- I just remember like being in school
and they'd say, "What do you wanna be when you grow up?"
And I'd say, "I wanna be an actor."
- Wow.
- They'd always look at me like.
- [Eddie] Good luck.
- Yeah, "Ah." (Eddie chuckles)
- Look at them now.
(mellow funk music)
(air whooshing)
- So how'd you start in acting, Eddie?
- I loved doing it at school.
When I was a kid, I loved it.
- I saw the video of you singing "Les Mis."
- You didn't take long to bring that up,
did you, Jessica? (laughs) - Well, school, acting.
- How did you get into this-
- Ah. - Weird, odd,
and wonderful profession?
- My grandmother took me
to go see "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."
I was like seven years old.
- Amazing.
- And she said- ♪ Ah ♪
(Jessica laughs)
♪ Bright colors shining ♪ - Nice, nice.
She said, "This is a professional company,
which means they're actors and they do this for a living.
It's their job."
And I was confused by it, but then it started
and I saw a little girl on stage,
and I went, "Oh, this is a job.
This is my job."
- Wow. - And it was like super easy.
I just was like, oh, this is what I'm gonna do.
(door handle clicks)
- [Amy] Hey.
- Ah. - You the new guy?
- Uh, yeah, Charlie.
- Hi, Charlie. Amy.
- Ah, hey, Amy. - Nice to meet you.
- You've played lots of real people.
Does that affect- - You have, too.
- How you, does it change how you prep?
- I guess the only thing that's different
is if you're playing a real person,
you're more like a detective.
- [Eddie] Yeah.
- If it's a fictional character,
the character's there in the script.
But you have to fill in more of the blanks,
like the favorite color.
What's their favorite smell or piece of music?
These little things that have nothing to do with the movie-
- [Eddie] Mm-hmm.
- But to me, really start to flesh out a person.
- Do you need anything?
- Mm-mm, I'm fine. - No?
Okay.
You let me know if you feel tired.
- I'm not.
I won't. I feel good. - Yeah?
- Yeah.
- [Charlie] Okay.
- Mm-hmm.
- Was there a moment in the script
or when we were filming when you felt something turned
in Amy when she gained a sense of the suspicion?
- I think in playing it,
it really felt like she had to fiercely defend her friend
because he was someone who was so loyal to her
and had helped her so much.
It was like them against the world in some aspect.
So no matter what people were saying,
she just couldn't allow it to be true.
- He's been at nine hospitals,
and none of them will talk to us.
- What do you mean? I'm...
- I don't think it was until she met
with the former colleague,
that's the first time it's like, oh, my God.
And then that's just something she can't ignore
because then that leads her to the storage room.
When that happens,
she doesn't immediately go to the detectives.
- [Eddie] Yeah.
- [Jessica] She continues to investigate it.
- [Eddie] Yeah.
- [Jessica] Which means she still has some doubt.
- Yeah. - You know?
About whether or not he's guilty.
- I thought that was amazing, that scene.
The lighting, Jody, the DP's lighting,
I know it was brutal, right? - Mm.
It's brutal. - 'Cause didn't you-
- I had to close my eyes for most of the scene
or for certain moments that he wanted the bright light,
and then open.
- [Eddie] Wow.
- Because the light was so bright for the effect he wanted
that I had to like,
I couldn't just stare at it all the time, yeah.
What was your favorite scene to shoot and why?
- I love the diner scene. It was a hard scene.
- I wanna talk about Parkfield.
(Charlie sighs)
I wanna talk about what you did.
- It was all about this sort of invisible cord between us
of who knew what and when and how.
I found all the ways to mine that from different angles
when actually nothing's happening
was kind of intriguing. - Mm.
- How about for you?
- The scene I loved the most because it made me laugh
but it was also so scary is that after Amy collapses
and wakes up and she hears like, (chuckles) what do you say?
- [Eddie] Hey. (laughs)
- Hey. - Hey, Amy.
- [Charlie] Hey. (monitor beeping)
Easy, easy. You're okay. (Amy whimpering)
You're okay. It's okay.
- And then you just see like slowly like,
I look over and there you are,
like ripping the IV out of the arm.
And I just loved that scene and I loved how you played it.
- I wanna go home.
- I know. Okay. (monitor beeping)
- [Nurse] Hey, saw her heart rate was up.
You awake? - Ah.
- [Amy] Bring me discharge form.
- Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I don't think that's a good idea.
Oh, she should stay overnight.
- Yeah, we got this.
- I thought that scene must've been really hard for you.
Because it's such a sort of...
There are very few moments in this film
which weirdly moves into the genre,
but that sort of moment of waking up drowsy,
all that sort of stuff-
- And then hearing your voice.
- [Eddie] I find out really hard, going...
(both laughing)
- It was fun, though.
I liked it 'cause you gave me so much to play off of.
That's why. I also like props, so.
- Fucking love a prop.
- [Jessica] Yeah.
- Love a prop.
- Ripping an IV out of my arm.
- Yeah, great. - So badass.
Charlie never explained why he did what he did.
Did you figure it out?
- No.
I mean, the real Amy said
that she basically only ever saw this other Charlie
in the moment that in our film is the diner scene,
and it was a dissociative personality disorder almost.
It was two different people.
But as far as the why,
like what I find intriguing about the film
is it never answers that question.
And in the prep for it, you just do all the reading
of which we were so lucky to have the resource of the book.
And this guy was so unhinged a bit,
in and out of institutions,
that it was just kind of staggering
that he had ever been allowed.
- [Jessica] Near patients.
- Near patients, yeah.
Who are some of, would you say, some of your role models?
- When I first started out?
- [Eddie] Yeah.
- Ralph Fiennes, actually, was one.
- Yeah, me too.
- I saw him do "Schindler's List"
and "The English Patient" very close together,
and I thought I don't understand
how the same person could do that.
And then when I got into college,
I saw "The Piano Teacher," and I saw Isabelle Huppert.
It was a huge lesson in film acting
and the idea that you could just think the thoughts
and not do anything, and then it's so exciting.
- Why are you being weird, Mom?
- I'm not. (chuckles)
- We're making something special.
- We had basically met a good decade ago-
- Uh-huh.
- At a children's film festival, and we became pals.
And I'm trying to think whether we...
It wasn't such
a conscious thing- - No.
- Of looking for material together,
but there was always- - I mean, we talked about it-
- [Eddie] We had talked about it.
- A little bit, but it was never,
we weren't sending each other scripts
or anything. - Yeah.
And so when it came-
- Yeah. - And when this particular
piece with Tobias directing,
it was the collection of people-
- Yeah. - That made it
the kind of the no-brainer for me.
- So it was an amazing experience working together
'cause it really felt like the easiness
and the ease of the personal relationship-
- Yeah. - Just also fit
into the work relationship, which is rare.
- And also, I feel like we have similar processes.
- Yes.
- Which is something you never know with actors-
- Yeah. - Until you're
actually working.
- So I checked in with Beth, she's still sleeping.
Jack's been pushing on his call button,
but I got it, so don't- - Oh, my God.
- What?
- There's insulin in her system.
(monitor beeping)
(alarm chiming)
- Thank you for listening to us
(Jessica laughs)
interrogate each other
about everything and anything. - About acting.
- And acting and schmacting.
Watch "The Good Nurse" only on Netflix.
(suspenseful music)