Felicity Jones

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0:50Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Would you dress up as a witch again? I do love being a witch. That was a very special moment. Well, Felicity Joes, welcome to One Night Stand. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be talking about these books with you. Fantastic. Have you always been a big reader? I have, yes. If there's ever a moment I'm not reading something and I think there's something really missing. What is it? It's because I'm not reading anything. To have your head in another story and another narrative is so comforting and calming.

1:30And I just find reading an absolute sanctuary. Yeah, I agree. Do you read at night? I do, yes. I try to. I tend to find, because I live in London, I actually tend to find reading outside of being in the city much easier if I'm away. But yes, I'll try and do a page or a couple of pages before I go to sleep. That's the key, isn't it? Even just a little bit feels better. Oh, yes. Yeah. I'm reading Intermezzo at the moment. Oh, I actually haven't read that one. Oh, it's excellent. Is it good? I'm really, really enjoying it. Okay. It's really, yeah, interestingly, kind of similar to Virginia Woolf in a way of being inside.

2:16It's sort of stream of consciousness. Yeah. Inside the two main characters' heads. Oh. but I'm yeah it's excellent. We've chosen four great books for us to talk about I thought we could start with A Room With A View by Ian Forster tell me what you love about that book. Well actually my love for that story started with the film which usually it's the other way around but I absolutely just adored that film I watched it when I was a student and then just kept watching it over and over again and I just love I love that it's set in Italy I love the romance um and the character of Lucy Honeychurch and all the surrounding characters and the general kind of um lust for life yeah that is at the center of the film and then and then came to the book afterwards and obviously just how I was struck by how true the film adaptation is to the book yeah just get captures its essence it really does and the like scene setting between each section of the movie yes yeah the titles yeah which obviously comes from the book and yeah just a just a glorious um just celebration of what's important in life and judy dench and maggie smith together on screen we're not like i know you can't it's sort of you can't quite believe it so interesting seeing judy dench because i think it was one of her early films yes um and obviously both her and maggie smith always amazing to watch and then and then that really helena bonham carter was one of the reasons i wanted to become an actor was watching her work and and and the variety that then she went on to do and yeah i've just loved her as an actress from being a really young woman yeah i love that book as well and i think the film captures this well too it really has a lot of these like quite disposable female characters are they meant to feel disposable by society like you know yeah alan sisters who are like these spinsters that everyone's like oh maybe they'll have the house or we'll let someone else in and i don't know it was just surprisingly like when i read it again for this i was like oh it's surprisingly sort of pushing the boundary on that a little bit yes it's um it but it does it with such a light touch exactly doesn't it but you get a sense of the um the complication of those lives and their existences yeah yes and how like sort of which again you mean your film um that's out this week um oh what fun it sort of has that sort of well similarly that kind of the woman who's like doing a lot of stuff but it's like it feels a bit placeless sometimes yes exactly and and how powerful it can be to explore that through humor exactly and you get a sense of these women's lives being um under the surface are incredibly difficult yeah I loved the sort of um the like class commentary stuff of it as well like I always was that appealing to you as well yes it's the way that Forster sort of captures captures character um and he has such a kind of perceptive eye and how in society you know the society that he's commenting on everyone is sort of on the surface being very nice to each other and very civil but underneath there's all sorts of other things going on and this competition and there's economic um sort of rivalries and um and he manages to capture in a very subtle way totally and how like Cecil who should get like is meant Cecil?

5:55Yes. Cecil? And he's like a real like shit, like you say on the surface, shit-starrer in a way, isn't he? Yes. Yeah. Played so brilliantly in the film by Daniel Day-Lewis. It's so good. Isn't there a scene where he's like flapping wasps or something that's amazing? And the scene of the three of them, not Cecil, but Julian Sands and the frolicking in the water. Oh, yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. It's so good. I was curious when we were talking about this a little bit before that we both, we went to the same university and I also am from Birmingham. Really? Yes. And also went to, I know, went to, I went to Five Ways.

