- Title: Timothee Chalamet dons armour for mediaeval coming-of-age tale "The King"
- Date: 2nd September 2019
- Summary: VENICE, ITALY (SEPTEMBER 2, 2019) (REUTERS) ***WARNING: CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** ACTORS SEAN HARRIS AND TIMOTHEE CHALAMET, DIRECTOR DAVID MICHOD AND ACTORS JOEL EDGERTON AND LILY-ROSE DEPP ARRIVING FOR NEWS CONFERENCE DEPP AT PODIUM EDGERTON CLAPPING AND WAVING NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR, TIMOTHEE CHALAMET, SAYING: "I remember going to set and watching Joel go to work because I really had never done anything like that in a movie and he was relishing the experience, he was having an amazing time. And I remember thinking 'oh, okay, when I get in front of David I'm going to have to replicate that if I'm not feeling it' because as I said that was entirely new to me to do stunt work. I'd done some stuff on stage but it's way different in a movie and it wasn't light sabres, it was swords, it was mediaeval." NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR, JOEL EDGERTON, SAYING: "I remember just feeling incredibly exhaust...I thought one day I was going to drown in the mud. And then one day I think I was fighting and some guy, one of the stunt guys trod in the mud next to me and at the end of the take I realised I had literally mud over my entire face and for some reason it just made me really happy. And it's one of the favourite photos I have from the whole shoot, it looks like someone's thrown a pie in my face." NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTRESS, LILY-ROSE DEPP, SAYING: "Yeah, I do agree, I think this movie speaks a lot to how different people harness power differently and we're talking about a time period in which women were given almost no power, I mean, very little, almost none and had basically no choice over their own lives, the fate of their own lives. And I think that the way in which my character Catherine harnesses her power in a very calm way but with a lot of conviction and a lot strength is a really nice message to send especially in this time period." NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR, TIMOTHEE CHALAMET, SAYING: "Everything we go through as humans, especially when we are young, when we're young we are still, I've said this before but you are still shopping for your personality, you are still figuring out who you are and I guess even today you have people born in royal families or in lineages of wealth or something and the struggle of that is less in status and more in humanity." NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS (SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR, DAVID MICHOD, SAYING: "We kind of worked out really early on that we were going to drift away from the plays themselves, that this thing was, it started there, I ended up doing a huge amount of weird, both of us did a huge amount of deep dive research which is one of the things I just love about making movies and then we made a whole bunch of stuff up too. And the upshot of it is that I sit here now, I sit here before you today and I honestly can't remember what's real, what's made up and what's from Shakespeare."
- Embargoed: 16th September 2019 16:01
- Keywords: Venice Film Festival The King David Michod Timothée Chalamet Lily-Rose Depp Joel Edgerton
- Location: VENICE, ITALY AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- City: VENICE, ITALY AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- Country: Italy
- Topics: Art,Arts / Culture / Entertainment
- Reuters ID: LVA002AUYSMRX
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Timothee Chalamet goes from reluctant heir to powerful monarch in "The King", a role he described as "terrifying" in a coming-of-age tale loosely based on William Shakespeare's plays about Prince Hal and his transformation into Henry V.
Chalamet's Hal, like Shakespeare's in his plays Henry IV parts one and two, prefers to live away from the palace, among common folk, carousing with his hard-drinking friend and mentor, Knight Sir John Falstaff, played by Joel Edgerton.
When Hal's father, Henry IV, dies, he reluctantly ascends the English throne, assuming new responsibilities and vowing to bring order and peace to the warring chaos he has inherited.
The 23-year-old actor, known for "Beautiful Boy" and "Call Me by Your Name" which earned him an Oscar nomination, said he had not done film stunt work as he did in "The King", which includes a key scene replicating the 1415 Battle of Agincourt.
"I remember going to set and watching Joel go to work because I really had never done anything like that in a movie and he was relishing the experience, he was having an amazing time. And I remember thinking 'oh, okay, when I get in front of David I'm going to have to replicate that if I'm not feeling it' because as I said that was entirely new to me to do stunt work," said at a news conference at the Venice Film Festival, where the movie premieres on Monday (September 2).
"It wasn't light sabres, it was swords, it was mediaeval," he added.
Director David Michod and Edgerton, who played Hal fresh out of drama school, said the film was a mix of history, Shakespeare and their own imaginations.
"We worked out really early on that we were going to drift away from the plays themselves ... Both of us did a huge amount of deep dive research ... and then we made a whole bunch of stuff up too," Michod said.
"And the upshot of it is that I sit here now before you today and I honestly can't remember what's real, what's made up and what's from Shakespeare."
Lily-Rose Depp, who plays the daughter of France's King Charles, Catherine, said the movie spoke about "how different people harness power differently".
"We're talking about a time period in which women were given almost no power... and no choice over their own lives," she said.
"The way in which my character harnesses her power in a very calm way but with a lot of conviction and a lot of strength is a really nice message to send especially at this time."
Edgerton said the battle scene was shot over two weeks in a muddy field in Hungary during a heatwave, with temperatures reaching +40 degrees Celsius.
"I thought one day I was going to drown in the mud. And then one day I think I was fighting and some guy, one of the stunt guys trod in the mud next to me and at the end of the take I realised I had literally mud over my entire face and for some reason it just made me really happy," he said.
"The King" also stars "Twilight" actor Robert Pattinson as the French heir and Ben Mendelsohn as Henry IV.
The Netflix film is screening out of competition at the Venice festival.
(Production: Christian Levaux, Hanna Rantala) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
