British actor Himesh Patel speaks with The Independent on working with comedy legend Armando Iannucci and director Sam Mendes on new HBO comedy series The Franchise. In the show, Patel plays first assistant director in a crew working on an unloved franchise movie, casting light on what really goes on behind the scenes of multiverse filmmaking.Patel also goes to bat for two early films in his career, explaining why The Aeronauts really just needs everyone to see it at an IMAX and why he holds a soft spot for Beatles-inspired Yesterday.
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00:00But I looked up the Aeronauts yesterday and Io Edebri had written a review.
00:04No.
00:06She'd written a review was,
00:07the guy from yesterday is in this movie.
00:09Just remembered that.
00:10It's just nice to know that she knows I exist.
00:12Hello and welcome to Go To Bat,
00:14a series where we shine a light on the hidden gems that deserve more love.
00:18I'm joined today by Himesh Patel.
00:21Done rehearsal, everyone on their A-game.
00:23Remember we are top draw professionals, thank you.
00:26Camera time!
00:28The franchise, which is from Armando Iannucci,
00:32directed by Sam Mendes, starring an array of brilliant people.
00:36And there's you in the middle of it.
00:37Yeah, it was a real thrill and a great cast
00:40and we all bonded really well and had a great time making it.
00:43Can you just kind of go through the plot of the franchise for those watching?
00:48So it's set behind the scenes of a fictional superhero movie
00:51and it's about the crew of this movie trying to keep it running,
00:55basically, as the studio itself tries to dismantle this movie.
00:58I'd like to fire the soundtrack.
00:59Okay, you can't do that.
01:00He's wearing the indoor scarf.
01:02I thought only directors wear the indoor scarf.
01:04Is he mocking me?
01:05It's kind of a tribute to the crews who make everything that we watch, really.
01:11Especially superhero movies, of course, that's the world that we're sort of playing in.
01:15But anything that I've ever made,
01:16anything that anyone's ever watched has a crew behind it.
01:20Would now be a good time to talk about career progressions.
01:22It's nice to be making something that's sort of spotlighting them.
01:25Sure, and you play Daniel, who's the first AD.
01:27You're kind of caught in the eye of the storm of this situation.
01:30Is it fair to say Daniel is kind of like the straight guy in this,
01:33next to everyone's quirkier characters?
01:36I think so, but he also is fallible in a lot of ways,
01:40as people will see as the series goes on.
01:43But yeah, he's sort of in the middle of the storm, as you say.
01:46First ADs generally tend to be, you know,
01:48they're the ones who have to call the shots
01:50and have to make sure everyone's doing what they need to be doing
01:53at the given time and at the given budget.
01:56There's a lot on their plate.
01:58So you could say they are the unsung hero of film sets, really?
02:02Completely, but I think so many people on film sets are unsung heroes,
02:06you know, because they just don't really get seen.
02:07So this is a series, I've read a few places,
02:10that it's kind of based on fact.
02:14That everything, the crazy stuff people are watching
02:17kind of happened at one time or another.
02:19Yeah, and I'm still finding out bits that were actually true.
02:23There's a whole bit of episode one involving some eyes getting burned
02:27that I found out recently is based on fact.
02:32I think there's probably even crazier stuff
02:33that almost you couldn't write it, so they didn't write it.
02:36It's funny, isn't it?
02:37Like, I think that adds, like, you know,
02:39already the show has allure because of the people attached.
02:42Knowing, the people knowing ahead of time when they're watching it
02:45that these things went down,
02:47just adds a whole nother level of anticipation.
02:51When you're on set and you're kind of,
02:53because the show is very fast-paced
02:55and there's such a great rhythm to it
02:56and that's part of the DNA of the show
02:58and you're kind of there the whole time
03:00and you've got, you know, Richard E. Grant
03:03chiming in, doing crazy things.
03:04You've got Lolly Iadufofi in your ear,
03:06who's just one of the best.
03:08Do you ever worry about corpsing and, like, ruining the take?
03:11I've done it plenty of times.
03:12Have you?