6:37So one of the grammar schools, exactly. That's where my brother went. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. For sixth form. Was he older or younger than you? He's older. Oh, sorry. I would have definitely missed him. Yeah. But I remember when I got to Oxford, finding the like class stuff quite difficult. and I think that sort of sense of how it was like always in the room even when you didn't realize it was in the room and I think growing up in Birmingham I maybe wasn't conscious of it in the same way um and I because I think grammar schools are kind of weird in that way because you have people actually from a lot of different yeah they're amazingly sort of um yeah from across the city exactly yeah yeah and we because I grew up in Hallgreen and Shirley and so I would go all the way across like we were all from all over but I'm curious if you had that experience at university or what that was like um it was I mean it was probably something I was definitely aware of I think um because I went to Wadham College and I really I felt very fortunate I found a group of people that have become you know my best friends so I felt that I really found my soul mates there actually so I had um I had quite a special um time there in in in that respect that's so nice yeah I found it a lot harder but I think I didn't understand I don't think I realized how important the college choice was because my friends who are at Wadham loved it for similar reasons well and that had come from I actually knew someone who'd gone there before and he had been really into drama and acting and and then through him he kind of you know showed showed me around he was from Birmingham as well and he said it's great for drama and and sort of knowing that that I that there would be a that kind of community that really definitely definitely helped it does help and did you love like studying and the like tutorial process I remember finding that traumatizing but also kind of fun I found it it was sort of um it's an amazing way of teaching you how to blag I found 1000 % yes literally how do I because you've got so because you're doing every week you're doing about you know you're doing an author a week yes you can't how do you and all the criticism as much as you try and read over the summer it's such an enormous amount of information to get through that you actually it's almost like training you to be a lawyer of synthesizing the key points and then putting them together to make your argument exactly and it's and I was quite struck by that it's not necessarily about reading every single thing from cover to cover it's getting all the um the right bits and pieces that you need yeah to put something together I mean ironically sometimes you do the least reading that you'd expect from doing a literature degree that's exactly how I describe it of like I think they used to say it was like civil service training where it was like one week you're working on this policy and you would read a vast amount condense it down offer some guidelines and move on and it's kind of crazy and like this kind of school I was at we were like taught to I guess kind of play it safe a bit really and like offer the correct answer and then it was only really at university that oh yeah that's not was demanded of you it's the original what is original the original almost interesting Yes, it's not ticking the boxes.

10:01No. You've almost, you're better off coming from a really intense angle. Exactly. And then using your evidence to support that. Exactly. But I only worked that out at the end. I mean, I was like diligently doing all my things. Yes. You know, being the perfect school girl. I felt exactly the same. And then by the end, I was like, oh, I get it. You're not supposed to do that. You've got to be more of a maverick about it. Exactly. and I would watch these boys in tutorials who I knew had been out drunk five nights a week and hadn't read anything they'd be killing it because they were just blagging yeah yeah and there um yeah it was an interesting I actually found it quite difficult the patience of writing essays of sitting I found it quite solitary I found that quite challenging that you know and then I'd be constantly um checking the word count I just get obsessed with trying to get to this word count and i i did find that in retrospect i found that quite quite challenging yeah you know it wasn't really a sort of it wasn't a group exercise it was you in the library or in your room just writing and writing and writing and you do also come up with some absolute shit i know i feel sorry for the cheaters what they must have been reading well also maybe some might mean read mine out loud and there's nothing more to find being like you're like it sounded good the night before at two o 'clock in the morning.

11:26Oh God. But no, I think, I mean, the force, I do feel like it captures some of that. The different sort of like, yeah, the role that all of these different characters play and what they're allowed to be in there. They're like the joy that they're allowed to feel in certain scenarios and the ones that are like. Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash.

