Episode 7 of More Like This features the (reportedly) fear-inducing actress Rosamund Pike as our special co-host and guest. But first, Krista chops it up with Gary Oldman, the legendary lead of this awards season contender, MANK. Directed by David Fincher, Oldman shares his experience working with the creative and breaks down his personal character development process from script to film. Similarly, Pike details her experience with Fincher in Gone Girl and takes us all on a phenomenal ride from rejection to triumph regarding her new audacious film, I Care A Lot, dropping February 19th. Tune in, if only for the gratifying accents.
Episode 7 of More Like This features the (reportedly) fear-inducing actress Rosamund Pike as our special co-host and guest. But first, Krista chops it up with Gary Oldman, the legendary lead of this awards season contender, MANK. Directed by David Fincher, Oldman shares his experience working with the creative and breaks down his personal character development process from script to film. Similarly, Pike details her experience with Fincher in Gone Girl and takes us all on a phenomenal ride from rejection to triumph regarding her new audacious film, I Care A Lot, dropping February 19th. Tune in, if only for the gratifying accents.
Krista Smith: Welcome to ‘More Like This,’ a podcast from Netflix Queue, the journal that celebrates the people, ideas and process of creating great entertainment. I'm Krista Smith. I've spent over 20 years interviewing some of the biggest names in Hollywood. And on this show, I'm bringing you fresh new perspectives from across the entertainment industry, with the kind of access only Netflix can offer, but I won't be doing it alone.
[00:00:26] I get to collaborate with some of the best writers, interviewers, and experts in the business. Many of us first met this week's co-host in 2005 as the gentle and reserved Jane Bennett opposite Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth in Joe Wright’s ‘Pride And Prejudice.’ Since then her versatility as an actor has been on constant display.
[00:00:48] We've seen her flourish in ‘An Education’ starring opposite, Tom Cruise and Jack Reacher. And then there's her Oscar nominated performance. in David Fincher's ‘Gone Girl’ and much more in between. Fast forward to today, she thrills as the cold blooded and deceitful con artist, Marla Grayson in the black comedy ‘I Care A Lot.’
[00:01:10] Let's face it in any role she plays we can't take our eyes off her. Please, welcome to our show, Rosamund Pike.
[00:01:22] Rosamund Pike, it’s so great to see you. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
[00:01:26] Rosamund Pike: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to come on the show and talk to you and get stuck into lots of things, I think.
[00:01:32] Krista Smith: Ah, let me just say congratulations on the Golden Globe nomination for this film ‘I Care A Lot.’ It's very exciting and all that stuff, even though it seems in a moment it can be frivolous. It's very important. And it's a great acknowledgement for you in this role in particular. And just for your career in general, I've always loved watching you on screen. So, congratulations for that.
[00:01:55] Rosamund Pike: It was a total surprise. You know, I didn't know the spirit in which anyone would take this movie. I hoped that it would be a movie that would be right for the times, you know, give a distinct and different flavor to this sort of turbulent year we’ve lived through and, um, and then, you know, to receive a nomination just as we're about to release it was just amazing.
[00:02:14] Krista Smith: So exciting. Um, and we're going to talk about the film and it's called ‘I Care A Lot’, a little bit later on in the show, but I wanted to know, what have you been doing during this crazy year we've been living in and how have you been getting through the quarantine and what have you been reading anything interesting, watching anything interest in?
[00:02:33] Like what what's been going on in your life?
[00:02:35] Rosamund Pike: The year has been getting to know this new, this city that I now call home, which is Prague and Prague has been a wonderful home from home. It's a very curious thing to explore a city in the state that it was sort of almost meant to be seen the state, the state that you can never see it.
[00:02:49] And if you came as a tourist to Prague, you'd never see it empty. And so for those early weeks, You know, it was quite a privilege to go out and roam the deserted streets and see all these sort of statues reclaiming the city.
[00:03:04] Krista Smith: And can I ask, what are you doing in Prague or are you working in Prague or did you relocate there?
[00:03:08] Rosamund Pike: Both. I started working on an Amazon show called the ‘Wheel Of Time.’ And at first, I thought about whether I could, cause it's close to London, whether I could work here and fly home and then, you know, I thought let's take everyone on a, on a new adventure at this point of our lives. And so, we relocated here, you know, we're, we're marooned without sort of close friends, but we've made friends as you do, and certainly fallen in love with the city.
