The new movie stars Sigourney Weaver (‘Aliens,’ ‘Ghostbusters,’ ‘Avatar‘) as Hildy Good, a funny New England realtor and descendant of the Salem witches, who loves her wine and her secrets. Her compartmentalized life begins to unravel as she rekindles a romance with her old high-school flame, Frank Getchell (Kevin Kline).
The new relationship ignites long-buried emotions and family secrets, as Hildy is propelled toward a reckoning with the one person she’s been avoiding for decades: herself!
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with the legendary Sigourney Weaver about her work on ‘The Good House,’ her unique character, the challenges of breaking the fourth wall, and reuniting with her ‘Dave’ and ‘The Ice Storm’ co-star Kevin Kline.
Sigourney Weaver stars as Hildy Good in Roadside Attractions’ ‘The Good House.’
You can read our full interview with Sigourney Weaver about ‘The Good House’ below or click on the video player above to watch our video from the interview.
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your first reaction to reading this screenplay, and what were some of the aspects of the character you were excited to explore on screen?
Sigourney Weaver: Well, for one thing, it was the story of an older woman from her point of view, who’s very funny. How rare is that? Then it picks up on Hildy Good, who’s a wonderful character, at the point in her life where everything is falling apart. Her husband has dumped her, her kids have sent her to rehab, she’s losing her business, and so she’s slipping, which I found very interesting. But she’s a fighter, so she’s going to fight back.
What I found most charming was that she talks to the audience. In between these scenes where you see her putting up this very accomplished front, she turns the audience and basically says, “Can you believe what’s going on in my life now?” The counterpoint between this competent Hildy, and the one who’s just fed up and telling you all about it, was what I just fell in love with about Hildy. She’s wonderful company. I couldn’t resist her.
Sigourney Weaver as Hildy Good in Roadside Attractions’ ‘The Good House.’
MF: As an actress, what are the challenges of acting directly towards camera and breaking the fourth wall?
SW: I think (she does it) because it’s an emotional thing. She just gets so frustrated, she just wants to tell you what’s really going on from her point of view. I guess the most important thing for me was figuring out who I was really talking to, because I think the audience should feel like they’re at a bar with Hildy, and she’s letting her hair down and throwing back a few Pinot Noirs.
So, I had someone I felt I could let my hair down to, and every time I connected with the audience, I felt she dropped all the facade and you just saw Hildy. Which is very important because we get to know Hildy better and better, and we get to know her perhaps better than she knows herself. She’s a very smart woman, but she’s quite deluded about certain things, and that’s what I found fascinating. That she can’t see, even though she’s really smart, and we all know people like that. They can’t see what they’re doing, but they think they can handle it.
(L to R) Sigourney Weaver as Hildy Good, and Kevin Kline as Frank Getchell in Roadside Attractions’ ‘The Good House.’
MF: Finally, can you talk about the relationship between Hildy and Frank, and having the opportunity to work with Kevin Kline again?
SW: Well, that was just a joy. I love Kevin. I love his work, and he brings such authenticity to Frank. He’s just a regular guy who doesn’t care what anybody else thinks. I just love his performance. He’s never done anything like this before. The love story, for us, because we know each other so well, those were the most effortless scenes because the relationship is so well written, and they just gravitate toward each other.
(L to R) Kevin Kline as Frank Getchell, and Sigourney Weaver as Hildy Good in Roadside Attractions’ ‘The Good House.’
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Set in a small Irish fishing village, the movie follows Brian O’Hara (Paul Mescal) as her returns home after spending years away. His mother, Aileen (Emily Watson) works at the local fish factory and is delighted to see her son return.
But when Brian is accused of a horrible crime by his mother’s co-worker Sarah Murphy (Aisling Franciosi), Aileen decides to protect her son, rather than tell the truth, which tears their close-knit community apart.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Emily Watson about her work on ‘God’s Creatures,’ her character’s codependent relationship with her son, working with two directors, and shooting in Northern Ireland.
Emily Watson as Aileen O’Hara in A24’s ‘God’s Creatures.’
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Watson, Paul Mescal, Aisling Franciosi, and directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer.
Moviefone: To begin with, what was your first reaction to reading the screenplay and what were some of the aspects of this character that you excited to explore on screen?