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12:45It really is. Yeah. It really, really is. I loved it for that. But I mean, I also really admire and with George in particular, he's sort of held up as the kind of free spirited, kind of not so worried about everyone else's sort of needs and goals. Do you think of yourself as quite free spirited or are you a little bit more like worried about what people think? I think it's really hard not to worry about what people think. I think if you didn't care what people think, then good for you. I mean I'm in total yeah that would be um I think it's part of being human but I guess it's just not caring too much about what people think and having your own your own way of doing things I know it's a balance isn't it yes yeah but um but it's not um it's not always it's not always straightforward I guess it's caring about what people you respect what they think yes that's a very good way of thinking about it yeah um one of your well your second book is the waves by virginia wolf which is another incredible uh book that i love tell me about your love of that book well that came from uh i at university wrote my i think they called it special topic paper or something they might have changed it but so my special topic was um one was ibsen and all of in his plays and then the other one was on Virginia Woolf um and so I just I loved just delving into all of her work and that and it was the first time I'd kind of read the stream of consciousness and and this idea of just being in people's minds and um and uh somehow I found that really I find that I found it very comforting you know all the she captures all the idiosyncrasy of thought and um And she actually talked about this idea of moments of you have moments of happiness, you know, moments of in your life when things come together and it feels things, everything feels OK.

14:53But actually, they are just momentary. Yeah. And it's not one continuous, you know, arc of pure joy. Totally. You just get moments. Flashes. Yeah. Yeah. True kind of being, I guess. When you read Wolfe, do you find, I oscillate between going back every paragraph and being like, what the fuck just happened? I need to try and understand and just letting myself glide. are you which yeah interestingly I found it trying I found reading James Joyce much harder I found that really I just couldn't sort of couldn't stick with it really but with Virginia Wolfe I somehow and I haven't you know I haven't reread her novels recently so I don't know what it'd be like now but I I found that if you sort of give yourself up to them a little bit you just have to let it wash over you totally and not it's funny that there's kind of a way of being you have to be as a reader totally you do you sort of have to like give yourself relinquish control you really do have to and I was actually listening to a podcast about it reads like this uh books podcast and one of the uh people on it who's a professor was like oh I have no idea what happens in any of all books and I was like the idea that you didn't have to follow the plot she was like oh no I have never paid oh yeah do bother with that I was like it's so chic but I did think that was quite interesting because I struggle with the glide because I'm always like but what happened what's going on yeah exactly well that's what was interesting with finding out so much of her literature is about she had um many of her you know deaths around her and her siblings and a lot of it underneath is about loss and grief and navigating that yeah also I think um she did a lot produced a lot in of her like most adored work in her 40s which I love hearing and just thinking about the idea that that can be a really productive yes yeah it'd be interesting yeah to read her now I know right yeah do you do you go back and reread books I tend not to only because I feel like there's so much yeah that I want to get through that I don't although I have done with a room of the view yeah that was the one and it's quite a short book yeah no I know it's a little easier yeah um but I yeah I tend to want to get onto the next onto the next one and yeah I just there's not enough time I know there's so much to read I think it's quite nice to go back into old books and just read like a like reading a chapter a little bit yeah just like a little taste reminding I went actually because I was doing a film a few years ago um called the invisible woman which was all about Dickens and I went back and and dipped in you know some of his books having read them as a child and then rereading them as an adult it's different yeah very different yeah yeah it's kind get a different perspective yeah and I think you sort of gravitate towards different characters in a way yes yeah but I was kind of struck by going back and looking at the way it's like how many I mean just how many bangers there are like in terms of like these little like one line descriptions that you're like oh god that capture a whole world yes in such few words oh yes yeah I'm always always it's like stand-up comedians it's like anyone I have so I'm so impressed with people who can do that can be able to get to something so truthful with so few words exactly it's yeah well that's I think writing is I know there's a skill do you ever I mean do you um would you ever like read books with the goal of adapting yes very much that's um often what I'm doing now and looking for those those stories that can potentially work on on screen um yeah that's definitely definitely and finding interesting characters and worlds and do you tend to look for newer writers in that sense or like more classic um it can it can vary actually I think if you're going to do a classic then it's finding a new way in which is why I'm really achieved to see Wuthering Heights because I like the way that Emerald Fennell has you know with Brideshead Revisited with Saltburn again Brideshead Revisited was one of my favorite novels and just seeing how she takes those classic stories and then spins them in such a modern way.

