Happy Sad Confused - Richard E. Grant

Episode Date: October 30, 2018

Richard E. Grant joins Josh to talk about his illustrious career, from "Withnail & I" to "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" and the upcoming new Star Wars film. He even puts up with Josh's obsession with "Hudson Hawk". A true gentleman.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

D.C. high volume, Batman. The Dark Nights definitive DC comic stories adapted directly for audio for the very first time. Fear, I have to make them afraid. He's got a motorcycle. Get after him or have you shot. What do you mean blow up the building? From this moment on,

none of you are safe. New episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Happy Set Confused, Richard E. Grant garnered some of the best reviews in his career for his role in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Hey guys, I'm Josh Horowitz. Welcome to another edition of Happy Set Confused. As I said, we've got an awards-worthy performance to celebrate in today's episode of Happy Said Confused with the wonderful sometime character actor, sometime leading man, all around delightful gentleman,

Mr. Richard E. Grant. Richard E. Grant is such a charmer, such an amazing body of work, so thrilled that he came on the podcast. As I mentioned, he is currently starring in the new film, Can You Ever Forgive Me, which is one of my favorites of the year. If you haven't heard about it,

this is the latest film from director, Mario Heller, she is the filmmaker behind Diary of a Teenage, which also garnered great reviews a few years back, and this one stars Melissa McCarthy as a real-life person named Lee Israel, who in the 90s in New York City was a writer of some repute who had to resort to forging literary letters from great luminaries, great writers of the past in order to make ends meet. Richard E. Grant stars as one of her good friends, also kind of like a peripheral fringe kind of just getting by New Yorker that I certainly took to heart.

All these characters in this film definitely resonated with me as a lifelong New Yorker, as someone that appreciates all the unique characters and stories that come out of this city. This is a great film full of drama and comedy and well worth your time. And I hope this one does get through and get into award season. could see Melissa and Richard getting some justifiable attention for this. So fingers crossed on that. That's the main event. Richard E. Grant on the podcast this week.

Other things to note, we are returning with a whole new batch of After Hours episodes on Comedy Central. So each Thursday, we're dropping a new one. And, you know, we started off with a nice little batch that included Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell and Joe Mangon. And Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish, if you haven't seen any of those sketches, please go to Comedy Central's YouTube page or the After Hours' Facebook page. Subscribe to that, and you can check out all those great sketches that we've done. And as I said, there's some new ones coming up with some familiar folks to listeners of the podcast, followers of my work. You will not be disappointed.

Some A-level amazing guests that were awesome. So anyway, starting this Thursday, November 1st, there'll be a nice and little new run every Thursday on Comedy Central's Facebook page, and after hours is Facebook page and my social media. You won't be able to miss it. So keep an eye out for that. In addition, I want to mention there's a great new documentary that is going to be in Select Theater's November 2nd. I believe it's also going to be on demand and different services like that. It's called In Search of Greatness. If you're a sports fan, if you're a casual fan or a diehard sports fan,

I think this is going to be a film that really resonates with you. It's from Gabe Polsky. He directed a great documentary a couple of years back called Red Army. And this one kind of tackles with the great question of like what makes an athlete great. And not even what makes an athlete great, but what makes the greatest ones special. And it's primarily framed around three interviews with three of the greatest athletes of our times, Jerry Rice, Pele, and Wayne Gretzky. And I really enjoyed the conversations, but also the filmmaking treatment of the subject matter.

It's well worth your time. Check it out. Look at In Search of Greatness.com to find out what theater it's playing in or where you can check it out. I highly recommend it. And that about that wraps it. That brings you up to speed on all things in the Josh Horowitz universe. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Richard E. Grant. He's just wall-to-wall charm, and it was just fantastic. one small note. We had a little bit of an audio glitch. I think it came two-thirds of the way through or something. So basically what happened was my primary audio recorder had an issue. It stopped working. Thankfully, I almost always am recording it on a backup. The backup audio is not as great. It's literally like an iPhone audio. So the last 10, 15 minutes of this might not be up to the standards that I try to keep. the audio at. So still totally listenable too, but just be aware it's not your ears going. You're not going crazy. The last 10, 15 minutes might not sound as great as the first 30 minutes.

So anyway, that being said, please enjoy this conversation with Richard E. Grant and enjoy his new film, Can You Ever Forgive Me, which is now playing. I am such an admirer of your work, sir, and I'm so glad that this. This movie has come around to give me an excuse to have you into my silly office. It's good to see you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I love your office.

Thank you, sir. E.T. in the corner and these pictures and, yeah, it's fantastic. There's a lot of stimulation here. If you get bored of me, you can just look around. Yeah, fan geeky stuff. I love that. Yes.

