Michael Douglas stars as Liberace in Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming biopic Behind the Candelabra – Photo: HBO
Steven Soderbergh revealed more details about his upcoming Liberace biopic at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Los Angeles.
While speaking to reporters on Friday at the HBO TCA event for Behind the Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh revealed that it was important to accurately portray the relationship between flamboyant piano entertainer Liberace and his lover Scott Thorson, who penned a tell-all book of the same title.
In Behind the Candelabra, Michael Douglas takes on the role of Liberace alongside Matt Damon who plays Scott Thorson, the legendary entertainer’s blond boyfriend.
“We take the relationship seriously,” Soderbergh told reporters at the HBO TCA event for Behind the Candelabra. “My feeling, based on some of the research we did, indicated that it was a real relationship and it was, at that point, the longest relationship Liberace had. I was very anxious that we not make a caricature of either of the characters or the relationship.”
Reporters were given a first look at footage from Behind the Candelabra in a new preview for the Liberace biopic. The footage showed Thorson admiring the excessive, flamboyant lifestyle of Liberace before a poolside kissing sequence and later contentious drama at home between the two lovers.
Matt Damon was also on hand at the TCA event where he echoed Soderbergh’s serious approach to the story written by screenwriter Richard LaGravenese.
“It was so complex, their relationship,” said Damon about the dynamic between Liberace and Thorson. “Richard so got this dynamic. Whether this was the actual dynamic or not, I completely believed what he had written. It was fun, but we weren’t giggling about it. We took it very seriously.”
A fact that some may not know, Liberace was the highest paid entertainer in the world for twenty years between the mid-1950s and 1970s.
Liberace began a relationship with Scott Thorson in the late 1970s after Thorson was hired as the entertainer’s chauffeur. Thorson later sued Liberace in a $113 million palimony suit that was settled out of court before the showman’s death in 1987 of . Prior to his death, Liberace maintained that he wasn’t gay and that he never had a romantic relationship with Thorson.