19:12Did you like Saltburn? I did actually yeah I did I did for that reason of knowing how much um how you know Bride's Head was sort of the bedrock of it but she'd done it in on her own terms but also how triggering were those opening scenes at uni because it just like the things like it was like exactly like I mean she just captured it so yeah yeah yeah and then the way she just adds something surreal yes you know she takes quite a classic story and then spins it yeah and makes it um alienating yeah that's very that's a good way of putting it so you'd be interested in sort of adapting maybe a more classic book and then giving it a twist somehow maybe I think yeah if it's um you've got to find well what is the reason to tell it now what is the modernity in it that it we need to do it yeah otherwise what's the point do you direct ever no I've never never a director would you be interested in um I wouldn't rule it out I think potentially um at some point but again I think it has to be the right story that you feel really compelled to tell yeah there was one line that um Bernard said in this that I wrote down that I underlined when I was very like probably hung over reading it but um to be myself um I need the illumination of other people's eyes and therefore cannot entirely see what is myself, which I thought was really interesting.

20:36Do you ever relate to that as an actor? Or do you, I guess, how do you think about yourself in terms of your work as well? Yeah, I guess that's kind of talking about the difference between the sort of public self and the private self. I think my process with acting has changed so much as I got older and increasingly now, I just really enjoy the artifice of it. and the you know the wigs and the makeup and the dressing up is is um I just really embrace that aspect particularly wigs in that quite Hitchcock way I feel like wigs can really unlock something quite uncanny interesting do you travel with your like whole family when you're on set or something it depends it depends very much um on when something is shooting and how long and it sort of varies depending on the on the project I think the playing dress up stuff is something that you do so much as a kid and then it's just funny the way you just stop isn't it yes yeah and then it's interesting like people when they have to go to fancy dress parties and stuff and halloween they really enjoy it exactly there's something yeah where you get to sort of let go of yourself for a bit exactly jump into something else i know just freeing somehow it is freeing it's like the myth the misrule of shakespeare i guess yeah exactly there's you there can be a little bit more playfulness exactly um did you in when you lived in new york did you have big halloween nights out i feel like that's such a compared to london it's just don't do it as weirdly though i feel as though now in the uk halloween is huge is it catching up yeah it's massive what is it trick or treating the whole the whole kit and caboodle the dressing up the parties the candy consumption as they would say in the UK the sweets consumption um yeah it's huge now I think it's because it's such a long period to get from September to December so true obviously with Christmas and everything but people now just can't wait for Halloween yeah I think it's just and it's an excuse what is it I think it's an excuse for celebration yeah the the need for a party yeah would you dress up as a witch again but do you get all the jokes about the worst being a witch that was a very special moment yeah um I do love a witch's hat right yeah that was was that I did that a couple of years ago I did you oh my gosh I bet you got a lot of um jokes have you shown your kids the worst witch yet or they're too young no not quite yeah no that'll be yeah I bet that's uncanny though that'll be a strange well it's amazing how um how you know the worst witch and then harry potter yeah how this idea of kind of training magical training in a boarding school setting yeah seems there seems to be a big audience for it people absolutely go for it i guess it's like kind of the british export but with a twist like i guess yes exactly there's a way into it yeah that's so fun though but that was yeah that was quite a formative experience because I was about 13 14 shooting the worst witch and just had a yeah fascinating time and it made some really good friends and incredible yeah love playing Ethel Hallow who's a bit of a baddie and a snob right it's quite fun that's what I kind of thought I think it's quite like um she was like Mildred Hubble was it fun playing like a villain though and away yeah exactly yeah and she had like i mean she had really like perfect ponytail with a bow and like everything was oh it was um yeah miss perfect did um i know that you only did one season and you were just like me i'm done is that like how did you were you just sort of so sure that you just didn't want to go back yes i definitely i just yeah had a feeling good for you yeah i didn't want to do it again yeah and then it went on and continued to be successful and yeah did you ever regret it as a teenager then or were you just like me over um no I think I just wanted I think my family were going on holiday and I didn't want to miss the uh summer holiday yeah fair enough I mean and you did the archers which is incredible and that yeah that was um I did that over about yeah five five or six years wow in well because barmingham in pebble mill was um amazing for all the television production that was happening and then obviously alongside that was the radio production that's amazing so i used to love going and being emma grundy getting some pocket money yeah at the same time i saw this incredible um someone when tom stoppard so tom stoppard died over the weekend and I saw someone tweet the story of how Steven Spielberg asked him to write the um screenplay for Jaws and he was like no no I'm doing a BBC play he was like you're turning down a Hollywood opportunity to do a BBC TV play he was like BBC radio play yeah which is so good I know but he would have just felt he just it needs to be the right story right and in retrospect you know Jaws probably wasn't the story for him right yeah but also just reflects how important BBC radio is I know I absolutely love listening to it but interestingly the radio has become podcasts yes so true it's these it's the same idea it is it's got a different name but it's so quick and snackable whenever I'm back at my parents in Birmingham they have radio for and in like every room and I just like migrate around the house but it's like suddenly oh it's so relaxing and you go in and out and you don't it's the fact that you're not always curating what you're listening exactly it's like suddenly you're listening to seven minutes about shipping yeah and you're like did I need to know this no but it's of interest yeah I think it's so it's like the same with the magazine or you know or a newspaper it's so important for kids as well I think about that a lot from when I was growing up that my parents often talk about my older sister's kids they're like oh they just don't read watch the news in the way that you guys did and it's just because it was just like on in the house and I think now everyone absorbed it you just You'd osmosed it in a way that I think you don't in the same way now.

