Cast and director of The Program tell how they tackled the film about Armstrong’s doping scandal

Stephen Frears says he had no great ambition to make a true-life movie or a sports film. Instead, he says of the tale: 'It’s an interesting crime story. There is so much material, and what I didn’t want to do was make a biopic.'

Ben Foster as Lance Armstrong in The Program, a film about the disgraced cyclist. Courtesy StudioCanal

The fall of Lance Armstrong is one of the biggest sporting scandals of our times.

The American cyclist was a global hero who sold the dream that you could come back from life-threatening illness and beat the odds to win the Tour de France, one of the world’s greatest sporting challenges, not once but a record seven times.

We now know that those victories came about because he was better at breaking the anti­doping laws than his rivals. The story that rocked the cycling world, and how it was uncovered, is dramatised in The Program, a new film by British director Stephen Frears.

The Philomena director says he had no great ambition to make a true-life movie or a sports film. Instead, he says of the tale: "It's an interesting crime story. There is so much material, and what I didn't want to do was make a biopic."

Surprisingly, perhaps, Frears says that when he began work on the film he had no great interest in cycling or Lance Armstrong – but that he saw that as a benefit rather than a hindrance.

“I make films I know nothing about,” he says. “I think if I can get interested in this, then the audience will. I think this is interesting – and you literally tell people what it is that you are seeing in front of you.”

Frears's interest in the project began when he read a review of a book by cyclist Tyler Hamilton, who rode and doped with Armstrong. When he could not get the rights to that book, he was given one written by David Walsh, an Irish journalist who wrote for The Sunday Times and was the first to accuse Armstrong of doping. The British paper was successfully sued for libel by Armstrong – but he was forced to repay the damages he was awarded when it was later proved that he was guilty.

Frears presents the story in a straightforward manner so as to cast no moral assertion over whether the use of drugs in sport is justified. There is a rule book and a group of men broke those rules.

He shows the attempts by Walsh to prove Armstrong’s guilt, and also focuses on Floyd Landis, an American cyclist who won the Tour de France the year after Armstrong retired, but was stripped of his title when he, too, was caught doping. He provided key testimony to the sport’s authorities, which eventually led to Armstrong being exposed as a cheat.

American actor Ben Foster portrays Armstrong. He came to the project with a different perspective, one that considers the good work that Armstrong did raising money to fight cancer through his Livestrong Foundation.

“He’s one of the most infamous athletes of all time and I had the opportunity to ask: ‘What would you do to protect the foundation that saved lives?’ ” he says of his desire to play the role. “And also to learn about cycling, which I knew nothing about. That was the joy of the job.”

The actor lost almost 14 kilograms and got into the shape of his life for the role. He also became more understanding of Armstrong’s state of mind as he researched the role.

“I’m more empathetic towards Armstrong,” he says. “The more I understand the sport, the closer I got to the sport – the more brutal I understand the sport to be.

“When you face death, when you face the disease, when you come back, you look at life differently. And after that, he said living is winning and losing is death, and that became his way to operate. So his story after getting healthy is a story of being a survivor, coming back from the dead.”

The way Foster spins it, the story sounds very romantic, but Armstrong broke dreams, because the sporting arena is meant to be about fairness and proving yourself to be a better person through hard work, dedication and talent. And when sport is no longer about ability, it’s less interesting.

Irish actor Chris O’Dowd, who plays Walsh, captures the thoughts of most people when he slams what the legacy of Armstrong did to sport.

“I have no interest in watching cyclists compete,” he says. For him, the hero of the story is Walsh. “The motivation for Walsh was to be the guy to stand up for the whole integrity of the sport.”

• The Program is out in cinemas on Thursday, October 29