It's like my house. So these all the previous victims you've had, are they? Most people have been here that are on this wall. This is actually New Yorkers. Right. These are for inspiration for some of the silly things I do on occasion for Comedy Central. I use sketches. So this is inspiration.

Oh, you know who would be great for a sketch? Alexander Scarisgard as a New Yorker, et cetera. So that's a... So you have to be a New Yorker to qualify to get on the board? Yes, exactly. Okay. Tina Miller, she's not a New Yorker. She lives in London, didn't you?

Maybe she's bi-countryal. Okay. By city. Okay. All right. You qualified as a New Yorker last year. You shot this here, didn't you? Yes, we did.

Yeah, we did. In January. 28 days, five and a half weeks. Crazy. going to get into all of that. I absolutely adore this movie. First of all, congratulations again. I mean, I first, I met you very briefly

at the Toronto Film Festival at one of those fun little shindig parties. I ran, I don't know if you could tell. I ran away when it was you and Melissa, I believe your daughter was there, and then Sissy SpaceX came in and like a little dance party started to ensue, and I was just like, this is too much for my

small brain to handle, Richard, I have to leave. Well, that's how I feel. And I don't have a small brain like you, but It's, yeah, it's surreal when you meet, when you meet people that you have, firstly working with the Minnesota McCarthy, I admire for so, so, such a long time. And then, you know, as you say at the festival, meeting Citi's Basic, just, you know, trolling into a party. It's not what you, what do I expect to see.

Yeah, well, that's part of what I appreciate, you know, having, I certainly know your work quite well, but also, like, having this opportunity to kind of read up on you a bit, is my sense is you are, you know, I feel like there are two kind of categories of actors out there. practitioners in the business, those that are kind of a little bit of aloof, kind of separate themselves from the trappings of it. Name them. It's that list over here. Are you being facetious or do you think that most are not? No, no, no, I'm very intrigued by your

division between the two types. Well, I guess I think it's actually most people I talk to or maybe they're pointing it too cool for school that don't get caught up in the fun that can be associated with this kind of silly business that can't that my sense is that you like appreciate the film festivals and the the silly parties and the opportunity to to mingle with the sissy spacec yeah absolutely i've been i'm i'm i'm 62 years old and i'm still a starstruck as at my age than i was you know a hundred years ago when i started watching movies and i think that is as much to do with anything as

where i grew up in a you know a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in you know the tiniest country in the Southern Hemisphere in Africa. So I still can't really believe that the stuff that has happened to me in my life has happened, which is the reason why I've kept a diary all my life. So I've never managed to be Blase. I met the late great Carrie Fisher 30 years ago in L.A. And she saw me in a chat show in England talking about people that I just worked with on The Player, which tells you how long ago that was, which had an absolutely star-crammed cast of famous people just playing extras. That was Altman's great conceit that he had, you know, Bert Reynolds, as Bert Reynolds, walking on for one line of dialogue.

And she, when I was talking about this on an English TV show and she was filming something there, she saw me afterwards and she said, you are no longer a tourist, you're one of the attractions. Not the main attractions, but one of them. Get a grip and stop being so star-strosite. And I said, well, that's easy for you, Carrie, because you were born and it's kind of Shobie's royalty. So, you know, but so that has never gone away. I'm still as thrilled now to meet people who are talented as, as I ever was.

Surely it goes away, though, when you get down to the work, you can shut that off and not be caught up. Yeah, when you start working together and you get to know that the person is, you know, a perfectly fallible human being, but there's something, I don't know whether you find this, but people that are really talented, and it's this in, undefinable invisible stuff that's in that that makes you look at one person more than you look at another person that to me is endlessly intriguing and really i've been disappointed by meeting people and i thought well they've never lived up to the expectations that i have of them right do you have that i i totally concur

people invariably ask me who are the disappointments who's the asshole and i have to say generally speaking, it's one percent. I'm generally... So who's on your one percent list? I can't name names, Richard? Why not? Because I'm going to probably have them back here to talk about their next project. Oh, I see. So you're a liar? I'm not a liar. No, I'm actually... You're just very, very good at covering up

the fact that you think they're jerks. Well, here's the thing. So I've often said this too. Like, you can tell if I am not into someone's project. They can come in and I can appreciate some of their body of work. I'm not into their current project. So what kind of words do you use, just that I'm warned? Well, no, you should feel comfortable because I've voluntarily said how much I enjoy

can you ever forgive me. You have, which we're very grateful. Oh, and I would never do that for something I don't enjoy. I would simply say congratulations on the film and move on. There's a coding to it. You know when you go to a press thing

and they say, describe the plot, describe the character, what are your plans for the summer? And you're out of that. When you go backstage and you see people and you go, that was something. Yeah. That was really,

something you definitely achieved something something happened yeah you just go you hope that that's gonna be the sort of cover that you're gonna be able to get out of their life you can probably tell from like listening to these conversations if you do a percentage of like how much of the conversation is spent on the actual project by how much I enjoy the project that being said there's so much more beyond this project I want to talk to you about so don't judge the percentage necessarily this time okay I'm not judging okay um what were we talking about oh so who okay so growing up in Swaziland, who were, so I know Barbara Streisand was a big movie star crush kind of early on.