26:56Well, I remember thinking actually the difference, actually when we were shooting The Worst Witch, it was when 9-11 happened. And we all, everyone like huddled around. We stopped shooting and everyone huddled around the TV to see what was happening. And I thought the greatest difference between then and now is that if you know if when there's a terrible event we are all looking at it individually on our phones yeah and that's sort of just looking back at that and thinking gosh that is the seismic shift it really is that we have gone through in the last what 20 years is just from from from it being a group activity to the individualization of consumption of yeah news and then because it's individualized you actually get to sort of like curate your own story in a way that has some wonderful qualities and some like harmful ones like you like you know because you just don't you don't get surprise and delight in the same way well and also it's a lot of it's a lot for one person to be consuming on their own totally but yeah I love BBC Radio always and forever yeah um all right Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte another of your favorite books tell me what you about that I really like the Bronte sisters I love I was actually torn between Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre yeah and I love the there's always a brutality to their writing there's a kind of emotional intensity there's a kind of it's there's a it's so impassioned and um and there's a tough there's a real toughness to it and obviously those women growing up you know in the moors and that with their weird brother that intense yeah family and then the and then the environment they were in it's just so unforgiving totally and then how they managed to distill all of that into their work and particularly in Wuthering Heights and they're just I just was really quite captivated by the book from quite a young age for that for that reason it's um it just yeah the intensity of it yeah I was struck reading it again this weekend how almost like soap opera-ish the levels of drama were not in a bad way I mean in a very complimentary way like the sort of the angst and the drama and the like in each scene this like this it's very heightened it's so heightened yeah yeah and it's so like histrionic in this kind of there's no like like compare it to the waves where every you know people's needs and feelings are quite inside and they're like articulating them out yeah and they're like are getting repressed exactly they're like bobbing around like keeping it inside whereas this it's all out on the table it's like the opposite it really is yeah it's quite fiery it is um no one holds back yeah and and the idea that part of life is tempestuous yes you know um shifts and changes yeah there was like a few bits that I wrote down like I think what was it I mean obviously the um I liked this bit that I don't didn't remember at all when um Catherine was talking to Nellie the sort of like lady about who she was going to marry and then she was like I'm required had to be left alone I don't want to choose either of them basically and I was like god that that kind of like just leaves me alone yeah and not being able to have time to yourself no and that's so similar with Austin as well and the Brontes that they're constantly being interrupted and just that well that's also what you know Virginia Woolf talks about a room of one's own the need for physical space right to reflect and to have ideas and that being such a struggle for so many of these authors do you how do you carve out time for yourself do you have like a routine to get like an hour on your own or anything like that um I do I mean mainly through you know exercise going to yoga or running or um that's kind of how I yeah try and keep a level head yeah I mean because it's hard to like carve out time and I think about that a lot with work when I'm always trying to be like I need to be efficient but actually you need like idle time for processing time yes and um and sometimes by taking a break you come up with a better idea yeah yeah if you go away and yeah and um take the pressure off sometimes you can work something out and i find that through running i find running really kind of therapeutic do you run marathons or have marathons oh no no just like a few miles literally i'm really impressed if i do like 10 minutes on the running machine no i can't literally i'll go around a local park twice and i'll be like yes I think it's just getting the heart rate getting the heart rate up once a day and you feel much better that's so nice there's also this bit that I when I was reading it again when Kathy gets back from staying with the neighbors and she's sort of like curious about Edgar and she's coming back and there's this tension as she feels the slippage between who she's become in the time away and who she was before and maybe who she wants to become have you ever had that experience in your 20s or with your work where you sort of come away and you come back slightly different I sometimes living abroad I notice it when I go home people are like you do what now and I'm like ah I haven't stayed the same sorry yeah nor should you that's the whole point right change and evolve and yeah yeah I do remember that you know going away filming and then coming back there's a little bit of readjustment right on re-entry but I think sometimes when you're away you know you have less there's less pressure you know you're not sort of being away from home there is a kind of um just you know even things like paying the bills and stuff like that you know when if i'm shooting away and you're not so worried about the day to day yeah sometimes when you get back it's kind of all the boring things that need sorting out are your parents still in birmingham they're not actually they um they both live in yeah different places yeah so do you suppose you don't go back like so i i haven't been back i used to go back when i was doing the archers because i was doing it at university so i'd go back to the mailbox yeah um because it moved from pebble mill studios and went to the mailbox um but i was thinking i would i'd absolutely love to just go back and and visit and just be be reminded of it again it is amazing i go back probably about four times a year um to my parents and stuff my sister's still there and stuff and i love when i go in ever i go into town i'm it's just like almost you always get this like glimmer of an old self like you sort of walk past this like a bus stop and i'll be like oh that's when oh it's quite special it's very virginia yeah yeah weird it's quite uncanny yes because you think where who is who is that person person yes that existed that was happening yep uh is she still there is she still there and like it's very yeah it's very strange but quite important to do totally and you sort of like struggle to almost find the connective tissue to where you are now I'm like how is that person now there I don't know it's it's an odd it's a very strange strange feeling yeah but it's town is very different now especially since they knocked down the library and I know I used to love that library i was saying that the other day actually i used to love going there was something about that architecture because it was really quite small they were quite low ceilings the rooms and it was really no i was navigating being able to concentrate and i could really focus and there was something about the environment that made it really special to be doing what you were doing totally so i would agree with you going up into a like body and you're sort of like Like, it was.

