James McAvoy & Elliot Page

24:52And you deserve your place. And so, and I think that that's quite positive. But yeah, that's, I do get a lot of that from X-Men. Yeah, I'd say my experiences have been so, you know, similar in the ways that X-Men has, you know, spoken to someone, helped them through difficult times, just been a huge part of their own journey, potentially, and discovering themselves. And those moments are always literally some of the most special interactions you can have with another person. Look, as...

25:31As often happens in these things, like they reiterate, they constantly reiterate, they recast you, you know, a recast of sorts from Patrick, We're going to see another Charles, another Kitty probably before too long perhaps, depending on what you read on the internet. I've heard Coleman Domingo, I've heard Bella Ramsey, I've heard a lot of different names. I don't know if you follow that, you hear that, what do you make of those names or just generally the idea of someone inheriting the mantle of these characters from you? I mean, yes, absolutely. Like, to me, that's, I wouldn't, I don't really follow, but those names sound fantastic.

26:12Approved. I mean, it would be just so exciting to see, you know, people do take on a new iteration. Yeah, no, I totally agree. Look, I'm excited to see what happens next. I was a fan before I was an employee. And no, you know, and I'll be a fan again. you want it to be, I just can't wait for it to be exciting and to be about, oh no that was gonna sound bad, it was gonna put a lot of pressure on people. Coleman Domingo sounds amazing though, he is great. Meanwhile Hugh just will always play Wolverine, like I mean apparently we can't improve upon that. I was gonna say ten years from now, it's probably gonna be ten minutes from now when AI has taken over and playing all the roles and there are no actors anymore, he will still be playing Wolverine.

27:01Even AI will be like, nah, you gotta have you. Nah.

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29:51Look, you both have such amazing resumes. Break it down for me. Like, what portion of folks that come up to you mention X-Men versus other things? What's the most frequent films or projects that usually come up to you? And can you clock from a mile away what kind of fan they are? I can't clock. I get surprised often, actually. I'd say right now it's a lot of Umbrella Academy people love that, which is so nice and was so fun to make. And I'll tell you, Juno, well, that is just, that just, that just keeps going strong. So I'd say, and X-Men, of course, but, you know, I'm not really in them as...

30:39Don't diminish the work. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, yeah. I get a nice broad range, really, but you get, what I really enjoy is when you're walking down the street and people call out a name of a character that you played, and sometimes you'll be like, oh, that guy's going to do it, he's going to do it, and then he surprises you, and he's like, Mr. Tumnus! And you're like, all right, didn't expect that. And then you're walking down the street, and someone's like, you're a professor, and you're like, oh, brilliant, cool. But it's quite fun. It is kind of fun. My favorite thing as well is when somebody recognizes you in the street or Like in the middle of a conversation They kind of look at you and then they lose what they're doing and they're kind of confused for a second But what what happens to their face is not oh, I'm confused.

31:28Who's that person? What's happened to their faces they go into such concentration of who the hell is that again? Their face kind of goes like this and they look like they want to kill you. Do you ever notice that? You were like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then you see it and you go like.

31:45Like that. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And it took me like a year or so of this sort of like certain amount of fame to kind of understand what was happening. I was like, what the fuck? I'm going to murder Mr. Tumnus right here in the Starbucks. That's right. Let me run down a few of those credits and just the first things that come to mind. You mentioned Narnia. I mean, that was relatively early in your career. And, you know, like I was saying to Elliot, that was probably like your equivalent of like Last Stand in that it was like a giant set. It was a giant scale of filmmaking.

32:21What are your first memories when I mentioned Narnia to you? Literally the first thing that popped into my head was Georgie who played Lucy. and we were we played a lot and we I think Andrew kind of like stuck us together a lot, the director, who's a great guy, great director just hoping that we would get along a lot and she was a really young girl at the time, I can't remember what age Georgie was maybe, I don't know, maybe 6 or 7, I'm not sure and I don't think she'd acted before so I was I just spent a lot of time with Georgie and her family and they were really lovely, so that's the thing that comes to my mind first and then just being on those sets was bonkers You get used to things, but I was like, oh, oh, you know what I mean?

33:10I don't even think we were texting and stuff back then. You're just alone with it. Maybe I'd phone home once a day or something like that, but you're in New Zealand, so you're on another planet. But just being alone with the kind of, oh, ness of it all was amazing. And seeing yourself in that makeup and everything, Today you would be immediately texting every friend and family member. Like, look at me. This is insane. Oh, man. And look, just to shout out to Howard Berger, Sarah Bano, Tammy Lane, the makeup department and that. They were like my absolute rocks. And to this day, one of the most fun and closest kind of relationships I've had with anybody on the set, really.

