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bespokeredmayne · 2 years

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Return to the dark side

The Good Nurse is certainly Eddie Redmayne’s grimmest portrayal in more than a decade, and there has been a flurry of false assumptions in the media that exploring the worst in human nature is new territory for the Oscar-winning actor.

The group of six fans who gathered by Zoom last week to talk to him knew better — were familiar not just with Marius Pontmercy, Stephen Hawking and Newt Scamander but Alex Forbes, Eddie Kreezer and Antony Baekeland.

And they couldn’t be more supportive of seeing Eddie — as he put it, “go to extremes” — and delve into the complexity and challenges of his most recent projects of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on stage and this true-crime thriller from director Tobias Lindholm, told with shades of Hitchcock suspense.

Armed with advance screener access courtesy of Netflix, the group — including two nurses from his fandom — were ready with their questions. They were rewarded with insights into how the film was shot, how Eddie’s stunning scenes in the latter part of the film were crafted — and of hearing firsthand Eddie’s exuberance and energy at tackling the role in partnership with Jessica Chastain and Tobias Lindholm, two artists he admires deeply.

The Interview

Eddie: Hello, hello, everybody from all corners of the earth!

Charlotte: …you do have your two nurses on — Marci and Cris from Italy. So we can have some expert analysis.

Eddie: Wow! It’s so nice to speak to you all, and thank you for jumping on.

Charlotte: Well, thank you, too. We just are thrilled. I think we’ve all kind of chatted, at least online, and this movie has exceeded all of our expectations. The sensitive approach to it, and of course your performance is just unbelievably authentic.

Eddie: Thank you! Thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed the promoting of it because it was an amazing experience making the film. It’s rare that you get through a sort of film where everyone is as impassioned about it as each other, so I’m thrilled you guys enjoyed it.

Charlotte: Well, that’s coming across. It’s really lovely. We’ll go ahead & get started here, and as always, Ivonne can lead with her first question.

Ivonne: We’ve spoken to you before about the physical preparations for your previous roles – a lot of your previous roles have had physical intricacies, but I felt like The Good Nurse is a very character driven piece, and I felt like your performance has a lot of nuance and a lot of layers that kind of came to the spotlight but in a very restrained way. So I was just wondering, what was that process like?

Eddie: It was, one of the things that I loved when I read the script — and the script was my introduction the story – was the enigma of Charlie. The fact that this was Amy’s story, and who was Charlie? The film wasn’t going to allow you to find out the pat reasons for his behavior. I love that even though, of course, as an audience you’re looking for that — for the “why” of it, and Tobias said something actually beautiful: “We’re looking for the ‘why’ in order that we can explain away this person as a monster…’we would never do that’…’he did it because of this.” What was much more complex was actually more the nuance in this man, his own trauma. I loved how stunningly underwritten it was. Krysty Wilson-Cairns had done a piece that really had faith in the actors. So one of the appeals for me, once I started reading about Charlie’s childhood, was about hiding (it) really, and there was a particular naturalism to Tobias’s movies that I had adored. Often his take on things is not the obvious; it’s the oblique. And one of the things I was most excited about was to be in a Tobias Lindholm film. I didn’t feel as if I had worked with this sort of filmmaker. And so it was about doing all the prep — and hiding as much as I could. If that makes sense.

Charlotte: Playing off what Ivonne just asked — because you do put in all this preparation, and you’ve talked about how Charles Graeber’s book had so much rich material, and you talked to Amy Loughren: Not having Cullen’s motivation be obvious — did it free you up in any way, not having that to really explain with your character?

Eddie: As the actor, even if the piece isn’t really explaining the motivation, you have to find a confluence of or accumulate some possibilities. Now he also had mental illness — Amy describes him as having a dissociative personality. So that was the massive insight — that this was two different human beings. But where that was catalyzed felt a lot about his trauma, not only about being abused as a 7-year-old, but also the closeness of the relationship with his mother and how the hospital behaved when his mother died in a car crash and how they couldn’t find (her body) and when they did find it, it was all sort of disrespected. And after having done these insane things in the Navy for many years, when he then came back and trained to be a nurse, it was that very same hospital where his mother had been brought after the car crash. The fury at that particular place and that system felt fueled. And I’m not saying that that’s the reason at all, but that felt like a strong reason. And so certainly when Jessica or Amy talks about his mother in that final scene, and (he says) ‘They didn’t stop me,’ that idea of the system being the thing that he, in his narcissism, believed was the problem, that was definitely something I was playing with. In relation to the freedom, I did feel freer on this film than I had in a long time, and that had a lot to do with Tobias and Jody (Jody Lee Lipes, the cinematographer) and his lighting that was so dark that it felt at its most real. You didn’t have the sense of the camera crew. You didn’t even feel like you were being observed, and that intimacy with Jessica was wonderful.