There were two, yeah, I had an absolute huge, and there's a lifelong crush on her, and I met her four times. And the other person that I was inspired by was Donald Sutherland, because he was very tall, he'd come from, you know, he didn't grow up in the middle of L.A. or this imagined dream that I had that, you know, all movie stars are produced at Hollywood's high school um that's carrie fisher's life exactly that's carrie's life um and because he had such a long face and such an oddball personality and mash and carrie's heroes of the films that i'd first seen him in when people said oh well you can't be an actor i had no notion that i ever might end up in

a movie or two um but they said you know as a theater actor you you're never going to be able to you know who are the role models you have to look like paul newman or robert at that time And I said, well, you know, there is Donald Sutherland. And they kind of went, yeah, well, you know, Donald Sutherland, he's a freak. So I thought, well, okay, at least there's somebody. He was a guy that I could follow. So he was an inspiration to me. Who was the first of that ilk that you worked with that you encountered in your wife?

The first famous person I met, goodness me. I did a film called Warlock. produced by the late great Arnold Culperson who just died last week and Julian Sands an English actor who was in the movie as well

was friends or is friends with Jodie Foster and I'd been in this film with Nell and I that she had seen and so we were the Hollywood at the Farmer's Market in near Fairfax

in L.A. And sorry I saw her fade with everything and so I went to he said oh come and have lunch to come and have lunch with a friend of mine, so I did, and I didn't quite expect to see Jodie Foster in a track suit,

eating food out of a Tupperware box, and blowing smoke up my, you know, fundament, saying how much she'd enjoy this movie. That was a completely surreal moment for me. So, yeah, I suppose Jody Foster was my first, you know, I'd see, again, it likes meeting Citi's Base Act. When I had seen her in movies since she was, you know, Bugs in Malone, 12 years old,

a taxi driver to all of those things. somewhere in my head I thought that she must be she must either live in a glass house or be 205 years old of course she did neither and she was very funny which I didn't expect either yeah so this was post obviously with now and I which of course was your film debut um so you were saying like you never imagined that you'd have a film career like outside of Donald Southern underworld

no because I tell you when when I graduated from college and theater training school the you get taken in by well the professor of the academy takes you in for a final assessment for about 15 to 20 minutes giving your career prospects and he said to me you know you obviously have a talent for directing you've directed lots of plays while you've been here that's really i think where your future lies and i said what about acting and he said well you know i took my cards on the table he said you look weird you have a very long face um I think you're very light, you know, I just, he just, he said, I think realistically, you should pursue the other thing. I think it's a radio, Richard. And then, you know, some years later, when I finally got my first movie in 1986 with her and I, all the reviews that I can remember reading, that, what I remember about them was they said, lanternjured, funeral-faced, you know, face like a tombstone, face like a monster, all of that stuff. So I thought, well, he was right about all that. But what he wasn't right about is that I actually got a job in a movie and in the theater.

So I'm glad I proved him wrong in that way. But he was right about what I looked like. How discombobulating was that whole experience? And because, like, with Nail and I, forgive me, I don't remember, I was too young to remember sort of like America's appreciation and how quickly that came. Like, was that an immediate thing that it was a global appreciated film? No, no, at all. I think it showed at the Carnegie Cinema as existed then, which now has gone.

is gone. It opened, I think, in two theatres in New York and L.A. And in London, it ran for about four weeks in a movie house and didn't get particularly good reviews. And then it got this cult following from students watching it on video VHS first and then DVD and streaming it. So it's because it's a rites of passage college thing that happens in England.

And I don't know if it happens anywhere. else, but I'm very aware of it in England because I get tweeted or Instagram or messaged about it on a daily basis, and I've used public transport all the time on the bus or the subway, the tubas is called in England. And there's not a day goes by that somebody somewhere doesn't quote or shout out a line from that movie to me. And of course, to the 99.99% of the population that have never seen it or me. They think what the hell is. Exactly. But I can usually spot them because there's a kind of type of person that likes that kind of movie.

A good type of person, I would say. Exactly, yeah. I'm the same tribe. Not many warlock quotes are coming at you on the tube. Not so far. I've not had warlocks, but, you know. That's a very particular type of person. It is.