[00:03:33] And found a thing that Prague has that London doesn't have is still all these kinds of wonderful communal areas of unmonitored space, you know, spaces that are used for skate parks and bike parks and venues, which of course are empty, but sort of outdoor art spaces and all kinds of things that London would have had.
[00:03:52] And now doesn't really have any more because money got in the way, but yes, it's a very creative place. I felt very creative here. And of course, you, you, you know, like anyone I'm sure like you, you know, you try and find an outlet. You know, I started learning poems and putting them on Instagram and just, just a way of kind of still expressing, or I collaborated with a dance, a friend on a, on a dance piece that we've done or remotely, you know, someone's done a libretto, someone's done music, I've done the voice, she's choreographed remotely.
[00:04:20] And you know that that's been fun. And I. I feel like I want to know what you've been up to. I feel like, you know, if you become a sort of market gardener or written a novel.
[00:04:34] Krista Smith: Not quite, I mean, my hands have been full with, with I have two boys so that the homeschooling really is like all hands-on deck. And then other than that, I really have found, I mean, this is going to sound such like the company line, but I have found a lot of refuge in the Netflix content.
[00:04:50] And whether it's watching ‘Ozark’ or ‘The Crown’ or ‘The Tiger King,’ or, uh, the latest in ‘Queens Gambit,’ I've kind of found myself having all of this, like extra time to sit with things because we're not running and dashing everywhere. And, and, and living these kind of hectic lives. We recently discovered ‘Loupin’ and loved it.
[00:05:11] you know, even when I watched it with the subtitles was fantastic
[00:05:15] Rosamund Pike: the ones we watched together where the ‘Queen's Gambit,’ like you said, which I just thought was a masterpiece, really. I thought, you know, this is the finest writing and production values and acting, and it's just. You know, excellent across the board. I felt so happy to see on Anya Taylor-Joy, who was my daughter in radioactive who plaid the remarkable Irène Curie, uh, daughter, Mari Curie.
[00:05:37] Um, so it was just, I thought she was phenomenal in it and I also loved ‘Unorthodox.’ Do you watch ‘Unorthodox?’
[00:05:43] Krista Smith: Yes. Loved it. Shira Haas, she was quite the discovery I thought as well.
[00:05:49] Rosamund Pike: Fantastic. That she was nominated for a Globe as well. Um, I thought the whole company was beautiful in that. And she was completely stunning, but equally the boys, I mean equally the, you know, the complexity of the male roles to now.
[00:06:03] I mean, I know we're all focusing on the complex female roles, but you know, actually when you see men, male roles that are complex in a different way than we've historically seen, like, I felt both those male characters, you know, morally ambivalent, the cousin. And the husband with all his sort of innocence and sweetness, and yet rigidity.
[00:06:24] I thought, I thought they were complex male roles of the, like I hadn't seen for a long time. And I've also been loving ‘The Crown,’ but I'm out of date. I've only just caught up with season three, so
[00:06:34] Krista Smith: Well, brace yourself. It's excellent. It's so much fun. And Gillian Anderson as Thatcher is great. There's a lot of good new actors peppered throughout.
[00:06:44] It's really, it's super by. I love that series. I think probably all in that's my, my favorite go-to. I also just had not too long ago, interviewed Gary Oldman for ‘Mank,’ which is David Fincher's latest film about Herman J. Mankiewicz and, and the kind of writing of ‘Citizen Kane’ and that world and Hollywood during that era, it's I think a masterpiece. Has your path ever crossed with Gary's before?
[00:07:11] Just in, in terms of being in London and-
[00:07:14] Rosamund Pike: it did, uh, because I was filming ‘Seven Days in Entebbe’, uh, at Ealing Studios and, um, we'd feel most of it in Malta. And then we moved to Ealing and in the next door, soundstage, Gary was filming ‘The Darkest Hour.’ And they, it was being directed by Joe Wright and he invited me across to come and say hi, and, and I got to spend a couple of hours watching Gary work.
[00:07:38] And, and I was very hesitant to, to meet him because I thought if he was involved in a role like that, he definitely wouldn't want I'm nice. I wouldn't want a strange other actor to come in and sort of interrupt the process. But Joe said, oh, no that's not how Gary works. He's, he's, he's completely kind of at ease and able to just switch right out of it.
