Domhnall Gleeson

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0:53Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans. It's a great book to give to somebody. Totally. I feel like it needs to come with a warning on it. I was just bopping along. I was like, are they executing the children right now? Okay. I was like, what is happening? Mary Gleeson. Yeah, yeah. What a woman. Donald Gleeson, welcome to One Night Stand. Thank you so much for having me. Thrilled to have you here. Have you always been a big reader? Started out as a really, really big reader. When I was a kid, like there was just books all over the house and yeah and like I'm one of four uh boys and my parents were teachers so like big into reading big into telling stories books everywhere and like what I really remember was that when I used to read when I was a kid I would sort of go like sort of deaf like when I was reading like I would lose sense the world around me and like I remember like my mom like saying like we called you in for dinner like 16 times and I just didn't hear her I would just be so just so in it that I kind of everything else would fall away so definitely yeah definitely mattered a lot to me growing up wow what kind of teachers were your parents what subject were they um my mom was only a teacher for a brief period of time then she was a community welfare officer my dad taught English and Irish Irish language oh wow yeah yeah so they were yeah and then he would have been into the drama uh side of things and all the rest of it as well when he was teaching in secondary school and that led to the then he was acting as well oh gosh that's amazing yeah what kind of books did you read as a kid do you remember I mean well I mean I do you know I was into well we had Irish language books for a good while like when I was very young because my primary school was Irish language and so it would have been like a lot of the classics but I'll scale that like in Irish yeah and then I was big into Enid Blyton and then Alfred Hitchcock Presents had like Alfred like all those all those young people solving mysteries you know it was that sort of stuff and so that was the first time I heard of Alfred Hitchcock was that there was a there was a load of books about like the three investigators or something they were called and and then Roald Dahl out of all of them Roald Dahl loomed the largest yeah totally yeah so did you think in Irish as a kid then or do you think it I you know I I up until the age of four or five it's possible there would have been as much Irish as yeah as English in there because my parents were big gale goers would have spoken around the house a lot and then like even like my um kindergarten whatever Nienra we called it that was in Irish as well so yeah I definitely would have had a lot of it in there and I don't know whether I would have switched back and forth or would it all would have been one big mess of yeah I don't know that's amazing I was terrible at languages I such a regret like but I don't I don't know but it wasn't that I was good at languages I think when you're young enough like whatever they put into your head will stay you know what I mean like I certainly couldn't do anything as I got older and all my Irish now is gone which I Yeah, and I was not just fluent, but I could talk forever up until I was 12, and I studied it up until I was 18.

3:51And now it's just gone. And it is terrifyingly gone. Yeah. Which is, you're about to find out with these books, because my memory is just shocking. Shocking. I know. I find that, though, about university. You think I wrote whole dissertations about, I wrote one about the 1381 peasant revolt. I cannot remember who was against. But it's just gone. This is a good match, then. Yeah, exactly. We're fine. Well, maybe we start with Matilda because we're on the subject of childhood books. But tell me what you love about this book. Well, I was trying to, I knew I had to pick a Roald Dahl book. And I was trying to think like Fantastic Mr.

4:25Fox, Danny the Champion of the World. There was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Like those are all huge, huge books. And then also because Roald Dahl wrote all those sort of like quite racy short stories for grown-ups with all those twists and turns. to them like I loved him all the way through so it was about picking one and I just have the reason I chose this in the end was because I have a couple of uh nieces and so I was trying to think recently about like good books to get for them and I really started thinking about Matilda in a big way and about well it's also about the pleasure of reading I was about to say it's a love letter to reading yeah and so it's that's such a part of it and intelligence is rewarded yes and it's and that teacher there's a good teacher in it like a great teacher and how what a difference that can make in a child's life it's a very it's a very wholesome book even though there's so much there's so much of the bold what we say bold and irish it means something different but like naughtiness there's a lot of like that you know what i mean like there's a lot of that in there uh but really it's the purity of it even more than in maybe his other books that I find really inspiring.

5:37It's so sweet. And the Mrs. Trunchbull to Miss Honey. Yeah. Their names. I know. Their names are, before J.K. Rowling was doing amazing names for the people in her books, like Wormwood, Trunchbull. Yeah, I know, Trunchbull. Great names you can hang a hat on. And the names of the scope. And Bruce Bogtrotter. Bruce Bogtrotter. What a name. What a name. I know. I loved that scene. Did you ever watch the movie as well, the adaptation? I did watch the film when I came out and really, really enjoyed it. And then the musical is fantastic. I know, the musical is good. But that Bruce Bogtrotter scene when I was young, I remember watching it with the chocolate cake.

6:11It's just so vivid. But everything Roald Ardell was so vivid. I remember reading Boy. Did you ever read that one? I love. Obsessed with Boy and going solo. Right. Obsessed with them. Because he's saying they're real. And you're like, the one about the rat's blood and the licorice. I just always remember the boarding school. That's in that, right, isn't it? I think so. There was a rumour that they were made out of rat's blood, I think. And when the boys had to go and warm the toilet seat for the older boys. That's right. At boarding school, I was like, what is this? So mad. And they just were servants, basically, for the older boys and all the rest of it.

