00:00Congratulations on dressing so, in such a desperate fashion.
00:04It's only appropriate.
00:05Had to look like a gentleman.
00:08Now I can't be specific about the heroes and zeros,
00:12but our protagonist is a hungry animal.
00:16Our antagonist has indirectly started a war.
00:20I had such a good time seeing this movie,
00:22took so many turns and was so stylistic.
00:24I really had a good time.
00:26Matthew, your character in particular,
00:29took me a lot of places.
00:30There were a lot of layers.
00:31He's very multifaceted.
00:33How was the process for you?
00:34What did you discover as you were filming about him?
00:38I felt like I had a good line on who he was,
00:41what he wanted,
00:42what he was trying to do going into it.
00:44I think the main thing that I didn't know was gonna happen
00:48was how much you change things,
00:51how much you have to adapt on the day
00:53if you choose to play with guys rewriting of scenes,
00:58which he does heavily,
01:00which at first was extremely frustrating for me.
01:02I'm like, I've been working on this for...
01:06But then all of a sudden it clicks and you go,
01:08actually, what he's coming up with is better.
01:12So I'm gonna be game.
01:14And so then there's an agility that I learned to bring every day
01:19to an extent more so than I've ever done with anybody,
01:22any other film.
01:24But also this type of film allows for...
01:27It is a musicality.
01:29It's part of the style you're talking about.
01:31His dialogue is very precise.
01:33He has very precise opinions on what that is.
01:36There's a meter that guy's listening for.
01:40And yes, he's written it,
01:41but he doesn't know what that meter sounds like
01:43until the actor's coming out of our mouths
01:45and going back and forth.
01:47You gentlemen have both worked with the director Guy Ritchie before.
01:51I was wondering what makes him such a great collaborator?
01:57His willingness to collaborate.
02:00He really is very open to the process.
02:03You know, he has the Guy Ritchie prism
02:06with which everything has to sort of go through.
02:08But I found he has a tendency to give all the people he hires,
02:16not just the actors,
02:17but cinematographer and production design
02:19and costume designers, everything,
02:20certain level of autonomy and expectation
02:22that you're gonna show up and do your job
02:25without being babysat, you know?
02:27Which, you know, definitely inspires you to do your best work.
02:31Well, no, I think that's right.
02:32And I have found, the older I get,
02:34that the better directors,
02:37the best directors are more like that.
02:40It's extraordinary.
02:41They barely seem to have a script
02:44and they have very few expectations
02:46at the beginning of the day of,
02:47I want it to be like this.
02:48They get really good at,
02:50what am I getting?
02:51What am I getting and do I like it?
02:52And altering it on the spot.
02:54Directing on the hoof.
02:56That doesn't feel like it to you at the moment.
02:58Out of fucking way you came in, you cunt.
03:01Is it one of those?
03:03Sure.
03:04It could be.
03:07Another thing that stood out to me
03:09was the ample use of the C word in this movie.
03:12Cause you're not going out the way you came in,
03:14you deluded duck eating cunt.
03:17There's C bombs left and right.
03:18I was wondering as actors,
03:19what was your relationship to just like,
03:22every day dropping C bombs?
03:25I thought it was quite kind of,
03:27I don't know, therapeutic in a sense.
03:29It is, yeah.
03:30It's fun.
03:31You don't often get to sort of scream with venom.
03:35That word.
03:36Those types of sort of words.
03:38Or even throw it off as a side handed joke and throw it away.
03:43And as you know,
03:44America has a very different relationship with that word
03:47than Britain.
03:49Yeah, it did infect the rest of my life.
03:53My young children say almost nothing else now.
03:56You know, it's an Englishman's prerogative
03:59to drop the C bomb.
04:01So we were making a film about good English gentlemen,
04:05so we'd be remiss not to.
04:07But it's a much, much more frowned upon word
04:10here in America, I think.
04:12So I dread to think what that's going to do to this film.
04:15Well, I think it puts you in the setting
04:17that you're supposed to be in, like you said.
04:20Hugh, I was wondering,
04:21you've played so many, like,
04:22really lovable characters throughout your career.
04:25There's been a lot of good guys.
04:26Is it enjoyable to flex those kind of, like,
04:30bad boy muscles in projects like this
04:31and be someone a little more sheisty?
04:34Well, I think the character I play in this film
04:37is rather lovable.
04:39I loved him.
04:40I'm sad that no one else does.
04:42I want you to play a game with me, Ray.
04:43I don't want to play a game.