33:52Because we spent so much time with each other. I remember being in trailers halfway up a mountain at 3.30 in the morning. And you're like, the ADs aren't here yet. Like, the trailers haven't been unlocked. And we're there early enough to get the makeup done. And you're like, what is going on? So yeah, they were an incredible crew. And Howard's just an incredible designer of makeup and incredible work. Elliot, you mentioned Super earlier, which is like James Gunn when he was like fully authentic, like Maverick crazy James Gunn. I mean, that's an effed up movie in the best possible way. You and Rain got to re-team after Juno.

34:30Happy experience working with James, who's just like a madman in the best possible way. It was so fun. Such an enjoyable set to be on. Such a nice vibe and energy. Everyone there to just work together to tell this crazy story. And such a fun, just full-blown character to play. And it was with someone like James, you really trust him when you are pushing it and going far that he's going to like sort it out tonally. And yeah, that was definitely one of my favorite characters to play for sure. Are you surprised that the trajectory he's taken, I don't know if you've seen the Guardians movies or Superman, but it's like, in some ways it's obviously authentically him, but it's a different side of him clearly than the super guy.

35:16Yes, for sure, yeah. But you can see just, I mean, how all those qualities and those strengths, you know, have fed into and made these great projects. Inception. I'm going to mention Inception because that project, talk about a classic. How does that script read the first time you read it? Do you understand what you're getting yourself into? Did Chris have to kind of walk you through it or what? I'm a little, I mean, maybe a bit of both. I remember sitting, because with Chris, It's very, as I'm sure people know, so secretive. You go to an office, you read the script, then you leave. And same when I just read the Odyssey.

35:58And it was the, I mean, I remember it just felt like an engine. Like you get on a ride, and it's what reading both scripts have felt like. And you're just, it just takes you in. And at first things feel maybe big or slightly confusing. And all these pieces start coming together. but at the core of it, you know, emotionally and, you know, just these arcs that are so defined and beautiful sort of despite the massiveness of these projects. And I think that's been my big takeaways from his scripts, his writing. David Plylarioui - It's also, I mean, your character, in a good way for you, I'd imagine, like, is kind of the audience in that and is like the one person in that story that's kind of like, what's going on?

36:47I mean, literally the whole movie, I'm just asking questions. That's my... Well, someone should in that story. Like, what? Wait, whose subconscious are we going into right now? That's what I do the whole movie. Yeah, yeah. I think, though, like, you kind of... I don't know. You are totally like that sort of David Copperfield. By the way, I love the film. This is why I'm about to lodge. Actually, I think you'll find. You're that David Copperfield character a little bit when you're kind of the audience in some ways. But you also like so young and you stand, like as a performer you stand up to DiCaprio and like you call him out so much in that movie.

37:25And like I don't know, I always had massive respect for you for that because he's incredible, right? He's got this amazing energy. And then when you start taking empty task, I was like wow. You felt like that's somebody getting put in their place, you know, it was good. James, that's nice.

37:44You've got some gamer cred thanks to Beyond Two Souls, we should say that. Are you both gamers? Did you grow up gaming? Do you still play games? Give me a sense. I game a little bit. I gave it up just because I didn't have time and life was too busy, you know, all the movies that I do. But then in the pandemic, me and all my buddies got together and we're like, you still got a PlayStation? Yeah, I've got a PlayStation. should we get a game? Let's get a game. And me and all these other middle-aged white dudes started playing online shooting games, and we were like, oh my god, this is amazing! So that got me back into it, and so I do.

38:23I game again. What's your favorite? What's consumed the most hours lately? Straight up just Call of Duty game. Call of Duty online shooty, kind of competitive people screaming at you going like, I can't believe this happened to me again! When you hear someone on the other end of the death comms, for anybody that doesn't know, when you shoot someone else and it's a real player in the real world, they open up the mic for like five seconds or whatever so that you can hear them. And some of the shit you hear is just incredible. You're like, why does this always happen to me? Cuts out. You're like, it's a grown man.

39:00It's so good. Do you ever on your end go, you just killed James McAvoy? No, but I did play ones with... Sometimes if you go on on your own, you can get paired up with a team of other rando strangers. And so this other team of three people needed an extra, and I got chucked in at their team. They all happened to be from Glasgow, my hometown. They were like, you sound like that guy James McAvoy. And I was like, I know, man, I get it all the time. I know, I know. It's quite funny. And one of them was clearly cheating as well. One of them was using some boosters or something. You got like 20 kills in five minutes.

