Scarlett Johansson says film backer tried to cut Holocaust plot in her directorial debut

Scarlett Johansson has revealed that a financial backer attempted to pressure her into removing Holocaust-related material from her feature directorial debut "Eleanor the Great," which stars June Squibb as an elderly woman who mistakenly joins a group of Holocaust survivors.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Johansson said that during pre-production, one of the film’s funders threatened to withdraw unless the plot elements involving the Holocaust were eliminated. 

“I mean, if they’d said, ‘I’ll only back this if you shoot in New Jersey’, or ‘We need to get this done by the spring’, then that would have been one thing. But they were objecting to what the film actually was.”

In the film, Squibb portrays a retired Jewish widow who inadvertently becomes part of a Holocaust survivors’ group and chooses to maintain the imposture after realising her mistake. 

“[The film] had to be about what happens when someone gets caught in the worst lie imaginable; if not the Holocaust, then what could it be? They offered no alternative. It was just: ‘This is an issue,'" Johansson said. 

Johansson stressed she refused to make the requested changes, leading the backer to withdraw and leaving the production financially exposed.

“It was really shocking, and I was so disappointed.” She added that distributor Sony Pictures Classics intervened at the last moment to ensure filming could proceed.

By Sabina Mammadli