6:45Like, really, really, really crazy stuff. Yeah. Really crazy stuff. And, like, grotesque levels of right and wrong. But I always remember that trunchbull line, which is like, I'm right, you're wrong. I'm big, you're small. And there's nothing you can do about it. Because as a kid, you're like... Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's so vivid. no totally and it goes to the he just he understood he understood kids and he understood what they could handle yeah like I remember being scared of our copy of the witches oh right I remember like terrified I remember that I remember being like in bunk beds I don't think I slept in the bunk beds but I was in the bunk beds and I was trying to go asleep and there was a copy of the witches on the floor and I remember being those amazing illustrations by Quentin Blake I remember being like scared of the book and it would say that like it it said that like a witch would often be the last person you would think it would be and I remember hearing my mom laughing in the kitchen and going oh no I'm gonna have to try and see your feet and see if she has toes or not you know they had those squares and I was like yeah and my mom has a real cackle my mom really and all her sisters have cackles so they have real witchy laughs and so he understood that you can be scared like like the parents in matilda are horrible they're like awful yeah like abusive they're abusive parents and and then when she starts and it's scary then when she starts to get her own back you're just like you feel amazing yeah and there's just so much life in those books and i also did all the revolting rhymes and all those sorts of things yeah i also think he writes like non-conformity for children so well yeah that's so true yeah and in a way that like encourages you to be bold were you a particular conformist child or were you kind of I was I was a very typical oldest kid very very well behaved and my parents didn't bring me up to be that way my brothers didn't expect me to be that way I just brought that on myself like incredibly responsible and there's a bit of the Matilda about that as well I suppose trying to do the right thing all the time all that saddled by guilt you've brought on yourself like mad stuff yeah and so those kids who were when they started acting out it was always because the world had been unfair to them yes and so there was a justice in that but I mean I grew up in a very happy family I was very lucky with the way I grew up so it always felt like you should be lucky for you know you should be grateful for what you have sort of yeah apart from being raised as an Aston Villa fan not so yeah yeah Yeah, I'm just, I'm sorry for your troubles recently as a Birmingham fan.

9:16I'm sorry, I'm sorry that's the way it's gone. Did you learn to, as an adult, because I was definitely a very conformist child as well. And then in my 20s, I had to work really hard to like almost connect with what I wanted sometimes rather than what I thought everyone around me wanted me. Did you ever struggle with that? I think in my teens, I would have struggled with it more. I think by the time I went to college, I had decided that I was interested in film. and I went to study sort of writing and directing and that sort of stuff for film and TV. So by that point I felt like I'd met a few people at school, started making films at school and I just started to feel like I'd found my tribe a little bit and was still quite well behaved and took a long time to shake and I'm sure all of it's not shook but like to get rid of some of that stuff of what's expected of you versus what you want.

10:05But I think once I was into my teens I started to, I think, I think I started to build empathy. I think I was quite judgmental as a kid. And again, right and wrong, all those things, big, big themes. Well, they're binary things as kids. They are. They are. And I think it took me a while to start to see the shades of grey, which is why my second book is Fifty Shades of Grey. I would love it if you put Fifty Shades of Grey. Well, one of the lines that I love in this book so much is when Matilda goes to the library and the librarian says to her, don't worry about the bits you can't understand sit back and allow the words to wash around you like music which i think is like i wish i'd had that when i was like trying to read sort of like stream of consciousness virginia wolf at university and i was like trying to pin down a noun so i could like understand and you sort of have to let go yeah i mean that's that is that's an incredible line that i'd forgotten because i haven't read matilda for a while but that is also i really had to learn that i know like yeah well we can talk about that later with one of the other books but It really took me a long time to allow something to be itself, to take it on its own merits, not to try to, what is it, don't try and understand the book, have the book understand you.

11:19It's like, let it do its work. Let it be itself and see how it feels at the end, rather than trying to structure it as you go through. And yes, letting the words wash around you, I think is, sometimes you just got to keep going. I know, right. Right, well, I was going to use that to go on to Balletuck because that's the feeling that I had. That's so perfect. And then I watched an interview with Stephen Ray where he was talking about the first, and he was like, it's not going to be about something, it will be something, which I think is just like... But anyway, tell me what you love about Balletuck.

11:50So my experience, I'm glad you let me pick it because obviously it's written as a play. It's written to be performed. That's what Ender Walsh, who is a genius and has made some of the most impactful theatre I've ever seen. If I'd really been cruel, I would have chosen The Walworth First. Do you know that play? Well, you did a performance of it with your brother and your dad, right? Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what that play is about? I haven't read it, no. Okay. That is an impossible read. Oh, really? Interesting. It is an impossible read. Well, I had to read parts of Balletark out loud to myself.