Emily Watson: I first read it and went, “I can smell this. I can smell the sea. I want to know who these people are because this feels incredibly authentic about a place and a way of life, but it also feels like a highly poetic Greek tragedy.”
What excited me about the character was that it is based around a terrible, moral dilemma that is entirely of her own making. You see her go from a place of joy and certainty, that God has blessed her with the return of her beautiful adored son into her life, to putting herself into a place of perpetual torment because she lies to protect him in the case of sexual assault. She’s like an animal, and it’s an animal instinct.
I also love the fact that it raises very profound questions about a community that closes ranks and protects an aggressor. The woman is cast out. That, in different forms, is happening the world over, in terms of sexual assault. There’s a moral hole in the teaching of children, and in the teachings of the church. We have to have that conversation about consent because otherwise, it’s a very dangerous structure.
MF: Can you talk about Aileen’s codependent relationship with her son and how that clouds her judgment?
EW: At the beginning of the movie, he’s been a son in exile. He’s been gone and outcast. She, at the beginning of this movie, you see her; she prays for his return. It’s the most important thing to her. You can see a desperate, deep down wish. Then she opens her eyes, and he’s standing there in front of her. It’s as if God has granted her wish, or by magic, she’s manifested Brian. There he is.
So, she comes alive. He can do no wrong. He’s absolutely given her, her life back and her joy. She lies, and she steals, and there are all kinds of things that she will do for him. Then suddenly, somebody says, “Was he home with you on the night of?” Like an animal, she just instinctively says, “Yes, he was.” She lies. That sets up a chain of events that really destroys the community in which she lives. An act of sexual violence doesn’t destroy one life, it’s a lot of repercussions all around.
MF: Can you talk about the guilt and shame Aileen feels when she discovers the truth?
EW: I think she puts herself on a spike of moral torture. It’s so conflicting. She gets to the point where she is, by the end, in perpetual torment, pain, loss and guilt. She will never get over that.
MF: What was it like working with Paul Mescal on that specific mother and son relationship?
EW: The joy, the light and the love was so easy because we all fell in love with him watching ‘Normal People,’ and he is adorable. He’s the full actor package. He’s really very talented and with incredibly good instincts. I didn’t feel like there was any way that I wasn’t working with someone who didn’t have a wealth of long experience.
So, it really felt like going into play with somebody who was very experienced, very knowledgeable and talented. Going to work every day was challenging and great in the best way. Then it was very painful to go through all that very upsetting difficult stuff. But in a way, those are the reasons you get out of bed as an actor. To crunch through those things, and to do it with him was truly thrilling.
MF: Can you talk about Aileen’s relationship to Sarah before Brian returns home?
EW: They’re very close. Sarah’s parents have died, but the families were very close. Sarah and Brian had a relationship as teenagers, young people. She’s my daughter’s best friend, and we work in the same fish processing plant. I have a motherly eye over her because she’s an orphan.
At beginning of the film, she’s having a relationship with someone who we, as a family, don’t like very much. He’s not a particularly pleasant character. So, it feels entirely at odds with my relationship with her, when clearly something bad has happened to her. I go to her to comfort her, and she just bats me away. She won’t see me and won’t speak to me. That’s just the beginning of it. I have it in my power to destroy her life, and I do.
Aisling Franciosi as Sarah Murphy in A24’s ‘God’s Creatures.’
MF: What was it like shooting the movie in Ireland? Did it give you a real sense of these characters and the community they live in?
EW: We shot it actually in Donegal, which is astonishingly beautiful. They call it the Wild Atlantic Way. Because of lockdown we had it pretty much to ourselves. Part of the character very much came from being in that place. It’s being a person who’s animal and instinctual, and not intellectual, not in her head space in any way. It all felt very informed by the place where we were, and obviously the sea and how dangerous it is, and how full of fish it is.
MF: Finally, can you talk about your experience working with co-directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, and have you ever worked with two directors at the same time before?
EW: No, I haven’t. I was nervous about that. How would that relationship be? But actually, you couldn’t find a space between them. They had so profoundly considered and thought about every single thing and they knew what their intentions were. So, they didn’t really have to confer very much about if something was working, or if it wasn’t, or what they wanted to change.
