Rachel McAdams’ New Film Almost Didn’t Happen Due To Shocking Sex Abuse Subject Matter


Rachel McAdams is part of an all-star cast in the new film, Spotlight, and it’s getting excellent reviews. But it almost didn’t happen due to its shocking subject matter, and the actors and director sat down with the Hollywood Reporter recently to talk about how the movie was done in a way that wouldn’t push audiences away.

In Spotlight, McAdams plays Sarah Pfeiffer, a real-life journalist who was part of a team of investigative journalists that shook the Catholic church to its core in the early 2000s with a series of articles about the sexual abuse that was happening across the country. The stories set off a chain reaction, a mixture of outrage and confusion that led to the Pope releasing an apology to the victims and their families, and the journalism team — portrayed by Rachel, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, and Mad Men’s John Slattery — made it their mission to dig up the truth on behalf of those victims, no matter how disturbing their finds were. That drive was what the movie tries to capture.

“Investigative reporting can be tedious. It can be endless. But it can also be exciting. And that’s the drama we’re trying to capture in this movie,” said director Tom McCarthy.

The difficult part of making such a film was finding a way to portray the real-life journalists without making the subject matter so dark that audiences would stay away. Mark Ruffalo says they understood that it would be a trying task.

“No one wants to watch a priest molesting a kid. That’s very hard for an audience to watch,” Ruffalo says.

The actors knew they had a serious job on their hands and took it as such, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Rachel McAdams took it upon herself to speak to the woman she was portraying to find out exactly what her life was like at the time, down to the smallest details.

“Rachel McAdams has asked me how long I kept my fingernails. What size Post-it Notes I preferred,” Sarah Pfeiffer wrote in the Globe.

The attention to detail and the gravity of the situation seems to have worked well for the film, as despite the sensitive subject matter, it has gotten quite a few good reviews.

“I think a film like Spotlight is the refresh button that moviegoers have been looking for. The story is compelling, the acting is unnoticeable, and the script seems to flow the way a real conversation would. The writers and director of this film are the ‘Spotlight’ of filmmaking, opening up a sensitive story that people acknowledged but probably couldn’t imagine on screen, and they brought it to us in a way where I felt all the emotions of someone finding out the truth for the first time,” wrote a reviewer on IMDB.

Rachel McAdams made headlines recently with the news that she’s joining the Marvel world — specifically, Doctor Strange, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch. Speculation as to which character she would portray has run wild online, with rumors flying that she’ll play a love interest for Cumberbatch. However, new stories say she might be taking the role of Night Nurse Christine Palmer. Though nothing has officially been announced, fans are running wild with the theory, as Palmer’s character had a history of surgical experience, making her a perfect fit for Doctor Strange.

[Photo by Sonia Recchia / Getty Images]

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