"It's a challenge to portray a character who is living. It's interesting because he's such
a vivid character and he has written so beautifully on his relationship with Iris. They
were an extremely eccentric and vibrant couple. John's speech rhythms are so
fascinating that I've studied tapes quite diligently in order to get them right. When we first meet John he is quite gauche. Like many academics he is intensely intelligent yet at the same time sort of lost in his own world. John Bayley describes them as two rabbits living in a borough, which goes halfway towards describing their rather strange lifestyles. When we first find John he is naive to the ways of the world, and I think Iris gave him a huge amount of confidence. He always admired her enormously. In many ways he was a blank canvas on which Iris wrote and sketched.
The cruelest irony of their story is that John was always reaching out to Iris for reassurance and for fulfillment and in the end, due to her Alzheimers, it is Iris who needs John. Its crucifying for him because her need takes him to a point where he isn't interested in the attention anymore. She gradually becomes completely dependent on him yet she is never quite capable of understanding that need. This is one of the great ripples in their story that Richard was able to successfully explore in the script.
The whole world of sex is like a desert for him. John said in his own writing that he picked Iris to fall in love with because he didn't think there would be any competition for her because she wasn't a natural beauty, and he thought sex was totally off the agenda because it was her mind he was in love with. Then to discover that she not only had sexuality, but a voracious appetite, and numerous lovers, was a bit of shock to his naivete. On the other hand he accepted it because he completely adored her.
At one point in his writing he speaks of him and Iris growing closer and closer apart. Which John defined as the basis for a great marriage. John and Iris spent enormous amounts of time apart. She had a place in London where she often went off to work on her own, as did he. They simply submitted to the solitary nature of writing. I think the great joy of their relationships was that they just talked bollocks to each other, and lived in their funny little fantasy world all the time."