‘The Gentlemen’ cast members Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Henry Golding and Michelle Dockery discuss collaborating with director Guy Ritchie, their reaction to the ridiculous amount of c-words in the movie, and more in this interview with CinemaBlend’s Corey Chichizola. Plus, Henry Golding reveals what it was like filming ‘The Gentlemen’ and ‘Last Christmas’ at the same time.
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00:00Congratulations on dressing so, in such a desperate fashion.
00:04It's only appropriate.
00:05Had to look like a gentleman.
00:08Now I can't be specific about the heroes and zeros,
00:12but our protagonist is a hungry animal.
00:16Our antagonist has indirectly started a war.
00:20I had such a good time seeing this movie,
00:22took so many turns and was so stylistic.
00:24I really had a good time.
00:26Matthew, your character in particular,
00:29took me a lot of places.
00:30There were a lot of layers.
00:31He's very multifaceted.
00:33How was the process for you?
00:34What did you discover as you were filming about him?
00:38I felt like I had a good line on who he was,
00:41what he wanted,
00:42what he was trying to do going into it.
00:44I think the main thing that I didn't know was gonna happen
00:48was how much you change things,
00:51how much you have to adapt on the day
00:53if you choose to play with guys rewriting of scenes,
00:58which he does heavily,
01:00which at first was extremely frustrating for me.
01:02I'm like, I've been working on this for...
01:06But then all of a sudden it clicks and you go,
01:08actually, what he's coming up with is better.
01:12So I'm gonna be game.
01:14And so then there's an agility that I learned to bring every day
01:19to an extent more so than I've ever done with anybody,
01:22any other film.
01:24But also this type of film allows for...
01:27It is a musicality.
01:29It's part of the style you're talking about.
01:31His dialogue is very precise.
01:33He has very precise opinions on what that is.
01:36There's a meter that guy's listening for.
01:40And yes, he's written it,
01:41but he doesn't know what that meter sounds like
01:43until the actor's coming out of our mouths
01:45and going back and forth.
01:47You gentlemen have both worked with the director Guy Ritchie before.
01:51I was wondering what makes him such a great collaborator?
01:57His willingness to collaborate.
02:00He really is very open to the process.
02:03You know, he has the Guy Ritchie prism
02:06with which everything has to sort of go through.
02:08But I found he has a tendency to give all the people he hires,
02:16not just the actors,
02:17but cinematographer and production design
02:19and costume designers, everything,
02:20certain level of autonomy and expectation
02:22that you're gonna show up and do your job
02:25without being babysat, you know?
02:27Which, you know, definitely inspires you to do your best work.
02:31Well, no, I think that's right.
02:32And I have found, the older I get,
02:34that the better directors,
02:37the best directors are more like that.
02:40It's extraordinary.
02:41They barely seem to have a script
02:44and they have very few expectations
02:46at the beginning of the day of,
02:47I want it to be like this.
02:48They get really good at,
02:50what am I getting?
02:51What am I getting and do I like it?
02:52And altering it on the spot.
02:54Directing on the hoof.
02:56That doesn't feel like it to you at the moment.
02:58Out of fucking way you came in, you cunt.
03:01Is it one of those?
03:03Sure.
03:04It could be.
03:07Another thing that stood out to me
03:09was the ample use of the C word in this movie.
03:12Cause you're not going out the way you came in,
03:14you deluded duck eating cunt.
03:17There's C bombs left and right.
03:18I was wondering as actors,
03:19what was your relationship to just like,
03:22every day dropping C bombs?
03:25I thought it was quite kind of,
03:27I don't know, therapeutic in a sense.
03:29It is, yeah.
03:30It's fun.
03:31You don't often get to sort of scream with venom.
03:35That word.
03:36Those types of sort of words.
03:38Or even throw it off as a side handed joke and throw it away.
03:43And as you know,
03:44America has a very different relationship with that word
03:47than Britain.
03:49Yeah, it did infect the rest of my life.
03:53My young children say almost nothing else now.
03:56You know, it's an Englishman's prerogative
03:59to drop the C bomb.
04:01So we were making a film about good English gentlemen,
04:05so we'd be remiss not to.
04:07But it's a much, much more frowned upon word
04:10here in America, I think.
04:12So I dread to think what that's going to do to this film.
04:15Well, I think it puts you in the setting
04:17that you're supposed to be in, like you said.
04:20Hugh, I was wondering,
04:21you've played so many, like,
04:22really lovable characters throughout your career.
04:25There's been a lot of good guys.
04:26Is it enjoyable to flex those kind of, like,
04:30bad boy muscles in projects like this
04:31and be someone a little more sheisty?
