Tom Hiddleston Talks 'Loki,' Spielberg, And Love For Owen Wilson

What was it like working with Spielberg? I don't know if I've told you this story, but I was summoned to meet him. I was very excited and I made a promise to myself that I would tell him. I would just thank him for his, essentially, his contribution to my childhood. But I would just say, I spent my whole life watching your films. I absolutely love them. And he was so grateful and he said, thank you so much. Look, do you think you'd like to learn how to ride a horse like a cavalry officer? Do you think you can handle that? I said, I will try my absolute best. And he said, well, I'd like you to do it. Just across the table and I was completely stunned. And I said, I'm so sorry, Stephen. Did you just, I just have to check, did you just ask me to? I had to sort of double check what he said. He said, yes, no, I really said I'd like you to play the part. And I was like, that's it? I don't have to do anything else? That's really great. Yeah, it was an amazing day. Could you ride a horse? Actors always say they can ride. I know they can't. You're the tough guy, huh? So unsophisticated, X5. Of course. You doing your own stunts now? Real cute. You quit with the magic and fight fair. It's not a fair fight. I didn't do anything wrong. Yeah, but why'd you run? A little over the top, don't you think? All the shadow play. I thought it was spot on. Welcome to the Actor's Side. Today, it is the end of a long journey. The beginning of another one. But the end of a long journey for Loki, maybe. We're going to find out with its star, star of so many things. But this has taken up a big chunk of his life. This is Tom Hiddleston. Welcome to the Actor's Side. Thank you so much, Pete. What an introduction. Well, I don't know if I can say in this business, anything's the end of anything. Because you never know. Right. But you have been doing this for 14 years. Yes, yes. We're actually coming up for 15. I think 14 for the audience, but 15 for me, just because I was cast in 2009. And then we had sort of six months of pre-production before we started filming. So anyway. Wow. It's only a number. I'm sure you had no idea probably when you signed on. No idea. That we'd still be talking about. No idea. It's been the great surprise of my whole life as an actor. It's been the journey of 1,000 miles. And with many twists and turns and surprises and developments. Right. And it has changed my life, changed the course of my career. It did then, and it still has. And it's been this extraordinary, almost reimagined opportunity every time. It's never felt like the same job. It's always felt like a different run around every time I go back. But a gift. I'm very grateful for it. Well, it's like, let's see, six films, 12 episodes, 14 years, like I said. You've died a few times. Unusual. An unusual trajectory. You know how to time slip with the best of them. That's right. I've got a gold medal in time slipping. It's been amazing. I always feel like, and I should say this, I think I would never have been allowed the opportunity to keep coming back to Loki were it not for the connection and the passion and the curiosity of the audience. That the audience keep finding him interesting. And I'm grateful and fortunate that the character's ancient and mythic and thousands of years old. So there's always new dimensions. There's always new notes to play, new stories to tell. So it's been really remarkable. It's interesting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe now, which has taken a few hits lately for not being up to the level of when you started this, this is their hit. Their big, big hit that continues to draw audiences. Thank you. Not all of the stuff is working. What's the secret for the success of a long run with this character? Gosh, that's a great question. All I allow myself to, all I can depend on is to make the conflict, because drama is conflict, and to make it as real and honest and detailed and authentic to me as possible. And just throw my soul at it, whatever it is. In season two of Loki, there's a huge problem. The TVA, which is the institution which is tasked with governing the order of reality. They thought they were the good guys, and maybe they're not. And the institution is fragmenting, and there's a sense that it might need dissolving. But Loki is also trying to prevent what he sees as a terrible, destructive, oncoming war between different planes of reality, different timelines. So the stakes feel high. And he also doesn't know where the center of meaning is in his life. He doesn't have a purpose, and he's still searching for it. So pretty high stakes. And as a company of actors and writers, you commit to the stakes as they present themselves. The sky is falling, at least in our story. And the sky is falling because war is coming. And at the end of it, there will be nothing left. And how do you prevent that? And so there's this real engine of desperation and anxiety that then can become almost a detective drama with