34:52And I liked the fact that it had all the sort of, like, random shops and, like, a bar on the Raphael's on the bottom. It's the idiosyncrasies that are so nice and the oddness. I know if you make everything uniform and perfect, it's so boring. Exactly. Yeah. No, it's a shame they got it. And the same with the, I used to love the station. Yeah. I remember all the, you'd see all the trains. I know. It was sort of, like, the old thing flicking. No, no, it's all a bit. No, it's pretty, yeah, unwrapped. a bit shiny now a little bit shiny I guess things have to they have to move on like us they have to exactly exactly but no I loved rereading the sort of weathering heights and I love that device in the where like it sort of starts with someone discovering um I think Catherine's old like diary entries um and my favorite book is Possession by A.S.

35:42Byer where they discover the letters but are you a letter keeper or journal keeper I do like to write a journal or diary um I do I find it really therapeutic writing out thoughts especially when there's a lot of thoughts coming at the same time um and then letters I love love to do but increasingly finding it difficult to find the time but it's and I like writing little thank you notes and um um but it's yeah sometimes a struggle to to fit that in but I do and I love receiving them as well yeah when um Jessie Buckley was on this morning we were talking about she mentioned that she uh got some writings uh made up for rap gifts and I and we were talking about rap gifts and I was like are they as much pressure as they sound like and she was like yes do you do rap gifts for all your projects as well for everyone no you suddenly you know get to the end of the shoot and you go oh my goodness I've got to get all these presents they've got to be really thoughtful and meaningful the pressure it's a lot right um it is but do you know what often is nice to do is um on oh what fun I went there was a really great we were shooting in Atlanta amazing uh bookshop oh that's exactly what Jessie said yeah and actually they were downstairs had a lovely section of art books and photography books and there's you know so you're rarely going to buy one of those beautiful books for yourself so it was such a it was so easy and just thinking about what everyone would like and write a nice note inside yeah um tell me about oh what fun because i watched it yesterday it was so fun oh did you i loved it it was really like i feel like it's sort of coming at the right time You'll need a little bit of festive cheer.

37:30Totally. At the end of the year. It is, yeah, it's just great. It's great fun. I mean, Michelle Pfeiffer falling out of a truck. Yeah. It's pretty cool. It's so good. Yeah, and we had, it was a lovely, lovely cast. We had such a great time hanging out together. And we all really naturally got on with each other. Oh, so nice. It was, yeah, cool gang of people. Are you a big Christmas celebrator? Do you like having a big Christmas day? I do. And we have, both my husband and I, have a lot of family members. So it's always quite a big event. Yeah, I always prefer Boxing Day because it feels a little bit like...

