Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Eddie Redmayne

Episode Date: October 23, 2022

Eddie Redmayne always knew he wanted a life on stage so he began acting lessons at age 10. By his early 20s, London theater had recognized him as an Outstanding Newcomer to the West End. Soon he made his way to Broadway and Hollywood. Now, the 40-year-old Redmayne is starring in  the chilling Netflix crime drama The Good Nurse  with Jessica Chastain, based on a little known, horrific, true story. In this week's "Sunday Sitdown," Willie Geist got together with the actor in New York.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks, as always, for clicking and listening along. Very excited to bring you my conversation this week with Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne. He won that Oscar for his performance as Stephen Hawking in the 2014 film, The Theory of Everything. He was nominated the very next year, by the way, for the same Best Actor Award for his performance in The Danish Girl. Highly acclaimed actor got his start as a boy in London, comes from a third. family with no experience on stage or screen, nothing in entertainment, but he just caught the bug as a kid, went on from there. Played in Shakespeare when he was in college, was noticed by a talent agent, and pulled on to West End stages where he won awards.

He won a Tony Award in New York City as well, performing on Broadway. His first major film role, how's this for a start, directed by Robert De Niro, starring alongside Angelina Jolie and Matt Damon in the 2006 movie The Good Shepherd. He went on to do the theory of everything, Le Miserab, the fantastic Beast movie. The List is Long. His latest is called The Good Nurse. It's a Netflix film that is the true story of a nurse-turned serial killer named Charles Cullen. In case you don't know or remember the story, Cullen, over the course of 16 years, killed at least 40 people. Investigators say that number could be up into the hundreds while working at nine different hospitals.

He kind of got shipped from hospital to hospital in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He would slip too much of a heart drug into a saline bag and kill people. And this was uncovered by a woman, the nurse, the good nurse, played by Jessica Chastain in the movie. It's an incredible film, an amazing performance by him. And there's just a lot to talk to. Super thoughtful guy, great, interesting career, married with two young kids. He's seen a lot in Hollywood and kept his head about him. So I hope you sit back and enjoy a great conversation right now with Eddie Redmayne on the Sunday Sitdown podcast.

Eddie, thanks for doing this. Morning. It's a pleasure. It's a lovely to see. We're going to have a long conversation about the American health care system. Just a deep dive on a Sunday morning. It's exactly what everyone wants to hear about on Sunday morning. I have to congratulate you on this film.

My gosh, your performance in it is just stunning. I'm going to call it creepy, but I mean that is a compliment because the character deserves it. and had certainly earned it. Yes. For people who don't know the story, it's a true story, the good nurse. So who is Charles Cullen? And what was it about, I don't want to say this character that appealed to you, but that compelled you to step in and play him?

So Charles Cullen was a male nurse living and working in New Jersey and Pennsylvania through the 90s. and he on the surface seemed like a kind, gentle, empathetic, very good fastidiousness, but was actually killing people and many people. And he was moved on from hospital to hospital, even though some of these hospitals had a sense of what he was doing. And it took one extraordinary woman, a woman called Amy Loprin, who Jessica Chastain plays in the film.

who befriended Charlie and was very close to Charlie, and in the end was the person who managed to prevent him doing what he was doing. Yeah. It's a true story. It is, yeah. He is a serial killer. I mean, the numbers are staggering. Yeah, at least 40, but maybe many, many more than that, into hundreds.

Multiple hundreds, perhaps. Were you familiar at all with this story? I was telling you, I grew up in New Jersey. And I remember hearing something about it, but having watched the film and then researched a little more, I had no idea the extent to which he was killing people. I knew nothing about it. I first read Christy Wilson Cairns' script,

and I was kind of astonished by what I was reading. I was astonished I didn't know about the story. He may be the most prolific serial killer in American history, but also what I loved about it was it was a hero story. It was how one individual, this nurse, Amy Lockham, was able to succeed in doing things that the systems failed to do. And it felt like, you know, particularly at this moment, like the power of the individual is an amazing thing

and that we can get caught in our ways in the infrastructure of these systems. But that felt kind of important to me. Was there any part of you that hesitated to take this role because of who he is, or did that make it more of a challenge and more interesting to you? For me, because the script was unlike anything I'd read, it didn't seem to fit into a genre. On the one hand, it was this hero's journey. On the other hand, it was a kind of character study of these two people.