Loki and Mobius, played by the great Owen Wilson, and also a drama of confrontation with Sylvie, played by Sofia De Martino. And so in terms of what's the secret, I think just play it for real. Play the stakes. Play him honestly. That's what makes it so good. It's not over the top. Do you even look at him as a real villain? Most people do. Yes, I know. Because to play him, can you look at it black and white like that? Well, of course he's been a villain in the past, and I've joked about that. But it's interesting because whether you're a hero or a villain actually is all about the perspective of the storyteller. And I was very lucky initially in the first Thor movie, which was written by the late, great Don Payne. And he created a backstory for Loki of very deep pathos, which is that Loki was a younger brother who found out he was an orphan, and he was adopted, and he was left on a mountainside on the ice to die. And that he feels marginalized and alone in the world. And then that grief, which you see on Loki's face in Thor, as directed by Kenneth Branagh, hardens into grievance. And that grievance becomes the engine of the Avengers movie. The grievance and the anger and the resentment, that's why he's the villain in the Avengers, because he's just full of anger and destructiveness. And then my great good fortune is I've got to come out of the position of the antagonist in these stories, and he becomes a more mercurial figure. He becomes an uncertain ally, someone you're not sure, which team is he on? Is he on the good side? Is he on the bad side? And I've been able to dance on that tightrope for a while. But then I get to the series across two seasons, and actually the whole thesis of the show is, are we in control of our own lives? Can we change? Or are we condemned to play the same part? So Loki watching his life play out, he thinks he was entitled and burdened with glorious purpose, but actually he watches his life play out, and it's a catalog of his missteps and mistakes and his emotional failures, which have hurt other people. And so it gives him a chance to reflect and think, well, maybe if I had another chance, I might do it differently this time. And so he becomes a sort of representation of that very universal idea that human beings grow if they do the work. Maybe you can be better, and in order to be the best version of yourself, you have to make peace with your past, you have to own up to your mistakes, take responsibility for your failures, integrate them into yourself, and then you can actually make better choices. And I found that very moving as an idea. And inside, of course, the architecture of this sci-fi world, but there's a real philosophical question in there, which I think audiences have connected to. And the thing I go back to is, I wonder if in life we find sincerity quite difficult, but we need it in art. We deeply need it in our art. We need it in cinema, we need it in theater. And I think audiences respond very strongly to sincerity. Not to mawkishness or anything too maudlin, but when filmmakers and actors are sincere, I certainly feel very, as an audience member myself, I love it when I can feel that the cast, the actors, the filmmakers are like, oh, they mean this. They mean what they're doing. They're digging around in some interesting material here, and they're excavating the experience of being alive. So I find that very inspiring. So do you feel you feel you're done with Loki? I know the show, they say it's not coming back. I never believed that stuff. But maybe I do, because it's up to you. I mean, really, to feel like, is there somewhere else you could ever conceive of going with this? For now, I'm really happy with where we've landed, because I think at the end of season two, Loki makes a very brave, very courageous, and very big-hearted choice, which is to— A great line, great speech. Right. For you, for all of us, yeah. Which was a callback to the first Thor movie. And that felt like a redemption and a catharsis for the character, you know? It felt like this broken soul from Thor, who becomes the villain in the Avengers, has found a way to heal. And he's done that by giving his life to protect the lives of others, and somehow inherit the throne that he was always destined for, but it comes in a shape that he didn't expect, and probably he would never have wanted. So where we are is—we've landed somewhere. And whether it continues, I truly don't know. At the moment, I can't conceive of— Was it Branagh who got you involved in the first place? Because you had obviously done Wallander and stuff like that. Yeah, well, I auditioned for him. I hope I knew. It was a big movie, and he wasn't going to be able to—he didn't have the authority, I guess, to just cast anyone he wanted. But I was pleased that I had a—I think the difference about our relationship was, I wonder if I—and I've never said this before—I might have been braver in the audition. Oh, really? Because I thought, well, I know Ken, so if this isn't going my way, I just