03:13There's a scene at the end of episode one with me and Lolly
03:16and I corpsed my way through it, basically.
03:20And I kind of, I made the cardinal sin, which is,
03:23obviously, it's bad enough laughing when the camera's on you
03:26because, you know, but you're only ruining your own take.
03:28Yeah.
03:28Then it turned around on Lolly and I still couldn't stop laughing
03:32and I felt really bad and I still do to this day.
03:35Thankfully, she's still talking to me.
03:36Yeah, was she all right?
03:38She's great.
03:39Lolly's just the best and she's so, so good in this show.
03:43I felt very bad about that and it's very difficult.
03:45Yeah, you're right.
03:46There's so many wonderful performances, hilarious writing
03:51and then the way that it's brought to life by these great actors.
03:53It's very, you know, it's always a surprise.
03:56And then as the series went on and we got to know each other a bit more,
03:59we felt that we could be more playful with each other.
04:02So people would start throwing stuff in that that might throw me off.
04:05Yeah.
04:06But, you know, I need to become more resilient to it
04:08because actually some of it is gold dust, you know,
04:11if you laugh over it, then it's gone.
04:13Armando Iannucci and the rest of the producers
04:16encouraged the improvising, improvisation.
04:18Yeah, well, Armando was a producer on this,
04:20so he wasn't as hands-on as he has been on other stuff like Avenue 5.
04:22When I worked on Avenue 5, he was the showrunner on that.
04:25Whereas on this, we've got John Brown as our showrunner
04:27who worked with Armando for years.
04:29I worked with John on Avenue 5.
04:31John kind of did encourage it.
04:33I mean, we certainly weren't sort of told not to do it,
04:37but the writing is so meticulous, as you say,
04:38the pace really does come from the writing.
04:42And they would often have sort of lists of alternative lines.
04:45They would always have these sort of alternative punch lines
04:48or just alternative lines that they would throw at us,
04:52you know, if they wanted to try something different.
04:54But then we'd always have the freedom to, you know,
04:56do some later takes, just sort of playing around a little bit.
04:59There's a few, there's one moment that made me laugh
05:01because they mentioned Christopher Nolan.
05:03Yeah.
05:03Being in a Christopher Nolan film.
05:04You just let it kind of like, a bit meta.
05:06Yeah, yeah.
05:07And it gets even more meta later on in the series.
05:09Yeah.
05:10But it is funny.
05:12Yeah.
05:12Because there's a few odd moments there
05:15where we're sort of being a little bit meta.
05:17There's a point at which Lolly mentions Saltburn,
05:19which she's in.
05:20She's in, of course.
05:21And Richard's in, of course, as well.
05:22And Daniel, in the first episode, Daniel Brühl, who plays Eric,
05:27Daniel Brühl's obviously worked a lot with Ron Howard
05:29and basically Ron Howard's the punchline to a joke in episode one.
05:33And I believe that he kind of had to,
05:35he did, we shot episode one
05:37and then we had to wait a little while through the strike and everything
05:39to shoot the rest of the series.
05:40Sometime after the strike, he went off to shoot this movie with Ron Howard
05:44and he kind of had to tell Ron like,
05:46by the way, sorry, my character makes a joke about you in episode one.
05:50You ever been on a set like as chaotic as the franchise?
05:53There's an element of chaos to any set, really.
05:55Because in and of, inherently, there's just a lot going on.
06:00There's various departments doing various things
06:04all leading to the same, obviously, culmination,
06:07which is the scene that you're working on that day
06:09or the set that you're building for the next day or whatever's happening.
06:12There's various things, various spinning plates, basically.
06:17And it's kind of the first AD's job to make sure that those plates keep spinning.
06:21But I've thankfully never been on a set that's really falling apart
06:25in the way that the set is falling apart in this,
06:27in this, on the set of Tecto,
06:29which is the movie that we're making in this show.
06:32Holy fucking shit, the studio's on fire.
06:38Okay, it's just some houses. We're back, everyone.
06:40But again, I've heard that it's the way some films can go.
06:44Yeah.