Yeah. And I sit in no judgment of anybody because, you know, I've geeked out on people and I've gone, how the hell do you like that person? So I understand this phenomenon and of investing a movie or an actor with more than maybe they should have. Well, and it also, as you well know, it depends on where it hits you in your own life. Like, for me, like my heart sang a little bit, Richard, when I was reading,

and you basically said, as great, I mean, I'm a with Nell and I fan, but you mentioned Hudson Hawk and was basically like, if you're a fan of Hudson Hawk, like the opposite. I don't quite get you or something. Well, how old are you when you saw this movie? Let's see, when did it come out? 1990. One.

1990 once I was 15. Okay. It was like too old. Okay. No. Either that or you weren't intravenous drugs or both. Oh, there was that? I didn't mention that.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that your brain, how old are you know? I'm 42. Okay. Could you watch it at 42 with the same whatever you experienced when you were 15? I don't think so. If they hook up the same IVs and whatever, perhaps.

Okay. All right. I rest my case. Which of your films, you mentioned you've kept a diary since you were a young boy, right? You still do it sounds like? I do, yeah. Which of the productions of your films would make the best movie? What was the most eventful production of a film that would actually turn into a great saga?

Oh, hands down, Hudson Hawke. Hudson Hawke. It was so off the chart insane. The whole, just everything about it, what we began shooting and what the script looked like at the beginning to what we actually ended up doing was, it was a unique experience. I'm going to say that. It was something. That was something. At what point did you realize it was going off the rails?

Was there a particular moment? I mean, was there? When you see, in those days, you still got a script in paper form. And when you have a script that arrives that is all white pages, and when within a very short space of time, there is every color in the Crayola box, the United Colors of Beneton are in the script. You know that many, many pores have been. Scrabbling to change the pages so you know that it's it's a cluster fuck I noticed I'm allowed to say that yeah absolutely okay I was at the New York premiere the other day and Sandra Berner was there your old buddy yes I know we say great

friends you see that's a benefit of doing a movie even if it tanks you the good thing that came out of that is that Sandra and I who played husband and wife the Mayflowers who were running the world and then got emolliated in molten molten gold as you do as one does and originally my character was going to die driving through the Kremlin in a 1950s converted

Cadillac having a fight through a what do you call those roof things that you open? Oh the convertible like the in a car. Yeah yeah yeah we Bruce Woods and I were going to be having a fist fight in that going through the Kremlin and a statue of Lennon

was going to fall on the car and kill me that you know that's something that I signed up for gladly as it was I just got molten gold in some shabby studio in the middle of Hungary so I'm glad you're enjoying it because it was tortured to do we can't laugh at it 25 years later exactly but we've Sandra and I have stayed great friends yeah and you got a great friendship out of it Bruce Willis hasn't called me for another gig so you know go figure that one well he could probably be the answer it's one of the earlier questions you asked of me but I'll let people figure that out okay um so you mean he's a one percent

He might be. Okay. He might be. He's a, I mean, this is not speaking out of school. He's a tough, he's a tough cookie for, I think, filmmakers sometimes and for people on my side of the pond. Okay. Okay.

See, you baited me in. And now I've revealed too much, and I look like the jerk. Damn you, Richard. Yes, but you, bastard face. You can edit all of this stuff out and make me look like a complete crumb. Okay. We'll see. I don't have that kind of time.

No, I think you do. a few other films I do want to mention before we get back to Can You Ever Forgive Me? Because again, these hit me at the right time And I think they stand up, unlike Hudson Hawk. Bram Stoker's Dracula, I positively adore, a unique opportunity to work with the great Francis Ford Coppola. Absolutely extraordinary experience.

And I would think I always talk to the actors that have worked with him. I would think part of the unique uniqueness of working with him is just hanging out in his estate for a few weeks, just improvising or rehearsing. He does. He did this extraordinary thing. He invited all of us to go to his Napa Valley estate for about two and a half weeks of rehearsals before we started Dracula while they were still writing, rewriting the script and doing a formal read-through and doing bonding exercises, some of which involved going up on a hot air balloon because he thought Carrie Elwis and various of us would be bonded as people going up there. And we were all, and that was surreal. you know, going on a trampoline every day and playing croquet and games with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder and...

Did you go up in a hot air balloon with Tom Waits? I can't think of anything more terrifying in a way. He didn't do it. He was the one person that didn't partake in all these activities. But because I think he was touring. So he wasn't in on any of those rehearsals. But he's not a trained actor. Right.