want to do my best, you know, because we'd been in the theater together. I know, so you had that familiarity. Yeah, but maybe that made me feel like I could be a bit braver in auditions. I always had a complex journey with auditions, you know what I mean? It's always a very difficult thing, and I say this to—people ask me for advice all the time, and I say, look, just be as brave as you can. But I think in my early life as an actor, I struggled with—didn't struggle with it, but it's hard to put yourself out there when it might not be—you might not get the job. But it was definitely a long process. I auditioned a few times, and it finished with a screen test. But I remember really committing to the audition, and it was fine. And the chance to work with Owen Wilson here, because Midnight in Paris— Yes, is where it all starts. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Woody Allen's brilliant Midnight in Paris, and of course he was the star of that movie. Yeah, that's where we met for the first time, and he's brilliant in that film, I think. He's just perfect. I really enjoy working with Owen. He's a brilliant, intelligent man of such a range of taste and talent. We've had fun. We share similar interests, and we've been doing this two seasons across the last five years. We've had a great time. He's a great writer as well. His capacity for invention in a scene—he'll always find a way of coming up with something, and we call it the Owen Wilson fairy dust. He just sort of sprinkles it on. Woody Allen? Yeah. He has a way of being spontaneous in the moment, but not straying away from the scene, which takes, I think, enormous precision. You have to really know what the scene is, because there are lots of great people who are good at improvising, but sometimes the improvisation—you start to wander, and then you've wandered into a different scene. Owen is so brilliant. I remember in our first scene in Midnight in Paris, in his first speech, because I'd learned the scene, and I'd learned his lines, and my lines, and Alison Pill's lines, who's playing Zelda. He picked up his cue and then wandered off around the garden of the speech, and I thought, hang on, that's not how it goes. But he was making it even more real and even more honest. He came back around and delivered me my cue on a plate, so the scene could continue. Really gifted, really skillful. That's so cool. What was it like doing that kind of a role to F. Scott Fitzgerald? We know who he is and all of that. Yeah, it was a thrilling prospect at the time. I remember thinking the challenge was to try to distill the essence of this very complex man in a very short space of time. It was a very brief interlude, really, but important in a way also to introduce the 1920s and the charm and the buzz and fizz of those parties that they must have gone to. Introducing Owen's character to Ernest Hemingway. It was a really fun couple of weeks in Paris, and Alison Pearl and I, who played Zelda, and Corey Stoll, who played Hemingway, we would meet and have dinner, and Alison and I read each other Scott and Zelda's letters to give us a familiarity. But yeah, big boots. Big boots to fill. So cool. Let me ask you about some of these other ones, too, because first of all, I love Crimson Peak. That's Guillermo del Toro. Yeah, thank you so much. That was, I think, a highly underrated movie, especially in the del Toro canon. Sure. It's so gorgeous and big and, you know, I mean, a really well-done gothic tale that only del Toro was so in it. And I think more people should have appreciated that for what it was, because it's really good. Thank you so much. I love making that film, and we all did, actually. It was a great labor of love for all of us, and he, one of his, I think he wouldn't mind my saying this, one of Guillermo's absolute favorite genres in literature is gothic romance. Right. This idea, essentially, of, and it was, I think it was, they kind of were the first, the great writers in gothic romance were the first to introduce the idea that the supernatural is a representation of a trapped emotion, that actually it's not, that a ghost isn't some emblem of the spirit world from heaven or hell. It's actually something more psychological, more wedded to the experience of suffering and pain that becomes locked in time, either in the mind or the heart or in a building. And in the great gothic romance novels like Jane Eyre, and The Mysteries of Udolpho, and The Castle of Otranto in Bluebeard, there's this trope of a young, bright-minded, open-hearted heroine who is drawn towards a tall, dark stranger with a house on the hill. That's exactly it. And the mystique of the tall, dark stranger falls away and reveals something more unsettling. And then, in a way, that represents, I suppose, crossing the threshold from youth into adulthood and learning, you know, becoming face-to-face with reality, with how life really is. And Crimson Peak is a tribute to all of that. Edith Cushing, played by Mia Wasikowska, is the open-hearted heroine, and