06:44So I'm sure I'll find myself on the set.
06:46At some point or another.
06:47Yeah.
06:48Well, you do have, as you say, you're safe from having been in a disaster today,
06:53which is great and long may that continue.
06:56But, you know, here for this series,
06:58we'd like to shine a light on the projects that you think
07:01maybe deserve a bit more love and for what, you know,
07:03that didn't get it for whatever reason.
07:06And you have picked one.
07:07Can you please tell us what you picked?
07:09I picked a movie I did called The Aeronauts, which I'm very proud of.
07:14You'll get your chance. They'll realise your worth.
07:16I think they know my worth quite well enough.
07:19It was only the second movie that I'd done, actually.
07:22I did Yesterday and then not long after I finished that,
07:24I went on to The Aeronauts and just had the best time.
07:27Did you? Yeah.
07:28Tom Harper, who directed it, is a friend of mine now.
07:31I just think he did an amazing job of this.
07:33Jack Thorne wrote the script.
07:35But I'm really proud of the movie and I think it maybe didn't
07:38kind of get the love and attention that I think it deserves.
07:41I think it was also one of those movies that maybe didn't have
07:44as long in the cinemas as it maybe could have done.
07:46And it's such a cinematic sort of spectacle of a movie.
07:50And luckily I did see it in the cinema, obviously,
07:51because I went to a couple of screenings
07:53and got to see it at the IMAX here in London.
07:56And I just thought, I mean, that's where it belonged.
07:57It's been shot for that, you know, and it's a really amazing story.
08:01And all the more amazing that it's a true story,
08:04basically, about the invention of meteorology
08:09and kind of the reason that we know anything
08:11about what's going to happen tomorrow.
08:14The thing that we take for granted.
08:15But who knew that, you know,
08:16beginnings of it was this sort of epic journey
08:18that these people went on.
08:20So it's funny.
08:20It's like I've only watched it this weekend
08:23in preparation, admittedly.
08:25And I feel like if I saw that at IMAX,
08:28there are scenes where I would, you know,
08:30my tummy would have been going funny
08:31because you said it like that on my birthday.
08:33You know, it would have been like, this is nuts.
08:35So impressively done.
08:37Really amazingly done.
08:39The technicians involved.
08:40You know, we talk about crews, something like this.
08:42I mean, they really have to be at the top of their game
08:45to pull off stunts like that.
08:47And the visual effects as well in post-production.
08:50So it really is an example for me
08:53of sort of big scale filmmaking done really well.
08:57And done right.
08:59I mean, you know, I was on set for some of it
09:01and it all was working pretty well.
09:03I didn't see too much stress around, you know,
09:06more than the sort of the amount that's just a given,
09:09really, when you're trying to make anything of that scale.
09:11But everything down to the costume, the detail on set,
09:15all of it was so, I'm really proud of it.
09:17And I guess that leads to my next question,
09:19which is, you know,
09:20so there's a deluge of content per ton.
09:23And I don't like using the word content,
09:24but it does become that, doesn't it?
09:25When every month there is just quite, you know,
09:28an amazing amount of new films and TV shows to tear through.
09:34And you've got to pick, because, you know, time is short.
09:39And you've got to like try and position this thing
09:42as the one to watch.
09:43And, you know, The Errant was a massive success for Amazon.
09:46I look back and I think in 2020,
09:48the, whoever was in charge then said a few months
09:51after it was released,
09:51it was the most successful film on Amazon at that time.
09:54So obviously it did have an audience at home,
09:56but, you know, then again,
09:58they're not going to release the numbers
09:59like they released box office figures.
10:00So you can't really track the success of something.
10:04I really wanted it to be sort of a cinematic event
10:07because that's kind of what it,
10:09what I think it deserved to be.
10:10But I think, yeah, I do remember people watching it
10:12and being very sort of complimentary about it.
10:14I guess like, well, so you were on yesterday
10:16before The Aeronauts,
10:18obviously two very different films.
10:19Yeah, yeah.
10:20One, you are literally the lead
10:22and you're in every scene, firstly.
