Orlando Bloom and Sean Ellis Discuss Training for 'The Cut' | Variety Studio at TIFF 2024

Director Sean Ellis, Orlando Bloom, John Turturro, and Caitŕona Balfe discuss 'The Cut' at the Variety Studio at TIFF 2024.

Transcript

00:00Orlando, I have to ask you, there's obviously a lot of gnarly body stuff in the movie.

00:06How was the training for that, the dieting and the exercising?

00:10How did you get into the physical shape for the film?

00:14Yeah, we started, we sort of shot in reverse chronological order because, I'll get that

00:20right one day, reverse chronological order, because it was like I basically came in at

00:27my lightest weight and started to eat as I went through the movie because I couldn't

00:31have had the brain function.

00:32I basically, I kind of teared down the food over a three month period until just before

00:37filming I was at my lightest and I dropped to about 52 pounds and I was 185 when I started,

00:45so I dropped quite a lot of weight and I was very mentally challenged as well I would say

00:52and, you know, you feed somebody a tuna and cucumber long enough you'll...

00:57Your brain's starved of calories basically so, I mean, you came to us at your lightest

01:02because it was going to be impossible for him to work while dieting so, you know, he

01:08came to us at his lightest and then he starts to eat so that meant that we had to shoot

01:13the film, the ending first and the beginning of the movie at the end so he eats all the

01:19weight and puts the weight back on that way and that meant over the 25 days that we were

01:23shooting he was putting all on the calories and then it's, you know, it's edited in reverse.

01:30Is that type of transformation exciting to you?

01:33Obviously you were early on with the script or is that daunting?

01:36Exciting.

01:37I think I really wanted to make, I think I really was excited about going into that.

01:44I was more surprised about the mental aspect of like the sleep deprivation and not the

01:49calorie, with the depleted calorie you're just like there's a lot going on in your brain

01:53also the character was obviously, Boxer is living in that headspace for a while was really

01:59challenging but I was excited about the prospect of doing a physical, I think I like being

02:04physical, I'm physical in my life so I was excited by it.