But he is the best and most inventive improviser I have ever had the privilege of working with. And many of your scenes, obviously. were with Tom. Yeah, he was absolutely extraordinary. And he's an English accent and we were stuck in a padded cell. He played Renfield and I really loved working with him and I've never seen him since. Is that right? Yeah, he was absolutely

amazing. But you know, it's talk about Francis Ford Coppola. He works I said, you know, you seem to work almost like a circus ringmaster with many, many people and he said, well put it like this I can't cook for two people, I cook for 30. Right. And that is essentially the metaphor for how he operated, that there were kids, children, dogs, visitors on the set every other day. He would play music to get people in the mood of what the scene was. So you felt that he was whipping everybody into action

as opposed to, in complete contrast, who I worked with a director immediately after Dracula was finished, Martin Scorsese on Age of Innocence, who works in monastic silence. and whether it was to do with... I wonder if it was that material in particular. Material of playing his upper class, New Yorkers. But Michael Bauhaus, the late Michael Bauhaus cinematographer

who'd done Dracula and then did Age of Innocence straight afterwards. I said to him, you've worked with Mr. Scorsese before. How has it been on his other things? He said, oh yeah, it's always really quiet like this. It's almost at a whisper. So, I... You're like...

You're tip to a museum rather than... I mean, so less enjoyable, but that product, I love that film. I mean, that's another one, honestly. Right. Well, I know, I'm much more social and noisy, so, as you can tell. So I prefer the Coppola Circus as opposed to the Scorsese silence. Well, I'm curious, like, back to Dracula for a second, something about that production. I don't know if it was a top-down thing from Francis or from Gary Oldman, but like, something about the style and approach, several actors, like, they're going for broke in the best possible way.

I think of Tom Waits. I think of Hopkins, I think of Oldman. There was something about that production where I feel like there was a license to go a little bigger. Exactly right, because the production design and the costumes by that extraordinary Japanese... She passed away a couple years ago, right, yeah.

It gave you, you felt that the scale of it was operatic and Coppola certainly wanted things on a large scale. There was nothing apologetic or particularly Mike Lee about it. It was the opposite of that. In contrast, you've worked several times with the late great Robert Altman. Yeah.

And he seemed to be a wholly unique filmmaker. I feel like I've never heard other filmmakers even approach. I mean, like, I know P.T. Anderson considers himself a disciple of Altman, but I think of him as a little bit more stylistically minded. Yeah, I agree. What was the appeal? How did you gel with Robert Altman?

He works, he worked in, and I miss him enormously. There's not a day goes by. I don't think of what a loss it is that we don't have him directing him more films. And I've just privileged that I got to work on three of his films, even if one of them, pretiporte stroke, ready to wear, as it was called here, was a flop.

But the way he works is very democratic, and it feels like you're back being a theater company because there are two tiers of salaries so that even if you're Julia Roberts or Sophia Loren, they may get a higher amount of money and you may be on a slightly lower rung. But you know that nobody's in there making big bucks. So that means that the whole hierarchy

and pyramid of star at the top and then people down in the mudflats below is completely dispensed with. So in the makeup tent, for instance, you would have to stand in line behind, you know, five famous people that were being painted and decorated and, you know, wigged up ahead of you. And what that means is that he's not spending any money on big Winnebagoes or entourages of people. He dispenses with all of that. And it's about making the movie because he didn't have the budgets for them and he had no interest in that.

And the other thing that he did, which was unique in my experience, is he invited everybody to see that. the dailies or the rushes, whatever you call them, in the evening or at the weekend. And he always had a party on a Sunday night. He always had a joint at the end of the day of work. And he always employed some musicians, stroke actors, so that they would provide the free entertainment at the weekly party. So, you know, it was an absolute blast working for him. I just, and he was very loyal to actors. He liked people with long faces who were tall and skinny. So for me, I was like fitted the prototype. I was just, I cannot tell you how much I, I loved working for that man. Well, he's a comic, e Grant, E Grant. He's a hilarious. He fit to the two categories.

I mean, both that like he could create sounds like an atmosphere. As you said, you're more of like the social type. You want to have a social atmosphere on a film. Yeah. And the proofs in the pudding. He could actually, you know, I'm sure there's some filmmakers that can have a fun time on a set and not deliver the finished product, but he was able to do both, which is a rarity. And the other thing that he did is that he had multiple cameras in the same way that he'd have 16 actors, and he really

pioneered that way, way back. The wireless mics. The wireless mics said, you have 16 people, and he'd say, it doesn't matter if you overlap, because in real life, people talk over each other. And of course, for some sound editing departments, that is the absolute nightmare antithesis of how

they want to do their job. But it means that you never need. You never knew whether your character was in close-up or on a wide shot or not even on screen at all. So it meant that you have to completely throw yourself into the scene that you're doing and it means that any

vanity or, you know, people worrying about touch-ups or am I in my close-up? Am I phoning this performance? And all the stuff that you can, I've seen on movies, people get corrupted by. They think, well, you know, I've done my close-up, I don't need to bother for the other person's coverage. Well, and also

I would think for an actor, like the moment you check out in any way from the environment you're in is death and for some actors it's tough to key back into that. Yeah. And he created an environment where you're in it all the time or you're not in a Robert Altman film. Exactly.

