Emma Thompson on George Michael Blessing Last Christmas Before He Died

I know that you came here right from London. You were filming Cruella. Yes, with the wonderful Emma Stone. With Emma. Double Emma. My favorite. Yeah, think of the money they'll save. Look at the wig you have on. That's a nice one. How tall is that? Is that, like... That's not the tallest wig. That's, like, a foot tall. That's a football. You have... And I have another one that's, like, three foot tall. Really? Wow. So it's kind of... Is that hard to act in? No, it's hard to pee in. Because, well, actually, of course, I'm British, so the first subject I go to is, you know, peeing and... But the costume I'm in is, like, is really tight corsets, so you can't really bend down. So you... Wiping is hard, and we thought, so what I... And then what happened, of course, was the first time I tried, you bend down to try to reach, and then you're like a giraffe because you can't get your head back up because the wig is so... You're like, help me, help me. Somebody help me. And, you know, you're mid-flow, and the whole thing's just... No. You'll have forgotten about it by the time the film comes out. It's fine. But it's not pretty. Thank you for being here. I want to talk about last Christmas. Let's talk about this film. You came up with this idea. You wrote this, co-wrote this with your husband... Who I met backstage. Very nice, lovely gentleman. Based on the Wham! song, last Christmas? And all George Michael's songs. All of his songs. It was weird, because this wonderful producer, David Livingstone, said, do you want to write a screenplay, kind of rom-com sort of thing? Because we need a new, great new Christmas movie based on last Christmas. And I said, not really. Because it's not my favorite song. It's not my favorite Christmas song. And then I started to, you know, last Christmas, I gave him a heart. The very next day, he gave it away this year, to save him from tears. I said, I don't know what to do with that. So I told my old man, Mr. Wise, and we started to talk about it and thought, is there an interesting sideways way of telling a different kind of story about the human heart? And so we started to work on it, and it was good treatment. And we sent it to George, and I met him, and he was just the loveliest guy you could imagine. And all of these themes in the movie, there's, he was passionate about homelessness. He had this great social conscience. And he was so lovely. And so I got really enthused, and we started to write. And then, of course, he had that tragic early death, 2016, Christmas. He died, actually, on Christmas. On Christmas Day. Yeah, nearly three years ago. So we lost him, and I miss him so much, and I wish he was here, because I know he'd love it. Because the film's like being hugged. And all of his music, we've got 15 of his songs, including a new one at the end. And it's so cool. And Heal the Pain, which is my favorite of his songs, is sort of, it's like it was written for the movie. And he said that. He said it's like this, because he was someone who was always in search of authenticity, you know? And it was really hard for him, before he came out and all of that, to find himself, and he just had found himself. And then what happens? Gosh, I wish he was here to see it. I wish he were. And your husband, by the way, is very funny. And I was talking to him, because he won the British Bake Off. Yes, Celebrity Bake Off. You know about baking in my country? Yeah. It's the biggest show in England. It's the only thing that's keeping anyone alive. Everyone's so traumatized. They just make biscuits constantly. But he won it. He won it. He won Celebrity Bake Off. With a self-portrait of himself. In biscuits. This is what he won with. So the bar is... Slightly scary. The bar is set high. It doesn't really look like him. It doesn't really look like him at all, no. But that's fantastic. And did you... We had a bit of a trauma with that, if I'm honest. Because, you see, these are all biscuits, but this was a pancake. And he... Yeah. And he made this quite a number of times. I mean, my house was literally just flour. There was just flour everywhere. So one night, I just couldn't take it anymore. And I went out and had like eight martinis, too many. And I came back, and he'd gone to bed, exhausted from all the baking. And I ate the kilt. I ate that pancake bit. I just thought, oh, that looks nice. That looks nice. I'm going to try a bit of that. Put it on. Worked my way around. I ate the whole kilt. But then the worst thing was, I went to bed and got up in the morning, and he was incandescent and was making new kilts, fresh kilts. And I said, what happened? He said, someone ate my kilt. And I said, oh, God, it must have been Gaia, our daughter. I lied. I so lied. You sold out your daughter? I totally just threw her to the wall. No compunction whatsoever. Just gave it, said, yo, it must be Gaia. It was miles later, after he had wreaked a horrible revenge, that I said, oh, see, it was me. But I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember because I had drunk too much, and that's no excuse. That's the whole thing. I'm a really bad wife and mother, is what. No, that's ridiculous. Because you know what? He ended up winning the whole thing. He did, he won the whole thing. See, because if he had left this original kilt, he might have lost. That's true. You helped him. Yes. You helped him win. Okay. Thank goodness for you, yes. Thank God you're here. And yes, and you taught your daughter a good lesson, too. Just. Yes, that bitch, God. That's right, yeah. No, no, don't go with that. Oh, my goodness. I want to. You Americans. I want to show.