by Gill Pringle
Actors on the rise, Baby Driver’s Ansel Elgort, Pete’s Dragon’s Oakes Fegley, Dunkirk’s Aneurin Barnard and Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard were all ushered into the press room to discuss their work on The Goldfinch.
Can we talk about the casting because Ansel and Oakes, you two look so similar; who got cast first?
Oakes: When I originally heard about the project, my mum had read the book and she was immediately like ‘you have to do this, or at least try.’ I heard that Ansel was pinned for the role of Theo, and I was immediately ‘yeah, I kinda look like him, it’s probably a good thing’. The audition process came together pretty quickly. Then we saw each other a few times on set, and we did a lot of rehearsals beforehand to bounce our performances off each other. But it flowed really well between the two of us.
Ansel: We didn’t have any scenes together though, which was a shame.
What about you, Finn and Aneurin, did you have to watch the other acting to get it right?
Finn: Nye and I only met twice when we did it.
Aneurin: It was really important with our intonation, the flow of the way that we talked. Even laughing, I remember being told ‘you guys have got to laugh the same’.
Finn: Which is such an extra effort for me. Because I laugh weirder and faster. That was a big thing. I shot after Nye did, so our vocal coach saved recordings of him talking, and Russian things…
You’re doing it with a Russian accent?
Aneurin: It’s a cross between Russian and Ukrainian.
Finn: You can’t really pinpoint it.
Aneurin: He’s supposed to travel so much. We played with that. We wanted to have the feel that he was trying to embody his background and heritage. We just found our own specifics with our vocal coach Kristina [Nazarevskaia], who is Russian and knows everything about Ukraine and Russia and all the different towns and sounds.
What did you all like about the movie, the story, and what message do you take out of it?
Oakes: The story is really different from anything that anyone has ever seen. It’s a coming of age story, but it’s also got a lot of different feelings throughout the movie. Everyone who watches it experiences all those different emotions. And, I feel that is one thing that drew me to it.
Aneurin: This movie has got a huge heart, and a lot of hope to find a way to survive. And I think that we all connect with those types of stories. These two characters, especially, when they meet, they’re both kind of lost, they both come from damaged backgrounds, and they find something within each other that connects and drives them forward to try to find a way through their very complex lives. That has the heart for an audience to really connect with. And hopefully for the audience to want Theo to be happy and successful and find a way.
Ansel: I like how the movie and the story has a lot to do with objects, and physical objects. After Theo loses his mother when he’s a kid, he puts his mother almost into the object of The Goldfinch painting. The way that we do, we have these objects passed down for generations that we put so much importance into. And Theo takes this painting and he almost holds it as if it’s his mother. So, when he loses it, and all hope seems lost, it’s as if he has lost everything. It’s interesting the way that we put so much into objects as humans.
This movie is for smart people… Maybe not for us 4…. But yeah, there are definitely a lot of solid messages, and that had a lot to do with Donna Tartt’s writing. I think Roger Deakins and John Crowley really captured that in the movie. It can be dark, but it can also be hopeful. And honouring those objects and celebrating life that came before us is important. Sorry about such an ambiguous answer, I wish it was easier to be so clear, but maybe that’s a good thing.
Finn: The movie is a lot about how people leave your life, and also how they come back in your life, which happens a lot, and it deals with a lot of themes such as mental health in general. It’s obviously not a satire, but it’s almost like the big thing that happens which kills Theo’s mother, it’s almost like a reflection of what the world turning around Theo is. When this explosion happens, it’s like everything crumbles beside him, like the way he lives, where he lives. He’s in this huge city, New York, the biggest city in the world, and then all of a sudden, he’s in the middle of nowhere in Las Vegas. It’s all about losing things, losing people, how they come back in your life, how they leave… I think it’s a really interesting way of telling a story. Obviously, there’s a storyline, there’s a timeline, but it’s almost like a liquid… It’s not a full liquid narrative or anything, but it jumps around a lot, which I like a lot.
Do you have a special object that you bring with you to work?
Ansel: My cell phone… just joking.
Aneurin: My wedding ring because my wife would kill me otherwise.
Finn: Anxiety medication… I don’t have any… There’s stuff that has sentimental value, little toys from when you’re a kid. I don’t travel with anything that I really….