12:22Did you? Because I couldn't understand it on the page. And then when I read it, I could see where the breaths would be and that type of stuff. And that's what I think what it is. It is a slow build of things you don't understand. It's very entertaining. But the reason I like it as a book is because I think some of the monologues in it are some of the most perfectly. Some of the most perfect summations of what it is to be alive without taking the trouble to explain itself too clearly. so he starts there's a bit towards the end where he talks about uh your what it is to be in the world to live in the real world and he talks about being spun in colors too heartbreaking to mention and that you're actually walking not through the word air but the real air and like what all that is when i saw it i just i remember feeling like you know those they sometimes have them as like shots at the start of a movie where it starts on like a page and then it zooms out of the house and the town and the city and the country and then the globe and you're looking at this world in the distance that's what those things do for me which i think great literature can just make you suddenly feel you're just this star wars the mandalorian and grogu is now streaming on disney plus what are you waiting for hop on the must-see galactic adventure comes home on disney plus This is the way.

13:49Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt. Star Wars, The Mandalorian and Grogu. Now streaming on Disney+. Read PG-13. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans.

14:37A spec. Yeah. Yeah. I got that. The size of the universe. Yeah. And that, I believe that end of, sorry, I'm not explaining it very well because I guess people who haven't heard it, should I say what it's about? Yeah, go for it. Oh no. Maybe you should say what it's about. What was your experience with it? Pardon me. Well, I read bits and then went and read reviews to kind of like make sure, I always have that like, am I reading this right? But it's these two, well, it's two men, one and two, who are like in a room sort of performing this town on all the people in this town, Ballykirk, right? And they are - That they've invented.

15:11that they've invented yeah and they're sort of in this sort of isolated community well community of two and then midway through in probably like such an incredible entrance i'm sure i haven't seen the play live but that entrance for number three must be incredible on stage but comes in and basically tells them one of them has to leave and is gonna die basically and then they have to decide but that's a very again that explanation does not do it justice because that's like the nuts and bolts of what happened but it's not really about what happened no yeah so enda apparently wrote it when his daughter was asking him questions about death oh wow and i think he wrote this as some sort of a way of trying to explain what that is yeah and at the very end of the play they have to decide on one of them to leave they've both been there for nearly all their lives in this sort of room which feels like purgatory or something and they use these stories to keep themselves going they've created a world for themselves to live in in this room and at the end one of them has to leave and you expect it to be the older of the two who goes but it's the younger who leaves and goes to die and then the last beat of it which I think is okay to talk about that right is that the door closes but he goes out to meet this godlike person he goes to meet this person and walks across a meadow to meet them then the wall comes back up and one is left on his own or two is left on his own this older man and then there's a tiny hatch and the wall opens up and a young girl comes in and you realise he's got to do it all over again he's with this other person who he may need to shepherd through to a similar place and it's just so big Yeah, I know.

17:05It's so big. It's so big and it reminds me of Beckett and very much of Beckett, but reminds me of and a bit of the bits of Joyce that I've read. It just feels huge, too big to understand on a word by word, sentence by sentence basis. But what it becomes by the end is like for a split second, everything is laid bare. And I really feel like you can see what it is to be alive for a second. And then you can't you can't look into that song. for too long or you go blind so that drifts and then you have to watch the play again or read the book again every time i read that monologue at the end yes the monologue that's the part i read out loud i was like every time i read that that like i it makes me cry every time and then i got to another play with ender called medicine that he wrote for me and and the other people who were in it and that's another i think he's a genius he is yeah yeah did you see the version of this with killer murphy i saw two versions i saw one with killian murphy and michael murphy and stephen ray and then i saw was all one fuere so they had a female three oh wow in the second one that i saw and i think you could change the gender very easily in that play um and tighe murphy uh and both productions overwhelmingly I mean overwhelming is the word I would put on it and like a joy, they're so funny, they're so stupid, the jokes are stupid, I love stupid humour and I love stupid humour it's really dopey.

18:40Yes it is, but it does both at the same time, it's like so profound and so sort of mundane all at once. Yes exactly and it feels very Irish to me and seeing the difference between how Killian did it and Tyg I did it. Two totally different energies. And that's why it made me think about the play on its own. Because that's the wonderful thing about a play is that it continues. Yes, totally. And will continue to be performed. But I think that is a very readable play. It is. It is. And because my first experience, I think, of falling in love with acting was reading a play. It was reading that Martin McDonough play, The Lieutenant of Inish Moore.

19:13I read that like, I read that a hundred times before I'd even auditioned for it because it gave me so much joy to read. and I think some I cannot you know I can read Shakespeare and I read Chekhov and I and I do all that sort of stuff but actually those are the players and Conor McPherson those are the players that like I could just read their work over and over as well as see it I also love a one at no intermission oh straight through it's my favorite it is like good 90 minutes and then you go and like get a drink and dinner after and you're like you emerge blinking into the world you're like oh my god I think I know what it is to be alive oh no we're late for our booking yeah yeah it's great you're straight back into the real world it's so yeah it's so good and how was your experience working with endo because you did it you'd like you said you did the play at edinburgh right yeah how was it it was the most full-on working experience of my life i think i was playing somebody who the setup of that was great yeah it's a guy who we decided once a year in our world but he's coming out and he's talking to the audience and we decided that he's in this institution and he comes out and once a year he gets to explain why he's there he gets to tell the story of why he's there and explain why he thinks he should be allowed leave and they bring in these two actors to help him tell the stories from his past unfortunately the two actors he has on this day are two musical theater actors who just want to show off and so he's talking about his abusive parents but they're doing these really big characterizations and he's saying please don't mess this up and they start making stuff up and then there's a jazz drummer on stage who accompanies his monologues and the job of the jazz drummer is to break the rhythm so that you don't keep doing it the same way.

