So now this is a dark, profound
tale, rich in metaphors and complexity, complexity.
But Jessie, when Rory turned up to set, with those teeth how did you keep a straight face?
I didn't
There was a lot of turning away from camera
and a lot of kind of back shuddering that if you look closely enough, you'll see
quite a few times across the... you package it as terror
Yeah. But you also provoke that.
You know, Rory just I mean, it's delicious.
I love of course.
And I mean, as an audience member, sometimes it's
okay not to know everything, to leave us in the obvious
or more so questions than you have answers.
But how is that for an actor?
Is that OK to be inhabited in a world to be part of this project
and still yourselves not necessarily have the answers to everything?
Yeah, it's not our job.
I mean, you know, fundamentally we're playing characters
and working with each other and telling the scene each speech
each time and getting to play those scenes in a number of different roles
and creating with each character a different dynamic between
between Jessie and myself in them.
That's really exciting and challenging, but you never really know what you're in
or what it's going to find, how you're going to feel about it.
And I do think that that is this kind of the interesting thing about this film.
It it does leave questions, but it also really leaves feeling
and I think it demands a kind of emotional response
rather than necessarily a intellectual analysis
that it most importantly exists as something that makes you feel.
I mean, obviously, so much of the attention of war is
a unique experience, a must have been like to play that many characters.
But just I'm interested in knowing what it was like to work opposite
that was that quite a challenge to kind of constantly be in the same of a sort
of so many different sort of characters of one act of a different guys?
No. Well,
because Rory's such an extraordinary actor.
You made me say that
And brave and brave and brave
and handsome. And
that like any
any time he came to set, I'm kind of in awe of what he's done.
Not because I think they're all so distinctive and genuinely,
every time he came out of the trailer, whoever he was, the whole tone
and the among us would shift, you know, when he came out was Jeffrey,
everybody wants to hang out with Jeffrey, everyone to laugh with Jeffrey.
When he came out, the vicar, nobody wanted anything to do with Rory
or his little kind of chopsticks, single nail timed
He was quite isolated in that.
And yeah, when you get to work with somebody who's that good,
you just kind of stand in front of them and see what comes out.
I mean, yeah, it's a remarkable performance.
I mean, everyone's so new ones, but it was I want you most enjoyed.
If you could pick a men's spinoff, if any of those characters.
I like the one who looksa little bit like Damon Albarn singing in the pub
Yeah, there are a few that one would have liked.
So because I obviously I did do as much work for each character,
even though one might have only been on set for a couple of hours.
So, yeah, the the landlord's.
I'd like to investigate him.
Oh, yeah.
Or I mean, like, I knew all of their all of their lives just as much
just because I, Jeffrey, the vicar, maybe have more time on screen.
I did, actually.
You know, I just felt like I knew each one of them reasonably to the same degree.
So, yeah, I'd like to see some of the sadness of the other men that I created.
I mean, because actors sometimes say they struggle to watch themselves on screen.
Is that especially the case when you're watching yourself
play so many different characters?
Or has it been a fascinating experience to see how it all came together?
Because I guess when you're in it, it might've been quite hard to envisage.
I mean, it's obviously it was interesting to see the whole
and there was a lot of not like
not like that...
things ... the holes in my performance
and the whole
but it's another obviously there's some VFX
creation that you were, you know, waiting to see how that all looked.
But by and large, it was it's quite it was quite a theatrical experience.
Alex [Garland] works in chronology, so you sort of got
went from scene to scene through the course of the film.
Like you would in the course of the play.
And at night, obviously, there was a small cast
working with the director quite closely with rehearsals.
There was quite a bit of quick changing and I guess when you start out your career
often playing two or three parts in the same place.
So there was kind of there were themes that felt very comfortably theatrical
and as a result,
most of most of our work was just playing the scene with each other.
And so that that wasn't such a surprise to see it in chronological.
That's what a treat Exactly.
Yeah.
Apart from the we actually shot the relationship scene the last two days
and it just I mean, you
spend your such as wonderful performers, you are you get you attracts big,
profound, quite emotionally charged roles because that's something
that people know you can kind of do so well.
But obviously this is about sort of trauma and grief and stuff.
But come playing roles that carry a weight.
And I mean that getting into that headspace can be quite exhausting.
And this is something you can do.
You have to kind of really learn how to switch off at the end of a of a shoot out
I'm not really somebody who kind of carries it around with me.
It doesn't help me.
The only thing that kind of was happening from this is like any time
I would go home at the weekend, any time my boyfriend
would come into the room and scream and he'd have to be like, I live here and
everything, I
was just kind of in a hyper alert kind of place for no.
I mean, I don't think you can carry this around with you.
You know, there's too much it's it's just very funny.
I mean, when you sort of play characters like this
and you sort of characters who are learning to overcome trauma
or grief and stuff that both of you can give it,
can you develop a skill set for the real for your values?
Do you like
could you ever find yourselves in real life learning from characters
that you've played or
in adopting certain traits or or things that they've kind of achieved?
I think it's probably the other way round that you use your life,
your own life experience to to formulate the way that these characters behave.
I don't think I've ever yet learned anything that I've managed to employ
in later
life, but who knows maybe the next time I'm confronted with seven
or eight different versions of myself on this exact
call. Well, thanks so much for talking.
So much. Appreciate. Things.