But at the core of it was also how this woman, you know, nowadays violence is met with violence. And this film felt like violence being prevented through compassion and empathy and humanity, which I thought was intriguing. So it was that coupled with Jessica Chastain, who I think is just one of the great actors of our generational generations, and she's also a pal with know each other for a few years. And so the idea of getting to play this with her

with a wonderful Danish directical, Tabiris Linheim at the helm, it felt like an interesting thing. It was fascinating to watch too because you played it right in here from start to finish. There was no moment in the movie where you, oh, now I see his dark side or he's gone nuts or something like that. It's that he was, I think, what makes it all the scarier, really, is that he felt charming in some ways. He felt like he too was empathetic as a nurse. What did you find in him as you started to study that you wanted to portray in the character?

Well, prepping for it, there is an amazing book called The Good Nurse by a brilliant man called Charlie Graber. And the last third of the book is our story. And the other two thirds are kind of a biography of Charlie Cullen. And this man, I mean, it was an extreme upbringing he had. This guy aged seven. He was abused by one of his siblings' partners and tried to kill this man. and then try to kill himself, age seven. He, age 15, his mother, who he was very close to, died in a car crash,

and when he arrived at the hospital, they had lost her body. And he was pretty traumatized by that. He then went into the Navy. And when he was in the Navy, he passed all the psychiatric tests to get into the Navy. And it was only when he was found with his fingers over a Poseidon missile button in a submarine that he was kind of expelled from the Navy and he then went back to the hospital that his mum had died at to train to be a nurse.

The idea that he was ever allowed near vulnerable people was pretty extreme. But Amy Lockerun, the real Amy, we were lucky enough to spend time before making the movie and the thing that she said is that was like the most importance to her was this was two different human beings. Her friend, the man who saved her life, was kind, gentle, sensitive, funny. He would use his sort of how screwed up his home life was in this kind of self-deprecating way.

And then she met the monster twice, and it was a different human being. So it felt very important for Jessica and I to really mind the truth of the friendship, rather than playing any sort of tropes, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, he cared for her children and everything else. I mean, they were as close as can be. Just the facial expressions and all the things that draw the audience in, we were talking about the 60 Minutes interview that he did, but that came later.

He's in jail at that point, and he's sort of in a different place. How did you capture that sort of physical essence? of him because that's, to me, that's the part that just like, wow, he's just, he's never too high, he's ever down here, you're just kind of always locked in. Well, there's a, I think that the part I love about my job is kind of getting to immerse yourself and throw yourself into a world and characters, people you knew nothing about. In the book, Charles Graber describes Charlie Cullen as looking like a question mark. And it's specific to his physicality, which was

had this very unique kind of hunch but also it's about blankness and about kind of anonymity this was a man that would sort of disappear into the sidelines and observe and so that was an insight

but also there's amazing footage and recordings so I've worked with a wonderful movement director of dancer who I first worked with on theory of everything and she and I did some work and that question mark posture thing she described how it was almost like he was being held up

by the collar of his, the nape of his neck and that he was observing the world sort of from that place and I found that pretty useful and there was something also about a traumatized seven-year-old in that that was helpful forgive the perhaps trite acting question but was it hard to get out of that man once you're inside his head

as deeply as you were? I have a six-year-on, the four-year-old. And for the sake of my wife's sanity, staying in Charlie Cullen would not have been enjoyable for anyone. So no, I definitely, the interesting thing about making this film is Jessica Chastain and her husband and her children. We all have kids the same age.

Tobias, our director, is a wonderful family man. And so despite the intensity of the story, Definitely, it was play dates at weekends. There was tequila on a Friday. Good. Imagine you needed the tequila on a Friday. Tequila on a Friday was quite an essential element of the making of this film. Okay, good.

