SUBTITLES:
Subtitles generated by robot
00:03
hello everybody and welcome to this
special conversation with the cast and
crew of operation mincemeat i'm dave
karger from turner classic movies and
i'm absolutely delighted to be able to
introduce seven members of the cast and
crew of this wonderful film so we have
with us two of the producers ian canning
hi ian
hi how's it going
great chris ticker is with us hello
chris hello the screenwriter michelle
ashford hello michelle hello
and three of the cast members kelly
mcdonald hi kelly
hi
00:34
matthew mcfadden hello
hi
and colin firth how are you hello hello
how are you and the director is with us
as well john madden hello john great to
see you hi dave before we talk about the
film itself this movie represents many
different reunions
of different people who have made
wonderful projects together in the past
colin obviously ian canning and his
producing partner sherman produced the
king's speech through seesaw films their
company and it had been about a decade i
01:04
think since between these two films how
much had you stayed in touch colin with
ian and emil in the hopes of doing
something together again
um we've sort of we we haven't all
together lost contact have we you know
[Laughter]
there was pigeons sent with notes and
things like that wasn't very ideas we
had a
i think you can call it a habit when
there are intervals in between but we
were
tending to approach each other
with ideas
um
01:34
which i think in this
world a um
ten years isn't actually bad going
into you know
in terms of finding the next thing ten
years between second world war films i
think it's probably
probably appropriate it's probably the
time that makes sense and to prove your
point that 10 years is impressive think
of how long ago it was colin that you
and john were together on shakespeare
love i mean that's over two decades
um was that was that a nice reunion as
well it was very nice john and i um i
02:06
think that we've had more contact not
least because we live about three doors
away from each other
if one of us has an idea for the other
it was hard for anybody to you know
avoid i've made this attempt a number of
times haven't we john we have we have
yeah it's like lobbying a script over a
fence basically and we've been sort of
done out of it on several occasions
having to do with
schedules and so on
um but uh yeah this one this one came
good and then of course john and
michelle you have the history together
02:37
from masters of sex which michelle
created so i imagine there must have
been a dialogue michelle continuing
between the two of you oh yeah
absolutely we became good pals when uh
john graciously directed uh the pilot
yes yes and then this is what she gave
me actually when when we were just about
to start shooting the pilot classes of
sex she said this is a fantastic book
and it says on the front
if it appeals i promise you a fabulous
03:08
script
honestly i said this
it took us six years to get there but
yes
but i did john and i really hit it off
when he directed uh masters of sex and
this book i did i had read the book and
i thought oh i can't think of a more
perfect director for this and so yes six
years later there we were
and then kelly what am i leaving out
well
one can't seem to shake me per thing
longer than anyone actually oh really
yeah
03:44
this is how many times this is three
four this is the hat trick yeah this
third one okay so i love john that you
just showed ben mcintyre's book
operation vince me that's kind of the
source material for this can you tell me
how it entered your life and and what
intrigued you so much
well it entered my life in material form
obviously this hardback that michelle
gave me uh is was not a
you know a story i was completely
unaware of
um
04:15
but uh
i had not read uh ben's book which was
you know a pretty um extraordinary
experience
because it's an extraordinary story to
start with and he has a a gift really
for lifting what could be a kind of dry
account of espionage and endless detail
into a kind of just an absolutely
ripping read full of the most
extraordinary characters and
and he has a way a rather mischievous
04:45
way of telling the story and pointing
you at the
the irony the ironies and the
absurdities of um
the story and the whole idea of it
frankly i mean my first feeling when i
looked i said wow this is a challenge i
mean it's a delicious challenge but
a challenge really to kind of
accommodate the the extraordinary range
of moods and ideas and reversals and
characters that it has in it and chris
from your point of view i know this is i
think the third film that you've
05:17
produced that john has directed so you
have a great history with him what were
you most excited to see john
bring to this
project yeah that's also a hat trick for
me um
i look like you know i i spend my life
waiting to make films with john so i to
be honest i would um i
if i could only make films with john
that would basically be what i would do
um uh
you know i think he has um
a marvelous way with actors we have