And he always said that he saw he essentially saw the frame the envelope frame of a movie screen is that he was as interested in what was going on the left hand corner and the right hand corner as opposed to what was supposed to be

The central focus in the middle of the movie. And, of course, that didn't always work. But his curiosity and his passion for movies and interesting people never abated until the day that he stopped breathing. It speaks volumes to the breadth of material that you've created in your career that I can go from Robert Altman to Spice World. Sensational film. Was that Altman? I can't remember. I'm a little rusty on.

Well, no, that was an eight-year-old daughter of the person that's speaking to you right now, saying, Dad, you've been offered the part of the Spice World's manager. I don't care if you offered a 10-year Disney contract. She said this at eight. She said, you have to be in the Spice World movie because I want to meet them. And so for, I did, and an amazing time with them. And so for about two terms on the school playground, I was about, I felt like Harrison Ford walking around because I was besieged by people. And then, of course, what follows is when they hit their teenage years, there's the shame of them having been Spicewell fans.

But then it sort of goes – it goes full circle. So you get them – the people that felt ashamed are now going for the reunion concerts or whatever they can do. So, you know, I can't knock it because Adele, you know, we share the same birth tape with the same bank account or birth year, she sought me out and I got tickets to go and see her show because – She was a spice girls fan. Amazing. You know, who would have thought? Lina Dunham gave me four episodes of girls because she was a spice world fan.

So, you know, it's, it's, yeah, there's no accounting for anything. And I'm here today, obviously, because you love Hudson Hawks so much. You never know. Speaking of musical icons, you've been directed by Madonna. Yes, I have. Yeah. I've known her through Sandra Bernhardt. Well, I first met her.

I went to, I went to Sandra to Madonna. house for Valentine's dinner in 1990. So I've known her some decades and she really pulled a fast one because she called me up and she said, I've written a short 12 to 15 minute film and I want you to play this blind who's, die of AIDS guy who was my dance teacher when I was a teenager and I'd like you to be in this thing called filth and wisdom. So, you know, I was for practically no money, a whisperer and a fart. So I went and did this. And then she said, she called me a couple of months later and she said,

oh, we just need to do a couple more bits. And then there's another week of shooting. And the next thing, I don't hear anything from her at all, tumbleweed. Madonna's 90-minute film is at the Berlin Film Festival. And I thought, hmm, how did you manage to stretch that chewing gum out to that length? Anyway, she did. I didn't get any more money. And I have never seen it, but I have been accosted by people who've said, it's probably

one of the worst things that I've seen. So, you know, the bottom line of all of this is that you're speaking to a total whore. I think that's what it boils down to. Let's go full circle. You've brought up filth and wisdom. You've brought up Hudson Hawke. And I just, you know, what can I do? Carmically, I'm going to come around to this wonderful success now.

I want to make sure we have time to pay homage to this great work. that I've seen twice. So can you ever forgive me? Is this delightful kind of character study about a few characters in New York. And I'm a born-bred New Yorker. And while this is not my life, these are not my people, I recognize these people very, very well.

Oh, good. And I'm curious, like, do you recognize them too? I mean, obviously, you didn't grow up here. But there's something wonderfully charming about the, these are survivors. These are desperate survivors. They are. They're failing upwards. Yeah.

With as much, you know, gastos that they can muster. Do you have an affinity for these? I think one of the tributes of the great accomplishments of what Marianne Heller has done in this film is that you have such empathy for these characters. They're not judged. They're not belittled. No.

And their sexuality is not... I mean, considering that Melissa McCarthy is playing an incredibly spiky curmudine of a woman who happens to be lesbian my character is HIV positive and gay Dolly Wells is playing a woman

who is dealing with her coming out but they what I was so struck by in the way that it was written and the way that it was directed was they're just that is who those people are it's not you don't don't ever feel that it's on a soapbox or that there's big slushy strings coming out or that

Maria Callis is going to be on the soundtrack. It's got none of the things that you would kind of usually expect of a movie that is dealing with people who sexual orientation is not heterosexual cinema. Right. If you like. Yeah. So makes sense? Yeah, absolutely. It's not underlined. It's not like, yeah, I mean, it's sort of just at a certain point you kind of realize it without even, you know, there's not a big coming-out speech by Moshe McCarthy's character. No. And I think that Jeff Witty and Nicole Holof-Senter's screenplay is so, I think that once you understand

how and why people do what they do, that Lee Israel fell on hard times in that, as a respected biographer, she couldn't, she didn't have a social skill or impulse to schmooze people and become, try and become a Tom Clancy celebrity in her own writer. Right. So she subsumed herself into the people that she was writing about.

