WE LIVE IN TIME Q&A with Florence Pugh & Andrew Garfield | TIFF 2024

Please join me in welcoming and congratulating, without further ado, Director John Crowley. Please welcome Andrew Garfield and Florence Plough. Congratulations to you all. Thank you. Before we go to the audience, I had a question. Can I say something quickly? Oh yes, of course. This is a fantastic audience. Thank you guys so much. Sorry, we were all just so profoundly moved to be watching it with you guys, and you guys were just so... I can't believe you even noticed the date on the wedding invitations, and you saw that. It was so beautiful. Thank you guys for sharing that with us. It was stunning. Thank you. Thank you. No. The question I wanted to ask is you have such a beautiful, both chemistry and comfort together, and I wondered if you can speak a bit about your process. Did you rehearse? How did you approach making this bond between the two of you? We did rehearse. We had, I think, two weeks of really special, beautiful time, which is always such a wonderful thing when you get rehearsal time for any movie, where we would just talk through scenes, talk through how we felt. John was very good about stopping it when it got a bit too exciting, and he wanted to save it for the day, which I'm always a big fan of. But I think we've spent the last... Well, today is the first day that we've both been talking about it since we experienced doing the film together, and so many of our memories of the way that we connected and how we built this chemistry was through the total enjoyment of falling deeper and deeper into it every day. And there is no way that either... Well, I wouldn't have been able to do any of the stuff without the safety that this man had for me and held me and allowed me to be. Neither of us would be here without John's space that he gave us and he provided for us, and I just have... It's so amazing being in this space with all of you because it was such a pleasure shooting this movie. It was like a true, true pleasure, and watching it is just life unfolding. It's so beautiful, and we're all doing it right now, and it's so amazing to make a movie that's about something that we're all doing, going to do, going to be a part of, going to witness, and our connection is because of that. It's because we made a movie about something that's very, very real, and we knew how serious that is. So, I don't know if that answers your question. I started crying and I forgot what you said. Beautifully answers. Would you like to add anything? All right. I mean, not really. No, I mean, just to say that the safety and the care was a mutual discovery. I think it's just such a great privilege to be able to find people to collaborate with that you can truly trust, and you know have your back, and enable you to travel to places that you can't travel to with everyone, and it's a rarefied thing, so I honor you and bow deep to both of you. And we to you. All right. Do we have any? Yes, in front, please. If I could repeat the question. She's asking if you could speak about your collaboration, which she believes goes, you've worked together making Boy A. We did. Yes. 17 years ago, I know. We haven't aged a day. Well, we were both much younger then, right? He was at the very start of his career, and it was an extraordinary performance as well in that, and it was, you know, he was conjuring a child in that performance in a way that was haunting and very beautiful, and now here he is. He's a man, and he's sort of gathered all the complexity emotionally along the way, and when I read the part, I thought instantly of him, partly because of the scale emotionally that he's comfortable operating in, and also partly because of his humor. I thought that he would play the humor in a way that wouldn't make the character too sort of quirky, that he would make it completely real and relatable, and there we are. Yes, lovely to be back working with John. It was the second film I made with John Boy A. If you haven't seen it, check it out. Amazon, you know, any good streaming service should have it. It's a really lovely film, and we were surprised by the response to it, and we brought it here. We were here in Toronto. That was my first time in Toronto. Was it your first time in Toronto? Yeah, so there's a lovely, beautiful, full circle thing happening here that we got to sit next to each other again and watch another piece of work, and yeah, we've changed a lot in 16 years, but there's a kind of, again, there's an innate respect and a trust and a love for each other that hasn't shifted. We've been longing to work together for the last 16 years, and this just happens to be the thing that finally enabled it, I suppose. And in 17 years, Florence, you and I will be standing here. Boy B. Girl C. Girl D, yeah. Yes, in the glasses there, please. Her question is that the film is very much about the lived experience of cancer together and apart. Were there things that you did to prepare for the roles around that issue or concern? Okay, I'll go first. Gosh, you know, it's one of those scripts where so much was taken care of already. The writing was