Thomas Sharp is the tall, dark stranger. And it's Guillermo's sort of eulogy to that genre. And we love making it. There's so much detail in the film. He's just the nicest and most amazing person to talk to. He loves movies. He loves this. You can see it in everything he does. You know, strangely, actually, just the experience of that shoot, there's so much very intense emotion in that film. There's a lot of drama. And a requirement, actually, to play at quite a high register in terms of the emotionality of it. But alongside it, it was one of the happiest shoots I've ever been on. I'm not surprised. Yeah, because Guillermo just likes to laugh. And he keeps everything light. And he would, you know, Josh, and there'd be games. He would tease me. He would tease Mia and Jessica. And, you know, we were always finding ways to make it fun. And that's when you know you're in the right spot. The work is sincere, but the atmosphere is light. What was it like working with Spielberg? I've asked you this, but I'm curious about it on War Horse. Because I'd seen the show on Broadway. And then you see the reality in the movie version. Yeah. And you're seeing it from a different perspective. But Spielberg's such a genius director. Honestly, unforgettable. It feels like unforgettable in my life. Unrepeatable, probably. I told him this. I said to when I met him, because I actually didn't think I was going to get the job. Oh, yeah. I thought, like, what are the chances of him picking me out of, you know, a run of like thousands of young actors to play this part? And what did he see in you? What did he see? I put myself on tape. So I sent in audition for Captain Nichols in War Horse. And he'd seen me in a very small role I'd done when I was very young called Victoria Cross Heroes. Oh, OK. Which, yeah. And I think he'd seen that. And he'd also seen what else was there to look at even then. Do you know what I mean? There wasn't a lot I'd done on film. But anyway, I don't know if I've told you this story. But I was summoned to meet him. I was very excited. And I made a promise to myself that I would tell him. I would just thank him for his, essentially, his contribution to my childhood. But I would just say, I spent my whole life watching your films. I absolutely love them. You know, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan. Jaws. Jaws, the whole thing. And I was nervous to sort of to tell him that. And he was so grateful. And he said, thank you so much. Look, do you think you'd like to learn how to ride a horse like a cavalry officer? Do you think you can handle that? I said, I will try my absolute best. And he said, well, I'd like you to do it. Just across the table. And I was completely stunned. And I said, I'm so sorry, Stephen. I just have to check. Did you just ask me to? I had to sort of double check. He said, yes, no, I really said it. I'd like you to play the part. And I was like, that's it? Do I have to do anything else? That's really great. Yeah, it was an amazing day. Could you ride a horse? Actors always say they can ride a horse. I know, they can't. I had been on a horse before, but not with the requisite precision and expertise that I had to get to. And in a way, that's one of the most memorable aspects of that experience. When I look back on it, it's kind of learning how to ride like a cavalry officer. With Benedict Cumberbatch and Patrick Kennedy. And it's very humbling when you're learning how to ride. Horses don't care who you are or what you've done. And so they became very fast friends. And yeah, it was a very happy summer. And he was just so generous. He was so generous about asking for our input into the character. Well, you're working with these directors like Kenneth Branagh, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Spielberg. They all have one thing in common. They all love movies. I've talked to all of them. And that is their language. And that is such a great thing to be able to do that. Absolutely, especially because I love movies too. And then you realize you feel like you're in the company of people who you can really learn from. And I certainly did. There were whole sequences in that. There's a cavalry charge, which took place in the summer of 1914 in northern France, when the Allies thought that they would create some kind of military advantage with a very old-fashioned cavalry charge. And so many young men were lost. And we restaged that charge. And it took about two weeks to film in a field in England. And every morning, we'd be up at four and ready on set for about six o'clock. And we'd shoot from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. while the sun was low. And I was leading a charge of a phalanx of 60 horses in formation, all galloping at full tilt towards a camera suspended on a crane, which was attached to a four-by-four. And I must have been galloping at sort of 25 miles an hour. And I thought, this is absolute magic. I feel like a cavalry officer. And Steven Spielberg is over there. And he thinks I'm doing