I'm glad to hear you're able to bounce in and out of it. The other piece of this that we were discussing a minute ago is the responsibility of these hospitals that kept passing Charlie along. Suspicious that maybe he had killed people, or at least that he'd been doing things that were unethical. it leaves the viewer of this movie at the end going, how on earth did he go on this long without anybody stopping him until Amy finally stepped in? Well, I mean, there are tons of reasons. One is that it's really hard to be a nurse.

And I was sent to nursing school with Jessica for a couple of weeks, and whilst I've always appreciated what nurses do, the fact that you have to be brilliant at science, brilliant at maths, you have to be physically strong. That's something I'd underestimated is the physical graft of being a nurse. You've also got to have this unfounding emotional intelligence

to be a conduit between doctors and families and people at their most vulnerable. So the skill set that you need is extraordinary and they are underpaid. And so this period in the 90s there was a massive nurse shortage particularly in New Jersey

and so the eagerness to have anyone was one thing also he was working night shoots I was working night shoots he was no one he was a night shift which the which is again not the desirable shift but you're right there was it was nine different hospitals he went to

and when you know when healthcare for profit is there and the bottom line becomes the thing that needs to be protected and the systems become dehumanized, you see that these are the fractures, these are the things that can fall through the cracks. And I find it dumbfounding. And I think it's interesting that, like,

you may have heard of the story, and I hadn't heard of the story, and yet this man may be the most prolific serial killer in American history, and you kind of wonder why, Like, oh, is there something, is there a reason it's not more known? Yeah, and I understand the instinct toward profit from, for hospitals. But my goodness, you think you could weed out the guy who you suspect is killing patients. That's the part that doesn't add up.

Yeah, I agree. Which is the next hospital hasn't looked in sufficiently or is so desperate for a nurse. They just take them based on what he said on the resume. Or the fear of liability. Right. And so it takes two detectives. Yeah. And it takes Amy.

to finally get to the bottom of all this. Is there a lesson in that, do you think, for hospitals writ large? I mean, there were definitely lessons in the case. I know that laws would change as a consequence of Charlie's being arrested. And one is that now whenever there is a complaint about a nurse that has to stay on the record for seven years. But it was astonishing to me that that wasn't happening before. And similarly, things have been shifted

about hospitals having to be more open about nurses' opinions on other nurses. But talking to Charles Graber, who is the authority on this, who wrote the book, he says there's still a huge amount of room for change. I don't know what the answer is, but for me, you know, people in hospitals, they are at their most vulnerable. families are at their most vulnerable and it's the humanity that needs protecting. Yeah, yeah, and you're right, the job is more than the medical piece of it. You're dealing with people at some of the lowest moments of their lives and pain and anguish

and grief and leave and death. Yeah. And you're that first line of emotional intelligence. I think particularly during COVID we've all learned to appreciate nurses more than ever. Absolutely that. And what the sort of ramifications of that are day and day out. for nurses. I mean, I absolutely believe that, you know, during COVID, it was a massive wake-up call to the world for the brilliance of healthcare workers and the extremity of what they go through.

Have you heard from Amy or anyone else about the film? We have. We have. So when we first, when I first met Amy before we made the movie, it was via Zoom because we were coming out the end of COVID. And I was lucky enough to get to meet her at Toronto at the film festival. And when the film played, um, afterwards, our director brought her on stage and the audience left to their feet.

It's an extraordinary story hers. And the amazing thing about Amy is she believes she did what anyone would have done. And actually the heroism, uh, and the courage that it took is, is for anyone who, who watches the movie is, it's pretty,

or knows the story. It's pretty profound. Um, but she, sees herself as, you know, just doing what anyone would do. Yeah, I don't want to give away too much about the movie, but she goes to great lengths. She does. To expose this man who had been her good friend. Yeah.

She takes some real risks to do it. Yeah. And she's the detectives couldn't crack them. Yeah. So they bring her in to do it. It's kind of amazing. Well, congratulations. It's an amazing performance.

Thank you so much. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Eddie Redmayne right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Eddie Redmayne. I'm just going to go back a little bit toward the beginning from where we are now, the Oscar-winning actor that you are, and see how this all started for you. Still sounds weird. I can see.

You flinched a bit, didn't you? You're still getting used to that. All these years later. You haven't got used to that. How did it start for you? Because I'm looking at your family background, and I don't see a lot of theater. I don't see a lot of stage work. I don't see the things that you fell in love with at such an early age.