so precise. I don't know if you know Nick Payne's work. He wrote an amazing play called Constellations, just making sure I got that right. An amazing play that has a similar kind of non-linear structure, and it's about relationships, and the way he writes about relationships is just so exquisite and so singular as a playwright and as a screenwriter. So I think there was a lot, it was just a really solid foundation. And in terms of preparation for the particularities, it feels like kind of what was being referenced before by Florence, feels like one of those films where you kind of don't want to know what the scene will be. You kind of don't want to know what the next take's going to be. And that can only happen if you have a scene partner who you can just pay attention to and tune into and listen to and know that you will end up in the most honest, authentic place with. And that's Florence, and that's Rare. And I think as soon as we, yeah, do it, do it, do it. And I think as soon as I recognized that I didn't have to like, you know, rev my own end, I didn't have to like pull the ******* like, you know, sometimes you have to pull the ******* thing and you'd be like, oh my god, I'm just gonna goose myself into ******* doing something. And that is a shitty feeling when you're opposite someone who won't even do off-camera lines with you sometimes. There are actors who don't want to do their off-camera lines, which is absolutely insane to me, because it's the best, because then you get no pressure on you and you're just watching an exquisite actor working. So anyway, those people are insane, but they're not here. They're not, no. Well, there are a couple in our film. No, I'm just kidding, no one in our film. Ella. Yeah, our daughter. She was tricky. She was having none of it. Yeah, she's, yeah, diva-ish. No, she was amazing and beautiful. And so I think, for me, there was a kind of surrender that wanted to happen in this film more than most other films I've made, and a trust and a kind of letting go. And I think that's a theme in the film. And I was just so struck by watching it, just there were moments tonight that moved me in a way that I hadn't been moved before. And it's the profound simplicity of two people who just want to live, whose longing to live is just essentially primally present and visible and palpable. And I think that's kind of what you're, that this vitality, this need to be here, this mysterious want to be here, as Tony Kushner said, like we live past hope. You know, that's all, like, when we're more sores than skin, we still want to live for some reason. This weird mystery of wanting to be here, and even through the most terrible suffering. So, yeah, I don't know. I think, as John said as well, I think there's a collecting of experience that one goes through in one's life, and personal experience, personal loss, personal love. And I think we were lucky enough to be able to bring all of those private personal things to this in ways that were healing for us, and hopefully healing for an audience as well. Yes, over there in the dark shirt. Yes, go ahead. That's an interesting question about the structure of the film. If it was told in a more linear chronological order, do you think the impact would be different than the one it obviously has? I do. And I think that the sort of the three time structures running against each other, for a start, it's a sort of playful invitation to the audience to begin putting this together. But it also allowed the story to not have to do the beginning, middle and end of everything. And one of the things that I loved about the script when I first read it was the complications in the relationship. It's like you see a relationship from multiple facets, you know, it's like a diamond with lots and lots of different pieces cut into it. Or it's like a Cubist painting, you're seeing something from six perspectives simultaneously. And jumping around in the story allowed us to do that so that you don't have to have, you know, the lead up to the argument in the trailer, you can just go into the argument, and then you can just see them getting back together. And you can see other things around it. And you wind up, I hope, with the feeling like you've known them all their life, that you've sort of taken a very rich, detailed tour around their whole relationship. So I think it would have been a completely different film if it was linear. We've got time for one more in the pink there. No, no, you. Yes, you're sorry. You look pink. I'm in her jacket. Yeah. No, sorry. It is a pretty pink audience. All right, please go ahead. She's asking, did each of you have a memorable moment, one particular time, space, scene that you'll take with you? The birthing scene. Oh, my God. It was amazing. It was. The experience was, I mean, you saw like seven minutes of it. We did 15 minute births, like eight times. It was insane. It was amazing. The only problem was I didn't have a baby that came out. So I was just so exhausted and sweaty and tired and I got no endorphins or anything. But what was amazing is we worked with Midwife in the rehearsal period and we