20:48So every night was new. So it nearly broke my brain, that play. But I think in terms of a room that felt special in Edinburgh, it was during COVID, we were only allowed 50 people in at a time. So everyone was spaced out. And I had to lose my mind in the play and I do think I lost my mind for a while. That's a good read though, Medicine, Medicine. Again, a last monologue that's like, it will break your soul. do you read while you're working or is it too much to try and have that no I don't read a lot when I'm working I don't watch a lot when I'm working I it no I'm bad at it and as a result over the years I've read less and I read a lot of scripts for work yeah and I've just read less and less and I'm really furious at myself like I had a year whatever it was two years ago I had a good year I remember like it was the year that the bee sting and prophet song oh my god it was that year so I remember I read a good few yeah yeah and I didn't like prophet song for a while I I it felt the language was uh flowerier than it would I would and Jesus Christ yeah Katrina Bell chose that for this as well yeah and I was like I can't believe I read that this weekend it is well done and I'm glad you're still here to talk that is a full on experience and it meant so much to me but I just had more time off that year I was able to sink into those worlds a little bit I feel like now's a good moment to talk about The Incomer because I feel like that has a lot of these kind of themes of that sort of, the people who are sort of living in this entire universe that they've built for themselves and then accountability, not accountability but like the clash with civilisation the outside world comes in, yeah that's so true Tell me about working on that movie.

22:28It was great. It was a first time filmmaker. And I loved, again, like when you're reading a script, I love the way that a script looks. I love the look of a page of script. And it clearly knew its own tone very well, this script. And so these two, this brother and sister who are living on this island who've never had. That's so funny that there is crossover with Ballyturk there. That's gas. Yeah. God, that's wild. I think you meant it on a similar level. I must be in there sometime. yeah so yeah and then and they they've never met people from the outside world oh my god it's the same i think we've ripped off valley turk um and uh and but they've got their own customs their own way they've got their own stories that they tell each other it's the same as valley turk oh no and then my guy turns up uh who's asking them to leave the island and but it's very funny and because they haven't met people before they are terrified of him they hate him they want to kill him and try to kill him and they also each fall in love with him yeah because they've never met anyone from the outside world so he is he's a shy guy and he's under a lot of pressure yeah and it's very funny very sweet very heartwarming but i think um also gail rankin is fierce in it which i love i love like a really elemental performance that's what gail's doing and then grant is hilarious and sweet in it so yeah yeah and you filmed in scotland we did right up at the very tippy top of scotland that must have been a fun sort of set to be on for a while it really was and it was also loads of young people it was a first time filmmaker and we were all the way together and it was just the weekends were fun you go out to the pub at the weekend you'd hang out i loved the producer one of the producers uh shirley o 'connor i went to college with and so it was like i'm really proud of it it feels really scottish and i believe it's been doing really well in scotland and but like we opened it in sundance here and i was so happy that the americans seem to really go for it you know you just never know whether it'll translate at all but they really went for it so i'm really hopeful for when it comes out yeah yeah and that must be such a different experience to filming something like the paper which i imagine is a like much more i mean maybe i'm wrong but like not corporate undertaking but obviously it's a big production with you know it is and it's also just like this the prep is so like on the incomer you have your script months before you shoot you work on your dialect you work on what you want to bring to everything you have challenges you've set for every scene and you know the overall arc and that's the joy yeah film in tv well certainly on this tv it's not even tv is it's a streamer but like it's you can get scripts at the weekend you're shooting on monday it is last minute and what you're trying to do is make it feel alive and give it life but also make sure that the character is not slipping away and that it all feels honest and funny you're just trying to make it funny as well so very different yeah very different do you enjoy one more than the other or is it just important to have both in your diet so to speak i think as an experience i think doing the film it's just easier to comprehend yes yeah in your head and i like that i like being set a task and then if you achieve it you feel good whereas because the ongoing nature of a streamer it's harder to hold in your head but the result I'm equally proud of and I also actually when we did season two I loved going back to work with all these great people with like Eric and Tim and and Chelsea just these amazing other it was great to go back to work with people yeah I love that so yeah I love both but uh if I can continue to do both I'll be very happy yeah I loved the paper as well I thought it was um I mean it's just so like fun and I think that that's sort of the irony of it all as well and obviously as a person who works in media it's so perfectly captures so much of her like trauma so sadly traumatic yep yeah but it's so it's so brilliant and the comic timing is is so good do you guys ever get the giggles on set when you're like doing stuff chelsea gets angry chelsea plays mayor in the show she gets angry because i don't really i'm really like in it and she gets the giggles a lot yeah and so she's like well you just don't think i'm funny i'm like no i think you're really funny but actually she's she's being so great in some of the scenes i'm like if i laugh now i destroy it so you stay in it and you double down and so that's where i go whereas yeah we've got some gigglers in the in the cast for sure funny and i loved the episode with the little robots at the with the little that's so good yeah it was very therapeutic to throw a food robot into a river i'm sure amazing i'm sure yeah no i think it's brilliant and i i can i i mean there's such different sort of itches those two projects but it's kind of nice to have that that's what i love about doing this series really is that you end up i end up reading so many books i would never normally choose and then you sort of like have that experience of doing something so completely different and it's kind of what you need especially now when we all get funneled down our own little tunnels there was one i realized i was trying to remember the books on the way in and yeah i think that the paper the paper i love i think this series is funnier than the first series yeah like i think it's come together in this really really beautiful way so i'm super proud of it when i was thinking about the books on the way in i was thinking i I was thinking, oh, no, it's a pretty good array of stuff, you know.