And, you know, her interest was in writing a book about Fanny Bryce. And as her agent says, no, he's going to use ten bucks to write a book about Fanny Bryce. Right. So that doesn't stop Lee Israel because this is a commodgeon that she is and, you know, so pig-headed. She goes to an archive, a library, or whatever, and it finds a letter. that's in a book inadvertently written by Fanny Bryce and then steals the letter and sells it and then realizes that she can earn money

by writing postscripts and then impersonating everybody from Louise Brooks, Noel Coward, Lillian Hellman, Marlene and Dietrich, Dorothy Parker, up down and sideways, and convinces dealers that these are the real things. So this act of literary ventriloquism, I think, is such an extraordinary thing And because she did this kind of under the radar

and at her court case there were four people. Right. You would think that a scam like this would have garnered much more publicity than it did, but because she lived her life so invisibly and you're taken into this story via the screenplay in the way that Mario Hela has conceived it, that I think, like anything,

once you understand why somebody does what they do, you can't help but root for them feel compassion. I'm curious, like, this has been so well received since, you know, it's kind of the film festival sort of, it's kind of these amazing reviews, in particular for your performance, but also generally for the film. You know, we've talked, like, in jest about sort of the ups and downs, some films that have been extremely well received in a career, starting with Nell and I, to the Hudson Hawks.

Like, at this point, are you, do you expect, are you a pessimist or optimist? Like, I'm sure you felt satisfied, and you certainly sounds like you've enjoyed your time with Mariel and Melissa. but when something comes out, are you, do you protect yourself? Are you sort of like waiting for the other shoot-a-drop, or were you expecting this to land the way it has? This is beyond, the response that it's had is beyond anything that any of us who were involved

could possibly have anticipated it. Because there are no car chases, there are no special effects. It doesn't, on paper, you go, how is this something that you can say? sell. So we knew from a teleride a month ago the film festival where it first launched, having no

idea what the response would be that we heard people laugh a lot and we heard people crying at the end. And then people would come up to us because it's such an intimate festival. You walk around this ski resort that's in the summertime and people who've seen the movie would just come up to you on the ski gondolas or whatever and go we really felt something. We really love this movie and you go

Okay, thank you, thank you. Nobody said, we really love this movie. And that sort of tsunami effect has been, went through Toronto and, you know, I've seen Melissa every day on this press junket, and we've constantly been saying to each other, when is the bad stuff going to come? Because it just, seriously, it hasn't. And if you've been around, certainly as long as I have, you know that the chances are that something's going to fall off down the canyon hole and suddenly going to say,

I really didn't like it. But that hasn't happened. So, well, that translates into people, you know, paying money to actually gather their apartments or houses to go and see the thing. You know, that's the gamble. But we have been astonished by that. I also, you know, praise is an odd thing that every actor that I know, because I think the nature of being an actor is that you have this combination of low self-esteem and large ego. The ego being, you know, give me the job over somebody else. But then when you have got it, you feel that you're not as worthy as somebody else.

I always think that everybody else can and could and probably will do a better job than I do. And that's not being disingenuous. It's just absolutely the nature of it. I think part of it is that you don't have a job for life. Every job, you're as good as the next one. And I've also been in so many things where people have predicted things or said, you know, This is going to do that. This is going to do that.

So I just, you know, literally like addicts, you take it a day at a time. And today is a good day. You get a good review or good response. You go, yeah, it's good for that day. But you know that the next day somebody's going to come around and go, I hate you. Well, it does feel like, I mean, yeah, from the outside looking in, as far as acting careers go, it feels like a, I mean, again, this is my vantage point, a consistent career. You've worked very, very consistently for ever since with Nail and I. Well, thank you, but that is the advantage

to being a character actor because you are You don't have to fit one kind of thing. Your availability and you know you can slot into things and you're not, there's not a huge risk that somebody is spending a gazillion dollars on whether you're going to sell a movie or not. Right.

You know, and I imagine for the handful of people that do have that status and position it must be a constant worry of like, you know, how long can this last? Well, yeah, again, it speaks to the versatility. You're probably the only living human being that has appeared in girls, Downton Abbey, and Game of Thrones.

And now Star Wars. Now Star Wars. Where's your Harry Potter and James Bond? That's all I want to know. Exactly. That's what I want to know. Yeah, exactly. Please get the word out there.

It's not for lack of trying. I'm trying to help. Star Wars, I talked you a little bit about our mutual love of JJ when I saw you at the Toronto Party. I remember. So this has been an enjoyable experience, I think. just, I would assume, mixing it up with this genius that is JJ Abrams.

