Matthew Warchus, the vicar’s son from North Yorkshire, is soon to take over the Old Vic Theatre from Kevin Spacey. Before that comes the release of his already much-praised new film, Pride, reports STEVE PRATT.

THE interview over, it was time to put an accusation to award-winning director Matthew Warchus: “You’re the man who deprived York Theatre Royal audiences of regular pantomime villain David Leonard.”

Casting Leonard, part of Berwick Kaler’s regular panto team, in the role of the terrifying Miss Trunchbull in the London West End production of hit stage musical Matilda meant the actor had to opt out of his annual York appearance.

“I apologise,” says Warchus. “I corresponded with Berwick, believe me. Berwick and I exchanged emails. I did ask him whether that’s okay.”

As a student, Warchus used to build sets for the pantomime and has been told he’s always be welcome back for a spot of set-building. He’s unlikely to have time to take up the offer.

This time next year, the vicar’s son from North Yorkshire takes over from Kevin Spacey in running the Old Vic in London, taking up that post garlanded with praise and prizes for his second film Pride, which opens nationwide tomorrow.

Pride's story of a gay and lesbian group that decided to support striking Welsh miners, which created a strong critical buzz at the Cannes film festival in May , wasn’t the sort of film Warchus was expecting to direct for his second cinematic venture.

“As much as I have respect for this kind of film and enjoy watching it, by that I mean something like Billy Elliot for example, I thought I was looking for something much more poetic and more obviously directed," he says.

"One of the most important things about making Pride was the direction of it needed to feel invisible. It needed a light touch.

“I was toying with a musical film, more American films and other big things. Pride is less of an option for you to show off as a director but I felt much more strongly about it than anything I’ve read for years and years.”

One question to which he’d still like to know the answer is why he was offered the film, suspecting it might have something to do with the success of Matilda. Producers were unaware that the themes of Pride “are a bullseye for me”.

Born in Kent, he moved to Middlesbrough at an early age and then to a village near Selby. “I don’t think anything really great is made by people without there being some kind of personal connection,” he explains.

“I found it in Pride. It just reminded me of the isolation and of two worlds colliding and then fusing or entwining. I understand the toughness, the isolation, the closeness of a village community and all the great things that brings with it. How hard it is to be an outsider in that situation, how hard it can be amid the mistrust that can occur, in my case between the north and the south.

“My first film, Simpatico, was American, nothing to do with me at all. It was almost like an abstract exercise in film-making for me. This is a homecoming for me in terms of many things.”

He finds similar themes in such apparently diverse projects as Matilda and Pride.

“Both are stories about injustice and setting right that injustice, and both have unlikely protagonists, a little girl and a small group of gays and lesbians, who are able to meet some enormous injustice head on and do something about it. I find something powerful and compelling about that theme,” says Warchus.

“Of course, it’s the nature of many stories that there’s a David and Goliath thing and that unfairness is put right. It’s not an unusual storytelling theme. What both projects do very well is use comedy as an over-riding ingredient. You’ve got this wonderful cocktail of intelligence, truth and comedy. I find my happiest projects involve these three things.”

Pride stars Bill Nighy, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton in the true story of a group of London gay and lesbian activists who decide to raise money to support the families of Welsh striking miners in the summer of 1984. They figure they face the same enemies – the Thatcher government, the police and the tabloids.

Warchus was an 18-year-old student at the time who used to see picket lines as he went past Europe’s largest coal-fired power station, Drax.

“The coalfield around Selby was a very modern one and was never under threat of closure, so there were picket lines but not the same kind of fights with police in that area. But friends of mine had fathers who worked in the pit. It was very useful in making the film," he says.

“It’s very easy to stereotype both communities in the film, the lesbians and gays from London and the village community from Wales. I was trying to find a way that the characters could be rich and colourful and vivid and extreme when they needed to be extreme, but there was enough detail, honesty and truth that they were three-dimensional and not two-dimensional.

“I felt that my life in Yorkshire and then my adult life in the metropolitan theatre world in London put me in a good position to join the writer, Stephen Beresford, in looking frankly at both groups.”

Home for him now is London with his wife, actress Lauren Ward, and their three children, although he says he’s much more comfortable out of cities.

“Even though I didn’t grow up in rural Yorkshire – it’s pretty flat and plain around Drax and Selby – you don’t have to go far to get to the hills and I love all of that.

“I miss Yorkshire an awful lot. My parents used to be my reason for going home and then they moved. My father died a couple of years ago and my mother now lives in Wiltshire so I visit her there. But I’ve kept in touch with some friends from school and there’s a couple coming to the premiere of Pride.”

He’s hoping to fit in another film before joining the Old Vic full time. A movie of Matilda is already set up but since the buzz on Pride at Cannes, he’s receiving more film scripts than he did before.

He considers himself a storyteller, so whether it’s stage or screen doesn’t necessarily come into it. “Films are rather like musicals – they’re enormous, take huge effort and are very expensive. So my approach is to ask if it’s worth spending all of this time and money on this story. Ultimately is it worth it? Does it give enough to the audience?" he says

“And that’s how I chose things. Because if for some reason it hasn’t got much to say and add much culturally or socially, then it’s too much of a personal sacrifice and seems like squandering resources and money. Things that matter enough make me tingle when I read them and energise me. And when you’ve been directing for as long as I have, something that energises you must be good.”

Pride (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow.