It's been over 5 years since Timothée Chalamet & Saoirse Ronan worked together for 'Ladybird' and 'Little Women.' Timothée & Saoirse sit down to discuss everything from the first time they ever met, working with Greta Gerwig for 'Little Women,' to their latest projects including 'A Complete Unknown' and 'The Outrun.'Senior Correspondent, HWD: Rebecca FordDirector: Tom SandfordEditor: Matthew ColbyTalent: Timothée Chalamet; Saoirse RonanProducers: Madison Coffey; Ruhiya NuruddinProduction Manager: Andressa PelachiCamera Operators: Maha Al-Badrawi; Paria Kamyab; Nic WassellFilmed on Location at: The British Film Institute; South BankPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAdditional Editor : Jason MaliziaDigital Editor: Henry BarnesAssistant Editor: Fynn Lithgow
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00We've obviously gone off to make other projects away from each other,
00:03but I've not really had an experience acting with anyone else like I have done with you.
00:08There's a real sort of, like, aliveness, I think, when I work with Timothy.
00:13That's how I feel.
00:15Wow.
00:22All right, and please welcome Timothy Shalabay.
00:25Oh, I didn't know it was live like this.
00:35Yeah.
00:36Okay.
00:36We're here.
00:38What do you remember about the very first time you met?
00:42Huh.
00:43You won't remember.
00:44I do remember.
00:44It was a rehearsal in Los Angeles for Lady Bird,
00:47and I just remember Saoirse arriving with an assistant, and I thought that was very impressive.
00:51I've never had an assistant.
00:53I also drive myself to work.
00:55That's not my recollection.
00:56To you.
00:58And we had this rehearsal with Greta, and I only, I...
01:05Sir, we're going to do a lot of blowing smoke tonight, so just get ready, y'all.
01:08But Saoirse, who continues to be a legend, but already she was a legend then,
01:12and I'd worked with an actor named Emery Cohen,
01:14who had just worked with her probably the year before on Brooklyn or something,
01:17so I kept hearing this name, Saoirse, Saoirse,
01:20and didn't put two and two together when I saw the name spelled out,
01:23because I'm an ignorant American.
01:26And then we got cracking, and I was just blown away immediately, you know,
01:30just by her level of talent.
01:32We were very lucky that we clicked straight away, I think.
01:38And we had Greta, who seemed to be, sort of from day one,
01:41she was so excited by whatever was happening between the two of us.
01:44I actually do remember that rehearsal now.
01:46I was still at that point where I was just like,
01:48oh great, someone gave me a job, like, this is amazing.
01:51I was a huge fan of Greta's.
01:54I found her, not because of anything that she had sort of given off,
01:58but she was incredibly intimidating to me,
02:00because I wanted to emulate her so much in her style,
02:04in the type of work that she made.
02:06And at that stage, I kind of, I didn't even really know yet
02:09that, like, I would want to direct one day,
02:11but it was sort of in the back of my head, sort of percolating somewhere.
02:15Even though Lady Bird wasn't like an out-and-out comedy,
02:17the fact that it was more comedic than anything else
02:20was something that, again, really intimidated me,
02:22because I just think it's like the hardest genre to pull off,
02:27especially if you're not a comedian.
02:29So I was really, I was very, very nervous the whole way through,
02:34which I think, I feel like I spoke to you about,
02:36I didn't speak to many people about it,
02:38but I was very in my head on Lady Bird.
02:39Wow, my memory is that the role felt like a glove to you.
02:44I didn't feel like that at all.
02:45But I was, I felt really relieved to have you there,
02:47because even though you say that you're, like, a Dome American or whatever,
02:51I think the fact that, because you're not.
02:53For sure, for sure, for sure.
02:54You know, he's not, he's not, he's not.
02:57But having someone who had this sort of, like, European flair
03:02in the way that you did, and you were so sort of, like,
03:04unique and, like, nothing I'd ever met before,
03:06that was really refreshing for me, I think, to have someone there
03:09where I could be like, can we just, like,
03:11have a moan about everything today?
03:13I think I really needed that.
03:15So I clung to Timothy, whether he realized it or not.
03:18This is all new information to me.
03:19This is brand new information.
03:21I love it.
03:22And so how did Greta present the two of you to do Little Women?
03:26I sort of had to tell her that I was going to be in it,
03:30because she hadn't sort of landed on me yet.
03:33We were at an event, and you were doing stuff for Call Me By Your Name,
03:37and I was like, by the way, I'm obviously going to be Jo, right?
03:42She was like, I guess, sure.
03:44But I wasn't sure how you got involved.
03:46Did she just ask?
03:47She did just ask.
03:49But I was shooting The King in Budapest,
03:52and I had met with Denis a couple times about Dune,
03:56so that was really the thing I was chasing and really excited about.
04:00And then Greta called me about it,
04:02and she was already such a fabulous director,
04:06just off of Lady Bird, just the experience working with her.
04:08You know, on Lady Bird, I read for both parts.
04:10I read for the Lucas Hedges part, and the part I ended up doing,
04:13and I was just dying to work with Greta,
04:15because as Saoirse said, she just gave off this incredible vibe.
04:18And there's a whole generation of New York filmmakers,
04:20like Greta, Pittisafte Brothers, Ari Aster,
04:23Robert Eggers, who came up there too,
04:25you know, that were all doing really unique work
04:29that seemed to have come up together.
04:30But Greta was one of the ones I really wanted to work with.
04:35I got the call, and I remember being not surprised,
04:37but Lady Bird was so in Greta's voice.
04:43Now she's proven with Little Women and Barbie
04:45that everything's in her voice.
04:47But I remember I was ignorant to how special
04:52what I thought was the ninth version of something.
04:55I'm probably exaggerating, but there had been many versions prior.
04:57But I just wanted to get involved with Greta,
04:59and she was very persuasive.
05:01I thought it was also a surprise for her off the back of Lady Bird,
05:04which became this sort of indie darling movie,
05:08which is so beloved, and we had no idea,
05:10even to this day, how beloved it was going to become.
05:12To then follow on from that with an American literary classic
05:17that had been remade so many times,
05:20and in a way, it's sort of, not with every version,
05:23but it did kind of feel a little bit twee,
05:26like Little Women was starting to feel a bit like,
05:28it's a bunch of girls, and it's Christmas time,
05:30and all they want to do is fall in love and get married.
05:33And that was sort of my take on it,
05:36just based on my memory of seeing other versions of it.
05:40It was always wonderful,
05:41but I was like, what's this director going to do with that?
05:45And as you say, in the way that every brilliant filmmaker does,
05:49they can take something which the source material,
05:52which we kind of rediscovered through making the movie,
05:55is so unbelievably brilliant and revolutionary.
05:58But it took, I think, Greta's voice and her vision
06:01to help us to see that.
06:04And it was the same with Barbie,
06:05and it'll be the same with Narnia,
06:07and everything that she does in the future.
06:09It's like, it's always a surprise,
06:10and she'll never disappoint,
06:12because she's so herself as a filmmaker,
06:16which is surprisingly hard to come by.
06:18And she was so fired up, I remember.
06:20So I remember just trusting that,
06:21how fired up she was about the material,
06:22and she said she always wanted to do it.
06:24Lady Bird and Little Women, it was just such a fascinating,
06:26I look back on them so fondly in different ways,
06:29because you talk in terms of career,
06:31I don't want to say like,
06:32I don't want to be too self-referential or reverential
06:35to Saoirse or Florence,
06:36but everyone was sort of like at a genesis, you know?
06:38Beautiful Boy was coming out at that time,
06:41and that was basically like the second,
06:44quote-unquote, big-ish movie I was in,
06:46and I was having a hard time getting,
06:50you know, people on the phone
06:51to help me figure out my schedule,
06:52where I was going to go, you know?