three wonderful actors here but i think
he he's character-driven he is a tough
05:49
task master for a screenwriter um in so
far as he is incredibly involved in the
script and i think um watching him work
with michelle
was sort of superb he's a director who
who gets under the skin and is both
incredibly respectful of um writing
talent but is all about script um
and we you know we wanted to make a film
that was a
i don't want to say it's an
old-fashioned film but it's a proper
movie movie you know we wanted to make a
a a big film
that was dramatic and characterful and i
06:21
don't think there's anyone better in the
world than sean i want to ask the three
actors about uh their characters because
they're also intriguing in many
different ways um colin i think what's
really interesting about how we learn
about you and montague here is that we
almost learn more about his personal
life before we learn about his
professional life and i think that's a
really interesting way to get an
audience invested in the character even
before the the plot of the movie you
know the spy plot i mean is set in
06:51
motion and i was very intrigued by the
scenes early on in the film where we
witness him
with his wife and family and see the
kind of
friction there and and the dynamics
there what interested you about
playing montague in kind of these two
different realms the the personal and
the professional the personal life of
spies is something
that has interested me before i don't
know
i obviously not an authority on any of
it um most of us don't know what the
07:23
personal or professional life of spies
is i i think there's a singular
difficulty in
which you can't
if you're if you're doing something
secret you can't share
you know
with your family you know you can't you
can't come home and describe your day at
the office
and uh i think that puts a particular
pressure i mean i've actually spoken to
people who
had to do you know i've played it
actually quite recently played another
navy officer whose work couldn't be
07:54
shared
and um
you know i think it clearly puts a lot
of pressure
um
on everybody concerned
there's a
line in uh in tinker taylor soldier's
spy
which tom hardy has and they're trying
to persuade him to come back from the
cold and do the job and he says
this line had over all the screenings
this line got a big laugh when they
speeded screened it for spies apparently
they actually showed the film
that the mi5 headquarters screening room
08:25
and there was a line which got a laugh
only in that screening and nowhere else
which is he said if i do this for you i
want out i i want a life i don't want to
end up like you lot
and it brought the house down
you know because it hit a spot with with
that particular audience i didn't get a
laugh anywhere else
and so i think that's just the clue as
to um
i think the sacrifices and how painful
it it must be
and i think there was something that
in our story
08:56
it was
important to kick off with that you know
just the personal investment of the
personal sacrifices
that
spies have to make but also it is a
profoundly personal story i mean it's
you know what do you think it's about a
corpse
who is also a human being and uh and all
the moral questions that uh
circle around that matthew i was really
intrigued by charles chomley
and he's this man who is very dedicated
to his work but he also has these other
09:26
pressures coming at him you know he he
is
kind of asked to spy on his own
co-worker but he he seems conflicted
about it
what struck you about playing those
different sides it's just great i i
i enjoyed all that i mean he's
he's he's sort of um
he's incredibly
bright i mean deeply deeply clever
chumly but terribly socially awkward and
sort of quite lonely and that was
fun to play um
09:57
and yeah and the sort of
the conflict between the sort of
triangle between
colin and kelly's character and me was
sort of worked
very nicely with all that
with the backdrop of this awful pressure
of
the operation and everything so yeah it
was great it was great it's really
interesting what colin is talking about
there's no reflected glory even for them
you know they couldn't not only could
they not speak to their families about
it but there's no sort of sense of sort
of strange
strange thing that spies go through and
they i don't think chumley ever spoke
10:29
about it ever or montague um
to anybody and kelly jean your character
gene i think is is
maybe the audience's way into the story
because i i just find her so
relatable she's someone who is ambitious
but is able to
navigate the world of her job in a
in a way that doesn't feel
super ambitious she does it with charm
and i found that really interesting that
she
she has the wherewithal to get in the
room but to do it in a way that feels
11:01
right what did you love about her the
most i loved exactly what you're saying
i loved how um vital she was and
charming and um
and i think from ben's documentary um it
was interesting actually to hear about
these women that worked in mi5 and how