10:24Singing The Beatles.
10:25Yeah.
10:25Which I can't imagine how daunting that must've been.
10:28Who?
10:29The Beatles.
10:31The what?
10:32The pop group Beatles.
10:33Nick, help me out here.
10:34There's this problem with musicians.
10:36They presume everyone else
10:37has this encyclopedic knowledge of obscure pop.
10:40Make you feel stupid when you haven't heard of bands,
10:42you know, like Neutral Milk Hotel or The Monophonics,
10:46or in this case, The Beatles.
10:48It was daunting and also obviously really enjoyable.
10:51Yeah.
10:52What I found really funny about it
10:53was that I thought I'd be really sick of it
10:55by like, you know, two weeks in.
10:57Because I had a really decent,
10:58about two, three months period of rehearsing,
11:00of basically where they just set up this room
11:02at the production office
11:03and I would just play the songs
11:04and learn the songs every day.
11:06And I just thought,
11:07I'm going to be sick of these songs
11:08come the end of next week.
11:09But at the end of production,
11:11I was still not tired of it,
11:13which is something about the magic of those songs, I think.
11:15But I also was really well supported.
11:18Yeah.
11:19And so it didn't feel as daunting as it could have done.
11:22Was there any songs in that film
11:23that you didn't get to sing that you wanted to?
11:25Oh, there's so many Beatles songs.
11:26Yeah.
11:27I love Blackbird.
11:28Yeah.
11:29And I've learned that on the guitar for myself.
11:31Just talking of other directors you've worked with,
11:33I've mentioned before,
11:34Christopher Nolan, obviously.
11:35Yeah.
11:36You aren't in Tenet for a long time,
11:37but your scenes are great.
11:39Yeah, yeah.
11:39You've got that power about you.
11:40You kind of, you linger in the memory
11:43after the film is done.
11:45Would you work with him again?
11:46I'm assuming it's a yes.
11:47Of course.
11:48He's got a film coming out in a few years, hasn't he?
11:50Yeah.
11:50I just heard news of that the other day.
11:52Yeah, in a heartbeat.
11:54He's one of those, you know,
11:56jump how high, you know, sort of directors.
11:58So, and everything he touches is really special.
12:01I think he's not made a bad movie in my book.
12:04Do you have a, come on, three, top three?
12:06It's tough.
12:06It's really tough.
12:07You don't have to mention Tenet,
12:08which by the way-
12:09I can't pick that.
12:10He's most underrated it's become.
12:12Yeah, I think it was a lockdown thing, wasn't it?
12:14And I really admire that he wanted it to come out
12:17during lockdown and really pushed for that.
12:20And I think, you know, people did, you know,
12:22when they felt safe, they did.
12:24Absolutely.
12:25He doesn't spoon feed the audience.
12:27And I've always loved that about his movies.
12:29I love that about Tenet.
12:30He doesn't need to do this sort of big exposition thing.
12:32And even when he does,
12:33if you sort of watch it and watch it again
12:35and you start to see, it's very well done.
12:37It's always very well done.
12:39One, if you had to throw one on tonight,
12:40you're going home, what are you going to put on?
12:42I'll go with Interstellar.
12:43I love that movie.
12:45And the thing is, I haven't watched it
12:47since having kids of my own.
12:48I'm kind of holding off because I just know
12:50it's going to destroy me, I think.
12:52I'm sure that scene will hit different.
12:54Especially that scene, yeah.
12:55The famous scene with McConaughey in tears.
12:58Yeah, I think.
13:00I met another girl then.
13:02I don't really think this is the one.
13:08But I just think there's something amazing
13:10about how he made something so epic and yet so intimate.
13:13Do you use Letterboxd?
13:14Are you aware of Letterboxd?
13:15Well, the reason I bring it up is
13:17I use it quite religiously.
13:18It's such a great...
13:19I watch so much, it's a great way of just...
13:20Is it just a way of listing what you've seen?
13:22Exactly.
13:23Like a diarising it.
13:25And you can do your reviews and stuff
13:27and you rate it out of five if you want.
