Filmmaker Paul Greengrass on rage, rebellion and ‘The Uprising’

September 3, 2026

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5 min read

In the new film The Uprising, director Paul Greengrass tells the story of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, a rebellion that English schoolchildren learn about but that Greengrass believes speaks directly to the present. The film follows an unnamed farmer, the Plowman (Andrew Garfield), who has lost his family to the plague and is driven by private grief into political rage. Greengrass, speaking on Fresh Air, connected this medieval story to the emergence of the Robin Hood legend, noting that the ballads became wildly popular after the revolt because they spoke to "people's desires for a better world, a fairer world against the rapacious rich." He began writing the script during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing a direct line between the numbness and rage that followed the Black Death—which wiped out half of England's population—and the "underlying rage" he senses in modern societies, where "the economy faltered, government didn't seem to work, and in the end all it took was a spark."

The Mechanisms of Rebellion and the Medieval Everyman

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What you'll learn

1 (00:19) **Introducing Paul Greengrass and 'The Uprising'** - Host Tanya Mosley sets up Greengrass’s signature: films about ordinary people trapped inside forces they cannot control, from Bloody Sunday to the new film about the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.
2 (02:20) **Connecting the Peasants’ Revolt to Robin Hood** - Greengrass explains that the legend of Robin Hood emerged directly from the peasant revolt, speaking to a bitterly divided world between rich and poor.
3 (05:04) **The Plague, Numbness, and the Spark of Rebellion** - Greengrass describes how the plague (the Black Death) wiped out half the population, leaving people numb and then filled with a gathering rage at a system that privileged the rich.
4 (08:43) **Casting Andrew Garfield as the Everyman** - Greengrass explains that Andrew Garfield brought the same mixture of strength, vulnerability, and emotional quality that Tom Hanks brought to his roles in Greengrass’s earlier films.
5 (09:12) **The Boy King Richard II: Fragility and Cruelty** - Greengrass describes the real Richard II as a boy king who was clearly mentally ill, raised to believe he was the Messiah and controlled by cynical oligarchs.
6 (10:44) **Writing Protest Songs for the March** - Greengrass reveals he wrote lyrics for the film’s songs, drawing on his experience making a film about Bloody Sunday where protest songs were sung during the march.
7 (12:32) **Letting the Audience Feel, Not Telling Them** - Greengrass explains his philosophy of never using music or score to lead the audience on how to feel; he wants viewers to have the experience of the movie and take from it what they will.

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Show Notes

Paul Greengrass’ new film, The Uprising, stars Andrew Garfield as a 14th-century peasant who, in the wake of the Plague, leads a revolt against the king. It's a history Greengrass grew up learning, and now sees parallels with Covid and Jan 6th. “People were left numb, and then this gathering rage …defenseless, and then suddenly you had this enormous rebellion,” he tells Tonya Mosley. Greengrass also reflects on his movie United 93, 25 years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Film critic Justin Chang reviews the new drama Filipiñana.

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