how they all
you know it became this passion
everybody wanted to be involved in this
um this story and sort of to to
sort of bring something to the table
11:31
and so jane's character is kind of i
think an amalgamation of a few of those
women and she got the prized sort of
you know she got to be the photograph
and the wallet the wallet litter and
then
and i think
um it was like winning a competition or
something i'm in the office
michelle did you get a sense in your
research of the script when you were
learning about
the women who worked on this mission in
in these organizations in general for
someone like gene a character like gene
12:03
what would the bigger obstacle have been
her her the status of her position what
level she was at or her gender
which would be harder to overcome in a
way well you know women played actually
a very vital role uh uh in the war
especially in this area of of espionage
and all the women that were working at
bletchley decoding and
um
what what was interesting
is they because so much of this was
hidden i think in a way it allowed women
to
12:34
to attain
more kind of status and and and position
in these in these operations because it
was so much of it was not
uh known
and so in a weird way without being in
public view i think women got to do
more and be involved more in these
operations than they would have been if
it was all on the up and up and um i
thought that was fascinating and the
women involved i mean there's so many
wonderful stories about women that were
13:04
vital to war effort operations and a lot
of them are untold ian when you think
back to this production what do you
remember as being kind of like
the biggest logistical challenge was it
scheduling
this sprawling cast that i'm sure was
pretty busy because you shot this all
pre-coded or was there a particular set
piece or
a department that that required a lot of
your attention i guess we we did have to
ultimately which i guess was my fault
because it was my idea that we we had to
do the landings
13:37
um on on on the beaches so um from my
perspective that was sort of an
essential part because the story is
so much about the intelligent private
people in the private rooms but actually
what they were responsible for was
from such a ludicrous idea to something
that they achieved that was so
spectacular really needed to sort of
land that kind of
i guess the peril that all of those guys
went through when they hit the beaches
so i would say that that was recreating
that
within our sort of limited budget was
14:08
was something that was important john
how would you rank those beach scenes as
far as just the scope of it compared to
you know and anything else that you've
done where does that rank so
when you get to the very last part where
you know this is something was going to
happen anyway this invasion
um
it was
somehow we didn't really have to work at
it we i mean obviously there was a huge
scale issue involved in it we took over
unfortunately not a sicilian beach but
what a beach in south devon uh which was
14:40
a huge landscape where the you know
massive lighting rig i remember the the
production um head of production at
seesaw said wow you've got a lot of kits
here you know we had
huge
movers and uh you know caterpillar
machines and all everything all over the
place um so it it that itself was um
it's sort of you know when you get to
those places it's like doing the fifth
act of a shakespeare play you know
exactly how to play it if you got the
first war rats right and
15:10
and the stakes were so clear and so
um
so
felt i think um
even by the guys who were running up and
down the beach you know countless times
in freezing temperatures
so it was uh yeah it was it was a
challenge but it was a good challenge
matthew and colin the relationship
between your characters is obviously
very fascinating and multifaceted
because they are teammates if you will
but then there's this suspicion
15:42
they're even competing for the same
woman what was that like to play colin
all those different
levels and layers of the relationship at
the same time as you say
the intrigue is less of an onion because
there's there's a intrigue within the
intrigue um they they ask
you know there's the enemy out there and
then you know the conflict that then
develops between
these two characters um
and just
they're keeping secrets from each other
and there's espionage in their
16:14
relationship uh
uh
not just secrets but
betrayals and you know
it reminds you of just how many fronts
this war is going on in you know there's
the the
the obvious ones that in this case
they're fighting the germans and then
russia which is an ally but still to be
suspected you know by the high command
and
one set to spy on the other and of
course you know
[Music]
16:45
my character has a brother who
was in fact um
a lot loyal to
soviet russia and
something that they foresaw would be a
problem later and then it's the
deceptions that they
um play on each other
over the romantic side of things
but then is it their own character are