After every take, one of them would go to the actors, and one would go to camera. But it was never the same one. It was utterly interchangeable. So, you never felt like you were having a conversation with Celia and then Anna would come over. It didn’t matter. I didn’t really notice who I was talking to.
We had a relationship that was very intense, and in the sense that I felt we were all telling the same emotional story together. It was emotional between the three of us. They really trusted me. They let me tell the story. They let me play, let those emotions that the three of us were all talking about and experiencing, they let me then have that, to play it out on my face. I’s a great privilege to be in that position, to be that trusted, and to trust them. It felt like a very precious thing.
Emily Watson as Aileen O’Hara in A24’s ‘God’s Creatures.’
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The movie revolves around Sally (Juliette Binoche), a truck driver who reluctantly smuggles a young girl named Leila (Hala Finley) to save her imprisoned brother Dennis (Frank Grillo).
As Sally and Leila bond during their dangerous journey across state lines, a retired FBI agent (Morgan Freeman) and his new partner (Cameron Monaghan) are determined to take down the human-trafficking operation and bring Sally and Leila to safety.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Oscar winner Juliette Binoche about her work on ‘Paradise Highway,’ her first reaction to the screenplay, Leila’s impact on Sally, and her co-dependent relationship with her brother.
Juliette Binoche in Lionsgate’s ‘Paradise Highway.’
You can read our full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Juliette Binoche, Hala Finley, Cameron Monaghan, Frank Grillo, and writer/director Anna Gutto.
Moviefone: When you first read the screenplay, what were some of the aspects of the character of Sally that really intrigued you and that you wanted to explore more with this film?
Juliette Binoche: I didn’t know how I was going to get into Sally, because it felt so far away from me. But the subject matter, the sex trafficking subject, as well as the truck driving excitement pulled me in. The director, Anna Gutto said, “No, you’ll be it.” She was always trusting that I could do it.
Also, she put me in the hands of this wonderful woman who inspired the script, Desiree. She’s a woman truck driver and we went on trip together for a few days in order for me to understand what it felt like to sleep in a truck and to eat in truck, and all the truck stops and all the journey. I interviewed her for many hours. She’s very eloquent so she was able to really share her experiences in her life, and I got inspired by her.
Also, the script was well written, so it said enough, but not too much because it’s terrible when scripts are too explanative. You don’t want that, but it was enough, so we got inside of it without having a book to read, it’s a journey you will experience.
The big question for me was, “Are we going to find the actress to play Leila?” Because it’s such an important character in the film. The relationship between her and myself really has to be the root of it all. So, I was crossing fingers that Anna was going to find the right person. I have to say, when we started shooting, the first day, I was like so relieved because Hala was really an actress.
(L to R) Hala Finely and Juliette Binoche in Lionsgate’s ‘Paradise Highway.’
MF: Can you talk about the relationship that builds between Sally and Leila and the moment Sally realizes she needs to help her?
JB: I don’t know if there’s a specific moment. Probably when she takes care of her, she’s cleaning her, and she sees that Leila is really this weak little girl. Probably my character is really feeling something. It’s true that in our experiences, when we see somebody at the lowest physically or emotionally, that’s where our heart is opening.
I think for Sally, because she is caught up inside of a relationship with her brother, the past, and the trauma she’s been through with her father and all that, it’s very hard for her to unplug that because she feels responsible.
She wants to keep that relationship with her brother until this Leila situation, having to take care of her, suddenly changes bit by bit her feelings. Her heart is finally opening up and understanding that you’ve got to choose a family of heart. Not only of blood, but of heart. That’s the journey she’s accomplishing in a way.
Frank Grillo in Lionsgate’s ‘Paradise Highway.’
MF: Finally, because of the trauma that Sally, and Dennis experienced together as children, they have a very co-dependent relationship with each other as adults. Can you talk about that complicated brother and sister relationship and how it manifests throughout the movie?
JB: There’s this emotionally enmesh man who is so unhealthy. Yet, the need is still fed inside of that trauma. My character in the film, Sally, is a pleaser. She wants to make sure her brother is happy and to make sure that he’s saved. So, it’s fed with this unhealthy kind of relationship until she finds out at the end, the truth of it all, and that she has to make a separation.
