The character Martin Scorsese specifically wrote for Ray Winstone: “He just let me make it up”
Unlike many of the industry’s foremost auteurs, Martin Scorsese hasn’t had a hands-on involvement in developing the screenplays for all of his features, although it stands to reason he gets plenty of output on the final draft considering he’s the legendary filmmaker calling the shots.
After being credited as a co-writer on two of his first three narrative features – Who’s That Knocking at My Door and Mean Streets – Scorsese wouldn’t receive a screenwriting credit again until Goodfellas, and in the years since he’s only been acknowledged as a scribe on The Age of Innocence, Casino, Silence, and Killers of the Flower Moon.
Of course, he’ll have a huge say in the process and has done uncredited polishes on countless scripts before cameras started rolling, with Ray Winstone turning out to be a beneficiary on one occasion. The two had never worked together before The Departed, but the actor wasn’t entirely sold on the character he was being eyed up to play.
In the ‘Best Picture’-winning crime thriller, Winstone projects menace as Arnold French, the burly enforcer of Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello. Questionable attempt at an American accent aside, the star is suitably formidable in the part, but Scorsese initially planned to have him operating on the opposite side of the law.
The iconic director envisioned Winstone as a member of the Boston police department, but to put it lightly, the performer was having none of it. He’d read the script and had instantly warmed to the role of ‘Frenchy’, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer during his conversations with Scorsese.
“I told Marty I wanted to play Mr French, and he said, ‘But he doesn’t say anything,'” Winstone shared per The Hollywood Reporter. “And I said, ‘But he will’. And he says, ‘Yeah!’. So he wrote out this character and just let me make it up, and that’s how French came about. And I didn’t want to play a cop anyway, I wanted to play the bad guy.”
Looking at how The Departed turned out, it’s impossible to say Winstone wasn’t completely correct in his assumptions that he’d be much better as the bruising heavy. In another world, there’s a version of the film where Mr French doesn’t utter a single word from start to finish, while the Cockney character actor toes the righteous side of the divide as a member of local law enforcement.
That wouldn’t have been the best use of his talents, but it was nonetheless a confident move from Winstone to stand his ground and inform Scorsese he wanted to play a character completely different from the one the filmmaker had in mind. Seeing as they reunited once again on Hugo, though, it’s fair to assume the Academy Award-winning director was suitably won over.