they beginning to are they competing to
inhabit this construct as a real person
which is quite interesting for us as
actors because in a way they're doing
17:17
what it's rather like they were making a
movie they have to sort of pick it to
pieces intellectually but they also
it's you know they feel they have to
they inevitably fall into it emotionally
and try and get into it like an actor
with a part you know
um so that was that was a lovely sort of
melding of the two the idea really that
sits at the center of the whole film and
the center of the story is a fiction
it's a fiction that is created
on which an enormous amount depends
uh and uh
17:46
the the inevitably as the story unfolds
the line between fact and fiction
between truth and fiction becomes ever
more difficult to discern particularly
for the people in it and they disappear
into their own fiction i mean that's
literally what happens
um
and and not surprisingly we're you know
and there are analogies obviously in the
making of a film similar things happen
or have been known to happen and
actually that sort of intensifies the
experience of making it but it
michelle was very very alive to
18:19
the idea that sits in the material as
well
which is that you know as matthew's
character observes all the time
everybody seems to be writing novels and
the 20 committee which was the heart of
wartime espionage was literally bursting
at the seams with novelistically
inclined you know crossword puzzle
solvers and detective fiction writers it
was quite extraordinary so that
the whole
idea of the creation of fiction and
storytelling
18:49
is this unseen current
in the whole film i love the idea of
having the character of ian fleming
future james bond narrate this film and
i also love his inclusion because it
allows for these moments that a james
bond fan will love where you kind of see
the gears turning when he sees a gadget
or what when did that idea
come to you as being a structural
framework for you well in terms of the
structure that was something that john
and i were talking about for a long time
19:19
so his narration came about late in the
game but when i
when i read that book the one of the
main things i was drawn to
was the fact that ian fleming was the
architect one of the architects of this
plot and i thought that is brilliant i
mean honestly the fact that the guy who
created james bond
was at the center of a real spy story
that he created
and then that led to him going wow this
19:50
is such a fertile area i'm just going to
start writing about it is i just thought
that was just fabulous and
and as john said so many of the
people who worked in real life in these
spy
operations were writing spy novels it
just showed that the grip of spy stories
on us i thought that ben's book was a
valentine to spies and spies stories and
how they have such a grip on us from you
know james bond austin powers too we
20:20
just keep coming back to this material
because it really
grips us somehow and i i felt that his
book was a valentine so
i loved that ian fleming was at the
center of this and then the more john
and i were talking about it we thought
well from the man who ended up writing
you could argue the definitive spy
stories of our time
let's make him tell this story and that
seemed really fun to us matthew would
you say your scenes with colin were one
of the highlights for you it's very
difficult when someone drinks in the
20:51
morning um
but it's also the highlight in certain
ways
it was joyful i had i i hadn't worked
with colin before i worked very happily
with kelly before also with an enormous
moustache what you had the moustache
matthew
[Laughter]
no it was a real thrill it was a real
thrill he's um he's a supremely lovely
man and a supremely brilliant actor um
and i on and so it was very it's very
nice we we both played one part um
jane austen part so that we had that
connection colin's much much older than
21:26
me so i've watched
[Music]
in all seriousness i've watched colin in
things like tumble down and month in the
country when i was
forming the idea of going maybe going to
drama school and the idea of maybe
trying to be an actor and so it was
quite a formative um
experience watching him in those things
and then so to work with him all these
years later it's lovely since you
mentioned it matthew
were was there any discussion on the set
of this film that kelly you were
essentially choosing between two mr
darcy's you know can i just say at this
21:59
point on paper it's like gene leslie oh
all these men are you know hesitant but
the real romance was between
man you can call it
i don't know what you're talking about
michelle i want to ask you and john
about the challenges of
weaving in
the the kind of war plot elements of the
film
among the interpersonal elements and
it's very seamless the way you both
did it and you feel like both sides of
22:33
the story you're getting equal love and
you're never feeling like oh i want to
go back to that it's always kind of it
comes back at the right time how was