Charlotte: Marci, do you want to ask your first question?

Marci: You have told us before about how you do a lot of research and homework in preparing for a roles, and then it sort of disappears into your portrayal. As a trained nurse, I wonder what you learned through your research and from Amy that became embedded in you that helped make your performance so authentic.

Eddie: Gosh, well through my experiences — I’ve had one particular one in the past couple of years of being by someone’s bedside and watching nurses — I’ve always had extraordinary admiration for nurses. But through the nursing school — a couple of weeks that Jessica and I did with a guy called Joe, a pediatric ICU nurse, we started with the history. I found that riveting, that fact that so many systems come from the late 19th century-early 20th century wars, and how the architecture of hospitals is built up. But also it was basically what it requires for nurses, and what you guys are. You have to be an extraordinary brain. You have to be brilliant at science and maths, and I really felt that because I was really struggling with some of the sort of biological-based stuff that we were doing. The thing that shocked me was the physical — the actual tireless, physical, like what it takes to move bodies, to move the beds around, how extraordinarily tiring CPR is. So the physical elements of it, followed by — and this was something that I’ve witnessed in a hospital — this emotional intelligence that you need, a humanity. You know, sometimes doctors in my experience don’t have that, and you have to be this go-between, between families, between patients at their most vulnerable. So it was those things — the fact that you have to be such a polymath — made my respect for nurses supersede where it already was. There were specific things — like apparently actors get the CPR wrong. You have to have your elbows locked. I’m not a very ‘prop’ actor, so things like attaching the IVs or putting in needles while doing other things — multitasking — were something that I had to come in every morning and practice on the dummies. And I did ping myself a couple of times. But after each take you would get that the director’s and Joe’s feedback. So hopefully we did OK.

Marci: I would say so. It was very authentic.

Chrissie: I did see the film, and I thought it was fantastic. The nuance of your characterisation of Charles Cullen is so spot on, according to Amy (Loughran) at the BFI screening. How did you manage the task without having met him? Was there ever a consideration to try to have you meet him? Is that something you would have wanted, and why or why not?

Eddie: Chrissie, what a cool question. I knew that it wasn’t going to be possible from the outset, particularly because we were going to be started filming at end of COVID so there were all sorts of restrictions. But the more footage I watched of Charlie now, and you can see the 60 Minutes, it did not marry with the man that Amy was describing as this kind, gentle, self-deprecating man. And so I felt it’s been so many years, and it’s almost like he’s lived with his reputation that I felt OK with not meeting him. I did not think necessarily the version I would get from him was…I didn’t want to be manipulated, honestly. That being said, it wasn’t an option. What I did have was all of this footage and voicemails and things from that period, so I worked pretty hard on the specifics of that, and Alex Reynolds (note: his movement coach) and I did a day, and Alex’s genius is managing to articulate something that I can observe and that I can take emotionally into my body. So that was probably the most. The other person was Charles Graeber, who wrote the book, and he spent a lot of time with Charlie Cullen. And he (had) such brilliant insight into the specifics of him. But the overwhelming thing was the real Amy talking about the side of the friend that she loved. That was the biggest score into him.

Chrissie: Playing such a complex character how did you ensure you looked after yourself whilst filming? It must have been quite draining.

Eddie: My family were here in New York. Jessica’s family were wonderful. The kids were hanging out, and I’m not an actor that brings it home. That being said, 70-80 percent of the movie Charlie was being kind. It was much more intense for Jessica. The heart element — Jessica was sort of pacing around, running around the wards, it was incredibly physically intense on her. But then my family left for the last few weeks, and that was the last moments of the film. That was intense. But still I’m not an actor, I don’t think — I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Hannah — who takes it home with me. Hannah was quite thrilled to lose the voice. Occasionally there could be some practicing, and she found Charlie’s voice pretty creepy.

Chrissie: It was very creepy. Lovely to chat with you.

Eddie: Lovely to talk to you, too.

Charlotte: Cris, if you could ask your first question.

Cris: Attending a nursing school, I would like to know what you liked most about this job.

Eddie: Gosh, I don’t have the emotional capability to be a nurse. I don’t know how you guys do it. And the feeling I had not just in nursing school but when I heard some of the stories, but particularly when I was in this ICU with a friend a year or two ago, was the emotional connection that you as a a family member feel to the nurse, who you engage with, who you get on with, who is the person who translates things for you that you don’t understand at this moment in which the person you’re with is at their most vulnerable. It feels like your everything. And that feeling when that person goes home and has a couple of days off — and of course they need a couple of days off — but you get a new nurse you have to develop a new relationship with. And it’s so complex. The thing that I learned is that nurses probably have to be extraordinary actors to be able to show that empathy and that compassion to people but also to have a relatively normal life at home. I know there are so many jobs in the services, whether it’s police or psychologist, that I would not be able to do. But I think that idea of how you’re able to cut off is astonishing to me.

