00:00Action!
00:09The cast is brilliant.
00:11I've got Dame Judi Dench, Dame Maggie Stone, Ronnie Pickup, Bill Nighy, Celia Emery, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton.
00:17It's phenomenal to work with them.
00:20That's an understatement.
00:21The donne, obviously, of the piece is that these are people who are at a certain point in their lives,
00:26so I'm casting actors, you know, at the peak of what they're able to do with their skills,
00:34which in this case are embarrassingly limitless.
00:37We've all known each other all our lives. Everyone's worked with everyone else,
00:43so it's been an easy kind of thing to slip into.
00:46It's so hot out here, and it's tiring, you know, it's tiring doing scenes,
00:50and they just, they bring it to the table every time. It's just, it's brilliant to watch.
00:54Muriel is an inveterate racist, um, and that was tremendous fun to write, obviously,
01:01but Maggie Smith is not, obviously, but, um, who has a salty way with words in life and on screen.
01:08It's an Indian in there.
01:09There was a moment in rehearsal, she turned to me and went,
01:13oh, do you mind if I say this instead? And I was like, no, Maggie, that's great, no problem.
01:16And I sat there thinking, that is as good as it gets. Right there is as good as it gets.
01:20I've been watching some of these guys, like Tom Wilkinson, for example.
01:23They just do the, the smaller scene where they're picking up a spoon or just, you know,
01:27they're talking mid-breath, but they give it so much depth and crunch that, uh, you know,
01:31it's, it's amazing to watch. It really is.
01:33These are people with such incredible depth of instinct.
01:37I remember a moment with Bill Nye and a phone, a man who's never been able to mend anything in
01:42his life.
01:43He's trying to mend a phone, and he said to me, I don't, I don't want to touch the phone.
01:48And it was a completely brilliant idea, and he proceeded to make, you know,
01:52wonderful thing out of his relationship with this object in front of him,
01:56as if it was kind of contaminated or something.
01:59The other end of the spectrum, we had a lot of people who were not wildly experienced, of course.
02:03I mean, Dev, who is a spectacular talent, I think.
02:06I mean, he's a kind of comic, natural, sort of Jacques Tati figure.
02:11Great physical clown.
02:13He's really, really talented, a young actor.
02:16He's very daring. He's kind of born comic.
02:20He's very, very young, but he has the assurance of somebody who's done this for a long time.
02:25He's got a wonderful ease, tremendous nervous energy.
02:30There are a few rehearsals before we take it.
02:32Each time he does his scene, he does it differently.
02:35And I really love that he's so spontaneous, because I get to learn a lot by watching him.
02:40It teaches me how to have that much variety when I'm performing.
02:44Tina Desai, who is enchanting, she's a great addition to the cast.
02:49And all the Indian cast, they're all very eminent actors.
02:52And we're lucky to have them.
02:54It gave me a chance to work both with a director who's fabulous,
02:58and a cast which was a dream cast.
03:01I kept telling him, I said, it's a coup. I don't know how you've got a cast like this.
03:04John's a natural leader. Whatever it is that a film director needs to inject energy,
03:09and commitment, and effort into the team around him, he's got it in spades.
03:15There is a moment in the piece when the characters all end up sitting on a bench next to one
03:19another,
03:20and you sit and look at those seven people and think, wow, that's some cast.
03:25That's an extraordinary resource to have to work with in terms of bringing the story alive.
03:30Because just the sheer level of comic skill, the depth of experience, the sort of nuance,
03:38it puts you so far ahead of the game. That was great.
03:41Cut! Thank you!
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