that was it like almost mathematical to
make sure that in the script and in the
film that too much time didn't go by or
too many pages didn't go by where you
weren't attending to one side of the
movie that took a lot of work uh the
book is huge and sprawling
and
you know uh
i certainly had a go at it for a while
and then john uh
23:03
uh joined me in this process and no this
took a lot of work to figure out how to
weave these stories and make it feel
seamless because it wasn't no it was it
was very complicated and um
the script did go through a lot of
different iterations trying to
get the tone right
as john was saying you know
when you read ben's book it's parts of
it are just absolute lunacy you know
like slipping on the banana peel comedy
23:35
and then and then some you know with the
enormous weight of a very real world war
happening so that that took a lot of
work to try and figure out how to get
the tone right what their relationships
were like how to include the
the humor without you know completely
derailing the rest of the story so yeah
it was a complicated one for sure
you know the task really was to make
sure they weren't alternate
it didn't have alternate values those
two different things i mean there was
24:06
obviously a story that was moving
relentlessly forward which was the
creation of this
uh fiction
uh and the task really was to make uh
both sides that's to say the personal
side the personal elements that are
involved in
in the creation of that
belong to and point directly at the
story that was emerging
that took quite a while to kind of
figure out exactly how to do that but
um but in other words they sort of weave
24:37
and braid together they're not like oh
well now we've spent too long in the
emotional world let's come back and deal
with some you know hardcore espionage it
it really didn't unfold that way and i
don't think it did in reality either so
it's really about making them belong to
one another i just wanted to say one
shout out that that
it was an extraordinarily interesting
film to edit
and to score
uh the editor victoria boydell and i
worked for a very very long time
remotely from one another rather like
25:08
the situation we're in here about 150
miles apart and never in each other's
company so we were sort of
you know experienced in the film inch by
inch and then tom newman who wrote the
score became involved
uh
you know some way into that process but
then very intimately involved
because the way
musically we weave our way through it i
think has an enormous amount to do
with the way the stories the different
aspects of the story go here chris one
of the things that i love so much about
25:39
this movie is the depiction of this kind
of wartime fabulous social life that we
get glimpses of in in this movie these
supper clubs and all these just so
antithetical to what you think would be
going on during a war when when you
think back to the actual production what
were some of the challenges
uh in making sure that that felt
right and authentic but also pretty
fabulous actually one of the things that
was really tough was to do blackout
london and to do
a london that it was much dirtier and
26:10
seemier and blacked out than than it is
now it's actually it's interesting i
think we've i hope we've been successful
but quite a lot of second world movies
look great but all the buildings are
bright and shiny white because
everything's been cleaned over the last
50 years whereas actually at this time
in the war everything was dirty not just
from wall but from the hundred years
that preceded it and coal and dirt so it
was
it was challenging to do that blackout
london and it was wonderful to be able
to sometimes open the door as you know
as they did in 1943 into this sort of
26:41
underground world not just the
underground world of room 13 and the the
the
spooks themselves but actually this
social life where the people who were in
london at that point the war was going
on but it was quite far away so although
they were we you know i think um kelly
says it in the movie when she says you
know we're like moles you know this idea
of sort of wandering around town with
little likes to you know not being able
to sort of and scurrying but then
actually having
an exciting time in in in their social
life i think again also to michelle's
point um
27:13
it was quite a sort of interesting
sexy time because you know there was
strangely women were having were being
given
opportunities and jobs they wouldn't
have there was a there was a sort of
world where some of the the sort of
slightly more
stayed mores of the pre-war years were
being wiped away because the you know
people were under pressure so that was
super exciting the um
uh gargoyle club is in fact uh the
original gargoyle club is in the uh it
is now where there is a soho house in
27:44
london so so the dean street townhouse
in uh london soho was
originally the gargoyle club in the in
the 40s and so
although we didn't take many cues from
from that there's it was it was quite
fun to sort of imagine that that that's