39:37And I was very new to the game. I was like, how do you do that? I'd love to learn, do you know what I mean? And the other two guys were like, we don't talk about it, man. We don't talk about it. Because one of them cheats. And then on your end, again, as I said, Beyond Two Souls, but prior to that or since that, is gaming part of your life at all? When I was like a kid, I really liked video games. I loved Sega Genesis, I had PlayStation. I'd say Sega Genesis is my favorite ever. And then I kind of stopped just because of life, busy. But on occasion, I'll get sucked into Nintendo Switch. But I'm more like Mario Odyssey and Mario Kart.

40:20I need something like Nintendo Switch because it's a little more... Before it got so crazy. So many buttons. I can't keep up. I can't keep up. Yeah. Did you enjoy the, that was performance capture, and that's a whole other beast of acting that I've talked to a lot of actors that absolutely love it. It's kind of back to basics, black box theater in a way. What was your experience doing that? I loved it. I'd say it was probably one of the more challenging acting experiences I've done, because you're just doing like 20, 30 pages a day. While you're doing one scene, you're literally pausing to do different versions of a line.

40:57So going from these like completely emotional extremes, it's like an exercise that you couldn't even create for yourself. So I felt really lucky for honestly just how full throttle it was. But yeah, what a dream and to do it with Willem Dafoe and it was a really good experience. And correct me if I'm wrong, is your production company adapting it into a TV series? Yeah, that's the plan. Yeah, yeah.

41:26Very cool. Let's talk about Split and Glass, James. Come on.

41:36I was in it. That's all I needed. Just needed a fact check. But what an opportunity. And I know you've said to me and others, it came relatively late in the game and not as much time to prep, perhaps, as you would have wanted. Not for Split. For Glass, I had a lot of time, but yeah, not for Split. So how do you, I don't know, how much time did you have to prepare and how did you possibly sketch out all of those characters so quickly? I think I've said like two weeks and my wife, who she used to work at M. Night Shyamalan's company, she's like, you had three. I'm like, it was still a lot, okay?

42:11It's still really impressive. Yeah, like two, maybe three weeks. And it was a little bit of a version of what you were saying about Christopher Nolan's scripts, I guess, where it's quite secretive to get the script because Knight, not always, but oftentimes is protecting a twist or something that's going to happen that surprises the audience. But they weren't going to fly over to hand me the script, so they did send it. But it was like a time-limited amount of time that I had to read the script. Yeah, it came late in the day. I didn't have much time to prep. I got over there. I spent a week solid with Knight running around the production office, like coming up with different characters, coming up with like anybody that was kind of around that office must have just thought, what the fuck are they doing?

43:01Like at one point we tried to figure out how he ran as the Beast. And I'm running up and down the production office and there's like 30 people employed and I'm like galloping and I'm like bounding on all fours and all that. And Nate's going, that's the one, that's the one. And then we're like, well, what if Hedwig roller skates? So I'm like roller skating up and down the production office. They were like, these guys are just taking the piss. But yeah, so we figured out, I think it's only like, I think it's like four or five main characters that I play in Split. And then with the smaller parts, I think it's like 11 or 9 or something like that.

43:42But those smaller ones were actually trickier because you don't have a full character to inform, well, why are they the way they are? And what is their function as part of this community that lives inside of one vessel? And so they felt a bit more like at risk of being just sort of like putting on a funny voice, really, do you know what I mean? So weirdly, even though you were playing a character that only had, I don't know, 30 seconds of screen time, you had to put in the work to kind of try and flesh them out. so that they didn't feel like, oh, here he is, doing a funny voice and a wink or something, you know?

44:19But it was an amazing thing. I love doing my job. I love acting. And people go, that must have been so hard. And you're like, no, what's hard is working on bad material. Putting in a lot of effort to something that's well written isn't necessarily hard. It's taxing, but it's really rewarding as well. So it was just like getting to do my job nine times instead of one times. I imagine those films are on the no-go list for your kids for the rest of their lives like you can you can breeze right past those Yeah, I don't think my eldest has seen split or glass He's actually seen quite a few of my movies now, but I don't think he's seen split or glass yet But yeah, no definitely although I think there's like some funny stuff in both those movies So yeah, you know maybe fast forward to the funny bit the funny cut you can do a fan edit um umbrella Academy we should mention because it's such a A special show to the fans.

45:14I would imagine a special show for you for a thousand different reasons. I mean, obviously it also dovetailed with the changes in your own life and working with your collaborators there and them adapting to your transition. What a gift to kind of work with them in that capacity. Give us a little, yeah. So just give me a little bit of a sense of the meaning of Umbrella Academy in your professional and personal life. Oh, gosh. I mean, professional life, it was just so wonderful to get to be a part of a project that was like as fun and exciting and have the response that it had and also was just really fulfilling as an actor, you know.

