Frank Pierson - Conspiracy - 2001 Peabody Award Acceptance Speech

Winner 2001 | HBO Films produced in association with the British Broadcasting Corporation


On January 20, 1942, 15 men assembled at a villa on the outskirts of Berlin for a meeting that would ultimately seal the fate of European Jews. Adolf Eichmann prepared 30 copies of the minutes of this top-secret meeting. By the fall of the Third Reich, all had disappeared or been destroyed—all but one. Discovered in the files of the Reich’s Foreign Office, the Wannsee Protocol detailed the plan for Hitler’s eradication of the Jews in Europe, the “Final Solution.” Under the expert pen of writer Loring Mandel, this sole copy became the basis for Conspiracy, a chilling re-creation of one of the most infamous summits in world history. Executive Producers Frank Doelger, David M. Thompson, and Peter Zinner, Director and Executive Producer Frank Pierson, and Producer Nick Gillot meticulously re-create the chilling conversations and business like atmosphere of that gathering. Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich and Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann epitomize Hannah Arendt’s memorable phrase—“the banality of evil”—with their characterizations of the Nazi leaders who conducted the meeting. Joining them as they ruthlessly, yet efficiently, plan the solution to the “storage problem in Germany with these Jews” are 13 other high-ranking Nazi officials, played by Colin Firth, Jonathan Coy, Brendan Coyle, Ben Daniels, Barnaby Kay, Kevin McNally, Ian McNeice, Brian Pettifer, Ewan Stewart, Peter Sullivan, Owen Teale, David Threlfall and Nicolas Woodeson. For this unnerving tour de force based on the actual transcript of the meeting in which the Nazi “Final Solution” was designed, a Peabody Award goes to HBO Films and BBC Films for Conspiracy.

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