27:39And then I suddenly realized, less with Matilda, but with the other four, there's something very much in common with them. And I'm interested if you feel the same. Oh, what's the thread that you've decided? Are you going to see if I can dig it out? Yeah, I'm interested. Also, I'm interested in what you made of them. Were there any of them that you didn't like? No, I liked them all. I mean, there's definitely they're dark and there's like a lot of dystopia. and not dystopia, but I think like gothic kind of. There's darkness for sure. Yeah, there's darkness for sure. I'm trying to think there's any I didn't like.

28:11No, I liked them all. Although I was just, I mean, a good man is hard to find. I was like reading it, bopping along and then I was like, what the fuck is happening? Tell me about it. So the way that happened, I mean, I'd read, so Martin McDonough gave me, like recommended Flannery O 'Connor years ago. So I'd read loads of like her stories years and years and years ago. and then my mother recently was like i read a great book and she gave me this really slim like it wasn't as part of a bigger book of collection it was just on its own and i was like for fuck's sake ma 'am yeah like that's her taste okay i love that now with a cackle as well i'm like your mom sounds amazing i know and i just loved it is such like and also i picked a few shorter books because i was hoping to reread them before and i did get to reread that before i came in yeah it is an absolute gut punch it is not high on humanity no and yet and yet there is something again i don't know should we talk about like what it's about yeah let's do it the grandmother is sort of the central character in it really yeah and her and her son her son's wife and their two children are all going on a trip somewhere yeah and the baby and oh my god I know.

29:27Jesus Christ, I forgot. Fuck. Yeah, the fifth gunshot went off. I was like, oh, she went there. She went there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I forgot that. Yeah, good, good. And she's saying, oh, maybe we shouldn't go this way. And she's just using it as an excuse. There's this misfit. Is it misfit? Yeah, the misfit is the criminal, yeah. Yeah, in the paper. And she just uses it as an excuse, because she wants to go someplace else. She wants to go and see this house that she thinks she remembers, but actually it was in a completely different state. And so she's really annoying. This woman is really annoying, the grandmother.

29:55And she's very judgmental. and she just, she wants everybody to be the way that she wants them to be and she wants things to march to the beat of her drum. They go, it's not the right house, she doesn't tell them and then she's brought the cat, is that right? The cat escapes from when they're going along, there's lots of smoke in the air, the cat escapes and then they go off the road. They go off the road and then the misfit turns up. And he is as scary, he is as scary as it gets. and the begging of the family of the father as they slowly realise what's happening and then there's a description of the woods it says it's like something like a yawning mouth or something like that waiting in the distance and two by two the misfits suggest that they take her son and her grandson they go in first and the rest of them remain and then you hear two gunshots and then he suggests the other three go and they all go none of them try to run none of them they all go where they're told to go they do what they're told and then there's a moment of humanity between this grandmother she finally sees this guy and says you're one of my children the misfit and then that's too much and he shoots her too thanks ma 'am Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney Plus What are you waiting for?

31:20Hop on The must see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+. This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt. Star Wars, The Mandalorian and Grogu. Now streaming on Disney+. Read PG-13. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports.

32:06Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans. I love that she recommended that for you. But like it is, it's dark, but it is as gripping as it's possible to be. It's very entertaining again. It's funny in places. Yeah. And then she just sees the world again laid bare for a second. I know. I also thought she writes the children's dialogue so well when the car crashes in there to keep saying, we've had an accident. I know. Isn't that amazing? Yes. That felt so real. I wondered if that had happened in real life or something like that. It felt so, and then these little people are toddled off.

32:51It's so dark. And he's like that kind of villain that isn't just sort of like, I wouldn't say he's charming, but he talks to her. Yes, he does. And he tries to understand her. And he also does this thing at some point. She asks him a question. And he's digging in the dirt with his toe. And he makes a small hole in the ground with his toe. and then he fills it back in before he answers and it really felt because he's trying to understand himself he's forced to sort of try to understand himself at a certain point he realises he can't understand himself or he doesn't and I thought just as a visual metaphor digging in and then deciding no cover that back up and go back to what I know I thought was like wow like it really fills you full of dread in such an amazing way they need an adaptation of that I felt like it would be it does well that was the other thing I realised I think a lot of them have been adapted.

33:45It's a very hard thing to do successfully. I know, right. And that just, yeah, that's just, that lives in my brain moments from that. And it's a great book to give to somebody. Totally. I mean, yeah, I feel like it needs to come with a warning on it. I was just bopping along. I was so, I was like, are they, yep, they're executing the children right now, okay? I was like, what is happening? Mary Gleeson. Yeah, yeah, what a woman. Yeah, it's so perfectly her taste as well. It's a great recommendation. That's so interesting. what else has she recommended for you she's recommended a few that's the that's the most recent one so that was the one that really popped out but also the one that's like she bought so christmas morning they would put like stuff in her socks and oftentimes you get like a uh a book yeah in your sock like a little thing she got one for my brother one year and i think it was a chuck i don't know it's palinuk okay book is that how you say i don't He wrote Fight Club, I think, and all those things.

34:40He got my brother a book, which was, and he read out the back of it to all of us on Christmas morning. I think it was about a woman who has sex with like 150 people on camera in a day. And it's told from the perspective of man number two, man number 73. We were like, man. And I don't think she'd read it. I think she just picked it up and thought, and like if Fergus was like as he ran out my mouth was like okay maybe that's not maybe that's not something from Santa oh this was five years ago I mean no we weren't children sorry we weren't children that's important no no no this was no they still do the socks for us every now and again oh do you know what that took on a real different depending on our age that's a very different story interesting we were we were grown-ups okay we were grown-ups yeah but you always got little like books in a stocking kind of vibe yeah like an apple and orange and Santa used to leave it for us when we were kids yeah and um then as we got older now she leaves terrifying books for you i mean good lord yeah yeah yeah she's great amazing it's also i think this book does capture so well this sort of they're like i felt really nostalgic until it got dark for like car journeys as a kid like do you remember that sort of did you ever do big car journeys with your brothers and your mom and dad we did and uh and we used to read on them and then a couple of us would get car sick i was gonna say yeah but like reading until the game boy arrived oh yeah reading was a big thing and it was a way to and then my dad would play like rye cooter on the on the thing and yeah all four was in the back that was a big that's it i remember listening to books as well they would have like audio books in the car on journeys they never did audio we did they used to do an alan partridge tape they had a tape of alan partridge when i was a kid that's fun yeah because he was on the radio for a while so that that was one of the ones that i remember and monty python and things like that but i don't remember any audio books yeah well probably because you got your parents to read them and I feel like having your dad read a book to you would be when you were little it's probably better than what they got on the recording that's true that's very true yes I saw him reading to one of his grandkids the other day was it good it was beautiful all the acts I mean because that's beautiful it's the expressiveness isn't it that's what you need yeah my granddad used to tell us stories and sometimes they'd make one up I also remember like when I was a kid my grandparents got me one of those books where and it was so far ahead of its time it felt like where they would put your you would right away and they'll put your name into like a christmas book so it was like donal and his best friend aiden and it was like that was my cousin you know what i mean like and it was a whole story about them going on an adventure i remember those oh that's so sweet yeah i mean those are the best types of little presents to read well there is something about also seeing it in print it feels like you're part of something real you know that like that like as opposed to there's something great about your grandparents your parents making up a story for you something else about opening and your own name is there.

37:29And I still feel there is something. I do prefer having a real book than a kid. Yeah. Oh, no, me too. Me too. Well, maybe next we can talk about Never Let Me Go because that is a book that was adapted and you were in that adaptation, which is... Yes, I had a very small part in that adaptation, so it felt okay to pick. Yeah. But in terms of how a book made... What I remember about that book is how it made me feel. Rather than the... I remember... So it's a carer. Kathy and she looks after people and she's been looking after people for like 11 years and then you realize that she's a different sort of carer than we're used to and it's the slow growth in the book of understanding of it peeling back and allowing us to understand who she is a carer for why she grew up the way that she did and how her life is different to ours and just the meticulous hand on the rudder that Kazuo Shiguro has, just the meticulous way of guiding you through this with her beautiful voice.

38:30She's a very beautiful protagonist. Yeah. And she's not judgmental of anybody. She's not judgmental of her situation. I know. I know. And she's not angry about her situation. Yeah. There's something about the acceptance of it that is the heartbreak. And yeah, so you find that there are these sort of clones. Clones is a gross word. Yeah. But the reason they exist is because they are bred to donate organs to real people as they get older. And they normally have two or three donations and a fourth is always you complete after your fourth donation. But it's her growing up as a child with Ruth and Tommy.

39:13Yeah. And so there's all this love between them. They both sort of love Tommy and then Tommy goes with Ruth. And they think they're going to get an exemption for being in. that myth that's the part that was just like well these are and these are the stories we tell ourselves this is the God this is God this is heaven this is you get to go someplace if you behave a certain way if you truly love someone yeah reminded me of like The Lobster by Yorgos Lanthimos so there's something in common there of you have a certain amount of time to have the perfect relationship and the pressure on that as being the meaning for life that you're worth you're worth a life if you fall in love truly or if you can express yourself through art all that stuff there's so many things going on in it but it was the gradual the gradual build of that book is so like it's a real page turner but not in the normally accepted sense no totally I mean it's completely propulsive it's the thread that it's all about people about to die yeah there we go that's it suddenly it's just locked in death is just like death at the centre of all of them really so yeah and I only realised that afterwards and it was quite an Irish thing and then one of the other books I sent was like The Dead and I was like well thank god we didn't do that one because that would have been too much I mean like there's too on the nose It is such an incredible book though and it's so gentle and I do think the part that's almost most blinding similarly to A Good Man Is Hard To Find is that when people are hopeful and like that glimmer of hope that they might get an exemption this myth of the exemption or like that the grandmother thinks she might be able to talk her way out of it that's the part that's always like makes me feel like sick in my stomach like yeah and yet that's like that's what we're all doing there was a real sense that like i think in the film they added this thing at the end that like you know when she's looking out at the end of the book and i can't remember if it's at the end of the book i think not but at the end of the film it's like how we all only like the tragedy of this that we know these young people are going to die all of them are on a limited time frame of like 25 maybe 30 the oldest right but like that's how long they have in the film i don't think it in the book but it is in the book um that the time you have is the time you have yeah and that using it to connect to love it matters how long you have obviously but in a way it really doesn't yeah as long as you do that as long as you have the use the time you have to connect and to really see somebody else yeah and to really see the people around you that that's as much as you can do yeah i think there's something beautiful about that and it is the only bit of glimmer because yeah she is yeah that that book is a special book for a reason there's also i think the genius of him setting it in the kind of like bucolic english countryside type i think hailsham is the house it's got like that sort of the going in that like tradition of like british literary books that are sort of like set there and then making it into basically a farm for humans is like and it made me like is it is it havisham is havisham the name of miss havisham is that the name in great expectations is it yeah yeah you know what i mean like hailsham and there's just something about this big house and all this death happening you know what i mean there's something kind of crazy about that and it's the hope of these young beautiful people and and the big thing like basically the world outside has has allowed them to be these donors yeah and there's something about what that says about the way that we all must live which is on a daily basis turn your back yes and forget about all the injustice all the pain all of the awful things that are happening in the world right now to people who are less fortunate than you that to continue living you you have to you leave those things behind or something like that that you develop a lack of empathy for the whole world because you must if you're to continue living there's something about that in the book as well yeah they've been abandoned they have and people have decided almost like that they have no souls no exactly and that's the way to keep them in a different place but there's something about that that just feels very every time you turn on the news you look at the news you're like yeah we're all doing that we're all doing that we have to just pretend yeah we're all doing it all the time exactly something so true about that and so heartbreaking what was the experience like on the film when you made it i was very proud to be a part of it it was like it was my first time working with Alex Garland who I got to who also is a wonderful novelist he's written um 28 Days Later was amazing was the Como was a brilliant book yeah um and I got to meet Kazuyo Shiguro and he signed a copy of his book for me and I I know him a little bit which is I feel really good about we met him on that I had auditioned for the lead role in it and not got it but everyone just knew it was a special project yeah and all those amazing actors It was just, it was incredible just to be around all those amazing actors.

44:02It's such a stacked cast. Yes, and they just continue to do all this amazing work afterwards. So like, I really feel like there was a moment where I got to just cross over with all these amazing actors who are still doing incredible work. Yeah, totally. How does it feel when you're, because obviously you've been in, well, the Harry Potter films obviously were adapted from a book and this again. Adapting a beloved text is a kind of big pressure, I'd imagine. It is, and I've been in a few of them. Yeah, how does it feel? Do you read the book before doing the adaptation or do you try and keep them separate?

44:34I would always read the book. Yeah. But then it's really difficult because you can then go in and you can think that the audience already understands stuff that they don't. Exactly. Or you can try and explain stuff that is no longer important. You can try and over explain things. So it's actually a very difficult process, which is why a good adaptation is hard to fight. Yeah. And Alex Garland is very, very good at it. But I was in a Tom Stoppard adaptation of Anna Karenina. so I read all of Anna Karenina in like five days or something like that and it broke my brain oh my god and then went back and reread it and reread it that was incredible yeah and then again adapted by one of the modern greats yeah sort of literature and and and theater um I was in the little stranger which is a wonderful adaptation um of a Sarah Waters book brilliant Sarah Waters book so yeah I've been in yeah and I it's always different but yeah I've realized you really need to concentrate and the story you want to tell now.

