It's been nine years since Tom Hiddleston & Elizabeth Debicki starred in 'The Night Manager.' Tom and Elizabeth reunite to discuss everything from working with director Susanne Bier to their individual projects including 'The Crown' and 'The Avengers.'
Director: Anna O'Donohue
Director of Photography: James Fox
Editor: Evan Allan; Louville Moore
Talent: Elizabeth Debicki, Tom Hiddleston
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Lyla Neely
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Camera Operator: Stephen Ley
Gaffer: Suzzette Ortiz
Audio Engineer: Mark Cheffins
Production Assistant: Andrea Ratti
Set Designer: Megan Derbyshire
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Special Thanks: to the Dorchester
Director: Anna O'Donohue
Director of Photography: James Fox
Editor: Evan Allan; Louville Moore
Talent: Elizabeth Debicki, Tom Hiddleston
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Lyla Neely
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Camera Operator: Stephen Ley
Gaffer: Suzzette Ortiz
Audio Engineer: Mark Cheffins
Production Assistant: Andrea Ratti
Set Designer: Megan Derbyshire
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Special Thanks: to the Dorchester
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I feel like I've come to your very fancy living room.
00:08Well, I wish.
00:13I just got like a Zoom flash memory of actually like working with you.
00:17Yes, yes, yes, which we haven't done for what, nine years?
00:20You know why we're on this thing?
00:22Because we worked together once.
00:23Because we're old now.
00:24I certainly am.
00:25You're not.
00:26You're not allowed to say that.
00:27Do you remember how old I was when I did The Night Manager?
00:29I was twenty-five.
00:30I was twenty-four.
00:31Twenty-four.
00:32I didn't know how to tie my shoes when I was twenty-four.
00:33What did I know?
00:34Wanna come?
00:35I don't think that would be wise.
00:36There's no current.
00:37I think it was the most glam job.
00:38I remember it looked very glamorous, and we were in some very glamorous locations, but
00:55my memory of it was of the four, I think four distinct different identities that I
01:02was playing, and having to jump in, because we were cross-boarding it, having to jump
01:07around in between different identities and different costumes, so I remember it being
01:12quite sort of stressful, in a good way.
01:16It was very fast.
01:17It was very fast for you, yeah.
01:19I was in much less of it than you.
01:24I mean, it's like when you watch a TV show as an actor, and you see the lead of the show,
01:34how many episodes?
01:35Six.
01:36Six, eight, ten, whatever, and you see that that actor is in almost every shot.
01:43You know, as an actor, when I watch that, I think, that must have been a hard job for
01:47them, and I think that was you.
01:49But you've now done that.
01:50Yes, I've done it much more, yeah, but at the time, on our show, I mean, my memory of
01:56it, it's probably very immediately tinged with golden nostalgia, but I was so happy
02:04making that show.
02:05I couldn't believe I got the part to begin with, you know.
02:08Do you remember when we did rehearsals in Marrakesh, in the hotel, in like a conference
02:14loungy room, and it was you, Hugh, Olivia, Tom, Susannah, and myself, and I remember
02:21sitting there, and you were all so incredibly articulate, but you were, and you'd had so
02:29much more experience.
02:31Well they certainly had.
02:32I just remember sitting there, and I honestly had this thought of like, one of these things
02:37is not like the other one, I was like, oh my god, I'm such a pleb.
02:42Like an Australian baby.
02:43No, no, that's not what happened, that's not how I remember it at all.
02:46I remember you just being, it was effortless, that's what I remember, I embarrassed you
02:51briefly.
02:52I remember we were doing a script meeting, it was a room above a room above a conference
02:58room in Holborn or something.
03:00No windows.
03:01In the rain, yeah, and we were talking about the shape of the scripts and threading through
03:04all kinds of different things, the update, and at the end of that meeting, it was like
03:08dark outside, Susannah said, I found Jed.
03:12And they went, oh great, what's her name?
03:15And she said, Elizabeth Debicki.
03:16And she took her laptop out and said, this is her tape, and suddenly we were all watching
03:20your tape for the first time, and I remember it was absolutely astonishing.
03:25I'll never forget that.
03:27And Hugh and I going, wow, okay, that's Jed.
