SUBTITLES:
Subtitles generated by robot
00:00
you know they want they want it to be
okay
and then you see then the the person
who's taking care of them
is ends up having the reaction that you
think the person who has
dementia would have
welcome to ews the awardest i'm david
canfield entertainment weekly's movies
editor and i'm joined today
by stanley tucci and colin firth stars
of the film
supernova in which uh the pair play a
long
time couple forced really to accept
00:32
that their journey uh together is coming
to an end as stanley's character
um struggles with early onset dementia
and i wanted to start with you
stanley i i know you got the script for
this film
first and you sent it straight to colin
is that correct
yes i did i did um
why colin well
i heard he was i heard he was a pretty
good actor so i thought
i know um well no i
have you know we we have worked together
twice
01:04
uh many years ago but
uh uh you know we've always wanted to
work together i i've always wanted to
work with him and
it just seemed like the right fit of
actor
and script and i i really felt like
colin would get the tone of everything
right so colin how do you say no to
stanley tucci i guess you don't
well you don't really um that's and here
we are
i am no i i tried to think of every
possible reason why i should um
01:34
reject it um but uh
funnily enough it's you know it's not
the first time i've
been sent something you know through a
side door so to speak
it was something very very particular
because i i didn't know
who the director was uh on first reading
i didn't know what i'd be reading uh the
only association i had with it was
stanley
so it had that association
on every page for me this this was
02:06
something that was wrapped up in stanley
and how i you know
see stanley and and a
two-decade-long friendship that we've
had
and i couldn't separate it from that so
it was
um it was very much
a notional experience of something with
uh
this very good friend of mine whose work
i admire enormously it's good to get
back on the road again don't you think
but how about just exploring the outer
regions of
fifth
02:40
[Music]
[Applause]
a gear yeah it's quite a production dick
pope uh your cinematographer does gives
it this beautiful
beaut the scenery is beautiful but it
also has this
intimacy that is more difficult to
capture than it looks
colin you mentioned of course uh your
your friendship with stanley
um i'm curious though i imagine that it
informed the dynamic between your
characters but on a deeper level
you're playing a couple that has really
03:13
spent this lifetime together and and you
see that
in every you know look you share in
every every silence as you say
what was it like finding that between
you this this profound
um profound love really you know colin
and i've been friends for a very long
time and
and the thing is
we've both been through when you're our
age
you've been through a lot of
loss pain struggle
and that when you share that
03:47
with a friend over many years
you become incredibly close and
so our love for each other our respect
for each other and
those that closeness that intimacy
informed was all sort of already
there a lot of it was already there when
you have a
really good friend
it is like it's like uh it is like a
04:19
a lover it is like a a marriage in a way
you know every you know a lot about each
other things that other people don't
know things that even spouses
don't know and that makes you incredibly
close
and and what that does is it takes
harry's beautiful
poetic script and the silences and
uh that colin spoke of excuse me and the
and the sort of negative
04:49
space of harry's script and it makes us
able to fill it very easily it makes us
be able to
joke around with each other very easily
in a way a lot of our job was already
done for us
simply by being as close as we are as we
are
the thing is harry's script just allowed
us to
articulate it that was that i mean that
was it was a gift
colin did you find that as well um you
know finding that natural way in
05:20
yes i mean i think stanley has
articulated probably everything that i
would have said um i
i it's um you know
there's no question it's a very we we're
we're engaged in a very strange
profession
it's it's a very peculiar thing to be
asked to do not just the business of
pretending to be somebody else and
assuming other people's experiences
but the fact that um
it you have to find ways in which it
intersects with your own experiences
05:52
and you can start off thinking that
you're a million miles from the
character you take on and
as you explore you you realize there's
more commonality than you thought
and um you still have to do the job
whether you have 20 years of friendship
or not
um you know we're expected to do the job
and if stanley and i had never met
my hope is that we would have found the
same
nuances and all this those those details
and
arrived at the depth or the semblance of
06:22
that um
just the same because we're sort of paid
to do
well maybe maybe sam will do it i'd love
that you do it for me
now as most of you will know i am slowly
losing my ability to
