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00:00because i was working with daniel craig he had a personal trainer on tap
00:03and so every morning i would um every morning once a week
00:08i would go to uh the gym
00:13i'm zach one of the film reporters here at deadline and today we're going to be chatting
00:23about wake up dead man a knives out mystery the third film in the knives out universe wake up
00:28dead man follows the famous benoit blanc as he arrives at the scene of a murder in an upstate
00:32new york church the firebrand priest jefferson wicks has been killed and his deputy judd duplensity
00:38teams up with benoit blanc to solve the crime i think you're all familiar with the team behind
00:43knives out so please welcome writer director and producer ryan johnson
00:47we have actor josh o'connor
00:51and producer ron bergen
00:56ryan this is a deeply contemporary film you know when you're watching it you kind of find
01:05yourself slipping and thinking about you know things on this side of the atlantic and things
01:09back stateside so i wondered when you were writing it what were you sort of responding to and how did
01:14you land on the idea of sort of the catholic church to you know work this story out yeah that was um
01:21and it's like thanks for doing this and guys thank you guys for being here uh the um that was kind of
01:26the starting point for all of these movies for the first one is to take the genre i deeply love but
01:31that i had mostly seen done as period pieces and to set it in very much unapologetically in the present
01:38moment um and for me in america in 2025 so um and i i grew up very christian i didn't grow up catholic i
01:47grew up protestant evangelical um and i'm not anymore but it's something that was a very personal
01:53thing for me my faith so um i have a lot of complicated deep thoughts about personal faith
01:59but also especially right in this moment um how the church is uh you know uh sparking off of society
02:07and politics so um in america so so yeah if that was kind of the assignment for me is okay let's take a
02:14murder mystery and let's plunk it right now and not be afraid of that as a as a fellow well as a as a
02:22reformed catholic school kid i also it hit me very hard this film is also is very different from the
02:28others and sort of the structure of it when i was watching it i almost forgot well i don't want to
02:34spoil anything but i almost forgot benoit blanc was coming because i was so engrossed in the church
02:38world um and i wondered why did you decide to use the character in this way you know it kind of you
02:42kind of flip it on its head a little bit we almost flip it back to its feet the reality so this movie
02:48it has almost like a more traditional murder mystery structure this is how most agatha christie
02:53books work where in the first act you meet all the suspects you kind of meet the protagonist who's not
02:59the detective and then the murder happens and then the detective shows up and that's a bit more how
03:03this one works and when you have josh o'connor as your protagonist leading that first act you can kind
03:10of relax and think okay um i think we can get away with this for sure for sure josh is definitely
03:15one of our best and i mean from what i'm reading online i think i'm watching him wither underneath
03:20the praise from what i'm reading online i think people have already admitted you to the group that
03:25they're describing as the hot priest um young priest yeah young but as people can see just in this clip
03:36the film is is really funny and so much of that humor comes from the timing of the actors and josh
03:40you're spot on for so much but i wondered how did you pitch that you know how do you make sure that
03:45you're coming in at the right moment so it lands it doesn't it doesn't draw um i don't know sort of
03:52a lot of that is kind of i guess is partly instinct but also that the um you know ryan has a really good
04:00sense and you can see it in the other um two movies as well you know there's a real good sense of
04:06you know comedy timing and also when to kind of lean into the comedy and when to pull back and
04:13and and bring in this more more of the truth of a scene um and then really it's just you know
04:21the ensemble is so strong that it's really kind of easy to play with these actors you know daniel
04:29um is incredibly cheeky and um and you know you can you can bounce off him very easily so
04:37yeah i suppose it's sort of it there's a kind of rhythmic thing to it as well i think um and that
04:43just comes from being a fan of of of these sorts of movies and it's also quite uh i think people
04:50would be surprised to find out as we we get more as they get uh further into the film it's quite a
04:54physical performance in like a in a very specific way which i also won't spoil i wondered how did
05:00you sort of approach that and also deal with that because you know you're going to set every day and
05:03doing these kind of stuff i don't want to say stunts because i don't want to give anything away but you
05:07know yeah um well there was a really practical answer to that which is that um uh because i was
05:14working with daniel craig he had a personal trainer on tap and so every morning i would um
05:20every morning once a week i would go to uh the gym
05:27with daniel um and sort of train like that um yeah and and so so really it was like i mean there's
05:39always um you know when you're looking at a character there is the kind of question of the
05:43physicality of that character and what that means you know this is a someone who's got a background in
05:50boxing so i did a bit of that um yeah really um in terms of the physicality i mean sort of
05:58you know i really like i always really like seeing the arc of a character and if there is anything you
06:04can do with the body to kind of help express where they are at any given moment and um jud goes from
06:11someone who's full of positivity at the beginning of the film i won't give anything away but it gets
06:16rather confused as you go through and a bit panicky and i think to see him sort of
06:23cut you know come in on himself a little bit um was nice so yeah that's always the way you just
06:29kind of look at the overall arc and then see how you can uh tell that in different ways you know
06:34off with something like this the words do a lot of the the work for you but then with your
06:38physicality and all that stuff yeah um you you and ryan have worked together for many years now
06:43and this this film is is a really expansive film the the last one the second one was a massive film
06:49and and these films have just grown and grown and grown and ambition and scale and i wondered
06:54first what's your first thought when ryan hands you these scripts it's like how are you going to do