38:13Yeah, just eat roses chocolate. Exactly. And just stakes are slightly lower. Yes, and just take the foot off the gas. Yeah, exactly. Be hungover. Do you like gifting books for people at Christmas? is that like a yes um although sometimes i'll buy them for my nephews and nieces and they're like give the pen that it's not a book is it like yes it is yeah read the god damn book yeah that's good for your education exactly are you ever are you much of a do not finish person with reading or do you like force yourself to get through i used to force myself to get through and now i just if it if it doesn't what's the point i was exactly the same it means also that that is not what you're channeling no you know and you often like to be reading something that you're thinking about or you're looking for an answer to or there's some other reason and so if you're not engaged I would just I think you've got to let it go do you read in preparation for parts ever like for roles yes definitely definitely it's a very useful way of finding a new angle into something you know reading a a film train dreams that i did i read a diary of a woman who was a kind of woman female pioneer similar to the character i was playing and she was a single parent with a child and i was reading about it was such a it was like a daily diary of her what she would do what she would eat she'd have to fish for everything she was um had to be totally self-sufficient she was a horse rider she'd go with her child on the back and they'd go out to the forest and go and camp in the thick snow for days at a time and she was but interestingly she was obsessed with coffee so she loved she had a coffee every morning she'd make so um yeah it's like oh not everything changes no I know she'd love yeah exactly still a big deal yeah that's so interesting and how do you think about what parts to commit to say when you're like signing on for a project do you have like a rubric that you go by or I don't know really until I've read it and then I factor in the story and the director and okay all those things feeling interesting and what I want to be saying at that in this moment because you know it's quite powerful putting a story out into a world into the world so what is the story that I'm a part of telling yeah is very is really key are there any like secondary readers who you particularly trust that you might like ask to take a look at something um i i mean with my agents you know we read everything it's very much a collaborative process but ultimately you you know you have to feel it yeah you have to feel like oh yeah i want to go and do this and yeah you know you have to spend a long time with that character so you have to believe in it to want to do it totally well your fourth book is war and peace by tolstoy just a little just a little one it's a little little book a tiny book tell me about your love of this book wow this book took me so long to get through I mean it was not it was not a it was not an overnight read yeah um but and actually interestingly I'd cut I think it it probably took me about two years or something to read and I would read other stuff in between oh nice yeah and then come back and um but I just found the the detail of human experience and the human condition a bit like Shakespeare yes how did how do they capture that I know just the absolute um just all the minutiae of what it is to be human and how we you know how we find meaning and what we're doing I'm sort of amazed that they can make me care about like so many like sort of in between scenes in a way yes it's all about that I felt the same when I read East of Eden um by Steinbeck and I was like just struck by like how be like god I've just 50 pages in this moment but here we are yeah exactly and to go so microscopic totally and you're it's so much more about the um the undramatic moments yeah actually and that's kind of like life I know it's all the bits in between yeah I also think he kind of surprisingly i thought he wrote like girlhood in quite an interesting way with natasha in this as well um sort of i mean and maybe i'm swayed because i watched the bbc version with lily james where she did that she was so good yes yeah she really captured it like that sort of like