remember and i definitely wouldn't be
here
if it weren't for this man next to me i
think one of the deceptive things
is it's not the the heart-wrenching
stuff that's the biggest challenge
technically
it's the light stuff uh that that's
often where i find
06:52
the film's authenticity questionable
is when people are just day-to-day
moments and they make each other laugh
and there's a little banter
that stuff is often forced because it's
really hard
were the aspects of having worked with
colin in this capacity really i think
it's safe to say for the first time
um aspect of his process or or his
interplay with you that surprised you as
an actor no no i wasn't surprised
no i wasn't surprised i i just
um no it's always interesting to watch
07:23
it's always interesting to watch actors
whether you know them you don't know
them i mean when they watch them sort of
behind the scenes or whatever
but um no i think
i wasn't surprised i was once again
impressed by his diligence
uh and his
technique uh but also
his spontaneity and his
uh uh that just i mean that's it's
07:54
a pretty profound talent and i'm not
saying that just because
he's because i'm here because you're
here
or wherever you are but yeah no it's
it's
it's it's a joy to watch and i remember
when we did conspiracy which was a hbo
thing we did
that that was when we first met 20 years
ago
um just about 20 years ago i was so
impressed
with with him and the way he handled
his speeches and um
08:26
and just with all of it and i st and to
this day i mean
you know making this little movie i
watched it again
it was really pretty cool to see it
it's nice to see it it's exciting colin
for you
obviously the dynamic between these two
characters is that stanley's is more
accepting perhaps of of the fate of this
relationship whereas
here's more just trying to hold on how
did you find that dynamic from your
perspective
working with stanley you know on the
craft side of it and finding that that
08:57
tension between you
i know no longer know how to
identify what was
inevitably the script and what we found
along the way
um it's i suppose that's complicated by
the fact that
stan and i started out thinking we were
playing each other's roles
so that switch happened fairly early on
you know when i've been some reason for
it
maybe it was already woven into the
script that that is how these characters
09:27
uh deal with the the pain and
and each other i think it could have
worked differently
um i think tuscan could have been played
uh with less control and if
whoever was playing tusca had made
different choices
maybe sam would have been played with a
little more
you know i i don't know um
yeah i see i see what you're saying yeah
yeah you know the way it came out
feels inevitable you know harry sent me
10:00
a bunch of
research that he had done and i looked
at documentaries
of people with dementia which was very
hard to
i have no history of it in my family i
have
i don't know anyone who's had it i don't
it was very very difficult to
do the research it was painful
to see you know people suffering but
then
also their family suffering and
10:30
and it's harder you know i think
particularly when people are
you know in their i mean some of these
documentaries people in their early 50s
late 40s yeah i mean and they
just so to me
it was really just about
looking at that behavior and making sure
that
that i created it as truthfully as
possible because the one thing that i
thought was so
interesting was that if you
have dementia and this particular kind
11:05
of
dementia in the in the st at the stage
that my character was
when you see people with it they do what
the actor should do which is play
against it
and laugh about it even
and then suddenly there'll be a moment
where they
fall apart but for the most part if you
say
can you do this with this you know if
they're filming the stuff i saw was them
11:34
like talking to doctors and
i say can you write the letter the
number four
and yeah sure
and they can't and the first their first
reaction is to laugh
afterwards so
that to me was really significant
that informed very much
i'd like maybe to pride myself on the
12:05
fact that i play against
things a lot but that pushed me even
more in that direction
you know they want they want it to be
okay
and then you see then the the person
who's taking care of them
is ends up having the reaction that you
think the person who has
dementia would have and that is
the thing that makes it so complicated
and so
painful you see that a lot
12:36
that's very well but i i think what
stanley's talking about speaks to
a very useful principle in acting which
is
you know the best acting and i think
stanley's portrayal of tasker is a
master class in this
is as i think stanley alluded to
you the actor should do what the person
would do
yeah you know the the the thing that
you're struggling with whether it's an
illness
or uh uh or the thing you know
13:07
you're you're usually trying
to feel good not bad you know i think
quite a lot of bad acting and where it
becomes a kind of strange
exhibitionistic mess is when you see
somebody trying to be sad
