-Happy holidays, early holidays.
You're from England, right?
-That is true.
-You guys really do it up out there for Christmas.
-Oh, yes, a lot of celebration.
-It always feels, like very, like, very Dickensian.
How is the holidays over there? I mean, do you love them?
-It is. It's lovely, yeah.
Get in the festive spirit.
It's incredible.
-Did you ever do it as a kid?
Did you ever do Christmas pageants or any that have stuff?
-Well, I did.
You know, you do the sort of Christmas productions,
but it was a bit disappointing.
I was always sort of a minor role.
So I was always kind of like a star in the corner.
[ Laughter ]
You know, trying to get into the main event.
Or a small animal. I was often --
[ Laughter ]
For some reason I was often cast as small animals.
-Wow. A small animal or a star.
-Yeah, exactly.
-But, at least -- but look at you now. You became a star.
You got to start somewhere.
-I've got range. [ Laughter ]
-Yeah.
I want to talk about your new movie "The Aeronauts."
This is you reteaming with Eddie Redmayne, who we love.
How is it like working together again?
-It's good.
It's always good to come back. -Yeah.
-We're great friends.
We've definitely, I think over the years,
we've developed some strange working practices.
-Like a shorthand or what do you mean?
-Well, it's sort of -- It happened when we did a film
called "The Theory of Everything" together.
-Absolutely. You were great.
-Thank you.
[ Cheers and applause ] Thank you.
Yeah, I was just fishing for that.
-Yeah, I know. Yeah. [ Laughter ]
You're like, "Yeah, we did that Oscar-winning movie.
No big deal."
-You got to throw it out. -Yeah. Yeah.
-Yeah, so we just -- in making that, we found this method
where if the camera is on one of us,
then the other person will hurl insults.
[ Laughter ]
Which sounds terrible, but the main idea is
that you get a really good reaction, you know,
that they might be able to use in the edit and then you get
something really spontaneous or unexpected.
-Really?
So, while you're doing a scene just nonverbal, I guess,
you're just looking, and then you have to react?
You just yell -- -"You're rubbish."
[ Laughter ] Yeah.
-Really, and just to see if you can surprise each other?
-Yeah, and then you sort of have to compete about
who can be more insulting. -Yeah.
-So, you'd never know this about Eddie Redmayne,
but there is a whole other side of him.
[ Laughter ]
-Now, "The Aeronauts," this is all about basically,
hot-air balloons, really.
-It is, yes.
Yeah, well, actually, they're gas-air balloons.
So they're a little bit different.
You fill them with gas and you kind of do it up
and then they sort of -- they take off.
So they're a little bit quieter 'cause the hot-air balloons,
you have that flame that everyone knows
that's pretty frightening.
-Yeah, I did the hot-air balloon once.
It was not as relaxing as you'd think.
[ Laughter ]
But there is a giant flame going, like --
[ Whooshing ] [ Laughter ]
Every 30 seconds or else you crash.
-Yeah, you're like,
"I'm really enjoying my champagne with this noise."
-Oh, yeah, they gave me champagne, too, and I go,
"I don't want this at all.
I really just want to land at this point."
I'm like, "Where are we landing? What is the plan for that?"
-"I'm too scared."
-Oh, yeah. I was, like, white-knuckling on the basket.
I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. I'm in a basket. What am I doing?"
[ Laughter ]
"What am I doing in a basket? It just makes no sense."
-I'm so glad you've been through this.
You understand the fear.
-Have you ever been on a balloon before this movie?
-No, no, this was my first time.
-Oh, my gosh. -Yeah.
-Do have you a fear of heights or anything?
-Well, actually, I didn't before the film,
and then now I'm actually... [ Laughter ]
I'm petrified. -Really?
-Yeah, it's totally ruined my ballooning experiences,
but it's a great film to see and enjoy.
[ Laughter ]
-Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a film. It's a movie, yeah.
But what is the plot of the film?
-So, it is about two adventurers and it's a survival story.
It's two people who go up in the balloon and have to fight
against the elements in order to survive.
Yeah, so it's Eddie and I, and it's great fun.
It's really feel-good
despite the sort of near-death experiences that we had on it.
-You actually really did.
Last time you were here you had all, like, bruises on your arms.
-And then Eddie came on, he had a boot.
He broke his ankle or something. -Yeah.
-How did he break -- I'm like,
"This is a hot-air balloon movie. What's going on?"
But it's dangerous. It really is.
-It is, yeah. I mean, anything can happen.
-Yeah.
-And that starts the whole thing with it.
You just don't know.
You take off, and who knows and it's the landing that --
the landings are the worst.
-Do they have a plan for landing at all?
Is there a plan at all?
-No, there's no plan.
-That's what I'm saying.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-I'm on the basket with the guy and it goes, like --
[ Whooshes ]
It's loud, and I go, "So where are we landing?"
He's like, "Around there."
I go, "Around there? Do you land on a pad?
What do you land on? A mattress or something?
It's like you just crash into a bush or something.
-Yeah, you think there's going to be some kind of safety net.
You're like, "They've got this covered. It's fine."
-There's nothing.
-And then you're just kind of hurtling towards the ground,
and that is the method.
-Yeah, because you see them, on these commercials and stuff,
and hot-air balloons are so beautiful and relaxing,
and it's the most stressful thing I ever did in my life.
No, it wasn't that bad. It was great though.
But yours is, like, extreme. So, you go to like --
There's a scene in there where you just -- you have to,
like you said, the elements.
You guys are freezing cold. -Yeah.
-'Cause it gets ice cold when you get that high up.
-Well, yeah. Obviously, the higher and higher you go up,
then the more freezing it becomes and so we wanted --
and a lot of it we wanted it
to feel as naturalistic as possible.
So we had this idea that in these cold scenes,
we would plunge our hands into freezing cold water,
ice-cold water, before the scene so that we would then
be as convincing as possible during our cold acting.
-Really? -Yeah.
-Was that the smart thing to do?
-I don't know. I mean, in retrospect, probably not.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
It looked great in the movie.
-Yeah, we kind of had "The Revenant" in our heads.
[ Laughter ]
We were kind of channeling that.
-DiCaprio, yeah. -Yeah.
-I want to show everyone a clip.
Here's Felicity Jones in "The Aeronauts."
Take a look at this.
♪♪
-Hello, everybody, and welcome!
♪♪
Are you ready?
♪♪
[ Applause ]
-You're incredibly late.
-Lesson number one of aeronauting --
We are creatures of the skies
and have no respect for landlocked clocks.
-Felicity Jones, everybody!