00:00How are you? It's really nice to meet you.
00:03You too.
00:04I feel like I've done this so many years and I've never had the pleasure,
00:07so this is lovely.
00:09You're bringing us the charm that we all know and love in this film,
00:12but weaponised in the best possible way.
00:15It just made me really glad that I don't have a basement at home
00:18because I don't think I could have gone home afterwards.
00:20I was so tense after watching this.
00:22Did this character push you in ways
00:25that hasn't really been done before, would you say?
00:28Because we have seen you doing these more villainous kind of characters,
00:32but I feel like this is something just that little bit different.
00:36Yeah, I hope it's different.
00:38I've played some pretty bad guys recently,
00:41but this guy's a monster,
00:44but hopefully an entertaining monster
00:49in that he believes he's fascinating and amusing.
00:56I modelled him kind of on those professors or teachers you get
00:59who think they're one of the cool ones, one of the funny ones.
01:02We all know that, yeah.
01:04So that gave me a chance to try and be funny
01:08at the same time as being terrifying,
01:10and I hoped that what was scary was doubly scary
01:13because it was coming out of someone who thought he was just having fun.
01:16And I'm really glad for those little moments of light relief
01:19because you do find yourself so tense at some times.
01:22It actually is a nice welcome relief.
01:24So that was great.
01:26I'm curious, though, how trusting a person you are
01:30if you were in the position of those Mormon girls
01:33because I am too trusting for my own good.
01:37I know that I would end up getting into trouble
01:40because I trust until someone gives me a reason not to,
01:43but then it's too late.
01:45What would you be like in that situation?
01:48Well, the reverse.
01:50In my old age, I've become very untrusting.
01:53I think everyone's...
01:57..on the make and...
02:00..ripping me off.
02:02There is something in that these days, to be fair.
02:04But obviously there's the underlying topic of religion
02:07that runs through this, and I don't want that to put anyone off
02:10because it's used in the best possible way.
02:14But is that a topic that really gets you engaged
02:18or is there something else that, for you, is like,
02:21oh, I could sit here and talk for hours about that?
02:24There's lots of things I can rabbit on about.
02:27You know...
02:29..pet peeves, obsessions.
02:31I really hate phones and tech.
02:33I think they've ruined our life. Yes.
02:36But I hope in this film, all the stuff about religion,
02:41as well as being, I hope, entertainingly presented,
02:44because the guy's such a weirdo,
02:46it is in itself quite interesting
02:49because this was very carefully researched by Scott and Brian,
02:52who wrote and directed the film.
02:54And there's stuff about Christianity in particular
02:58and how, you know, the basic pillars of Christianity,
03:04a saviour, born of a virgin, baptised in a river,
03:08performing miracles, resurrected from the dead, ascended into heaven,
03:12all the things you think of as essentially Christian,
03:15are in hundreds of religions and cults
03:18for thousands of years before Christ was born.
03:21Lots of them together.
03:23In each case, it's almost like Christianity
03:27was just another iteration of these older religions.
03:30That was very new to me and I think genuinely fascinating.
03:33I honestly thought you'd say, oh, when you read that script,
03:36you were like, oh, this resonates with me,
03:38because I feel like I've had that opinion, I guess, quite a bit.
03:42Have you? Oh, well, then you're better educated than I am.
03:45I don't know about that, but yeah, I was genuinely thinking that.
03:48And is it nice for you now at this point in your career
03:51to be kind of untethered by expectation in the roles that you take?
03:55I feel like I've grown up with you doing the rom-coms
03:58and being that person,
04:00but now there's so much that I'm really enjoying this different side.
04:05That's nice of you.
04:07Is it nice for you as well to not have that?
04:10I slightly wish I'd started this phase earlier.
04:13Or at least had it running in parallel.
04:16That would have been good.
04:18And I kind of did right at the beginning.
04:20Just after we made Four Weddings and a Funeral,
04:23I made another film with the same director, Mike Newell,
04:26called An Awfully Big Adventure,
04:29in which I was twisted, dark, weirdo theatre director
04:34with nicotine-stained fingers, very predatory.
04:38And no-one watched that film.
04:42But I wish they had because I would have liked to have two careers.
04:47One, making very enjoyable romantic comedies.
04:50I'm proud of them, I'm glad people like them and have watched them
04:54and they've given pleasure.
04:56And they're good, most of them.
04:58But it would have been nice to have the character acting
05:01going along simultaneously.
05:03We've got it now.
05:05You are loving it so much.
05:08It's been genuinely great to see this.
05:11I'm looking forward to more of this.
05:13Thank you so much, this is genuinely great.
05:15Thank you so much.
05:16Lovely to meet you.
05:17You too.
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