um you see somebody trying to be sick
most people
aren't doing that you know most people
aren't trying to be angry or trying to
be
um whatever it is
is usually an obstacle and we were
taught at drama school don't play the
obstacle that's you know the obstacle is
an
13:39
obstacle the thing you're playing is the
overcoming of that obstacle
it's like when you see an actor
you know playing drunk they're trying to
be drunk
but but a drunk person always tries not
to be drunk
they don't try to be drunk they are
drunk
but they try not to be drunk or
you watch actors like you said try to
cry but actually
we all try not to cry we all don't want
14:11
to cry
it hurts too much so we try not to do it
so just try not to do it and
that's it yeah that'll be five dollars
for that acting class
[Laughter]
i'm taking it i'm putting in my market
right now i think you might be over
charging
the other element of this film uh that
resonated for me
in this particular moment was um you
know you're in this van traveling
together and
you're in a lot of confined spaces and
14:44
it's a lot of intense time spent
together and with nobody else
aside from um one you know larger part
of the movie
um which obviously resonates uh given
the current state of things
yes it was sort of prescient i suppose
yeah in indeed
um was that re watching the film
you know you made it before watching the
film now
um and the way it portrays relationships
in a way that
i'm sure will hit hard for many i was
that an interesting experience for you
15:14
colin at all
that there does seem to be i think
there's an intensification of
you know to their response because of
the year that we've
been having us still having yeah um
i think that will probably
play out differently uh with different
people
but i think issues of isolation issues
of the importance
of connectivity of reaching people that
are
important to you being away from the
15:46
world
in some way these are all things which i
think the film contains which
clearly uh and loss and grief and fear
of that
um so i i think people are
uh very very
alert to those things and also i think
you know there's a lot of people are
thinking about their values
i wanted to end by putting you both on
the spot a little bit uh you've known
each other for a long time
um i'm sure you're fans of each other's
work
16:16
uh do you have a favorite performance of
each other's stanley i'm going to start
with you
no that's very hard because he's awfully
good consistently uh i've heard that
yeah i know i know i'm very glad you
asked this because i
still am i remain unconvinced that he's
[Laughter]
um i well
besides mamma mia
[Laughter]
16:54
uh i i think uh it's for it honestly
that's a
it is a very hard question you did put
me on the spot it is very hard
um i think that i still
and maybe this is just when i because i
first met you and everything like that
but
you've done so many brilliant
performances but i still
go back to conspiracy because it was so
complex
what you had to get across and the way
you
did it the way you achieved it was i i i
17:25
i don't even know how you how you did it
uh for me that's still
i still think about it extraordinary
okay colin it's to you um
well it's it's just as hard
i mean also because stanley is
so extremely inconspicuously versatile
um that it's like comparing apples and
oranges
you know um because there are some
performances i'll admire for their
subtlety
17:58
and others i'll admire for their extreme
lack thereof
um
i don't know well i mean sitting
opposite
because we had a lot of time to
scrutinize each other in conspiracy
because we were sitting across a table
from
each other for weeks you know stanley
was playing a very very dark character
with incredible subtlety and containment
you cannot believe
the actor who is capable of the
performance he gave in
things like hunger games is the guy who
sits there so quietly
and doesn't seem to want to draw
18:33
attention to himself so stanley i think
it's awards worthy for stan lee to even
play a guy who doesn't want to draw
attention to himself
no i mean it's so he has he has arranged
not just in terms of different
characters but
actually in terms of style of acting as
well uh
i will go to conspiracy as well i it
might is it cheating
to say that his performance in supernova
is my favorite
i don't think that's cheating at all i
think it is
i think i think stan has has um
i think he's surpassed himself here
19:06
which is quite a bar
to surpass i think his performance in
lovely bones was extraordinary
in big night um you know i
even when the movie is unworthy of him
i think you know he's always
and that's that's enough of that because
i'm getting uncomfortable now
i can't think of a better more lovely
note to end on that was
so sweet both of you and i think that is
love as we spoke about
um stanley tucci colin firth thank you
19:45
so much
the film is supernova it is one of the
best of the
i guess not technically year award cycle
year and two months
whenever it is um yes thank you again
this has been the artist i'm david
canfield
thank you so much
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