[00:07:58] And then just switch right back in. And that's the kind of magical, which I thought was amazing. So, I got to see that incredible makeup. That he had up close. I mean, it was unreal. It was, you just couldn't see where Gary ended and the prosthetics began. It was the most extraordinary work.
[00:08:16] Krista Smith: Yeah. And, you know, he went on to, to get the Oscar for that performance.
[00:08:21] Uh, which was incredible. I mean, you think about it and interestingly enough, he talks in the interview about not having any makeup and how he was most terrified of that because he likes as an actor to kind of hide behind a nose or some kind of prosthetic or a hat or a thing. And, and Fincher specifically didn't want any kind of.
[00:08:41] Any kind of look to try to emulate what Mank was. He was just wanted him to be the essence of that person and not have it.
[00:08:47] Rosamund Pike: You brought that out in, in the, in the interview that I saw and, and, and you got your drew Fincher on the same subject. And he ended up saying, you know, I want that quality that, you know, an actor has that you can't beat out of them with a tire iron.
[00:09:02] And of course, I listened to that and I thought, wow, You know, hmm what was in me? Beat it out with a tire iron. And then I thought, actually, I don't think I want to know the answer to it.
[00:09:16] Krista Smith: Let's have a listen to my chat with Gary Oldman.
[00:09:23] I caught up with the Academy Award winner to discuss his expansive career and how it prepared him for his brilliant Golden Globe nominated performance as Herman J Mackowitz in ‘Mank.’
[00:09:40] Thank you so much for joining me.
[00:09:43] Gary Oldman: That's okay. Very happy to do it.
[00:09:46] Krista Smith: So, I wanted to go back to when you first heard about this movie and you know how this movie first came to you and what, what your reaction was when you opened that script and read it.
[00:09:56] Gary Oldman: Initially, obviously I was very excited before I'd read the script because it ticked a box of mine.
[00:10:03] I've worked with some wonderful directors over the years, and David was certainly on that list. And then to just read. The score is writing by his, by his dad check Fincher. And not only that he's lying down, so there's in bed for most of it. So how, how exciting can I make that? But, uh, it was one of the, really one of the best scripts I had didn't know in a long time.
[00:10:33] And I was just thrilled to be, um, to be asked to do it very. Hmm.
[00:10:41] Krista Smith: I mean, obviously Herman Mankiewicz is a brilliant man. Had a lot of turmoil. Did you know about him before you had read the script?
[00:10:51] Gary Oldman: I really was more, I was more aware of Joseph the brother, just because of his achievements. ‘All about Eve’ is one of the great all time screenplays
[00:11:03] and films and vaguely knew that that, you know, there was that, that connection with Wells and that he had done a bit of sort of script doctoring and a bit of writing for the Marx brothers. But, um, basically it was, it was a blank canvas to me.
[00:11:22] Krista Smith: Well you've said, and I love this. So, I hope it's true.
[00:11:27] You've talked about how acting isn't necessarily an intellectual pursuit, but it's more of a sensation and a feeling. And I wonder what was that for you? With this character with Mank. What was that sensation that, um, got you to this character? That doorway?
[00:11:52] Gary Oldman: Yeah, no, the processes, it's all still a bit of a mystery.
[00:11:57] There's a certain, obviously there's a certain amount of, of work of head work that you'd need to do with the character lightness because. There isn't there's I mean, there's quite a bit of information out there on, on him. And there are, uh, there's enough footage of him, tiny, tiny little cameo he did, and an early movie, which doesn't really tell you very much.
[00:12:25] And it's all anecdotal, you know, he said this, he said that he did this. He did that. So, there's that work that you, you know, you get, you, you gather, gather the information. As, as, as much as you can, but I've also said that you could do, you know, if you were playing Hamlet, you could read every book there is on, on the Hamlet, you could holiday in Denmark and whatever, you know, whatever kind of work you would do in that respect or research, I guess, as it's called.
[00:13:04] Um, but I've always said you couldn't do all of that, but don't know meaning night that won't help you stand there and say to be, or not to be, you know, Matt was an alcoholic and I have, uh, I've been in recovery now for almost 24 years. Um, but I do remember what it was like. So in that respect, I could bring a lot to the party.