It’s so hard because we don’t want to separate from our parents. We don’t want to separate from our siblings because there’s an attachment that is so hard to unplug. But you have to choose your own life, your sanity, your own feelings, and your own thoughts. So, that’s a huge step to make. Not an easy one, but a huge one to make.
(L to R) Morgan Freeman and Juliette Binoche in Lionsgate’s ‘Paradise Highway.’
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Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Alexander Skarsgård about his work on ‘The Northman.’
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You can read our full interview with Alexander Skarsgård about ‘The Northman’ below or watch our interviews with Skarsgård and director Robert Eggers by clicking on the video player above.
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your first reaction to the screenplay when you read it? What were your initial thoughts?
Alexander Skarsgård: I was very excited. I’d been part of the project from the very beginning, so it wasn’t like on most other movies, where you’re sent something and then you start reading it and you’re like, “Oh, this is the story. Okay.” I had met Rob five years ago when we started talking about teaming up and working on a Viking project together.
That was a real privilege to be part of the whole journey. Even before the first draft was done, to be able to have those creative conversations with Rob and with Sjón, his writing partner on the movie, I learned a lot from that. Again, it was a treat that you don’t always have, or very rarely get as an actor.
MF: Your director Robert Eggers mentioned to us that you were a Viking historian even before you signed on to this project. How did that knowledge help you prepare to play this role?
AS: Enthusiasm is very helpful in a creative process because it makes you go deeper and absorb it in a deeper way than if you’re not genuinely excited and thrilled about it. Again, a couple of years before meeting Rob, I had an idea of trying to make a Viking movie. The fact that it came together in this way with such an incredible filmmaker like Rob, I was really over the moon. I couldn’t wait to actually sink my teeth into the material and start working on it, and on the character, and start reading the old Icelandic sagas and books on Norse mythology by different historians and Viking scholars.
I had Neil Price‘s book, “Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings,” which was my go to source for any inspiration or knowledge about the life of a Viking, the world someone like Amleth would’ve existed in, and how he perceived the spiritual world around him, and the relationship he had to the gods. All that stuff was tremendously helpful again, in shaping the character.
MF: Finally, can you talk about working with Robert Eggers and watching him execute his unique vision for this movie?
AS: It’s imperative, and it is 100% historically accurate to Robert. Authenticity is crucial. He does a tremendous amount of research, and basically became a Viking scholar himself in doing research for the movie. He also had four or five Viking historians and archeologists working with him on the screenplay, and on building the sets in order for them to be 100% authentic.
It made my job quite easy as an actor. When you step onto a set that is 100% a Viking village, everything you’re surrounded by is authentic. The clothes you’re wearing are not even remotely anachronistic. Everything is authentic to the time and the place, and that was very helpful.
We wanted it to be a very visceral and an immersive experience for the audience. By throwing ourselves into the mud, literally, and being out there and not shooting it on a comfortable sound stage, but actually be out there in the elements, hopefully you can sense that or feel that when you watch the movie. That was at least the goal.
The movie stars Naomi Watts as a woman who is desperately racing to save her child after police place her hometown on lockdown due to an active shooter incident.
We recently had a chance to speak with actress Naomi Watts, as well as director Phillip Noyce, about their work on ‘The Desperate Hours’
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You can read a full transcript of our interview with Naomi Watts below, or watch the video of our interview with Watts and Phillip Noyce in the player above.
Moviefone: To begin with, what was your first reaction when you read the screenplay?
Naomi Watts: I just was like, how would I be in a situation like this? This is the most horrendous nightmare that a parent can imagine, that your kid is not safe in their own school. Unfortunately, it’s a story that seems to play itself out oh too regularly in news feeds, and it just keeps happening.
I wanted to know what it would be like to be a parent in that situation, and how would my nervous system handle it? It is confronting. It is hard stuff to take in, but hopefully it connects with people, and this is the world we’re living in right now, which is not okay.
It’s the wrong thing for anyone, no matter where you are. It just shouldn’t happen. It’s senseless. Not everyone’s story plays out like Amy’s, but it’s just one little tiny way into know what it might be like. Lives are being lost in a senseless way, and that’s just, again, not okay.
Naomi Watts in ‘The Desperate Hour.’
MF: Finally, he movie has a very small cast, and most of the scenes revolve around your character. What was the process of making this film like for you?