04:45Oh, please.
04:46No.
04:46I said play a game with me, Raymond.
04:50Right.
04:50Lovely.
04:51He lives in the morally gray.
04:52I know what you mean.
04:53He's appalling.
04:54He's an absolute...
04:56Yeah, he's sleazy and disgusting.
05:00Yeah, it is cathartic.
05:00Anyone would say that.
05:01You'd say that's better.
05:02It's more fun playing baddies, isn't it?
05:04Yep.
05:04And easier.
05:06You're too smart to be blackmailing us, Fletcher.
05:10These people are going to clean house.
05:12And you are part of that house.
05:15Henry, we've been seeing you in a lot of movies
05:18where you're super nice and charming.
05:21Was it exciting to kind of flex a different muscle
05:24and be kind of like sheisty and terrible?
05:27Yeah, this was definitely a departure of...
05:30It's funny because I was filming at the same time last Christmas.
05:34So one day I'd be on the streets of London prancing around,
05:38kind of falling in love with Emilia Clarke.
05:41And then the next day sat opposite Matthew here
05:45and just like throwing daggers at each other
05:48in like such an intense scene.
05:50So having to switch from those two characters
05:54throughout pretty much October and November when we were filming,
05:58it was amazing.
05:59It was really sort of the ability to inhabit
06:04such polarizing characters during a small kind of time frame
06:11kind of allows you that sort of flexibility.
06:14You become attuned to it.
06:17And so it was a joy sort of like waking up
06:20and like, who am I today?
06:23And sometimes I would start reading
06:27sort of my script for last Christmas in the dry eye kind of voice.
06:30I don't know if you ever do that.
06:31You sort of start adding a couple of C-bombs.
06:34It's weird.
06:35The more sort of swear words that were coming out of my mouth,
06:39it was just putting me into that dry eye kind of state.
06:42Did you keep it quite separate?
06:43Like were you learning lines on...?
06:47I was learning at the same time,
06:48but it was just switching and it was weird
06:52because my wife would come into the room
06:55as I was reading the different scripts
06:56and she would know what script I was reading
06:59because just the atmosphere in the room would be really dark and tense.
07:04And she'd be like, she'd come and she'd be like...
07:07You're like, he's reading dry eye.
07:08Like I'll leave him alone.
07:09I was also very taken by how the violence in this movie was very random.
07:15Sometimes it's hilarious.
07:16Please!
07:16Harry for Hulk, Condor for Hulk.
07:19You know, it's explosive.
07:23How did that factor into your process?
07:25The fact knowing that these things were coming out of nowhere
07:28and you were going to hit the audience in the face.
07:31That's one of the delights of Guy Ritchie's films.
07:34You know, we were saying that earlier,
07:36every character has a very clear identity,
07:38but if you're going to have many immovable forces
07:42where the plot has you intersect, something's got to give.
07:44It can happen.
07:46It can happen with the jackknife.
07:48You know, it can happen immediately.
07:49When you don't, it can happen in the middle of the most comedic scene.
07:53I think that's part of the playfulness that Guy does well in a movie like this.
07:57One of the things that really stuck out to me was how ultra stylized it was.
08:01I was wondering how cued in to like the subtitles or the cue cards
08:06or the little editing choices.
08:08Was that in the script?
08:10Were you aware of that during the process?
08:12He told me it wasn't going to be like that.
08:14I said, are you doing all your whizzing about nonsense?
08:17And he said, no, no, no, no, no.
08:19We're doing it straight.
08:19It's doing it straight.
08:21We're going to have classical music.
08:22That was all rubbish as a character.
08:24You haven't seen it yet.
08:25No, I haven't.
08:26But it is.
08:27It's quite stylized and sort of block stockish.
08:30Yeah, it's heightened, which I found really enjoyable as an audience member.
08:34Do you know what?
08:34I think part of that is that Guy works very, very closely
08:38and gives that sort of that thing we were talking about,
08:40an enormous amount of autonomy to Jimbo,
08:43his editor.
08:44And I think Jimbo, you know,
08:47sort of just gravitates towards that style of,
08:50you know, of filmmaking in the editing room.
08:53So, you know, probably a lot of it has to do with their collaboration.
08:57You know, because Guy said the same thing on the last two films I did with him,
09:01that it was going to be this grand departure
09:03and sort of an entry into very, very classic, sensible filmmaking.
09:10And it hasn't happened on both occasions.
09:13There's only one rule in this fucking jungle.
09:16When the lion's hungry, he eats.
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