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A stylish hotel screens my call when I first make a run at reach Johnny Flynn.
Good to know theyre protecting people.
How did Autumn de Wilde first approach you with the idea forEmma.?
It works really well, because I guess the novel is reams of these incredibly witty sentences.
Ive always loved Jane Austen movies, but I think that some of them are a bit earnest.
To a fault, perhaps.
And thats an easy thing to fall into when adapting Austen, when the humor is so important.
It just said, Knightley dives in, gets dressed, and leaves.
Its something about seeing these characters behind their bedroom doors.
What did they really do here?
She was fascinated to hear that the men didnt wear underwear, for instance.
So she was just like, I really want us to see that.
But also its not sexual.
Its not a sex scene.
Autumns going, All right, boys.
This is how you do it.
Hes really wrestling with himself beneath that veneer of prudishness and kind of mansplainy bachelor thing.
You should have a sense that theyre quite a bad match to begin with.
Or that its a silly idea.
But basically, when he starts in the proposal scene, he apologizes to her.
I dont know I like it when people say sorry.
My wife told me, I liked it in the beginning when you were all stern.
And then you got all soft.
I was like, Thats not what youre meant to say!
I try and bring as many charactery quirks to those straight romantic leads as I can.
Theres an openness thats required.
Youre supposed to be grateful.
And I am grateful.
But I do relish the chance to do comedy.
At drama school, I was into a lot of clowning.
Hangmens coming to Broadway this spring, sadly without you.
What happened there?Im absolutely gutted that I couldnt come.
Mainly, my 8-year-old son is at school.
Hes at the local state school, and theyre very strict about that.
Its happened to me a couple of times with Broadway runs for a similar reason.
I just wasnt prepared to be away from my family for six months.
Its going to be at a festival.
They havent announced it yet.
But its going to be out on the back of that, if it goes well.
Its very much a tiny moment in his life.
Its not really a biopic.
They struck up this odd-couple relationship.
The label guys played by Marc Maron.
So we spent a few weeks doing scenes in a car together last summer, which was fun.
How does the movie work around that?Well, to begin with, they never wanted the music.
They never asked for it.
Because at this point in time, he was promotingThe Man Who Sold the World.
He wasnt actually playing a lot of his own music.
So thats what we do when he plays gigs.
We show him singing the real songs that he was singing at the time.
But he had shame about his own writing and music at the time.
Howd you feel about that?
And you could understand that he just said, Well, they dont have the music.
But he did know about the film.
He just said, Thats fine.
Im not going to be involved or whatever.
Thats absolutely fair enough.
Its really just a tiny moment.
Im not a huge fan of the big biopics.
When I first heard aboutStardust, I didnt even want to be considered.
I just said, You cant do it.
So I was doing it anyway, trying to write as David for my research.
I told Gabriel, and he loved it.
He said, Bro, why dont we have you singing this song in one of the gigs?
As if its like a lost demo from the time.
Its not going to be a perfect song.
It should sound like a crap demo from that period that gets discarded.
Thats the first meeting.
Its a little way off when we start filming.
They were telling me all the amazing locations.
So actually, the best way for me to be anywhere is to have a job to do.
Or to just keep moving.