NW: It’s a big piece of it, and we worked as a team. That’s always the case with filming, but the intimacy and the size of it made it so that we were very connected to one another. Sometimes, when I was running, they were all on the truck and everything was being operated from there. Other times they were running too alongside me, or in front of me, and even backwards at times.
So, sometimes the man went down because he tripped, and I had to just keep running and the show carried on, but it was quite an interesting piece physically. I anticipated that it would be difficult, but then you get there on the day and you’re like, “Oh my God, this is far more difficult.”
My body, even with the preparation that I gave myself in the lead up, it just wasn’t as strong as I wanted it to be. I’m not in my twenties anymore. I used to be someone that could run for miles and miles, but it all worked for the story to play out, to be physically exhausted, to be broken down, to have aches and pains, and the breathlessness. The emotions definitely come more easily when you’re exhausted.
Opening in theaters and on digital beginning February 18th is the new biopic ‘Ted K,’ which is based on the life of Ted Kaczynksi, better known as The Unabomber.
Directed by documentary filmmaker Tony Stone (‘Peter and the Farm’), the movie stars ‘District 9’ actor Sharlto Copley as the title character, while the film explores Kaczynksi’s life leading up to his time as The Unabomber.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with both Sharlto Copley and Tony Stone about their work on ‘Ted K.’ The actor and filmmaker discussed the new movie, why they wanted to make a film about Kaczynksi, Sharlto’s approach to the role, and the movie’s use of Alice in Chains’ “Rooster.”
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You can read the full transcript of our interview below, or watch a video of the interviews in the player above.
Moviefone: To begin with, Tony, what fascinated you about the life of Ted Kaczynksi and what did you want to say about him with this movie?
Tony Stone: I just was always fascinated with the tale of the Unabomber since I was in high school. He was arrested, covered in dirt and was living with no running water or electricity. The fact that he had this bombing campaign that paralyzed the country and shut down airports. He was able to pull this off with basically a letter-writing campaign.
After 9/11, I was just interested in him a little more, just looking at American terrorism and what an American terrorist is. But also, the complexities of Ted, that he was, in a way, a serial killer, but he was a serial killer with a belief system and killed out of that.
So, the more I dived into the story, the more complicated it got. The Manifesto that he wrote has become way more relevant than it was when he had written it. So, I just wanted to get into his mind, tell the story, and also let the audience decide how they feel about him.
So, I didn’t want it to be a morality tale that a lot of films these days can be. I just wanted to leave it open for interpretation, and how you feel about him. There are moments you’re with him, moments you can’t believe the way he is acting and then realize, these violent actions, how heinous they are.
So, I just wanted to create this spectrum of the person, but also just humanity in general, where we are saturated by simplistic vilification narratives. I really just wanted to show some of the complexities of the human condition, in a way.
MF: Sharlto, can you talk about your preparation for this role, and what did you learn about Kaczynksi that you did not previously know?
Sharlto Copley: I knew very little about him. I grew up in South Africa and it was on the news there. But when the project came around, I thought this is just another serial killer. I don’t want to do it. But then I looked him up. I read the Manifesto. That changed my mind, completely. So, whatever was in the press about him, now I was looking retrospectively. What had been written about him, this mad man that was put in jail. I was like, wait. That doesn’t quite add up. This is intriguing.
The man was incredibly self-aware. He was brutally honest about himself, about the people around him, and had a genius IQ. So, it became something that was very interesting to me. There’s only one recording of him speaking from jail. When I looked at some of the other adaptations and actors that had played him, I was like, nobody’s done his voice. Nobody’s done his energy level. This is not the creepy weird guy that you wouldn’t be able to talk to. When you listen to him in jail, it’s like, I could talk to this guy.
So, that was some of the background. Then, getting into it, it was really just seeing that there was a real human being there. He’s like a shrink on himself in his diaries. You see his loneliness, you see his desperation for female company, his frustration of what technology’s doing and how it’s making people so miserable.
When you look at our suicide rate today, people are seriously miserable. Our suicide rate is monstrously higher than the number of people that died in war and violent crimes combined. It’s higher now, in terms of people killing themselves, which is staggering to me. So, it became a very interesting tale.
Sharlto Copley as Ted Kaczynksi in ‘Ted K’
MF: I want to ask both of you if you had any concerns at all that perhaps you were making Ted Kaczynksi too sympathetic a character in this film?