[00:13:33] Because you have to sort of get inside, not only a brilliant mind, but a drunk mind. And that to me was very obvious from, from what I was sort of researching or looking at. You see it in the movie. Uh, he turns on everyone who wants to help him, you know, drunks want an enemy. They need, uh, they need a villain.
[00:13:59] He, he really, he really had some villains there. So, a lot of my own experience really that I gave that I brought with me. Here's the other interesting thing. I don't really think I could have been a convincing Churchill without the prosthetics. David did not want any and he trip, he didn't want anything.
[00:14:22] He didn't want a wig. He didn't want a false nose. He didn't want false teeth. He said to me, I want you to be as naked as you have ever, ever been. And I do like, you know, I like a nose or a pair of glasses to hide behind. So that was incredibly challenging and very daunting. And I resisted it at first and it wasn't until I started to kind of move and breathe in, in, in the, in the language, in, in, in the script and then the clothes and the shoes that I realized I saw, you know, Dave was right.
[00:15:07] I haven't really answered your question about how do you get into it?
[00:15:11] Krista Smith: Well, specifically, I wanted to know what that moment was when you've got, Oh, I've got Mank. This is it. This is my, this is the essence of, of him.
[00:15:22] Gary Oldman: I think with this one that really got, got, got the ball rolling was, was finding the voice.
[00:15:30] Now there is no recording of man. But there's plenty of recordings of Joseph Manckowitz. And I said to myself, you know, the Apple probably doesn't fall far from the tree. So that was what I started to work on that, that real dry delivery that sort of throwaway delivery in. With the voice of Joseph Manckowitz and that's kind of where I started, you know, you've got the, the, the, the basic group sound and Tom bruh from Joe, and then you add a bit of smoking and some whiskey, uh, or a lot of whiskey on top of that voice.
[00:16:26] And, uh, you give it a pinch of a Burgess Meredith. Hmm. And, um, you, uh, yeah, you, you have to Mank
[00:16:39] Krista Smith: totally. You have Mank, and in ‘Mank,’ it's just, he's so funny. And he's so alive that Gary, you made him so alive in a bed with, with a body cast, essentially. That was what I thought was so incredible.
[00:16:55] Gary Oldman: You know, also Wells described him and loved and dearly. Loved Mank dearly said that he was the perfect monument to self-destruction.
[00:17:12] He, he embodied the, the very essence of it and was very bitter and incur. And of course, incredibly funny and well said that when that bitterness. Or that, that vile wasn't aimed at you. He said he was, he, he was the funniest man on the earth. Now some people have said going back to the old days around the, you know, the Algonquin table in the early days, the, even when, even when that vile was, was, was aimed at you, he was so funny that you would laugh in spite of yourself.
[00:17:58] Krista Smith: I have no trouble believing that. I think what's also very interesting about your career and I'm going to transition a little bit here because it is kind of staggering. When I went back, there was so many performances and I can get a little to that a little bit later, but there. The directors you've worked with from Christopher Nolan to Francis Ford Coppola, Sonenberg Koran, Oliver Stone, Tony Scott, uh, Joe Wright?
[00:18:24] I mean, so many of them. And earlier you mentioned wanting to work with David Fincher and I, I want you to talk about that a little bit. Like what are the characteristics that make it a Fincher film? What's the experience with David Fincher?
[00:18:40] Gary Oldman: I mean, he knew exactly how we wanted it to look and sound from, from the starting pistol.
[00:18:48] So you don't have any worries or doubts that he's going to capture the period. But the thing that surprised me was the work that we did on the text in rehearsal. Analyzing every scene sometimes going over with just a word, you know, what's, uh, we need to change that and that needs a little bit more sizzle.
[00:19:15] What's it? What's a good phrase. What's a good word. That's not, that doesn't feel right. Um, what, what, what's the, what, what's the motivation here? What, what does Man want from the scene? What does Marion want from him here? Just the work on the character, characterization on what we're saying, and just the story makes sense.
[00:19:37] And so that was sort of a surprising to me.
[00:19:40] Krista Smith: I had talked to Tom Palfrey earlier, uh, and he just talked about how much he loved, uh, being able to do scene after scene, uh, you know, take after, take after take has Fincher obviously is, is a perfectionist.
[00:19:55] Gary Oldman: Yeah. He will not do like takes I don't. I sort of just an unnecessarily just doing take up to take up, to take off, to take for the sake of it, you know, sometimes.