06:53And I wanted to kind of do a regional tour
06:55and visit places in the States
06:56that were affected by that story, you know?
06:58So the intent was pure.
06:59But I was in my trailer,
07:00and I only got a call at a certain time.
07:02So, and my hair and makeup was quick on that movie.
07:05It was like a 10-minute, you know,
07:06I would jump in, whatever, and I was out.
07:08So I guess I was supposed to be in a chair at a certain time,
07:10and I wasn't, but I was on the phone
07:12trying to do this thing,
07:13and I get this bang on my trailer door,
07:15like really intensely,
07:16and I'm thinking someone died.
07:19And I opened the door,
07:20and it's Saoirse in a bald cap.
07:23Do you remember this?
07:23Yeah.
07:24She's like, get your ass in the fucking trailer right now.
07:28Like, they're waiting for you in the hair and makeup.
07:30And I always just love that memory, you know?
07:33I just love it.
07:34And are you on time now?
07:35I'm on time all the time.
07:37Good.
07:37Yeah, all the time.
07:39All the time.
07:40That's what's so nice, I think,
07:42about us all being at this point in our life
07:45and in our career.
07:47I was saying this to friends of mine the other day that,
07:49you know, we made a movie together like seven years ago
07:52that we've all got like history together now, you know?
07:54We've made more than one movie together,
07:58and we're all sort of like growing up with one another,
08:00and we'll dip back in every few years,
08:03and we can catch up.
08:04And that's what's so kind of beautiful
08:07about this point in our lives.
08:08We're really, really lucky that, you know,
08:10the two of us and the other people that we've mentioned
08:12are doing really well,
08:14and our paths can kind of continue to cross.
08:16I think that's why I'm really grateful
08:18to people like Greta as well,
08:19because she's very much like Denise as well.
08:23She's very much a believer
08:24in bringing a company of actors together.
08:27And I know that she'll always want us to come back together
08:30and work with one another again.
08:33You know, I figured you'd love me, Joe.
08:36And I realized I'm not half good enough,
08:38and I'm not this great man.
08:39Yes, you are.
08:40You're a great deal too good for me,
08:42and I'm so grateful to you,
08:44and I'm so proud of you.
08:45And I just, I don't see why I can't love you
08:48as you want me to.
08:49I don't know why.
08:50Our love in that little women's scene,
08:52how we had so much room to play,
08:55and we're just all over the place there.
08:57I think they put the camera on a track,
08:58and we were just like all over the place.
09:00We weren't limited, any sort of blocking.
09:02I remember rehearsing that with Greta and Saoirse
09:04in Amy Pascal's house before the movie started,
09:06and Greta had us rehearse it once,
09:08and she said, okay, I don't want to go near this,
09:09because this already feels locked and loaded.
09:11It makes me nostalgic for those movies,
09:13but also, I don't know how you feel,
09:15but I'm also like, you know,
09:17happy to be older in some way,
09:18because I kind of see where we both were at in life,
09:21not in any tragic way,
09:22but you're figuring yourself out in your early 20s.
09:24Yeah.
09:25Like at the beginning of a career,
09:26it's all so overwhelming.
09:27That's why I'm grateful to Saoirse, period,
09:29because she's always had my back.
09:31We had like maybe half an hour,
09:3245 minutes to shoot that scene.
09:34We were chasing the light.
09:35They wanted to get magic error,
09:37so we had like no time to shoot it,
09:39and somehow the energy of that,
09:41and knowing that it was almost like
09:43going on stage for like half an hour,
09:45all of this energy that we'd stored up
09:47was just going to go into this thing,
09:48and it really felt like two actors and two people
09:52who were very much sort of in each other's corner,
09:55you know, creatively and personally,
09:58and I think that's what I've always felt
10:01from working with you.