an okay job. And yeah, it was an amazing experience, really. And I know I've told this story before, but he gave me a perfect note, which is that at the end of that charge, he wanted to create a shot of my face, of the face of Captain Nichols in close-up. And that in that shot would tell the story of the totality of the failure and the loss of life. And I remember the way he set it up. He set it up in profile and said, the camera's going to come around from profile to the front of your face. And I want, how old are you, Tom? And I said, I'm 29. He said, okay, when I say action, you're 29. And you're 29. And I want you to be confident, capable, commanding, and as heroic as you've been for the last two weeks. And as you feel the camera settle in front of you and stop, I want you to de-age yourself by 20 years. So you're nine. Wow. And I want to see the boy. And then I'm going to cut. And then when I cut back to you, there'll be no rider on the horse. And we'll all know what happened. It's just the most perfect note. I don't think I've ever received a more poetic piece of direction. Yeah, it was beautiful. And how many takes did it take you to go back to nine? Well, yes, I did two. And I did one take. I thought, maybe I can reveal a little more vulnerability. And then after the second take, he was delirious. He was so happy. And because I saw how happy he was, I thought, ah, that's what he needs. And I asked him, I said, do you mind if we go back for another one? And he said, honestly, I really think we have it. And I said, I think I know what you need. Can I just show you something? He said, okay. And it involved quite a big reset. We had to get all the horses back to the bottom of the field. And the light was going. And I thought, oh, my God, I've asked Steven Spielberg for an extra take. Anyway, we did it again. And I think I tried to reveal a little more. And he said to me, afterwards, he said, I see what you're doing. I think it might be number two. But it was a Friday night. And he said, I'm going to edit the scene over the weekend. I'll tell you on Monday. I thought, great. At least I left it all on the field. The weekend passed. I came back on Monday morning. We had more to cover. And he came to find me in my dressing room. Knocked on the door and said, I've cut the sequence. Take three, the Tommy take. It's in the movie. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See that? You can direct yourself. No, I can't. I really, I can't give myself notes like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before we go, I have to ask you. I'm so excited. You just announced that the night manager is coming back. Not just for a second season, but a third season. Yes. Like, it's amazing for all the fans of that absolutely exquisite show. Thank you very much. Which has taken years to get to this point. But to match what you did the first time, you know, takes a while. Yes, we took the time to try and get the story right. Principally, John le Carre seems so happy with our adaptation the first time. And that was such a relief. And so if we were going to go again, we needed it to be just needed to find the right story. And what's so fascinating about le Carre is his stories often emerged within him in response to the world as he found it. And what I'm really excited by is that eight or nine years have passed since the first season. And these characters have been alive in the world in the last eight or nine years. And I think, hopefully, our show will reflect that. So Jonathan Pine, as le Carre calls him, the close observer, has been alive in the world. And I think, and so he will be eight or nine years older, just as I am. And I think it'd be so fascinating to see where he is, what he's doing, how he's operating, what he's thinking, what's changed, what hasn't changed. And hopefully, we can create the same sort of chemistry we made on the first one. Well, it was an amazing series. And you had Olivia Colman, you had Tom Holder, you had Elizabeth Debicki. I mean, that level of cast. Absolutely amazing. All of them amazing. Yeah, truly. Bring all this back to that level. It's going to, you know. I can't wait. I mean, I really can't wait. We've got to climb the mountain. Yeah, when are you going to start shooting that? We'll start this year, later this year. So if the scripts are in great shape, David Farr, who wrote, who was the screenwriter for the first series, is back and has written, has an extraordinary vision for where to take the next chapter. And we're, you know, we're fine-tuning and just, you know, twisting the dials and things and tightening things up. But it's feeling, it feels very exciting. And yeah, I can't wait. Can't wait to get started. Well, more power to you. And Loki, everybody's seen Loki. But if you haven't seen Loki, Disney Plus. And then we'll wait for the Night Manager. You won a Golden Globe for that. Oh, you're very kind. More power to you. Thank you. This is Tom Hiddleston. Thank you for doing the actor's side. Thanks, Pete. Pleasure.