[00:20:08] We, we walked away from things and he said, ah, I've got it. Here's the wonderful thing about having the opportunity to do many takes is you, you really start to live in the word you, you really well let's put it this way. I've always thought it was crazy that, um, Uh, production would spend millions and millions of dollars on Anita.
[00:20:40] Labrecque set, spend millions of dollars. I'm just a thousands of dollars on costume. And then we would get there in front of the camera and we'd have two or three takes and then we'd move on. I I've been in many situations like that and it puzzles me now. I understand that there are budgetary reasons why you, you can't just do endless takes, but when you look around you sometimes at these sets and these costumes and you think, Oh, my word, look at the props.
[00:21:17] Look at the clothes. Look at goddesses, marvelous. And then you get two bites of the Apple and you're moving on.
[00:21:25] Krista Smith: Gary, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for your time and your incredible performances in all the films that I've seen. And, and most recently in ‘Mank’ it's, it's, uh, just a pure delight.
[00:21:38] Gary Oldman: Thank you. It's lovely speaking with you. And, um, I'm, I'm thrilled that you like it.
[00:21:48] Krista Smith: Cool full interview with Gary Oldman, as well as more interviews with the cast of manque go to present company, wherever you get your podcasts and for an even deeper dive on the making of ‘Mank.’ Listen to our recent spotlight episode. Okay. Rosamond let's talk about, ‘I Care A Lot’ It's dropping on Netflix. This Friday on February 19th.
[00:22:13] I think audiences are just, they're going to flip out when, when this drops on the platform, it got great reviews. And again, you were at the center of those positive reviews for your performance. I can't really remember a time when I've seen the female protagonists as so morally bankrupt in such a delicious way that they're driving every aspect of this narrative.
[00:22:42] And it has this tone of, of a black comedy, but yet it's a thriller, but it was very real to me. And I love this character. She's amazing, right. Marla, graceson, and with just the physicality of her and then the interior life of her, it was just like a perfect marriage. Uh, And I just want to ask you first and foremost, what were your thoughts when you first got this script?
[00:23:05] Rosamund Pike: Well, the first time I read the script, I mean, I just thought I have never met a character like this. I've never had the privilege to read one on the page. I've never. I haven't been so excited by a character I've read for years. I think my agent sent it to me and it wasn't accompanied by an offer or anything like that.
[00:23:27] I mean, it was just, you know, read this script. What do you think of it? And I read it and I thought, well, I just have to write to the writer and say, you know, I mean, I've no idea whether I will ever have any involvement with this, but I have to say, this is the most exciting script I've read for years. The idea of somebody who so convinces,
[00:23:46] as a responsible, upstanding citizen who takes care of the elderly and takes on this difficult job of caring for, um, uh, families loved one when perhaps, you know, the rest of the family members live out of state and she is the kind of go-between between facilitating doctor's visits and, you know, care services and all of that.
[00:24:05] And meanwhile, you know, she doesn't care in the slightest and is only using it all to her advantage. You know, paying herself some vastly inflated hourly rate and, um, without, with an ultimate plan to move the elderly person into a care home, taking commission from the care home director and selling off the assets while they remain in care for the rest of their life.
[00:24:29] I mean, it's, it's a scheme that just you're dismayed to discover. And yet, the real villain of the piece is the system that allows her to win. I think, you know, she sees a, uh, an inefficiency in the system that she exploits for all it's worth. And I met Jamie Blakeson the writer we got on really well. I think he had, you know, really been a fan of ‘Gone Girl.’
[00:24:53] But, you know, it was several months before the film came to me as an offer. And so that, you know, one presumes that it was offered to other people in the meantime. So, any conclusion you can draw, but you know, I've never been frightened of being, you know, second choice, third choice, because I think if you, if you get sort of prideful about that, then you can miss out on an opportunity.
[00:25:15] Ultimately when it comes to you, it's yours and you know, then it's up to you to make what you can of it.
[00:25:20] Krista Smith: Well, all the physical choices, the stuff about your hair. I was looking at that like how just as, as the actress was that having to be razor sharp every day was the hair, was the hair person just cutting that perfect edge.
[00:25:37] I mean, you could, it was just sublime and the color of yellow and the shoulder pads and just, it was like this armor that she had to do what she did. It was like, this is my character that I'm building that is this person and it's flawless and it's pristine. And it looks powerful just as an actress. How kind of fun was that to get in and put all that on with all those little details all the way down.