So where was that born for you? You're right. I don't come from a family who were massive theatre fans or film or music fans. But I don't know. I had an instinct to me. I loved music and singing and acting at school. And to my parents' credit, which now as a parent myself, I really do hold highs. They just, anything I had an interest in,

and what all my brothers had an interest in, they supported. And so as a young kid, I went to this place, occasionally at weekends that was called the Jackie Palmer Children's, like, Theatre Club, School. And I would sing a bit and act a bit. And I got to do a product when I was like 11 years old. There was a production of Oliver, the musical in London. And I was cast as one of hundreds of children in that. And I used to get to leave my school, stand up in the middle class, take the tube. to Oxford Circus

and go into the stage door of the London Palladium, which is one of the most beautiful old theatres in London and do this piece of music, a piece of theatre that I adore, and I was completely hypnotised by it. And I describe it as a drug

because it sort of was, and it remains one. I did a production of cabaret in London this year, and similarly, going into the underbelly of a theatre in London, is a special thing. Yeah, all the smells. The smells, the costumes, the, you know,

seeing all these wigs and props and the kind of, you know, the fact that it is all, it's fake and it's magic, you know, it's sort of one-dimensional behind that, you see that it, but yet when you're in front in the audience, it suspends you into a different, different world. You had some good company at Jackie Palmer.

We were talking about your friend, James Corden. James was there. Aaron Taylor Johnson was there. Yeah. Cradle of greatness. Well, I mean, we definitely didn't know it at the time. I'm not sure.

I was, yeah, I would sing sort of, I would go and there would be these showcases every year in High Wickham, and I would go and sing memory from cats. And James would do some street dance, which means that going on James' show is horrendous. Because normally when you do these talks, talk shows, you know, they dig up material, but they kind of check it with you first. Right.

When you go on James's talk show, he has, like, he has access to an archive that I don't even know exists. So I, yeah, as when he humiliated me last week on his talk show, I saw that. I'm thrilled that it's coming to an end. I'm thrilled that no more skeletons will be dragged out. That was quite an outfit you had on there in that photograph. Yeah. We won't show it here.

Don't worry. It was a thing. We'll try to bury it for you. I was a student. I was trying to make, I was trying to, I mean, there's no point excusing it. It was disastrous. Thanks, Woody. Listen, we've all had our moments.

Yeah, really? We'll give you a pass on that. I didn't have that moment. I did not have that moment. But your reaction was hilarious. In only a way a friend could respond to something like that on national television. Yeah, there you go. So when did it start, Eddie, to get more serious for you?

You sort of liked it. It was fun. You were a kid doing plays. When did it become something that maybe could be, a career, a job? Well, while I was at university, it was the 400th anniversary of 12th night, Shakespeare's play. And there's a building, beautiful medieval building in London

called the Middle Temple Hall that's a Lawyers Inn. And they had commissioned Shakespeare to write this play, and 400 years on, they commissioned the now sort of new Globe Theatre in London to put on a 400th anniversary production in that space. and they wanted it to be all male, as it had been done originally. And Mark Rylance was running the Globe then, and he played Olivia, and they were looking for a young guy to play Viola. And somehow I got cast in that.

And that, again, was where, you know, I'd always dreamt of doing this as a profession, but I didn't know how feasible that was. But through that experience, working with Mark at the Globe, they had voice coaches and verse coach. It was kind of my drama school, really. And I suppose that's where I began to take it and myself seriously. Was there ever anything else in the equation?

Did your parents ever, despite all the sport whisper to you, that this was going to be a tough road? Maybe she went to medical school. Endless whispers. Endless whispers. But like, and you know, you look back and go, I mean, my dad was, he works in finance. And so he was good with statistics.

And he was always sort of saying, you know, how many people want to be actors and how many actors are out of work. And so it's true. I again, I understand it. Like as a parent, you just don't want your kids to be okay. And I can totally imagine going like, you're going into this world we know nothing about. And it's hard. But again, they were nothing but supportive.