10:03We've obviously gone off to make other projects
10:05away from each other,
10:06but I've not really had an experience acting
10:09with anyone else like I have done with you,
10:12whether it's on set or in real life,
10:15and it really keeps me awake and alert,
10:18and it keeps me very creative,
10:20so there's a real sort of like aliveness,
10:24I think, when I work with Timothy.
10:26That's how I feel.
10:28Wow.
10:29That's nice.
10:31That's really moving.
10:33I don't want to...
10:34I just want to take that in.
10:37It was so exciting to watch you as Bob Dylan.
10:39I could tell that you'd put so much work into it,
10:43and the craft was there mixed with the magic,
10:48which was so great.
10:49I was watching it, and I was like,
10:51I've forgotten that I'm watching you,
10:54but it didn't feel like I was watching a movie
10:56about Bob Dylan.
10:57I felt like I was watching this young man
11:00who knew his own mind,
11:01but he was still open to the world around him,
11:05and it sounded like this voice
11:07that I've grown up listening to,
11:09but also you'd added so much of yourself to it.
11:13It was so beautiful.
11:14This is getting very overwhelming.
11:18But yeah, I'd imagine that was hard, was it?
11:20Yeah, I mean, I just fell in love with the process
11:23and the young man that is Bob,
11:26and it's honestly very moving here,
11:28and it's just weird.
11:28It feels like worlds colliding
11:30because I feel like I stumbled into Lady Bird,
11:34definitely, and Little Women,
11:34so the process on Bob
11:37was really like an individual one for years.
11:40Not that it was lonely, but I was alone,
11:41so to hear my sister, in many ways,
11:45commend that is really moving to me.
11:47Want to use this beauty?
11:50They always keep it handy, don't you?
11:52He's like a gunfighter with a six-gun.
11:54He's keeping it close.
11:57Oh, the time will come, Bob,
11:59when the winds will stop
12:01and the breeze will cease
12:03to be green
12:06like the stillness in the wind
12:08before the hurricane begins.
12:10The hour that the ship comes in.
12:13There was this whole war on the movie
12:15in a sense of using pre-records
12:17or doing the music live,
12:18and I was always in the camp
12:19wanting to do it live
12:20because it's folk music,
12:21and Bob Dylan certainly wasn't matching his voice,
12:24you know, so I didn't want to be
12:25matching me mimicking Bob Dylan
12:27in a studio in L.A. six months before we shot
12:30because I had to be respectful of all the work
12:32that we had done in the preparation,
12:34but Edward Norton was always in my ear too
12:36saying, you sound better live, do it live.
12:38So that was making me good ammo.
12:40But once you get into the church of Bob,
12:42it's hard not to revere
12:44what an incredible artist this man is and was,
12:47especially in this period when he was,
12:49you know, we were talking about Lady Bird
12:50and Little Women before
12:51where you talk about press opportunities and stuff
12:53we were going through.
12:54You watch his early press stuff
12:55and he's combative and confrontational
12:57and subtle and peculiar,
13:00and I don't want to be a smudge on that legacy.
13:03I mean, I know for us making The Outrun
13:06because we produced it as well,
13:08so we know that there are traps
13:12that you can fall into,
13:13like you get kind of drowned out
13:17almost by the real person
13:19and you're trying to find that gorgeous harmony
13:22between the two.
13:24I think what's nice in both these cases
13:26is that we're playing creatives,
13:28and so I don't know what Bob was like,
13:31but I know with Amy Liptrott, who I play,
13:35the art and the project
13:37and what her work and her life was going to turn into
13:41was more important than capturing
13:44every sort of element of her personality.
13:47She just wanted it to have the feeling of her story.
13:52So we had a real sort of meeting of minds,
13:54I think, from the very beginning
13:56out of respect for one another's work,
13:58that we would combine both of our personalities
14:02and our worlds and our voices
14:04and how we moved and everything.
