“Aaron Sorkin has, I think, wisely, very wisely in my opinion, especially for the actors who play Atticus, really taken him off his pedestal and made him much more, I think, approachable,” Thomas said. Maeve Moynihan as Scout and Richard Thomas as Atticus, on a front porch in Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” (Courtesy of SevenVenues)

In American fiction, Atticus Finch stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Celie from Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Holden Caulfield.īut Thomas jumped at the chance to land the part in the play, because of how Sorkin - whose award-winning screenplays include “A Few Good Men,” “Moneyball” and “The Social Network” - reimagined the character for the stage. “There are certain characters in fiction and in theater who are so vivid that they seem to have a life of their own off the page,” Thomas said. Scout befriends a recluse, Boo Radley,Ī 1962 movie starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and featuring Robert Duvall, in his first ever film appearance, as Radley, won Peck an Academy Award, and in 2003, the American Film Institute’s “100 Years…100 Heroes & Villains” named Atticus Finch the No. Racial justice is one of the book’s themes, as Scout is awakened to how racial animus affects her family and wider community. Atticus represents Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of rape. The story is told through Scout Finch, a young white girl who lives in a 1930s Alabama town with her brother, Jem, and their father, attorney Atticus Finch. Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was published in 1960 to immediate critical and popular success. E-Pilot Evening Edition Home Page Close Menu

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