[00:26:05] Rosamund Pike: I think that, you know, you build it. And I knew for quite a while, you know, I probably knew I was playing Marla in January and we started filming in July. And so, there was plenty of time to assimilate her. I mean, in the, in the script, J writes describes her as, um, as having raven colored hair, which I know he said, so that a woman of any ethnicity could read herself into the role.
[00:26:31] You know, that's how he works. And so I asked him if he wanted her to have dark hair and we discussed all kinds of options. And at one stage we were thinking about her being a red head. And then, you know, J was a bit worried about the sort of trope of sort of fiery redhead as not taking away from Marla as he'd written.
[00:26:51] So he felt that the blonde would be more iconic with the color palette and the sort of look for the film that he created. And then, you know, I have a friend who. Who also cut my hair and ‘Gone Girl’ actually, and cut that sort of angle goal that Amy comes back with after her time with the Desi. Um, and so I called upon her again and I said, you know, we need something fantastic again.
[00:27:17] And I had had this idea of, uh, Um, the very straight bob sort of come to me. I'd been in Sweden early and earlier in the year, and I'd seen this magazine article and I was, and it just struck me. I thought that's smaller, even though this was a dark head girl. And then Tina got the exact length and, and then Lori Deidre, who was our hair person.
[00:27:38] Perfectly managed it through the shooting of the film. So, but, but all of that is built up. So, you know, the color palette, those suits, the amazing dresses, all of that. That's not written into the script that emerges as you start to find the character, her sunglasses, her vape, it all gets detailed in, but it's, you know, as you say, you know, it's all a performance, isn't it. It's all exterior show.
[00:28:04] Krista Smith: There's some excellent action scenes in this. Uh, and one in particular, I don't want to give it away, but it's also an incredibly physical performance. One of the things is there's a brilliant series of scenes, but the one that kind of culminates with you and Diane Wiest is, is pretty magnificent.
[00:28:22] And as an actress, obviously you you've seen her work before. She is a legend in her enter time. It is Diane Wiest. How was that working with her in this film?
[00:28:32] Rosamund Pike: For a start, I was very honored that she wanted to do it. And she was so surprising and her delivery was so unexpected. And, you know, she had this sort of wonderful kind of humorous robustness to the way she played the victim, you know, which didn't make it easy for Marla.
[00:28:50] And I think that was true across the board with all the other actors is Marla's game was raised because of her opponents really in every scene. And each of those actors. You know, obviously you had to do the lines they were given, but, but they made it, they made the negotiation tricky by being surprising and original and deft with their delivery and all of that makes it fun.
[00:29:14] You know, it really is fun.
[00:29:15] Krista Smith: Yeah, it's a great cast. I should say. Eiza Gonzalez, Chris Messina, Peter Dinklage. I mean, everywhere, you kind of turn there. There's a fabulous actor coming, coming on screen, whether it's throughout the film or just in, in one, you have one great scene. I'm thinking with, with Chris Messina in particular in the office, it's terrific.
[00:29:36] As, as an actress, reading, reading, this kind of character on the page and bringing it to life. Do you feel that as, as women, as we're talking about, like these fully rounded out women, we're all trying to make it better. We're all trying to get these, these characters, even if they're larger than life, especially these female characters, more complex, more, you know, not always playing to type.
[00:30:02] Right. So, for you as an actress, you've had an actually kind of an exceptional run at this. I mean, how do you, how do you feel we're doing out there in the world in Hollywood, when you, when you see something like this and you star in something like this and you get nominated for something like this.
[00:30:17] Rosamund Pike: You know, look at Carey Mulligan, being so brilliant in ‘Promising Young Woman.’
[00:30:20] It's not the same story and it's not the same sort of character at all, but. It does have the common thread of a woman convincing me playing something she's not, you know, before she turns and says, Hey, hang on a minute. You know, and I think this notion which might have started with ‘Gone Girl’ actually, because I think one of the things that people were so arrested by in ‘Gone Girl’ was the idea that some of these things that they like and women can be.
[00:30:54] Performance, you know, the cool girl is this whole thing is schrade is the whole happy go lucky, you know, and hanging with the boys, drinking beer. Is that for every woman? Is that a schrade? No, of course not. But are there some who, who play cooler than they are? Yeah. How will you, of course there are, you know, and that was what Gillian Flynn tapped into.