14:06I don't even recognise you anymore.
14:11I wish you a completely different person.
14:13Don't say that.
14:15I can't do this.
14:16What do you mean you can't do this?
14:18I just can't do this.
14:21Did I do that to you?
14:27I'll never do that again, right?
14:30Whatever I did, I'll never do it again.
14:32I'm never going to drink again.
14:34I promise you, right?
14:35Because I don't want to lose you.
14:37I don't want to lose you.
14:38There was a lot of that experience,
14:40even though I haven't been throughout myself,
14:42but I've watched people I love go through it
14:44and have sort of received the energy off of that.
14:48And you do repress it
14:50or you don't deal with it in a kind of healthy way
14:53and it just sort of turns into like anger
14:56and confusion and frustration.
14:58And so to be able to actually take all of that
15:01and rework it and to put it into something productive
15:05and something that I could kind of see in front of me
15:08was really helpful, actually.
15:10But also that's just why I do this.
15:12I do it because it feels good for me to get that out
15:16and to be able to take any sort of messy emotion that you have
15:21and sort of give it some alignment,
15:23give it some shape, control it in a way
15:27so that it doesn't get out of control within you.
15:32I think if what we do is used in the right way,
15:35it's a very healthy occupation to have
15:38if you use it in the right way.
15:40So I loved it.
15:42I enjoy getting it all out.
15:43Was there a point in this business
15:45where you had to decide like,
15:46this is my career and not just a childhood hobby?
15:49Yeah, I think for me it was really clear
15:50because I was put on the sort of traditional American
15:54academic path, you know, and didn't know why.
15:58It was very peculiar to me that I was paying money
16:01to be somewhere I didn't want to be.
16:03You know, it was around when I was 18 or 19.
16:04I had enough momentum with my acting stuff.
16:07I thought, okay, it's sort of now or never.
16:09And this is not prescriptive.
16:11Whatever works for anyone works.
16:13But I felt like if I had a plan B
16:14or if I was working towards a plan B,
16:16my plan A would be ruined
16:18because I'd been doing it on and off for years.
16:20You know, I don't want to speak for Saoirse,
16:21but I think she was more full-time earlier than I was.
16:24I was doing it from so young
16:26that it was just sort of a part of me.
16:32It was a part of how I saw the world.
16:35It was a huge source of education for me.
16:39Like, I definitely had moments.
16:41I remember distinctly that the first one
16:43was on Atonement when I was 12
16:46and I did my first crying scene.
16:48Which is a big moment for any actor
16:50when they realise they can cry
16:51and people love it when you cry.
16:54You always get a round of applause.
16:55And it was something that I never had to,
16:59you know, a kid never has to do that on cue.
17:02And I got to do that.
17:03I remember that myself and the director
17:05had to really work on what this was going to be
17:08and craft it.
17:09And through my dialogue with him,
17:12something came out of that that was new for me.
17:15And that really felt like acting at that point.
17:19And I think your idea of what acting is actually changes
17:22depending on where you're at in your life.
17:25But that's what it felt like at that point.
17:27And I remember going,
17:28this is what I'm going to do forever.
17:30Is there a specific movie genre
17:32that you haven't yet explored,
17:33but you would like to?
17:34Musical.
17:36I really want to do a musical.
17:37Oh man, you got to do a musical.
17:39I know.
17:40What musical would you do?
17:41Wicked.
17:42I can't stop thinking about Wicked.
17:45I love it so much.
17:47I don't know.
17:48Maybe an original.
17:50I would like to do a biopic of someone,
17:52but I'm not going to say who it is
17:54because I don't want someone else to steal it.
17:55But you already have it in mind?
17:56Yeah.
17:57Is it alive?
17:58Yeah.
17:59Do they know you want to do it?
18:00No.
18:01Interesting.
18:03It's Bob Dylan.
18:04It's a Bob, no, no.
18:06No, he's mine.