45:28It will always leave something elemental. It will always leave something behind. And that has to be okay. Exactly. And you have to be able to, like you say, know the distinction between the two. But I do think it's interesting for the world building. But I think there's such a pressure with actors and directors, I think, when they're adapting, because people have so many opinions and they love to kind of share them. And they love, yeah, and that's reasonable. That's what you take on. But I think that, like, I don't know. There is this thing. I don't know if it's a cliche at this point but you know that the novels that were not necessarily the deepest can make better adaptations sometimes so Jaws and The Godfather quite pulpy in a way and then the films feel almost like found depth that I wasn't aware were in those books whereas if you're tackling Anna Karenina or Never Let Me Go those are so deep already and I don't know how they did it I think they did manage to bring some of that across but it's a hard thing to do.

46:27Yeah. Are you a Russian literature person? No. No, me neither. No, and like I, no. I started into War and Peace and like Tim Kee who I'm working with I think really loves Russian. I've not, no, I'm bad. I just can't get into it. Quite a few people have chosen them for this and every time I try to go back in but I don't know, there's something about it that doesn't, I don't know, it doesn't, I mean I can appreciate it but it doesn't make me feel in the way that other stuff does which I don't know. Yes, and I think, and I don't know how it would have felt bit Anna Karenina had I not been reading it from the perspective of this one person it really changed how I read it yeah um so yeah I think if I'm going to read any more tomes of Russian literature I probably will have to be playing yeah exactly to do with it which does not speak well of me casting call out there we go yeah um well your final book is The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M.

47:16Cain which you've got a beautiful copy here with the great cover as we were talking about before yeah tell me about your love of this one had you read it before no um had you read any James M. Cain before. No, I hadn't. Do you have any interest in that sort of book? What way? Which part of it? Because, you know, I first read that in my early 20s. And it's like, you know, it's like, it's sexy and it's murdery and it's got, and I loved Double Indemnity, which he wrote the book of, but somebody else wrote, not Chandler or Hammett, somebody else. So I got big into Dashiell Hammett and Chandler and all these people.

47:50But that one always stuck out and I couldn't remember why. I just love film noir. I love all those sort of things. And I cannot believe that that was written in the 30s. I cannot believe that was written nearly 100 years ago. That is nearly 100, I can't believe that's 100 years ago. Isn't that mad? It feels so, like the guy in it, like, you know, he's got bad aspects to his, well, there's loads of bad aspects to his character. He's not a good man. But there's something about him that I care, and it started me on this journey, I think there's a real clear through line to you. three of my favorite books starting with this which is that book and then the outsider or the stranger depending by camus which whatever and that's a really apparently that was an influence on that but there's a real disconnect between what the person is doing and and then from that to the book of evidence by john banville there's like a really strong line they're three of my favorite books and i feel like they're all the same book in some way yeah um so that's why i chose that one the setup is just it's so good a guy arrives in and within two pages the whole thing is set up yes he goes into this sort of a dinery kind of garagey sort of a place and he's just passing through town and meets he calls him the greek right is that what he calls him the greek he calls him uh nick is the guy's name right and then he sees his wife in the background in the kitchen and he just goes i'm staying here yeah and it just goes so badly yeah but they're they're they're not glamorous no a lot of the time those books the guy the kind of gumshoe guy who ends well he's not gumshoe but like the guy who is doing all the bad stuff with the femme fatale is inherently cool he is not no he is scared yeah he's petrified he gets nervous he fucks up he's shit at it yeah he is and a cat I love the cat the cat and part of the reason that Martin McDonough play that I did sorry this must sorry I should should I explain please please will you say what the book is about you'll be better at it no you're doing a great job it's I mean you've already explained a lot of it I felt like but it's so sexual as well like she says bite me bite me the first time they kiss they're both just incredibly like like all over each other.

50:15Yeah. And he bites her and blood hits the back of his mouth. Mm-hmm. And she likes that so they both, and then blood is running down her throat as he carries her upstairs. You're like, what the fuck is going on? I know. Is it in the 30s? Like, how is that allowed? I mean, and how old were you when you first read it? Early 20s, you said. I would have been in my early 20s, yeah. Yeah, there was something so visceral about that. Jesus Christ. Like, I know, I know. But that's like, so I think reading about relationships like that way, it's just so like, like two magnets is at that age you're like a lot.

50:45But then when they turn on each other, they both go off each other. They are. And when they're not in the pursuit, when it doesn't feel wrong, it doesn't feel right. No. So only when they're in the midst of trauma, not trauma, only when they're in the midst of drama and ugliness do they work. Yes. And as soon as they get what they want or things settle down, the attraction's gone. And I think that's like, that is a sort of toxic is an overused word perhaps and referred to too many things too but that relationship is fully toxic yes it speaks so well of a relationship which isn't working like just in a normal sense i think that's so true i hadn't thought about it that way but it absolutely does that way that they're both kind of constantly looking over their shoulder at each other like are you gonna are you gonna pull for you yeah like and that makes them love each other yeah exactly when there's no drama no the trust is doesn't work they're like well then what's the point yeah and i think i just know loads of people like that and I'm sure I've been like that in my own life and I think actually it has some really true things to say in the middle.