And it's been a real lesson from me as a parent. So they did kind of encourage me to go to university to have a sort of backup plan. But so I did. And I studied history of art, which is something that I love. And everyone's always like, what would you have done otherwise? And I kind of go, maybe a curator. And I have no idea. But I think I would be useless. I'm useless at selling things. So it's a good that's worked out otherwise. There's no backup plan. There's no backup plan. You find some success on the stage, for sure, in London. And then you decide it's time to

move to Hollywood and check that out. You make it sound so... Yes. I'm off to Hollywood. Skipped off to Hollywood from the West End. You live in a house, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's you, Andrew Garfield, Jamie Dornan, and others? No, that is slightly wrong. The truth is that Jamie and I live together.

But it's a different time I lived with Andrew. But we were all a group of actors who would find ourselves in Los Angeles normally in the rainy months in London. In theory, going to try and get work, but I genuinely don't think I ever got any work in Los Angeles. But we would audition relentlessly, and we would be helping each other with our auditions,

quite often auditions, which we would then be auditioning for. And I look back on it as this, I was with Andrew last week, and when I go to L.A., it's sort of flooded in nostalgia. I definitely look back on it, rose to his spectacles. I was like, man, he wasn't wonderful. And he's like, yeah, it was. And I'm like, was it though? You know, actually, actually, it was a lot of rejection and table tennis. And, yeah, that was how we'd pass our time. And then a lot of really bad sort of, I remember just perpetually

driving around Los Angeles with sheets of these sides for auditions, you know, with 12 different American accents, none of which you were probably particularly nailing. And the thing about Los Angeles, which to this day I struggle with, is like, it's traffic, nightmare. Total nightmare. So I would either be an hour early or two hours late and arriving. I always, it was when Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling did that film La La Land. But it really caught something, that feeling of sort of sitting outside an audition room with like seven other guys. Right.

Pretty similar to you. Right. It's quite, which I can now look back on romantically, but it definitely didn't. I think that's true of everyone. They look back on their 20s. Wasn't it great? Wasn't it wonderful? Struggling, I couldn't pay my rent.

Exactly. You know, eating garbage. It's like there was nothing. So you do get a little bit of a break on the Good Shepherd, fair to say, right? Yeah. And you're thrust into the film industry with maybe two of the biggest stars on Earth. Angelina Jolie and Matt Damon. What did you learn on that set?

that made me help you down the road? Well, I remember, you know, I'd sort of been flown over from London. I was staying in a beautiful hotel, you know, big cars, driving you to Brooklyn to set every morning. And, you know, there'd be paparazzi outside the, and then you'd have thousands of people working, and then you'd be here in a scene like this, and there would be a crew of hundreds,

and Robert De Niro behind the camera. And I just, the amazing, amount of nerves I felt. It was too much. Like I couldn't actually. And so I remember the thing about you know, working on film is that cameras see everything. And there's sort of no room for nerves. So I think I sort of learned watching that film back that I've got to get rid of that somehow because I'd sort of rather get fired than be terrified. Do you see those nerves when you go watch that film? Oh yeah. I see myself. I do. And I have an amazing I learned some, I remember many things,

but De Niro would do this thing when you were shooting, you would do a take and if it was an emotional scene, he would keep you playing the scene, and once you finish the take rather than call cut, he would ask you to kind of bottle the emotion and go back to the top of the scene and start all over again, take that emotion and kind of repress it

and see where it took you the next time. And that became a technique on, during Lemme's arrival, on empty chairs and empty tables. That was something that I used and on the goodness, in the last moments of the film that are pretty intense. It was a technique that I asked to be as our director if we could use. So you learn on every job. You watch, I was so lucky from early on to work with formidable actors. Angelina, Jolie, Matt Damon, Cape Blanchet in early, you know, in work in which I was playing very small parts,

but you kind of watched how they, not only how they worked, but how they lived. And it's an odd life being an actor. You kind of, like, for all the glamour and the joy, it's, you, you're still a sort of circus nomad, you know, and trying to work out how to have, you know, family and, and, like, calm in and amongst the chaos. Stick around for more of my conversation with Eddie Redmayne right after a quick break.

Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Eddie Redmayne. It feels from the outside anyway that you've managed that piece of it pretty well. I don't think you think that way. I don't know. As I said, from the outside, maybe it's not true. But, I mean, I don't see you in the tabloids. You have a wonderful wife and kids. And it seems like you've lived as normal a life as one can live in your position.

Is that a conscious thing for you? It is. And, you know, my kids and my wife are everything to me. But as we were talking about earlier, it's so interesting because each age of your children, it's a different thing. It's like you sort of, and so suddenly the things of like, oh, do we travel and just travel the world together as a band? But like, does that create sort of a total accident? And there's no answer to it. I keep sort of expecting someone to come and be like, here's the answer.

But there is no answer. Let me tell you, it never comes. Have a couple. Yeah. Good to know. Yeah. We're just staying, just keep on and keeping on. But you've done well with that.

I mean, it seems you have so far. It's early. It's early. It's early. A lot of time. You mentioned Le Miz. Was that the breakout moment for you in terms of exposing yourself to a much wider audience and being a star of a movie effectively?

You know, it's so weird. you, one has no idea. Like it's, I feel like I can see that about my friends. I can see the moments when something happens. And, um, but for me, it always felt very gradual. You know, I sort of started in theater and then gradually moved into TV and film. And, and as far as like, like, like people stopping you and stuff, it was very a sort of gentle, um, shift and change.

And so there was never an overnight thing. I look at my, you know, my friends, um, and, and watch. I remember years ago I did a little bit of, um, um, um, I did a little bit of film with Kristen Stewart when she was young and then by the time we did press for it, she had done Twilight. And I just sort of watched her life just completely shift and her dealing very graciously with it. But like it was, so I feel I've been, I had a very lucky, you know, run of it.

And each time, each incremental shift I was able to kind of come to terms with it. you had to learn to sing and sing well for that movie, didn't you? It's so funny that movie because we shot it live, which meant that we were singing live on set, which was wonderful for the film, but my character sings really high, like really high. And if you dubbed it, you could have sort of sung it looking like sort of ugly sing

and then like sort of come back and try to, when you're miming it, make it look more sort of palatable for a camera. But sadly not. So there are definitely moments in that film, which are quite an intense watch, I think. But then when we came to sing at the Oscars, we had to sing at the Oscars live. And someone was like, could we bring it down a tone? Could we like bring it down a step? And the composers, they're like, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, wait a second. Why the hell didn't we do that when we were making the movie? No one would have had to look at my veins kind of pounding during the late now. I'm boring for these high notes. Yeah. I would pay good money to watch you, watch your old movies and go, oh, God. Yeah, no, no, no. The vein.

Oh, the veins. Yeah. No, that's a sort of form of, yeah, no, it's not good for actors to do that. At least for a few years. There's a weird thing with, like, when you watch a film, all you can see is the things you would shift and change. But so I think years and years later, occasionally you'll glimpse something and be like, you're slightly kind of to yourself. Yeah, I think experience. That comes with experience.

for sure. I mean, we all feel that way a little bit. I don't want the sound of my voice. I don't want to watch back. No, thank you. You did it. I did it. Let it go out into the world. Can't change it now. Seriously. You sort of smiled when I called you an Oscar winner a few minutes ago and said you never really get used to that. For the theory of everything, to have won the Oscar, to have won the Golden Globe, all that came for you as a result of that performance. What did that mean to you personally,

but also to your career and maybe the way you were perceived to have that statue in your hand. To me, I got into acting through theatre. That was sort of what I knew. Film I was pretty ill-educated on, and it was something I only came to later. So I don't think I'd ever even allowed myself to dream of that as a prospect. So the way that all came about and the making of the theory of everything, and the stakes felt very high on that film because I'd met Stephen and his family

and I adored them and I didn't want to let them down in a similar way to Jessica playing Amy Lockren in The Good Nurse when you know the people you're playing on watching the movie it heightens the sense of responsibility so when they were happy with the movie that meant the world

and then all the everything that came with it was it was a whirlwind honestly It was a, I was, Hannah and I got married between, I think, you know, between the film coming out and the awards, things happening. But while I was doing, I remember I was making the Danish girl while the Oscars happened. So I sort of went to L.A. for a day. And then the second I got off the plane, I went straight back onto set for the Danish girl. And so it was such a whirlwind of a time that it's, It's tricky to make sense of, but there was one moment at the end of the night of the Oscars,