45:58I really love playing that character. I love this cast and crew that I got to work with for years. It was really, you know, of course sad to say goodbye to. And we were just so lucky that obviously people responded to it in the way that they did. And yes, personally it sort of tracks my own, you know, transition in my life and the fact that Steve Blackman was so open to making that a part of Victor's story and was, yeah, I just feel really grateful for the whole thing.

46:48You're going to be in the Odyssey. I know you can't say anything about that. But getting that call from Chris Nolan must be such a special, it's special for any actor, but you obviously have a history with Chris. Can you give me a little sense of just like how it happened, the veil of secrecy? Does a briefcase come with a script? What happened this time around? Just full of money. Yeah, exactly. A bag of money. I mean, I was so excited to be thought of for it and to be asked to come back to work with him. I loved working with him on Inception and loved being a part of that movie. So, yeah, I was just completely jazzed and excited and basically went and met with Chris and talked about the part and then sat in a room and read the script and, you know, it was of course a big yes.

47:44Yeah, sadly I can't say much but, yeah, it was such a joy to come back and to come back now as you can imagine, being more just comfortable in yourself makes these sorts of projects more enjoyable, just waking up every day and going to work. So to kind of get to have a Chris Nolan experience again now, that actually really just meant so much to me. Like, yeah, selfishly. Just, yeah.

48:13And then just, I promise, I'm not probing for any real dirt, but what we do know is that you're shooting on these massive locations, IMAX cameras. We know that. Did it take your breath away just being in these environments? Oh yeah, I got to go to some pretty awesome places. And it's going to be epic. It's going to be extraordinary. Can I ask a technical question? Is it true about the sound with the IMAX cameras that a lot of the dialogue is unusable? They're really loud. And so when you are doing stuff that's close and quieter, they basically made a giant, There's just a giant blimp that goes over it to quiet the sound.

48:57But it's huge. So it's not like you have to ADR everything? No. Great. I know he's been improving that over the years. This is when you think of a movie of inception, I think I did like 20 minutes of ADR. Like he's, sorry, maybe a lot of people don't know what ADR is. It's a thing in post where you're kind of fixing sound that may not be clear enough or you're fixing a line completely. And as an actor, like you're in a studio watching the film and either matching to your lips or the line could be off camera. But that's something you do usually a lot. But Chris wants like the sound on the day. He hardly uses mics.

49:37Like you're, it's, he's wild. Am I even allowed to say this? I'm like, oh no. You might get fired. He's going to edit you at the movie. You're in so much trouble. You're good, you're good, I promise you. And I'm going to tell on you and try and get your part. Don't do it James. Honestly, when you were talking about Inception, I'm like, that's one of the few films I can watch again and again and again. I didn't know that you were in the Odyssey, so that when you dropped in you were in the Odyssey, I was like, fuck's sake, man.

50:11No, I'm very jealous and also really happy for you. Was it a dream? Did it really happen? Inception? Any takes on the ending? Well, so the ending, we got to go. Shoot. We do sadly have to go pretty soon. But before we do that, I want to give some love. James directed a movie that we're all going to be seeing hopefully pretty soon. Yep. California Ski Man. The trailer's jut. No. Anything you can tease the audience about that. You had your premiere at Toronto. Hopefully we'll see it before too long. But what a moment in a career. something that's a whole new adventure for you. Yeah, totally. I had a great time doing it, which is not any reason why anybody should watch it.

50:51It was great for me. No, it's a really great, it's a true story about two guys in Scotland back in the early 2000s who tried to make it as rap artists and in their own voices, in their own accents, that sounded like mine but probably thicker as well. And they kind of got laughed out of the industry. And so they came back and they reinvented themselves and pretended to be California skater dudes, rewrote all their music, re-recorded it all with American accents and the same companies that laughed them out of their business gave them a record deal for 60 grand. and they went on to have a pretty wild ride as two young guys who essentially had to become method actors for two and a half years.

51:41And they lived it 24-7 even when they were on their own and it's really entertaining, it's really funny, it's really tragic at some points, but I'm really proud of it. Hopefully you'll all get to see it next year. You have 3 ,000 tickets sold just from this audience. Guys, give us a follow on Instagram on California Ski Man. We'd appreciate it. Hashtag California Ski Man. Aspiration, you've directed for television. You obviously are producing aspirations to direct. Is that on the list or happy to do what you're doing? Right now, I'm just producing and that's what I'm enjoying. Excellent. Thank you guys so much for geeking out with me and all these folks.

52:21You've honestly contributed so much, obviously, in the X-Men franchise and beyond. Thank you for your time. Thank you, all of you, for coming out today. Give it up one more time. Elliot Page, James McAvoy. 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. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't ready to do this by Josh.

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