a similar sort of crowd and atmosphere
for the 40s were there so there was you
know it was super it was exciting ian am
i right that you you all rapped kind of
just in time in march of 2020
yeah i think um
there was that sort of
28:15
i was back in london i remember chatting
to chris on the phone and
chris saying i think we're going to come
back to a very different london aren't
we and i said i think you are and then
literally that changed in the next
three or four days it was
it felt like a sort of um
a tide sort of that was coming towards
us and it was like would you be able to
safely get to the end and and complete
the film so yeah there was
there was there was definitely drama
around that it felt like the world was
changing around us as we were coming to
28:46
the end of the shoot it feels like
operation mincemeat was the last
job before the world changed forever
kind of thing and it sort of has made it
even more you know we had such a ball
we just had the best time like i've
never had a better time i think just
sitting around in strange sort of dusty
old rooms and directors cheers with a
bunch of actors
colin i want to ask you and matthew
about the humor in the film because it's
it's throughout and it
it's it's something you wouldn't
necessarily think you would find in a
29:17
movie when you hear about this movie but
it works and i'd just be curious to know
how
you and
matthew and john and you all kind of
talked about it and played it to make
sure that it felt uh appropriate
but also
uh funny enough to still be these
moments of levity i think john alluded
to it a bit and which is why michelle's
script so brilliant is that it's the the
amateurish and the abs the
amateurishness of of what they were
doing
was sort of is part of that is part of
29:47
the seriousness as well you know
and the absurdity of it you know i think
mitchell caught this absolutely
brilliantly and uh because
it's it's also
you know humor can be very specific to a
culture um it could be i don't know
certainly
you know
british culture can be of that area can
be seen as quite specific but it could
be uh different depending on class for
all i know the air force has a different
sense of humor from the navy
um but i think that it's how you handle
30:18
things so if you're an extremist
or you're frightened or the stakes are
incredibly high
um it it it's possibly your only
recourse you know particularly if
there's been conflict between the two
people concerned so when you get things
like i may vomit i may vomit with you
it's from
it's from that part of you that's gonna
vomit you know they mean it
uh but what else can we say it and now
we've done everything we're gonna have
and all we can do is wait to see if uh
30:49
you know civilization is going to be
saved or not
um there's a sort of desperation that
underlies a lot of the
the humor and like any humor you know
you just have to play the reality of it
it's not like
well let's have some gags now because
this is a tough story for people to
stomach i mean it isn't it's just the
way the story unfolds and if it's
working
it pulls an audience into a relationship
and understanding of that ian how did
the netflix of it all come about netflix
came we were in post-production
um
31:20
you know as john said during the
the pandemic we had
john editing
from one room and then um
victoria like on a washing machine
editing her bits but um
uh
netflix came in i guess we had we had
made a sort of longer promo that had um
got out into the sort of business you
know industry and so therefore we
started to get calls and and then they
went from there but they've been
very passionate supporters of it so it
was it was good to get them on board and
31:51
so passionate about it in the us colin
let me finish with you this i feel like
this is such a great
only in england kind of story i don't
know if you would agree with that and i
also know that you've been away i think
you're in the united states you're
filming uh this hbo show that you've
been doing for a while i don't know if
it makes you feel homesick watching this
movie or talking about it or thinking
about it but it really does seem like a
quintessential only in britain kind of
story doesn't strike you that way too
one of the things that this touched on
for me was
that world war ii was not a full gone
conclusion
32:22
i know we all know that but we don't
really know it it was written it's it's
part it all feels inevitable that it
that it had it ran the course it ran
right now we're at the end of the
generation who who lived through it as
adults you know i think the character of
the nation that we're talking about um
would probably be very different today
had things gone differently well i
congratulate you all on making a rousing
and massively entertaining so thank you
so much to the whole crew ian cannon
chris ticker michelle ashford john
madden colin firth matthew mcfadden and
32:54
kelly mcdonald it's so great to be with
you all today thanks so much
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