started blocking out the scene. And then I continued working with her. I've never had a child, which is pretty key to knowing how to have a baby. But I do know a lot of amazing women have had loads of babies and I've heard all of their stories and I really know how important it is for it to look and sound right. So I was with Penny, the midwife, and she would be teaching me about the different sounds and where it would fall and how it would land on this and that and where it would be hurting. And it was just so fascinating. And so when we were actually doing it, she'd come in and would crouch down and be like, OK, so when you get to the next bit, it's like, oh, and I'd be like, OK, OK, OK. And so we were getting notes from like a midwife about the birth. It was so amazing. And then we'd go again. And it was just like once you're on this roller coaster, we were off and it wouldn't stop until John said cut and until that baby came through my legs. It was amazing, tiring, amazing, exhausting, so beautiful to watch because it is just all about life. And yeah, that was my most memorable. And just we we were talking about it today with the space that we made in that room, in that dirty toilet became so sacred and so beautiful and so intensely quiet in between takes. And it was like Andrew and I were preparing for a baby. And it was really, really, really beautiful. And when we finished the scene, we stayed in the room and we kind of just like sat in the moment for a bit. And then we said goodbye to the room and it was so emotional. But it was like we had a child and we had we'd had eight children. We'd had eight of them and seven of them were dollies and one of them was real. That's how it happens. Yeah, right. It was amazing. That was what I was thinking as well. I was thinking that scene. And yeah, it's a weird it's weird that we made that toilet a holy site. But it did feel that way. Like we as Florence said, we didn't want to leave. We just kind of wanted to hold each other there for a while because it was profound. And, you know, you're conjuring something you'll do. You're you're you're trying to do something. You're trying to recreate something that is maybe maybe a big part of the reason, you know, why we're here. I don't know. But yeah, it was it was hard to leave that space because it did feel like we had done something ritualistic together. It was very, very sweet. Yeah, I would pay. I mean, obviously, that scene is very special. But the scene about 10 minutes into the film, whether in the underground car park and where Florence says, what would you say if I said to you, I don't know how to go through that again. And we shot that on on the fourth day of our shoot. And we had done lighter material up to that. And this was the first big scene. And I remember being really struck by what was going on in the monitor. And I remember Stuart, wonderful cameraman, having to walk away from the camera at one point because he was moved. And then you coming up afterwards going, I'm looking slightly surprised going kind of what just happened, you know, and you said that that was much easier than it should have been. And you didn't mean it was easy, you just meant that somehow you had fallen into each other in the scene in a way that is what you're talking about. And that's very rare. And I had seen flashes of that in the rehearsal and was trying to kind of go, wait till we get a camera, guys. But it was sort of they were like two racehorses kicking at the stalls, you could feel this energy bubbling up. And that day, which was day four, was when it really sort of crested. And then there were several other scenes that had equally remarkable, not just moving stuff. I mean, the scene where, you know, you turn around and say, I might actually want to have a child with you one day, maybe kind of like that is a very, very emotional scene. And it was well into the shoot. And you were so in control of what you were doing there that you were able to play the wit of the you and the stuff about the excellent notes, but while playing the heartbreak of the scene and you know, I don't know, you see that on a monitor on a set that's pretty special. I think also just on top of that, it was enjoying it, like enjoying every single scene, even the hardest things that you could possibly imagine that you'd ever have to say to anyone in your life or hear that news. It was so enjoyable to be dancing that dance with with all these people involved. It felt like we'd been given this gift and this reward, and we were allowed to enjoy it, which is just such a magical feeling. If you want a silly story, when we started shooting the big birth scene, and call action, and we're there and the operator who's live, you know, just off set is speaking into the phone. The next thing the phone goes dead and says out of credit. Right. I forgot about that. I was so angry. So it wasn't all poetry. Right. I cannot thank you enough for what you brought us here tonight. Please join me in congratulating them. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Yeah, you were gorgeous. We're pleased to have shared it with you.