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Freud confirms Beatles’ songs to star in musical

Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

Mariam Issimdar

24 minutes ago

Film producer Emma Freud has confirmed The Beatles have agreed for their songs to feature in a stage version of the movie, Yesterday.

Freud is working on the show with her husband, Richard Curtis. They were behind the 2019 film and other box office hits, including Love Actually and Bridget Jones’s Diary.

She called it “a huge deal”, saying: “They’ve [The Beatles] never done that with a West End musical before. So it’s the first time that you can kind of legally see The Beatles’ music on stage, which is amazing.”

Freud spoke to BBC Radio Suffolk on Monday, after she received an honorary doctorate for her work in film and broadcasting at the University of Suffolk on Saturday.

Emma Freud wears a red cap and a red, white and gold gown over a black jacket. She is smiling and stands in front of a window, next to a plinth with flowers. The view is of Ipswich Marina and the Waterside is filled with boats.

She said a theatre where the stage show will be performed had been chosen – “but I can’t tell you what it is because I will get killed”.

She confirmed the stage version of Yesterday would also be directed by Oscar-winner Danny Boyle, who oversaw the movie.

Freud said: “We’re at workshop stages, so we’ve already had two workshops and we’ve got a third one coming up this month, where you sort of ask actors to come into a room and just interrogate the script and the songs and the staging, and see how it’s going to work.

“Currently we’re on the 11th draft of the script, because it isn’t just taking a movie script and putting it on to a stage.

“It’s the same story, but actually every beat of it becomes different, becomes theatrical rather than filmic.

“So it’s been an incredible process to be a part of. I don’t feel like I’ve ever done anything as big in my entire life.”

Yesterday is about a struggling musician who wakes up one day to find an altered world where no-one has heard of The Beatles.

He becomes famous after singing their songs and passing them off as his own.

The film stars Himesh Patel and Lily James, along with Suffolk-based singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran.

It was shot throughout Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk, including a scene with 6,000 extras in Gorleston-on-Sea.

Richard Curtis stands against a whitewashed brick wall next to actor Himesh Patel. Naked lightbulbs on cables are hung on the wall behind them. Richard has a black top on and Himesh has dark hair and a beard, and is wearing a black jacket over a white T-shirt with a green pattern on it.

On receiving her doctorate from the University of Suffolk, Freud said “the honour” was “so massive”, because “Suffolk is my home and it’s where I was brought up, and it’s where my family has lived for generations”.

Her family arrived in the county as Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930s, escaping the tyranny of the Nazis.

Freud’s work has also involved tackling poverty and inequality, and has included working as a creative director and executive producer at Comic Relief, external.