Charlotte: And now we’ll go to Erina in New Zealand, who always tells us what time it is in New Zealand.

Eddie: Yes! What time is it over there?

Erina: It’s actually quite respectable. It’s 6:48 a.m.

Eddie: What’s that? It’s like an early wake up.

Erina: Yes. (Laughs) But it’s Friday; it’s in the future. My question is: You really see the transformation of Charlie from the caring friend to the frightening killer in those last few scenes. What was the shooting schedule, and could you actually build to those last transformative scenes? Or did you shoot out of sequence, were you back and forth?

Eddie: Well, the amazing thing was we shot all the exterior scenes out of sequence. But everything that took place in the hospital, they had built this hospital. They had wanted to shoot in a real hospital, but because of COVID obviously that was impossible. So in a business park they built this ward, and…all the background artists were real medical professionals. What it allowed was for us to shoot that main part chronologically. And it was really wonderful because on the page, the friendship and how the friendship unfolds is stunningly underwritten by Krysty. It was about finding the truth of friendship through extreme scenarios, but it was also a workplace thing. It was how to find that organically. And there were moments of improvisation, there were things the actual circumstances brought up, like with the pizza. And Jess and I had known each other for years, but it really was wonderful, it was actually really a lovely period shooting that. And then everything shifted after that, and when we got to the interrogation scenes, I hadn’t actually seen Jess for a couple of days. I’d done the scenes with Noah and Nnamdi, and they had been kept away from me during the process so sort of the first time I’d properly met them was in that scene. Tobias had kept them apart. That was pretty intense, the days shooting the interrogation scene. So when Jess came in the following day, we just gently kept our distances for that last day, and so when she came into the room, it was like an old friend coming back. None of this is ‘Method’ or anything, but it was just a way of trying to find the grace notes, given that we were able to shoot chronologically because it’s so rare that you have.

Erina: That’s like a luxury, so it’s so awesome to hear that they did that. So how great is that?

Eddie. Really great.

Erina: Thank you, Eddie. I might not get my second question, so…

Eddie: Lovely to speak.

Charlotte: We’re starting on our second round…

Eddie: I’ll give short answers… (laughter)

Charlotte: Well, Ivonne had wanted to ask you about your experience with the K-Pop stars but that question was knocked out, so she’s going to have to ask a serious question now.

Ivonne: Serious question, yeah. When you think of your career as a whole — because there are so many audio-visual media — what would you like your legacy to be?

Eddie: My legacy — oh God, I have no idea. It’s not something I think of. I don’t like to think back in the past, but it was interesting recently at Zurich, they showed me lots of films I’d done in my career, or moments of them, and it was so interesting because for me what it does is take me back to where I was in my own life. It takes me back, like seeing Les Mis takes me back to when Hannah and I had just got together or like, each film comes woven into a life memory. My thing is if I just never underestimate how lucky I am to get to do something I love. It comes with odd, weird things that I have sort of negotiate. But if I just keep to doing it, that’s what I care about. And it’s lovely…I’m going to stop answering (laughs).

Charlotte: This kind of plays off that, my next question does, talking about your past movies. Because we all know that you’ve done these very dark roles in the past, but a lot of people are just kind of discovering you now, and in the last decade or so you’ve definitely played roles that run along the lines of being romantic or heroic — or being a nice guy — certainly not anything this dark. What about The Good Nurse appealed to you, particularly at this time in your career?

Eddie: The interesting thing is that it was six years ago that I was cast in it. This often happens with me, whether it was The Danish Girl — films are such weird things, really. They can take years to happen. This film I was cast in six years, it then moved studios, the financing fell through, then all of our schedules were all over the place, but ultimately I’d say it was two things, three things. It was an extraordinary story that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of given he was perhaps the most prolific serial killer in history. Secondly it was working with Jessica, who I think is one of the greats. Thirdly, I had seen Tobias’ movies, and I adored his films…he felt like a unique filmmaker and whenever you watch his films, you know that you are watching a Tobias Lindholm movie. And I wanted to be in a Tobias Lindholm movie.

Charlotte: That’s lovely, very simple, too. Marci?

Marci: You and Jessica Chastain were both amazing in this film, and you seem to have great chemistry. What was your favorite part of working with her?

Eddie: My favorite part of working with Jessica was she is a sensational actor. She also has innate confidence, but also loves what she does. She’s an absolute optimist. And she always looking for the best. I am someone who…whenever I read a script, I hear the worst version of it. And she was really good at just having none of it, just pushing me into an optimistic place, which was really wonderful and galvanizing me.