04:34Well, I think the character I play in this film
04:37is rather lovable.
04:39I loved him.
04:40I'm sad that no one else does.
04:42I want you to play a game with me, Ray.
04:43I don't want to play a game.
04:45Oh, please.
04:46No.
04:46I said play a game with me, Raymond.
04:50Right.
04:50Lovely.
04:51He lives in the morally gray.
04:52I know what you mean.
04:53He's appalling.
04:54He's an absolute...
04:56Yeah, he's sleazy and disgusting.
05:00Yeah, it is cathartic.
05:00Anyone would say that.
05:01You'd say that's better.
05:02It's more fun playing baddies, isn't it?
05:04Yep.
05:04And easier.
05:06You're too smart to be blackmailing us, Fletcher.
05:10These people are going to clean house.
05:12And you are part of that house.
05:15Henry, we've been seeing you in a lot of movies
05:18where you're super nice and charming.
05:21Was it exciting to kind of flex a different muscle
05:24and be kind of like sheisty and terrible?
05:27Yeah, this was definitely a departure of...
05:30It's funny because I was filming at the same time last Christmas.
05:34So one day I'd be on the streets of London prancing around,
05:38kind of falling in love with Emilia Clarke.
05:41And then the next day sat opposite Matthew here
05:45and just like throwing daggers at each other
05:48in like such an intense scene.
05:50So having to switch from those two characters
05:54throughout pretty much October and November when we were filming,
05:58it was amazing.
05:59It was really sort of the ability to inhabit
06:04such polarizing characters during a small kind of time frame
06:11kind of allows you that sort of flexibility.
06:14You become attuned to it.
06:17And so it was a joy sort of like waking up
06:20and like, who am I today?
06:23And sometimes I would start reading
06:27sort of my script for last Christmas in the dry eye kind of voice.
06:30I don't know if you ever do that.
06:31You sort of start adding a couple of C-bombs.
06:34It's weird.
06:35The more sort of swear words that were coming out of my mouth,
06:39it was just putting me into that dry eye kind of state.
06:42Did you keep it quite separate?
06:43Like were you learning lines on...?
06:47I was learning at the same time,
06:48but it was just switching and it was weird
06:52because my wife would come into the room
06:55as I was reading the different scripts
06:56and she would know what script I was reading
06:59because just the atmosphere in the room would be really dark and tense.
07:04And she'd be like, she'd come and she'd be like...
07:07You're like, he's reading dry eye.
07:08Like I'll leave him alone.
07:09I was also very taken by how the violence in this movie was very random.
07:15Sometimes it's hilarious.
07:16Please!
07:16Harry for Hulk, Condor for Hulk.
07:19You know, it's explosive.
07:23How did that factor into your process?
07:25The fact knowing that these things were coming out of nowhere
07:28and you were going to hit the audience in the face.
07:31That's one of the delights of Guy Ritchie's films.
07:34You know, we were saying that earlier,
07:36every character has a very clear identity,
07:38but if you're going to have many immovable forces
07:42where the plot has you intersect, something's got to give.
07:44It can happen.
07:46It can happen with the jackknife.
07:48You know, it can happen immediately.
07:49When you don't, it can happen in the middle of the most comedic scene.
07:53I think that's part of the playfulness that Guy does well in a movie like this.
07:57One of the things that really stuck out to me was how ultra stylized it was.
08:01I was wondering how cued in to like the subtitles or the cue cards
08:06or the little editing choices.
08:08Was that in the script?
08:10Were you aware of that during the process?
08:12He told me it wasn't going to be like that.
08:14I said, are you doing all your whizzing about nonsense?
08:17And he said, no, no, no, no, no.
08:19We're doing it straight.
08:19It's doing it straight.
08:21We're going to have classical music.
08:22That was all rubbish as a character.
08:24You haven't seen it yet.
08:25No, I haven't.
08:26But it is.
08:27It's quite stylized and sort of block stockish.
08:30Yeah, it's heightened, which I found really enjoyable as an audience member.
08:34Do you know what?
08:34I think part of that is that Guy works very, very closely
08:38and gives that sort of that thing we were talking about,
08:40an enormous amount of autonomy to Jimbo,
08:43his editor.
08:44And I think Jimbo, you know,
08:47sort of just gravitates towards that style of,
08:50you know, of filmmaking in the editing room.
08:53So, you know, probably a lot of it has to do with their collaboration.
08:57You know, because Guy said the same thing on the last two films I did with him,
09:01that it was going to be this grand departure
09:03and sort of an entry into very, very classic, sensible filmmaking.
09:10And it hasn't happened on both occasions.
09:13There's only one rule in this fucking jungle.
09:16When the lion's hungry, he eats.