Yeah, extraordinary, because, you know, again, there's a situation where I would have thought the amount of success that he has and the amount of money that he has accrued, I don't know how much precisely, but we know that it's more than you and I will ever have, unless you're an oil baron sitting here in your, sadly not. ...that, on a daily basis, every time I've worked with him, he has, I've said, please, judge, you can just pinch my shoulder to know that I'm actually here and I'm in Star Wars for Day before

I get cut out of the movie or whatever happens. And he is as excited from day one when we began shooting on the 1st of August as every time I've intermittently seen him because even though he's directed him before and he's had

such incredible success in his life and still is 10 years younger than me. He is as wide-eyed in Babylon about it all, as I certainly feel. And that's, you know, that's very endearing because it's very easy to be cynical and to go, you know, you understand the business side of it

and how, I remember the first time I ever worked in L.A. in 1988 where, I think, in the first three days, the amount of people that said, we're so excited, we're so excited, and I realize they said the same thing about a donut. It's not meaningless, you've rendered it meaningless. Yeah, so I've sort of since taken that praise. And I think most actors, a lot of actors I know can quote verbatim, the worst reviews they've ever had. Whereas the good ones, I don't know.

I don't know anybody that believes them. I was in a supermarket, the equivalent of Whole Foods or whatever in England, and an elderly woman was pushing a trolley and came up to me. And because I'm tall, I thought, oh, she's going to ask me to, you know, pull down the Kellogg's conflicts for everyone, top shelf or something. And she said, are you Richard Egrad? And I said, yes. She said, yes, I don't like you. Oh, no, I've got to fuck off. And I stood there thinking, what if I don't deserve this?

So, you know, you have no idea what's coming at you, is the point. If you're not, I'm not going to try and get any Star Wars spoilers out of you. I know you're under walking key on that. Well, you know what character I'm playing. I'm playing the part of. Your audio just dropped out, Richard? Yes. How does that happen where the audio drops out in person in front of me?

It just did. And the plot that I play, the plot line that I have is, it goes, oh no here we go again you're just going to have to fire your sound editor exactly that's me I think I'm firing myself so my question though is wait do I have this right did you not even know you were up for a Star Wars movie

when you kind of like put yourself out there for this I got sent a 10 page generic sort of I think it was an interrogation scene from a 90th clearly a 1940s British B picture because the references were not Star Wars and the

The language was something that my grandfather would have spoken in. And I thought, you know, there were three contrasting scenes that you were supposed to show as much versatility as you could muster in a self-taping situation. So I did that and sent it off, you know, it goes into cyberspace and you don't even think about it again because it's what actors, you know, at my level do all the time. You audition, you send stuff out and you never hear.

And then I got a call for my agent saying, oh, will you go to Pinewood Studios? to send a car to pick you up and I thought why that that's never happened to me before a car to go and have a meeting so they did and I got there and the casting director Nina gold had got me in there the first place was very smiley and she said oh you're you guys said what am I here for what am I I I don't have any scenes to prepare I've not been told she said no don't worry about that so I went in and JJ was sitting with Daisy Aydley um and said hey you know great you come in so are you going to do it And I said, do what?

Where am I? What's happening? And at this point, the room went upside down. And I'm sure he was telling me in detail what part I was playing, what the character was called. I have no memory of that whatsoever. I just kept thinking, I might be in Star Wars. I kept waiting for him to say, well, you're going to come in and stand in for somebody else because we need somebody to test who's your height or your age or whatever.

But no, he kept saying. This is for Donald Sutherland. We're going to get going to get again. Exactly. I said, you are going to do this, are you? And I said, of course, I'm going to do this. So that's what happened And I still didn't really believe that it was going to happen

And it still might not, you know I know the vagary is such of my paranoia That you can shoot stuff and then be cut out of it Has that happened to you? There's always a first time It's not going to happen, it's not a first time We're not going to drink so today How do all this without having a list of questions in front of you?

Well, because I'm a fan, because I know this stuff I'm not pretending. Well, no, that's astonishing And the earwig, I have this little thing It's the old Marlon Brando thing. Oh, right. You're Robert Danny Dewey. You're being fed information.

And I'm being told... And I'm being told to let you go back into the wild, sadly. Ah, okay. As you can tell. Are you do have any of peace? No, I don't. Oh, I see. That's my old man hair probably coming out.

Oh, right. How old you? 42. 42, right. Okay. So got all your hair and teeth. Astonishingly. Not a great hair in sight.

I'll show you the dentures afterwards. Oh, okay. This has been such a delight. Thank you. Thank you for putting. up with my silly Hudson Hawk talk. Well, thank you for putting up with my career that has with his fake, Hudson Hawk within them.

Thankfully, the reason you came in today, again, worthwhile, can you ever forgive me? I can't enthusiastically endorse this movie enough. It's just a delight. Thank you. Your performance is wonderful, as is Melissa's, of course, the whole ensemble. Check it out, and I know this is a silly time of year where we talk awards and stuff,

but I'm hoping I see you on the silly circuit as we continue. It's a film that is worthy of, recognition and certainly your performances as well. I'll shake your hand on that. All right. Good to see, buddy. Thank you very much. And so ends another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

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