because the second you win an Oscar, you get taken off the stage, thrust into this room with thousands of journalists. The adrenaline is pumping through your body, and you're being asked these questions, and then for the rest of the night you get moved from one place to others of smiling for selfies. You sort of don't have a moment to yourself or with, you know, with Hannah, you know. but it was only much later in the evening I was staying in a beautiful hotel in Los Angeles called the Sunset Tower Hotel and there's this room

it's this old deco very L.A. romantic building and we were some of my best mates were there and we were in this room overlooking Sunset Boulevard and the sun started to rise over Sunset Boulevard and we were out on the balcony and for me that that was moment that something that felt real and it was pretty extraordinary. Something about the,

you know, the history of that city and it was very, it was a lovely moment. It sounds like a scene from a movie. Sun coming up over sunset boulevard. Little on the nose, actually. A bit on the nose too much. Bit cringe. Yeah. Let's pull it back. Pull it back. Pull it back. Exactly. And then you get nominated the next year, by the way, so it just becomes old hat. I've got to ask you about fantastic beasts because I feel like that was an entirely new experience for you to be a part of such a massive billion-dollar franchise like that.

Did that do the thing that you saw in some of your friends later where, okay, now I'm in this thing that so many people of all ages around the world have seen. Did that change your ability to go outside and all those things? Or not really? I mean, I think that thing about the going outside thing

to a certain extent is a choice. Like I, in London, I mean, it did shift things because it's seen by gazillions of people. But those people that are passionate about that world, there's a great generosity to them. And they were sort of willing, you know, my new character. But the choice to, in London, for example, People are like, do you still get the tube?

And you go, well, like, you can't. It's like, it's like New York. It's like, you can't get around London without taking the tube. Unless it's going to take you five hours. So what comes with it is the odd surreptitious selfie, like, or, you know, photo being. But you, all people coming up, but generally people are really nice. So it's a sort of, we live a very normal life and it hasn't really changed things. It's, it's odd.

I'll tell you what's odd is sometimes when you go to countries you've never been to before. And so you're having a kind of tourist experience and then people come up to you. Right. That's weird to get one's head around. The global quality of being an actor in a big film is a bit odd. Then you become the attraction. You're there to see something. Wait a second.

I'm here on. No, no. The pyramids. Seriously. I think you're right, though. I think London is like New York where people are busy. Yeah. If they see you, loved you in the movie.

and they keep walking. It doesn't turn into a mob scene. I completely agree. You've done so much already. You've done such fascinating work and such great characters. Are there big things out there on the horizon for you that you maybe haven't done yet

a kind of movie or something different? Maybe you are an art history major after all, become a curator. Become a curator. Yes, it's the next chapter. Maybe that's the way. Maybe that's the thing. I've always found, like quite often people have said, like, what part do you want to play?

And there are certain parts in British, certainly British theatre that are seen as the canon. Like, oh, you must play Hamlet or you must play. And I've sort of never had much interest in that. The times when I've found myself most excited as an actor is when a director comes up to me and has seen something in me that they think I'm capable of that I perhaps don't see in myself. A good nurse was an example of that. And as was theory of everything, I think. And so, and it's when you go, really? Like, okay, and you then, that's when you find the unexpected and dig deep to kind of mind the things that are, that you weren't aware of.

And that's what excites me most. So I've never been someone that has a game plan or a... But I love what I do. I'm so lucky. Like the kid that got to leave math class and go to the theater is still as excited and kind of... You don't take it for granted because it's a wonderful existence. And you've proven to your parents that you made the right choice. Just about.

Not quite yet. They'd like to see a few more? No, that good. No, that good not. I think the Oscar probably got them. Well, yeah. I think you've done it, son. Eddie, thank you so much for the time. Such a pleasure.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. My big thanks again to Eddie for a great conversation. You can check out the Good Nurse streaming on Netflix. And my thanks to all of you for listening again this week. If you want more of these conversations with our guests every week, be sure to click follow so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist.

We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sitdown podcast.