I'm going to begin by asking if you guys had a kind of long
established relationship with this world of the very rich and exquisite
in my household.
When I grew up, I had the sort of original film I used to love.
My my mom was of watching her when she was younger.
I just wondered
if you going into this project, taking on these roles, if you if yeah.
If this was already a world that meant something to you both.
I very distinctly remember watching it, watching the original
when I was a little tiny kid, probably five or six years old at home.
And and I did I didn't watch it again
until until I watched it after I joined this this movie.
But it's such an interesting thing.
So many people have such a emotional connection with and so many people
give it such a place in their heart.
When you when you talk to people and they said what you do and work wise
and you say, I'm doing this railway children update their face.
You just light up there it
to proved that they really appreciate it and it's something about
it's something about you know
certain films if you watch them once then they stay with you for the rest of
your life, those iconic films and certainly getting to be in it.
And an update of it with Jenny Agutter
getting that seal of approval from that from that sort
of guardian of the folklore of it was a real thrill either.
I only saw it once I came on board.
I remember seeing excerpts from it.
The stopping of the train.
I remember the young Jenny in that wonderful heart
and one having joined this one,
I saw the old one and I thought it was beautiful.
You know, Jenny, if you had to bet
on 50 years ago, arms and the man
geography to me, Brian Cox...
Well, it wasn't the right exchange.
This then this hadn't been built in Manchester and touring.
Yeah.
I was wondering about working on was this not just of Jenny
and the ones who showed them, but you're working
with an array of young actors in this or children.
Was there
do they have a kind of blissful outlook on life
because they don't treat this like work for them? It's not really a job.
It's probably quite fun.
Is that quite an infectious sort of thing that sort of spreads around the set?
When you've got so many kids on a movie like this, it feels like it.
Yeah, it feels like they're still doing it because they really love it.
And there's other stuff that, you know, we don't still love it.
But I think the further you go into a career,
you know that every time you do a film, there's an expectation to it
and and, you know, you're just constantly kind of suffocated
by the weight of the past and other things that you've done.
But to see them just start it off and that they've just got such a pure
relationship with the job and pure relationship with with the world of it
and that sort of sense of blissful naivete.
It really helps their performances because, you know that
that they're playing children that aren't yet kind of sullies by the world.
And because myself and Thomas so badly
sullied by the world by now, it's basically, you know, especially me.
It's just nice to be around,
come out the other side because I'm so old.
It was just nice to be around that energy that was so pure and so innocent.
Yeah, they're really great kids.
Were there any challenges that came to maybe calling you outside?
Just challenges.
But with working with so many children,
you know, they're lovely.
I mean, there are more challenges working with grown ups.
I can tell you
often, you know, oh, that can be.
And it's important.
I mean, because I thought about about
sort of giving this film to the next generation.
How important do you think it is that we study conflicts
from the world that aren't
just necessarily against the enemy, but actually against allies?
Because that's something you don't really see too often.
I haven't seen too often in films, particularly when I was a child.
I don't think I ever saw sort of films that that would show kind of yeah.
Conflict.
And between people supposedly on the SWAT team, there was
this that sort of thing of of America to which we're so indebted.
But as we see now, in which there are elements that are so awful
and, you know, how do
you put them together with difficulty?
And so I was going to ask, do you have many memories from this time?
Because I guess your
would you be roughly the same age as one of the younger kids in this?
I was born in 1937, so I was a child
during the war when we were hot air raid shelters.
We went we were evacuated for a week to Bridlington from Harlow.
My mother couldn't stand it, so we went back to Hull and we were bombed.
We went in the air raid shelters.
So I remember vividly.
But when you're young, you don't know the danger of it.
We used to we used to go on the bomb bomb buildings would call them to
try and find shrapnel
or you've got a piece of shrapnel
having no notion of how deadly it was if it came your way.
So it's just different children different as well.
When I watched the original film when I was a kid,
I it's from the films that made me cry so much.
I still I still remember it almost from I couldn't watch a second time
because I remember how much it made me cry.
Well, what films was the sort of one film you remember from your view
for your child that really, really got you?
I remember finding it unbearable,
unbearable.
I remember really having to watch it and really stop myself
from turning my head away from it because I found the emotional
and sort of peak of it almost an overwhelming idea
that emotions just stuck with me very, very as it got.
Remember, I mean, when I saw,
oh, what was Celia's great film?
The railway film, another railway.
Oh, Celia Johnson.
What was it called?
The Big Romance with Trevor Howard.
Oh, brief encounter.
Yeah. When I saw that, I just met her.
I was rehearsing with her.
So when I saw that on the Friday evening,
I was destroyed.
I agree on it, actually.
I actually find it overwhelming to watch.
I haven't been able to watch it since I was younger
because I even just certain moments in it just make me so
88 and I never saw it.
It gets me every time. Anyway, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Bye bye.
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