06:58this you know what's your first thought i mean in reality we start working on it and start prepping
07:04the movie before ryan ever hands me the script because he's as he's writing it he's pretty clear
07:09where where the movie is going to be set he knows pretty much all the sets knows who we're going to
07:15be looking to cast and so we start prepping it early on so you know it wasn't i didn't feel like
07:23it's overly ambitious in terms of like the production of it we just the thing is that we have a lot of
07:28time to start prepping it so we are prepping it really well and it feels it feels like any other
07:34movie you know and again it helps that he knows exactly what he wants early on uh nobody will
07:41notice this because it's done so well in the film but this is set in upstate new york but you shot
07:44mostly in london i believe i wondered if you could talk a little bit about that trickery you know how
07:49you how you managed to do that because i couldn't tell and i you know i'm from london well it's it's it's
07:54mostly takes place in like a small town and kind of an old stone uh church in the small town and the
08:00reality is you have more of those here than we have in the states so it made sense in that way
08:05there's also um the interior of the church is um one of our main locations and we built that our
08:11production designer rick heinrich built a beautiful set here um at ram and i you know we made the star
08:17wars movie that we made was we obviously did here in london and we love and we just kind of fell in
08:23love with working with british crews and with um with working here in london i was so yeah it made
08:29sense for a lot of reasons and ryan you've worked together for for many years uh this is your third
08:34knives out film i wondered what are you sort of planning are you plotting to do next as you say
08:38that you know you always kind of have an idea well i'm writing right now it's i'm writing um uh it's
08:45not one of these it's just something completely different an original thing um uh and it's not
08:51because i'm burned out on making these i'm actually feel very energized after making this one but
08:55but isn't three in a row it's probably healthy to you know see other people
09:00and just on the note of the cast as josh brought up i wondered like i see a lot i don't want to say
09:10any names because maybe oh my god i love how careful you're being but there's there's people
09:15in this film where i'm like oh i wouldn't have thought of them for this role like i wondered how
09:19do you sort of think oh this person could play this they'd be right for this and what's that sort
09:23of process well our casting directors uh directors mary vernu and brett howe who we've worked with
09:30on all these movies um it's a collaboration with them it's also though i mean i just that's part of
09:35the treat for me of making these movies is they have big ensemble casts the ideas it's a different
09:40one each time and that means i just get to work with such a wide variety of bucket list actors who
09:46i've been dreaming of working with like glenn close the fact that i got to work with glenn close in
09:51this movie um i don't know it's and and it's fun to because the actors are so good it's fun to cast
09:58against type in that way because you know they're going to come in and bring you something unexpected
10:03in the part and i i read somewhere i don't actually know if this is true but i guess i'm saying it in
10:09public which is it's going to be true the second you say it so choose your words carefully i heard
10:13that knives out the title came from a radiohead song and glass onion came from the beatles where did
10:19this title come from so there is a u2 song called wake up dead man that's a very good song that's
10:24kind of about loss of faith it's on the pop album which underrated album really good though uh but
10:31the phrase i actually really know it from there's um recording the pete seeger did of a hudie lead
10:38better song of a lead belly song called go down old hannah and in the seeger version he has a verse in
10:44there that's where he says wake up old dead man and that's always stuck in my head just
10:49oh that'd be a good murder mystery title so yeah oh cool and and uh josh you mentioned sort of your
10:57partnership here with with daniel craig i wondered what what was it like working like you know going
11:02toe-to-to-toe with him a lot a lot of the time it is just you two sort of fighting it out in a way
11:07figuring it out i wondered what was what was that sort of dynamic like um yeah glorious you know
11:13daniel's um we associate daniel obviously with these kind of big big roles and he he's sort of
11:20this grand movie star which he is too um he's also a goofball and um and sweet and incredibly humble
11:31um and really encourages you to kind of push yourself i think one of my first days this is a scene
11:39again not giving anything away there is a scene where i raise my voice and there was a wind machine
11:45and um and we did a rehearsal and halfway through the rehearsal it's a fairly long speech
11:52daniel didn't have a line at any point during the speech and i'm doing this speech and he just goes
11:57save it
11:59halfway through and he was right and you know so he's he's someone who's been um you know such a
12:08such a brilliant performer for such a long time and he's so willing to give that his skill away
12:15which is a beautiful thing yeah ryan this is a slightly nerdy question but the thing i i enjoy
12:21most one of the things i enjoy most about this franchise is the music and it and like sort of
12:28thriller music like this is very difficult to do well because it's something that we all know when we
12:33think about you know so the hitchcock scores and stuff like that it's very hard to do something
12:36original but this is feels really quite original so i wondered how do you approach putting the score
12:40together and making it feel contemporary and something i'm glad you asked about that so
12:44nathan johnson who's my composer um he's my cousin and we've been making movies together since we were
12:5010 years old and he's done all of my scores and um with the exception of star wars um we we let
12:57johnny williams a young kid do that one and um uh but uh nathan is the first time he ever did an
13:06orchestral score was the first knives out movie he kind of jumped into the deep end of the pool and
13:10he is so talented and and we really approach each one of these on the story's own terms you know and
13:17so with this one it's a totally different mode he was working in and um i think he did such a
13:22beautiful evocative job so yeah i i love my cousin it's family it's all family shout out to nathan
13:29um that's all we have time for so thank you please thank them for joining thanks guys thanks
13:34thanks a sec
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