Charlotte: Cris in Italy, your second question?

Cris: What inspired you for the interrogation scene for the last part of the movie ?

Eddie: We hadn’t prepared the interrogation scene. We had worked a lot on the scaffolding of the character up until that point, but that piece — a lot of it was verbatim from the transcript of the trial. But also he had gotten furious in that interrogation, but also there was also a moment a year later when he was in court, when the judge was reading out a pronouncement and Charlie Cullen started screaming this mantra about the judge’s failings, and repeated it again and again and again furiously in court to the extent that he had to be bound and gagged. And I wanted to bring that element into that scene also.

Charlotte: OK, Erina. Ye of little faith, you get to ask your second question (group laughter).

Eddie: I got there, Erina!

Erina: I’ve got to deliver something good now. No pressure! You've played real-life characters in the past - what have you learnt from these other roles that helped you bring the Charlie to life?

Eddie: I still feel every time I get cast in a film, it sort of feels like the first time. I don’t have a specific process, but what I’ve learned — and the real shift in that was Theory of Everything, when I started working whether with vocal coaches or Alex on movement — but realizing it was so odd to prepare a character in a vacuum. I have lots of actor friends who have acting coaches, and I’ve never worked with an acting coach. But that process of having sounding boards, other artists you can play with ideas when you arrive with your director and other actors felt really important to me. All of that technical stuff may just be sort of reassuring to know that you’ve done some prep. Sometimes I don’t even know how useful some of it is. But it’s also it’s part of what I love doing. It’s like with Cabaret, when I went to Paris for this theatre school, LeCoq, the workshops there. I don’t know how useful any of it was, but what it did, it took me to a place of being willing to make a fool of myself in front of strangers. And that’s what I knew I needed to do in rehearsal for Cabaret. And that I knew I couldn’t be safe; I needed to go to extremes. And I don’t know whether any of that makes sense, but…

Erina: It all makes sense.

Charlotte: Eddie, thank you so much! Usually we know what you’re doing next so we can say we look forward to talking to you again, but we certainly look forward to whatever you’re going to do and to speaking again sometime. Thank you!

Eddie: Guys, thank you so much, as always, for your support. It helps me a great deal. I love that we get to chat in this kind of international fashion, across time zones.

Ivonne Jofre, who is originally from Catalonia, is now a budding filmmaker who divides her time among London, Spain and New York — where she has been accepted for a master’s program in cinema studies at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts & hopes to clear the hurdles to attend in 2023-24. She founded the first (and most popular) online fan website, Eddie Redmayne Net, in 2008 when she first met Eddie after seeing him on stage, and her @eddieronline account is the largest on Twitter, with more than 68,000 followers}.

Charlotte Aguilar, from the U.S., is an award-winning writer-editor-producer who has managed BespokeRedmayne accounts on Tumblr, Twitter + Instagram for nine years, with more than 30,000 followers — assisted by teen granddaughter Maria Suarez. They have met Eddie in New York and London and coordinate an annual fan fundraiser for his birthday to support Eddie’s patronage of the MND Association of the UK.]

Marcella “Marci” Wright is a blogger from Oklahoma, who previously worked as a nurse for years. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2020, she subsequently had to leave her nursing job due to mobility issues, & now works remotely as a data analyst. She is also a proud mom to Jake — who was the reason she started blogging about Eddie, after seeing his portrayals in The Yellow Handkerchief and Fantastic Beasts (upon seeing the original 'Fantastic Beasts' movie, Jake, then 15, happily announced, "Mom, Newt is autistic like me!")

Christine “Chrissie” Sallans is the OG of Redmayniacs, following his career since his early days on stage in London, and an integral member of the “Troop” of fans who camp out and brave London weather to support Eddie at premieres, performances and special events. Just this year, she’s visited with him at Cabaret, the Olivier Awards, the Secrets of Dumbledore red carpet, and the London Film Festival UK premiere of The Good Nurse. A social worker and educator by training, she is currently a university lecturer.

Maria Cristina “Cris” Della Valle lives and works as a nurse in Turin, in northern Italy near France. Lately she has worked in intensive care after many years in the cardiac surgery and general surgery departments. She is one of Eddie’s earliest fans and part of his “Troop.” She has traveled throughout Europe to see him on stage (this year in Cabaret), attend festivals, personal appearances and premieres for his films (most recently for The Good Nurse in Zurich).

Erina Ellis lives in Wellington, New Zealand. She works in television and is currently involved with broadcasting the Women’s Rugby World Cup, being held in New Zealand. She manages the @amazingeddieredmayne account on Instagram, the largest of its kind with more than 100,000 followers.

#eddie redmayne #the good nurse #fan interview #netflix #jessica chastain #tobias lindholm

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