[00:31:16] So eloquently and bitingly. And David completely got that when he was shooting it. And I think since then, that performative aspect of certain women has come to the foreign film it's been enjoyed. And I think it's unsettling to people and they're startled by it. And, and I think it's fun to play with the tropes of femininity, you know, Marla.
[00:31:42] You know, can, can present herself as very compassionate and caring and honor bound and dutiful. And then, you know, she just turns and the smile goes and she deadens and it's all back to the sort of cruel business of getting rich off at other people's expense, you know? I think that's what people find frightening.
[00:32:06] No people tell me, you really scared me in that movie ‘Gone Girl.’ And people have said that about this. You already scare me. And I think it's to do with the fact that they're taken in or they could be taken in, or they fear that they could be taken in by a woman like that. Yeah. 2019, there was a screening at the BFI and I introduced it and hosted an evening and already the way that our world has moved on in terms of.
[00:32:32] Reaction and appetite for people controlling their own media, you know, through social media already, there's a sort of new resonance to Amy's everything she does. You know, she's almost more brilliant in life to what we now know and, and more terrible, more diabolical because we can, we understand that fiddling and altering of playing with, uh, image.
[00:32:59] That she was doing so awfully all the way back then people now do is sort of run of the mail day-to-day, uh, exercises on social media all the time, you know, performing themselves, performing versions of themselves. You know, she was brilliantly put, setting herself up as the victim. You know, Amy Dunn is a killer, right?
[00:33:19] I mean, you've done murdered someone. I mean, Marla doesn't kill anybody. You could say that she prefers the slow death approach. I mean, taking someone's freedom away. Is sort of virtually killing them, you know, which is what she does, but she also nearly gets killed herself. There's a sort of grit, to Marla that I think Amy doesn't have.
[00:33:43] I mean, I think if Amy had been subjected to what Marla is subjected to, I'm not sure she would have survived. And if you think about Amy and gone go when she's mugged by those two, um, chances out in the Ozarks. She has this indignation that anybody should have tried to mug her. You know, she's got that sort of entitled sort of rich girl thing, which Marla doesn't have.
[00:34:05] Krista Smith: Now that that's, what's so thrilling about this character. She's just so scrappy and you realize she's, it's kind of that American dream. I'm going to go out and get mine. And you know, if not, why not me, you know, if not me, someone else. And that's what I love about the movie at the pace of the movie is because everywhere you turn someone, else's something that they're not.
[00:34:27] It's amazing. It's a great film. And, uh, and I'm so happy for you and it's you, you've had such an interesting career when I first met you. You were, you know, in the corset is, is Jane Bennett, perfection, you know, the ideal in pride and prejudice. And, and I think about all the different parts that you've played throughout.
[00:34:49] And your, your love of it. It feels like I've, I've watched your joy throughout your career, but it's interesting to me that I was reading out, but I didn't realize that, you know, when you had started out, you had tried to get into some drama schools and you didn't end up getting in. So, you had failure kind of at the very beginning.
[00:35:08] And I would just like for you to talk a little bit about that, about what was that like for you to then you, you went to college and kind of got back into drama through, through university, but for you, how has that kind of propelled your career? Has it at all and what kind of mark did it have on you?
[00:35:26] Rosamund Pike: I think, you know, they can, they can knock you down the schools by rejection, but they can't knock it out of you.
[00:35:33] If, if you sort of fundamentally believes that that's what you are. You know, I think with acting, for me, it wasn't a desire. It wasn't something I wanted to do. It was something I had to do. You know, it sort of can make me emotional saying it, but, but you know, I do know, how fortunate I am to be getting these roles.
[00:35:52] You know, I do know that and I sort of marvel at it still and it's come through hard work and it's come through rejection. And you know, when you're 19 and the thing you want to do is be at drama school than have that seal of approval and be sort of told that yes. You know, you qualify your right. You can do this and to be told you can't and we don't want you, and you're not right for us, you know, that feels like a horrible dismissal from the club you want to be part of.
[00:36:21] And it hurts, but what it made me determined to succeed or to find another way. And so I think that's why I've found my own teachers and on the way. You know, people who've really inspired me whether it was Fincher or whether it was, um, a dancer that I've been working with quite a lot. Recently, I did a music video for Massive Attack, and we worked together on that and I've consulted her about many things since in terms of physicality and roles and, you know, just exploring my body and all these things that you might've gotten as a basic training at drama school, I suppose.
