Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can, The Lion King, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) describes the uplifting story of Trudy Ederle, who was the first woman to swim across the English Channel, to be “the most inspirational film about women’s sports.” This was his North Star when he adapted Glenn Stout’s novel Young Woman and the Sea:
The journey to the screen began when Nathanson was hunting for little-known IP in used book stores to inspire his daughters. He wanted to make the film that wasn’t yet made, but wanted them to see.
“I was wanting my daughters to have the feel of a certain kind of movie that I had had growing up. I was trying to capture a certain moment in time, when there were just so many great films with sports as a background.” Moreover, Nathanson was trying to imbue them with his love of movies from his childhood. He states his desire to “put them in a time machine.”
Attaching Jerry Bruckheimer
Jeff Nathanson secured the rights to the novel and reached out to Bruckheimer who he’s known for many years. “We were definitely a bit like family, so it was very easy to reach Jerry and the president of his company, Chad Oman.”
According to Nathanson, “Jerry is the most successful movie producer of all time, and what makes him so good is his love for storytelling. He has enormous respect for the audience, and that’s why people connect to his films.”
Jeff Nathanson
Nathanson confesses that Young Woman and the Sea was a difficult pitch because “it was not exactly what people or audiences would associate with Jerry.” He acknowledged these challenges, but figured “having the biggest producer on earth in the middle of it might get us over the finish line at some point. It took us seven years.”
The Bruckheimer brand was essential to secure a theatrical release and bring the production value that the film required.
Admittedly, Jerry was not expecting the pitch that Jeff delivered. Their initial conversations orbited around the Rocky films as a sports film template. Soon enough, Bruckheimer realized Young Woman and the Sea wasn’t a big-budget star-studded movie, and quickly said, “Look, this is small and it’s something you’re passionate about, so let’s give it a shot.”
The Roaring Twenties
Young Woman and the Sea is set in New York City in 1926. It was a time of exuberance, boldness, and defiance. Women’s sports were just starting to take off. Sports like tennis were more popular than others, but swimming the English Channel, was fanciful.
“Women’s sports was more of an exhibition and curiosity.” Some people of the time believed that strenuous sports might physically harm women and impede their ability to have children. “For a young girl who was from New York City to raise her hand and try to do that was viewed as suicide.”
Women were not taught to swim during that era because it was considered “indecent.” The General Slocum paddle steamship disaster caused hundreds of women to die when the ship caught fire in New York’s East River, only feet from the shore. This avoidable tragedy sparked Nathanson’s imagination.
He was also fascinated by how little Trudy Ederle’s accomplishment was documented in the annals of history. Furthermore, she was losing her hearing and retreated from public life after her groundbreaking swim and didn’t seek attention. The irony is that millions of people honored her victory in the largest ticker-tape parade New York City had ever witnessed.
“She disappeared for the most part. What she did was just so grand that she couldn’t really disappear. It always followed her.”
Trudy Ederle was a woman of strength and determination. “She definitely viewed herself as outside the box and was somebody who liked the idea of pushing back against all these stereotypes. Even though there aren’t a lot of interviews, it feels like there’s always a little bit of a twinkle in her eye about the whole thing; as if she’s having a laugh lap.” Nathanson really enjoyed this aspect of her mischievous personality. In spite of all the challenges and obstacles, she really enjoyed every aspect of the swim.
Writing The Sports Movie
Sports movies come with their own tropes. Jeff Nathanson leaned into them and made them his own. Young Woman and the Sea got shades of The Longest Yard, Slap Shot, Bad News Bears, Sea Biscuit, and Rocky.
Curiously, the screenwriter didn’t specifically set out to write a sports movie. Nathanson was writing a character movie for himself and his daughters.
“I view it more as a prison break movie than a sports movie. Imagine if you’re in Maximum Security in a cell that’s heavily guarded and there’s no way out? How do you escape?” This seemingly impossible proposition was how he viewed Trudy’s life.
Swimming “is a hard sport to visualize and dramatize.” Nathanson pondered how this could be done on the screen. “Can you keep an audience engaged and throw enough curveballs at them to get you across the English Channel?” An expanse of open sea is not enough to sustain an audience through entire film.
“If you start with the idea that if people love your main character, they’ll stay with her. That was where I started.”
Trudy Ederle’s family was vital in ensuring her success. “If you’re going to do a film for your own kids, you will hope that what you feel for them comes through on the screen. The personalities of the two sisters in the movie are similar to my own daughters.‘” One of Nathanson’s daughters is an athlete and he comes from a family with strong females. So, it wasn’t difficult to write those characters in the film. Trudy’s older sister Meg (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) helped her discover her love for water. Both were strong swimmers, but Trudy was the only one that broke free of societal norms.
Meg Ederle (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) Photo courtesy of Disney
“I felt like I lived that family, and even though it was a hundred years ago, I tried to look inside and ask what is it about my own world that I would like to see on screen.” Nathanson describes the family love as more of a feeling than a specific narrative in the film.
Jeff notes Trudy’s mother Gertrude (Jeanette Hain), who pays for her swimming lessons after witnessing the ferry disaster, goes beyond that by deciding she’s making the swim team. She even defied her husband Henry (Kim Bodnia) to pay for those lessons.
“That was certainly the most important thing that ever happened to Trudy; to have that mom who refused to accept what so many people had accepted in that time.” Even though Trudy’s traditional father was initially hesitant, he finally came around.
Adapting The Book
Jeff Nathanson describes the process of retaining fidelity to the story and infusing come creative license in the film as “a big dance.”
“We’re very true to who Trudy was and what she did. I don’t think that that ever waivered. There are things that had to happen in the movie in the interest of pacing and entertainment.”
Timelines were contracted. It was a year between Trudy’s first and second swim in the book, but in the film that time period was reduced to three days. “We were purely trying to find a rhythm and find a pulse to the story.”
Trudy Ederle also swam in the 1924 Paris Olympics. It was arguably a low point in her life because she didn’t win any individual gold medals. “She was devastated. The conditions they put the women in and how they let them train was truly brutal and not conducive to doing well.”
Although this was captured in the story, Nathanson pivoted this experience as the springboard to swim the English Channel.
Trudy also had more brothers and sisters in real life, but they weren’t mentioned in the film so they wouldn’t interfere with the story flow. “The decisions you make hopefully don’t interfere with the spirit and the accomplishment of the movie.”
Although Jeff Nathanson didn’t swim the English Channel, there are parallels between his and Trudy’s lives. He was also an athlete in his youth.
“I didn’t know anyone in entertainment and attempted to become a screenwriter, which at that time seemed impossible. And so, just from purely understanding how athletes think, and understanding what it’s like to throw yourself into a situation where most people around you are saying, ‘This is insane,’ I relate to her. I understood parts of that, but I could never understand ever somebody who’s strong enough and has the will to do what she did.”
Final Thoughts
We asked Jeff Nathanson for his advice to screenwriters.
“Great screenwriters usually start from character. They will start not from an idea, but from a feeling that their lead character can provide that is original and different and you haven’t seen before. There’s usually something about that character that can almost change your whole perspective on the world. That’s why those characters stay with you.“