innocence and yes joyfulness the like laughter yes but also the feeling of um starting to navigate yeah and understand that you know yeah the complexities of it yeah but I love that yeah and I love the sort of the winter the winterness of it the snow and the cold yeah the scale be able to to be able to go so to talk about a country in its entirety and then to go so particular yeah and so microscopic yeah exactly and the history and the way into intertwines it's really it is really extraordinary and the sort of dialogue is so so good and you know and it's especially even incredible because it's in translation I think the translators do such a beautiful job and to be able to capture the essence of what the person was wanting to say right it's it's really quite remarkable um have you read much other like are you a Russian literature person well I've read Anna Karenina oh yeah which again is just kind of yeah masterful yeah um and then Torrance of Spring to Ganev and yeah I went through a period that my mother is a fan of Russian literature so I kind of went those round um it's actually just after university I went through a period of going and reading them and that's so nice you know there's also romance to them and the idea of sort of the longevity of love I also miss the kind of like serialized form like I think that with Dickens when you read it you're like oh you can imagine why this was like oh my god yes you know you'd be like it's like a tv show exactly yeah that's why actually interestingly these kind of epic novels make great tv shows yeah because you know particularly dickens because it was meant to be consumed on a weekly bite-sized basis yeah no it is it's it's such a wonderful way to consume and a wonderful way to like be like drawn and and you sort of get to go in more depth then because you have these smaller hooks pulling people through you don't have to sort of exactly well it's a bit like soap opera there's got to be a hook at the end to get you to come back I know so you're reading intermezzo at the moment anything else on your to be read pile i just read an interesting book called wintering which was all about embracing the cold and embracing winter and um how talking about different societies how they treat winter and it shouldn't be something to be afraid of it should be embraced and i love that um yeah it's really you know it's quite i quite like all the hooks it hugger yeah higgy yeah whatever this i don't know how you say that like that's just i quite like that like light candles in the morning and you know how to bring warmth in the winter i love that and your character in oh what fun is a novelist she is yes she's exactly laptop i know i like that bit between her and her brother where he's like okay i didn't mean that part and she's like and the dialogue's good too and he's like yes i love that like it was so the script was just so brilliantly written yeah it's very funny and it does capture all those family dynamics exactly well just the you know the love slash annoyance yeah that we all go through yeah well we're virtually at time but one question we often ask our like guests on um is like what uh books we think one of their like famous characters would like so do you what do you think jin aso's reading this might be like martial arts times yeah i was trying to think about like what it might be as like the sort of like the daddy element i don't know whether that be hamlet no um yeah i think she'd like definitely i think she'd like comics yeah and uh fanzine fan and um um and then literature wise what would she be oh maybe like um wakowski or something yeah yeah something really um off the beat i asked my ai i was like what do you think they would be and they said ender's game which i thought was interesting yeah i was so random i know i know it's like truly the robots haven't quite got it yet but uh it's always funny i love asking random questions like that yeah oh that's so good i wonder how it got there yeah it will find a link somewhere yeah it was sort of about the themes it was about the sort of military and and being a resistance and all that kind of vibe yeah enders games yeah why not well thank you so much thank you for choosing great books thank you what a pleasure