[00:36:58] I mean, rejection, it does it, you know, it does suck, but it does make you. It can give you metal. I think, I think it should be an inspiring thing for aspiring actors to hear, really.
[00:37:09] Krista Smith: I can't remember at what point I was interviewing you for, for whatever movie you are doing, but, and our conversation. You had imparted something to me that I think about all the time when you were just like, one of the ways sometimes you get through a day is just by looking up and I, and maybe you were on the street in London and just by looking up and so often, and here I am in a, in a podcast studio looking up, but I will go outside and I'll be like, God, I got to remember to just look up because so many of us have like straight ahead, what's right in front of me.
[00:37:43] And just that simple gesture of, of looking up at the trees, looking up at the sky and the birds or wherever you are, the city, the skyscrapers, the, you know, just taking in the noise. It's the weather, the sound, the, the visuals is, is so important about. Where you are, and it kind of informs, you know, you're being in that, in that moment.
[00:38:05] So I always attribute that to you.
[00:38:08] Rosamund Pike: It's still absolutely something I stand by and I take my children out in Prague and I see, you know, look up and use, find all these people. As I said, at the beginning of the statutes who are reclaiming the city, you find these people watching over you that you never knew were out there.
[00:38:23] You know, all these details and the buildings. And it came to me when I was at Oxford and I was having a hard time and I didn't really find myself there for a long time. And, and then one day I came back and I thought, I'm just going to enjoy this city. And I started looking up and this whole other world opened up.
[00:38:40] I, it was like an overnight change. And I started to discover kind of secrets that I never knew were in the city and stories that little, you know, gargoyles that led me to find stories and led me to find literally secret doors in the walls that led to hidden gardens. I mean, all that sort of mystery that you would hope.
[00:38:58] About resides in Oxford is, is the air for the finding, but you've got to look for it.
[00:39:02] Krista Smith: Well, thank you so much for, for coming on the show and chatting a bit. I miss you. It was great to converse with you and I love this movie. It's people are going to love it.
[00:39:14] Rosamund Pike: It's really nice to see you.
[00:39:18] Krista Smith: We're nearing the end of the show.
[00:39:20] And at the end of all my conversations, I always ask whomever I'm interviewing what advice they have for the next generation. You heard me speak with Gary Oldman earlier. Here are some of the wise words he had to share on the subject.
[00:39:36] Gary Oldman: You can’t be sort of interested in it. I have a passing interest in it.
[00:39:44] It has to be everything. It's the air that you breathe. It's the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning and it's the last thing you think about when you go to bed? No shortcuts. There's no shortcuts. You've got to put the work in. I stumbled on an interview with Paul Newman and he really had to work at it rather than it be a thing that was sort of intuitive.
[00:40:18] And he would look around him and he say ‘God, these people that could just sort of get up and do it. They just, it's just, it seems so easy for them. And he felt that he really did not have that, but really what you were saying was I had shortcomings. I knew, I recognize them. And I had to really work. I had to work harder than most people who had it intuitively and, and there's no substitute for it.
[00:40:56] That's, that's what I would say that you must want it more. More than you want anything else. You've got to remain hopeful and optimistic you. Can't saying that you're gonna, you know, you just get your trauma score to, I dunno, Juilliard, and then you're going to come out and, um, I'm working in Walmart. You may for awhile, end up working in Walmart or driving a cab or white trussing or whatever, whatever you end up doing, but you can't, you got to have the attitude, you know, what do you want to do when you leave Juilliard?
[00:41:42] I want to be at a great play on Broadway. So, you've got to keep, um, you, you have to keep optimistic and grow a thick skin.
[00:41:54] Krista Smith: Hmm. Great advice for life in general.
[00:41:58] Gary Oldman: Yes. You've got to grow thick skin or remain optimistic.
[00:42:08] Krista Smith: That's our show. ‘Mank’ is streaming on Netflix now. And ‘I Care A Lot’ will be streaming starting February 19th. For more head over to Netflix queue.com. That's Netflix Q U E U E.com. And follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, review, and share. And thank you for tuning in. Listen in next time for ‘More Like This.’