SC: There was no concern about that for me, because my job is to just portray him as much of a human being as I can. I see that as the function of the acting. With a producer hat, I feel quite strongly as an anti-violence person in my own in life, but I feel like there’s an enormous amount of hypocrisy in our society.
I think if we were talking about like, “Don’t glorify this villain.” I’m like, “Well, look at every single television show and movie that we are making.” We are unquestionably glorifying violence. Whether or not that is affecting kids or not, we can have that debate. That’s a three-hour conversation. But to say, of all the violent roles that I’ve played, I was the most comfortable with this one because it was at least honest.
It was at least looking at, why do people do this? We are a violent animals, the males of the species in particular. From my father’s generation, back, in my view, there was at least a 50% chance that if you were male, you were killing or defending with your life. That was normal male existence for thousands of years.
Really, it’s only since the World War II that we’re going, “Violence? We don’t do that.” It’s like, no, no. We do!” It’s deep in our genetics. We’re already seeing it in our societies now. It’s bubbling just under the surface. So, at least we’re dealing with violence in a way that is like, let’s get under the hood in a little bit more of an honest way. It’s like, look at every movie that’s made. ‘Game of Thrones’ is the biggest show in the world, and you’re complaining about humans being so tribal and violent. You don’t see any connection?
TS: We did approach the film from the documentary perspective. So, I just felt, doing all the research, understanding Ted, as well as you could, that we just would strike a balance. I don’t think anybody goes to see this film and wants to repeat what he’s done. It’s in the traditional anti-hero characters in cinema, and cinema is this escapist media. That’s why I like it.
So, I think it was just to create an experience of what this villain is like and add some humanity to it. So, there’s humanity. There’re moments of empathy, of course. It’s like as if you were Ted Kaczynski’s family member and you were watching this film. You’d have disappointments in his actions, but also understand that this person is a human being.
MF: Tony, there is a pivotal moment in the movie when you use for the music, Alice in Chains’ “Rooster.” I thought it was a perfect marriage of that song and that particular moment in the film. Can you talk about choosing that song for that scene?
TS: Glad you asked. Thank you. That almost happened by accident. That was not pre-planned. It just aligned, so well. It comes in a moment where Ted has reached his high point, and he’s paralyzed the nation with his mail bombing campaign. Then, obviously, it’s so specific to the period.
Weirdly, the lyrics align with Ted Kaczynski at that moment. I think there’s absurdism to it, too. But also, really putting you in the time and place. Obviously, it’s a song that Ted Kaczynski would’ve despised. He was obviously more Baroque focused, which we use a lot of in the film.
Sharlto Copley as Ted Kaczynksi in ‘Ted K’
MF: Sharlto, was it difficult for you as an actor to get Ted Kaczynksi out of your head when you were done making the movie?
SC: No. What was difficult was to live that experience and see how right he was about what’s happened to society. So, when I come back, and I look at my phone, and just look at my screen time every week, every day, or whatever, it haunts me. The experience of living and spending the time we did, because we went back for all the seasons.
So, we spent a lot of time out there, lived in that environment, and filmed on his actual land. So, that’s been difficult to shake, the idea that we really are in a tough spot as a society. It’s like, what do I do? I can’t do anything. I’m just a domesticated cow. Just in the system. That bugs me, for sure.
MF: Finally, Tony, what do you hope audiences take away from this movie about the life of Ted Kaczynksi?
TS: I don’t know if I can answer that. That’s where I want to let the film speak for itself, and people to come to their own conclusions. So, we leave the film as an open book for the audience members to feel what they want and connect with some of the ideas, or not. I just wanted to leave it open ended for them to interpret.
(L to R) Kunal Nayyar, Elizabeth Henstridge and Tom Rhys Harries Promoting ‘Suspicion,’ which premieres on Apple TV+ February 4th.
Premiering February 4th on Apple TV+ is the new series ‘Suspicion,’ which is based on the Israeli series, ‘False Flag.’ The series follows five people whose lives are turned upside down after London police identify them as suspects in the kidnapping and disappearance of an American media mogul’s son.
Moviefone recently had the opportunity to speak with actors Kunal Nayyar, Elizabeth Henstridge, Tom Rhys Harries, and Noah Emmerich about their work on ‘Suspicion.’