13:29But it's so great.
13:30I try to...
13:31I get to watch so much, I'm very lucky.
13:33It's a great way of remembering what I've seen.
13:34But I looked up the Aeronauts yesterday
13:36and Io Edebri had written a review.
13:39No!
13:41Her review was...
13:42Will I still love her?
13:43You will.
13:44The guy from yesterday is in this movie.
13:46Just remembered that.
13:48It's just nice to know that she knows I exist.
13:52She knows you exist, man.
13:53She knows you exist.
13:53I'm sure she now knows your name
13:54because that was a few years ago now.
13:56So I'm pretty certain.
13:58And talking of Avenue 5, just circling back,
14:01we had the lovely Leila Farzad in for this series
14:04and she picked Avenue 5 as her go-to-back
14:07because she thinks it just was...
14:09Yeah, let's throw that in as well.
14:10Yeah, I loved it.
14:11I had a great time.
14:12What year did you kind of get the role in yesterday?
14:14Reminding of that, was it?
14:15That was beginning of 2018.
14:172018.
14:18So, you know, in the last six years,
14:21you've built up an impressive body of work
14:25and obviously you...
14:25When did you leave EastEnders?
14:27I left EastEnders 2016, beginning of 2016.
14:30What is it you like so much about my daughter?
14:33Everything.
14:34Not everything.
14:36I'm more into her mind, not her looks.
14:38What's wrong with her looks?
14:40Nothing.
14:40She looks great.
14:41She dresses great.
14:42She's a great kisser, I'd imagine,
14:45because she doesn't let me kiss her.
14:47She doesn't let me do anything.
14:48Not that I've tried.
14:49You did it so quickly after leaving EastEnders.
14:51I know, I feel very lucky that things lined up that way.
14:54I mean, I use the word lucky a lot,
14:56but I mean that in the sense of any actor's journey
15:00is a lot of hard work and a lot of commitment
15:02and learning along the way,
15:05but it's also just luck that things line up at the right time.
15:09You know, I was doing a play in New York at the end of 2017
15:13when the self-tape for yesterday came in.
15:16So I did the self-tape while I was still in New York doing this play,
15:19and then they were taking meetings towards the end of the year,
15:21and actually the play finished sort of mid-December,
15:24so then I flew home to do this meeting with Danny and Richard Curtis.
15:29But I just keep thinking that, well, if the play had been running longer,
15:31they probably would have gone,
15:32he's not available to do the, you know,
15:34it's a matter of weeks sometimes that these things can, you know, so.
15:37Of course, and it's, I guess, it's the what ifs
15:39and the crossroads thing that kind of makes a career
15:42and the near misses and whatnot.
15:44Have you ever had a moment where a project has come along
15:48and you've just not been able to do it,
15:49and you've really wanted to and it's not worked out?
15:53I suppose the thing that happens with actors is
15:56you have avail checks, availability checks.
16:00So casting directors will get in touch with your agent and go,
16:02you know, we think he might be right to audition for
16:05or might be right for this role in this thing.
16:08Is he available?
16:09And sometimes they'll be like, no, he's not.
16:11And then I'll never hear about it
16:12because they're like, you don't want to know.
16:14They're protecting you from the anguish of a missed opportunity.
16:18They could have been, Spielberg could have come a knocking.
16:21I have no idea.
16:22So what's next for you, Himesh?
16:24What have we got coming up?
16:25I've also got a movie called The Assessment
16:28with Elizabeth Olsen and Alicia Vikander,
16:31which premiered at Toronto Film Festival.
16:33It's also playing right now at London Film Festival
16:36and hopefully will be coming out soon.
16:38So I'm excited to hear about when that will be released to the world.
16:41Well, we're going to look out for The Assessment.
16:43We're going to re-watch The Aeronauts.
16:44So we'll watch it for the first time.
16:46And we're going to tear through the franchise when that starts.
16:50I'm assuming it's on Now and Sky.
16:52Thank you so much for your time.
16:53I really appreciate it.
16:54It's been really great having you here.