Eddie Murphy and Britt Robertson in Mr. Church.
The KCET Cinema Series continued its fall season at the historic Aero Theatre in Santa Monica on September 13 with Mr. Church. The drama stars Eddie Murphy as a cook who comes into the lives of a young girl and her terminally ill mother and forms an incredible bond with them. Following the screening, writer Susan McMartin talked with KCET Cinema Series host Pete Hammond about the inspiration behind Mr. Church. An edited version of their conversation appears below.
The fall season of the KCET Cinema Series is generously sponsored by the James and Paula Coburn Foundation. Screenings continue weekly at the Aero Theatre through October 10. Individual tickets are available on the night of the screening. For more information, see kcet.org/arts/cinema_series/.
On the inspiration for Mr. Church.
This is based on a real friendship. There was a real Mr. Church in my life. He went by a different name, but its based on our friendship.
He came into my life when I was a little girl, just like in the movie. My mom was very sick with cancer and he stayed in my life until the day he died. I always knew that I wanted to write a story about our friendship because it was so unique and he was so important in every aspect of my life - childhood, becoming a writer, everything - and I always knew that one day I wanted to write about us. I never knew how I wanted to tell the story.
I had a baby and he passed away before my baby was born and it was very sad that they would never know each other, that they would never meet, that she would never know this person who raised me and that he would never know her. I thought, well, Im a writer. I can write a story where they meet. Thats how it started. Then I went back to the beginning.
I always say that its inspired by true friendship because everything about the friendship in the movie, about our bond, about what he gave me, what he taught me, our love for each other, who he is, is all real. Then I took creative liberties - two of the main ones being my daughter, he never met my daughter, so I created that story, I am a single mom. The other thing, my mom survived her cancer. Shes actually here tonight. Its funny because I always feel bad. Im sorry to tell you, my mom is still alive.
On killing the mom in Mr. Church.
Ive talked to my mom. My mom was dying of cancer and he was in our life and she is a miracle. She is a total miracle. Ive talked to my mom about this. After she survived her cancer, for many years, I lost my relationship along with my mom, to alcoholism. He became - and thats like a death in itself - extremely important to me. I didnt want to write the movie about my relationship with my mom and go down that road. I really wanted to focus on the friendship, so I chose to give you a romantic exit and kill you.
I killed my mother. And I did it in such a beautiful way. I think its pretty poetic.
Mr. Church screenwriter Susan McMartin. | Photo: Michele Garza.
On the theme in Mr. Church.
I think thats what I love about this story. And you see it at the end when Jelly approaches and doesnt even know he cooks, that idea that we all know different parts of each other and everybody has their own story with somebody. My story with the real Mr. Church was one of a father figure, a best friend, a teacher, where, in somebody elses life, he was a piano player. I love that we all have different relationships. In my life with him, the one thing he always did want was privacy. I always felt like, heres a man who gave me everything, if the only thing hes asking for is his privacy, I have to honor that. I didnt want to put in a fake, Im going to reveal some really weird secret about him just for the sake of Hollywood and storytelling. Because I think that sometimes we fall into that trap. Audiences need everything tied up in a neat bow and thats not how life is. I dont know every aspect, but I know what I was supposed to know and the important things of this man. I knew everything that he wanted me to know about who he was and, in his death, just like in life, I wanted to honor his privacy.
On the length of time it took to get Mr. Church made.
My daughter was a baby and shes now in high school. It took braces and birthdays.
I wrote it very quickly. It really poured out of me. Once I knew, the first line of dialogue came to me while I was taking a walk and I, every day, wrote. Didnt outline it. It really just poured out of me. For five years, it was in the hands of Sam Jackson and his management and they optioned for five years. So, for five years, we were trying to get it made. We would either have Sam or we would lose the director. Or, we would have the director and we would lose Sam. It just didnt happen. Then it sat on the shelf for three more years. Just sat.
What I love is that I wrote this because my daughter was never going to get to meet the real Mr. Church, but in a weird way, she has grown up with him in our home. She has seen her mom do everything to get this movie made and so then, about two years ago, my manager was in a meeting and he gave the script over to, he was in a meeting for a whole different project, but as he left he thought of my script and he said, Would you be willing to read this? Lee Nelson and David Buelow read it and decided, yes, we want to make this and then Mark Canton and Courtney Solomon came on board.
Eddie Murphy in Mr. Church.
On casting Eddie Murphy in the title role.
Once it came back off the shelf, we had Bruce Beresford and we had the producers. We decided, lets rethink who we want for the movie. We had gone down Sam years ago. Its time to start approaching and we all said Eddie Murphy, but, of course, it was a dream. He wont do it. This isnt his type of movie. This is a small movie. Its a drama. Mark Canton said, Im sending it to him anyway. Eddie, halfw
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Eddie Murphy and Britt Robertson in Mr. Church. 