03:29And it was the most brilliant audition.
03:32There were many things that made it a really extraordinary job.
03:35Susannah won, and the cast, gorgeous actors that have ever been shoved together in a thing.
03:42But we really were everywhere that the camera showed us to be, and that is so extraordinarily
03:48rare, and so helpful.
03:51Because it just informs everything about your, that your body begins to feel, and then your
03:57mind catches up with it.
03:58You look grown up.
04:01Very nice.
04:05Thank you.
04:06All right.
04:07It's so funny.
04:08The other day, this is a crap story, but I was, so often people say, oh my God, you're
04:14the night manager.
04:15Or they.
04:16They say that you're the night manager.
04:17You're the night manager.
04:18And I go, my name's Tom, hello, nice to meet you.
04:21The other day I was in a food shop, and I was at the checkout, and somebody, very sweet
04:27lady came up to me and said, are you the manager?
04:30And I said, actually, I'm Tom.
04:32But are you the manager?
04:34I'm looking for roast chicken.
04:35I thought, okay, sorry, sorry.
04:38No, I'm not that manager.
04:39I think you probably, I'm flattered that you think I run this place, but.
04:43Did you help her find the chicken?
04:44I did.
04:45Yeah.
04:46She had other complaints about the store, which I couldn't, I couldn't remedy, sadly.
04:51But anyway.
04:52But anyway, the crown.
04:53Here's what I bet people stop you in the street about.
04:55Diana.
04:56Nobody stops me in the street.
04:58Really?
04:59No, I find that English people are very, they're keen on personal space.
05:02Yes.
05:03I'm from Australia, and I found this here.
05:04Yes, yes, yes.
05:05So, yeah, no, no.
05:06No one's stopping me on the street.
05:07Let it be said, first off, you are magnificent in the crown.
05:12You are absolutely magnificent.
05:14And I don't know how you did it, frankly.
05:17You've taken on a character that exists in the public consciousness in such a luminous,
05:24striking, and personal way for every person.
05:27I kind of don't know how you did it.
05:29I've watched you and gone, how is she doing this?
05:31Because I know you.
05:33And so I'm looking for Elizabeth, but I can't see it.
05:36And yet I see aspects of someone who I knew from a distance as a young person.
05:43Obviously, I had no proximal relationship to Diana at all.
05:47I thought you meant me.
05:48I think I know you a little better than I knew her.
05:52I thought we were friends.
05:54Yeah, of course.
05:55Yeah, come on.
05:56I felt I got to know Diana more intimately through what you were doing.
06:02And it was so human and compassionate and loving and detailed.
06:09I mean, the detail in your performance is astonishing.
06:14I suppose it's already too late to stop this.
06:20Yes.
06:24I just thought it was amazing.
06:25Thank you.
06:27How has it been?
06:28How was it?
06:29It felt like it was the right sized challenge for what I wanted to try and do as an actor.
06:36That's a retrospective.
06:39Yeah, you can't think about that.
06:40No, at the time I felt, beforehand I felt very, very nervous.
06:45I mean, like very nervous.
06:47Understandably so.
06:48Which has translated into me becoming quite fixated on the technicality of everything in the beginning.
06:53But that keeps you safe, doesn't it?
06:54It felt like it was keeping me safe until actually it felt like it was sort of a hindrance.
07:00Yeah.
07:01I watched a lot.
07:02I thought maybe by osmosis I would just absorb, which I think I sort of did once you sit with enough hours.
07:08It was a very all-consuming two and a bit years.
07:12Yeah.
07:13I feel that I have a strange encyclopedic knowledge of certain strange things.
07:17Yeah.
07:18I also have like a vast treasure chest of stories because once you play somebody like that, most people have had a,
07:25when I was on the King's Road, I got out of a cab and there she was walking into a hat shop or, you know, whatever it was.
07:31And they'll say it was the 16th of May.
07:33It was a Thursday.
07:34You know, it's burned into people's memories.
07:36I don't know.
07:37I'm very clear about the fact that it was a character that I created.
07:40But it was a great gift.
07:43It taught me a lot about being a person.
07:45That's so interesting.
07:46Yeah.
07:47It taught me a lot.