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You can read the full transcript of our interview with Kunal Nayyar, Elizabeth Henstridge, and Tom Rhys Harries below, or watch all the interviews in the video played above.
Moviefone: To begin with, Elizabeth, can you talk about the incident that brings these five strangers together in the series?
Elizabeth Henstridge: Well, I was in this show called ‘Suspicion,’ where Uma Thurman plays a corporate PR strategist. She’s a very powerful woman who has just been named US ambassador to the UK. Her son has been kidnapped. We play British citizens that happen to be in New York on the day that Leo was kidnapped. Then we are accused of this crime, or at least suspects of this crime.
So we kind of follow how that unfolds for Uma Thurman’s character, Catherine Newman. You see the impact it has on our lives and the lengths that you go to, to try to clear your name and how difficult that is when the truth is being blasted all over social media, which might not be your truth. It’s hard to know who to believe in and what is the truth.
MF: Kunal, the show deals with the theme of trust. Can you talk about the level of trust between these five strangers when they first meet?
Kunal Nayyar: It’s difficult, again, to speak about these things without giving spoilers away. But obviously as you see these characters and the journey that they’re on, I think that the level of trust switches, it’s not so black and white. I think it’s a gray area. I think all we know is that they need each other.
They definitely need each other to accomplish whatever it is that they’re trying to accomplish, whether it’s clearing their name or actually trying to get the job done, we don’t necessarily know. So I think the level of trust shifts every episode, and I think for the audience perception, it’ll be impossible for them to tell who trusts who, who’s done what, and who’s responsible for the end game.
MF: The series also deals with the themes of technology and surveillance, and how we deal with them in our modern society. Tom, can you talk about how those themes affect these five strangers?
Tom Rhys Harries: Well, yeah. The surveillance and the social media and our digital footprint paper trail, it’s become sort of so interwoven with how we lead our day-to-day lives and very quickly. If you’d have told someone 20 years ago that most of us would be kicking about with a piece of tech that’s worth however much it’s worth in your pocket, I think people wouldn’t have believed it. Also, the amount of information that we have access to. That comes with really difficult questions that we have to ask as a society.
I think it’s important for us to be asking these big questions, particularly for a younger generation, because I don’t think we’ve quite cracked it yet on how to manage surveillance, the ethical issues and moral issues of all of that. I think what I really dig about the show is that it’s asking a lot of big questions about these very current themes that are prevalent in society and it feels very timely. That this show is coming out when it is coming up.
MF: Another theme in the series is truth. Kunal, can you talk about that and how your character really learns the truth about himself?
KN: Look, it’s a very good question, really. I think you have to be lost to be able to be found, and I think that’s what we see in this character. He’s definitely lost and because he’s lost, he finds purpose in something that you don’t know if it’s good, you don’t know if it’s bad, and that’s the beauty of this show.
Even when you figure out what happens and who did it and how it happens, you still don’t necessarily leave feeling like, “Oh, that was the right thing to do.” Or, “that was the wrong thing to do.” That kind of narrative, that kind of perception is going to be very individual and very individualistic.
MF: Elizabeth, ‘Suspicion’ could easily have been done as a movie, but it would have had to be condensed for time. What has it been like for you to do it as a series and have more time to develop your characters?
EH: Oh, it’s brilliant. I love TV for that reason. That you can explore big themes and then also things where you can discover so much about your character. Aadesh faces the truth or finds the truth out as we go, but as an actor that’s just such a gift to be given all that time with his character and to go through such extreme circumstances.
I think it suits itself perfect to a mini-series in that we’d lose so much at being a movie, but then with it being eight episodes, it’s a very intense week in these people’s lives. I think that it keeps the suspense and it keeps the pace and, hopefully week-to-week, people are going to be shocked.
KN: That’s why we were talking about how much we love the fact that it’s a show like this. A show like this, it’s perfect that it’s coming out one week (at a time). I mean, except for the initial two episodes. I think that is going to really lend to the stakes.
(L to R) Tom Rhys Harries, Kunal Nayyar, Georgina Campbell, and Elizabeth Henstridge in ‘Suspicion,’ which premieres on Apple TV+ February 4th.
MF: What was it like working with Paul Mescal on that specific mother and son relationship?
