Arena: Everything Is Connected – George Eliot’s Life is a BBC Studios Production and was commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Four by Mark Bell.