07:48I think it opened up my heart a lot.
07:50Wow.
07:51Yeah.
07:52What an amazing thing to say.
07:53Yeah, what a gift.
07:54Yeah.
07:55You know, I don't know a terrible amount about Marvel.
07:58Apart from having been in one of the films.
08:00Yes, I've been in two of them.
08:02Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
08:03I feel that when I was working with you on The Night Manager, how many films had you already done by then where you played Loki?
08:10Two?
08:11Three.
08:12Three.
08:13Yeah.
08:14That was sort of the…
08:15I was 33.
08:16And it was this massive thing.
08:17And you were a massive star.
08:19And it was this big thing.
08:21Well, it's definitely…
08:23Well, that's very sweet of you.
08:25And that character has been with you for how many years?
08:2915 years now.
08:30Yeah.
08:31So I was cast…
08:32I'm now 43.
08:34And I was cast when I was 28, which is…
08:39What does it feel like to be with someone for that long?
08:45Definitely there was a moment of…
08:47It was a big…
08:48Maybe kind of similar to what you were saying about being cast in The Night Manager.
08:51A very lengthy audition process.
08:54And then Kevin Feige saying, actually, we've got plans for Loki.
08:59And they were plans far above and beyond my expectations.
09:02I thought I was just doing it for one film.
09:04That Loki would be the antagonist in the first Avengers film.
09:09Because he was the antagonist in the first Avengers comic.
09:12And suddenly I was standing in a circle with Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans.
09:21All of us in our vibrant, multicolored outfits.
09:26And I remember the film came out and it changed all of our lives, I think.
09:31It changed my life forever.
09:32Oh, I've heard.
09:34The mind is beast.
09:37Makes play he's still a man.
09:40How desperate are you?
09:43You call on such lost creatures to defend you.
09:46How desperate am I?
09:48And then the joy of continuing to play the character.
09:52Having built Loki as a…
09:55I always saw him as a broken soul with a shattered heart.
10:00I won't touch Barton.
10:02Not until I make him kill you.
10:04Slowly, intimately.
10:06Across the journey, all the way up to the show.
10:09I wanted to find a way of redeeming, to sort of find his way back to the light.
10:14And to have had the chance to do that across 15 years is really rare.
10:19Because the audience are coming with you, too.
10:21The audience are invested in who the character is and you get…
10:24Because I think he's such a complex character, the mask of the character is full of wit and charm and playfulness.
10:30But the mask is hiding all the loneliness and the pain and the loss.
10:35There's a great vulnerability inside of him.
10:37I love that.
10:39In a way, he and Pyne are quite connected in that way.
10:43There's a presentation of something.
10:45There's an external.
10:47And then behind that, on the inside, there's something much more turbulent, much more broken, much more on fire.
10:55And occasionally you get to see these windows where you get to look into these lonely characters, I guess.
11:02But is it fun to play someone who has magical powers?
11:05Yes!
11:07And then to try and connect the magical powers to something honest and soulful.
11:13I think the key is to try and fill the silhouette with something really honest.
11:20So that the audience goes, wow, he's the god of mischief.
11:24He's immortal, but he's full of very human…
11:27Yes, he seems so human.
11:29Feelings, yeah.
11:30The whole thing has been like a little essay on identity, actually.
11:33You know, you say, like, Diana has left you with this…
11:37It was almost like a lesson in love or open-heartedness.
11:41And it's similar in a way.
11:43At the end of the show, Loki finally understands that his purpose is to give his own life for his friends and the people he loves.
11:52In the end, it was all about love.
11:54And finally give him, I suppose, that peace, which you hope everyone gets in life.
12:01See you again soon.
12:03Do you have my number that's still working?
12:07I think so. Is it the same number? Have you changed it?
12:09I don't know.
12:10I guess I'll find out.
12:12I'll send someone a text.
12:14Like, hi, Debicki.
12:16And I'll get a response back saying, this number has not been recognised.
12:19Someone else rap on top. We can't do it because we're going to see each other in a second.
12:22I'll see you sooner than ten years. Let's do this again.
12:25I hope so.
12:26On a blue sofa near you.
12:27Yeah.
12:28In less than ten years' time.
12:30Please.