Oakes: I don’t either. If there’s anything remotely like that, even though he’s not an object and it sounds kinda stupid, it’s my dog probably. Because when I come home to my dog and I am not in a good place mentally, although he doesn’t do much and he just kinda sits there with me, it’s nice to have him there. So, he helps me out sometimes…
Have you ever had the experience of being totally magnetised by a work of art?
Ansell: Do movies count? For me, On the Waterfront, the Kazan movie with Brando, I am so magnetised by that, I could watch that movie a million times. It’s so beautiful to watch and also the story that it tells. I love movies right now, I am so into them. Obviously, pieces of art are great too, going to museums and getting stimulated by art all day.
Aneurin: I love Turner paintings.
Oakes: Oh my God, you literally just read my mind. I was about to say the same thing!
Aneurin: We should have played each other!
Oakes: Oh my God, exactly.
Ansell: Turner?
Aneurin: There’s a movie about it called Mr Turner.
Oakes: His paintings sometimes don’t have a lot of colour, but the scenes have so much raw emotion with the storms and the bright days. In a very happy or sad way, he can just bend your entire emotion in completely different directions when you look at his paintings. I don’t have a specific painting that magnetises me specifically, but all of his paintings are incredible.
Finn: I just started getting into art recently. I was in New York recently and I went to the Gagosian to see Harmony Korine, he’s a filmmaker who wrote Kids and directed Spring Breakers and Gummo. I was interested to see what his art would be like. He’s a great filmmaker but his art is next level. He had an exhibit called Young Twitchy. He had this character called Twitchy that he would just paste on everything. It was photo realistic. It was Miami, Florida warm backgrounds and textures. It was the first time I felt something… when I was younger and I was at a museum, I was like ‘let’s go’, and this was the first time that I have felt something seeing a painting. There was one painting that’s really great. It’s by a pool, and it was like being on a vacation and having a fever. You’re in a great place but you’re surrounded by not so great things. Harmony did an interview about how he does art. He kind of goes method with Young Twitchy. He turned the heat up in his house and he would treat himself badly. He would pour himself some cheerwine, which is like a Southern soda. It’s like Big Red as a soda. It’s disgusting. But he would pour himself a giant glass and just eat Taco Bell and just treat himself awfully, so that he gets this washed out weird fever dream. I would never want to do that to my body.
Despite the horrible things that happen in the lives of these characters, it’s still a hopeful story. Do you think this is something that’s needed now?
Aneurin: I think cinema has always been a release for people. We go there to have fun and disappear. The more depth in a movie, the more that people can switch off and go on a journey. Whilst I’m in this industry, one of my favourite things is watching films and disappearing for a few hours and going on a journey with someone in a story. The Goldfinch has so much depth within it, and there’s so many different characters at different stages in their life that you get to connect with. You can really get swallowed up by it. Especially theatrically. Going to the cinema and watching a movie like this, I hope it becomes like the great movies. I hope it becomes something like that. Movies of this scale about these types of people don’t get made very often.
Ansel, your role is very dramatic, what did you have to do to prepare?
Ansel: I starved myself, which sucked. I always felt bad, I tried to find whatever inner darkness I could because he’s a real tortured soul at that point in his life. And he feels like he’s been living a lie for a long time. He gets wrapped up in selling fake antiques and he’s hiding this masterpiece painting. He has so much regret that he wishes that he would just show up at a museum and put it back on the wall. For me personally I had to find a way of getting there, and it was a big challenge.
Were you scared of your dark side?
Ansel: My girlfriend didn’t like me very much whilst I was making the film.
Why did you choose to play this role?
Ansel: I love The Goldfinch, I read the book and was obsessed with it, I thought it was amazing. Torturing yourself to play roles is sometimes necessary to do our job. And I love being an actor. That’s why I wanted to do it. I don’t know if I want to do every role that feels like this because it was definitely painful at times.
What was it like to work with Nicole Kidman?
Ansel: Nicole Kidman was like a mother, which I was really happy about because you never know… Actually, I’ve been saying you never know, but so far, I have been very lucky. Going from Jamie Foxx and Nicole, almost every big person that I have worked with has been really nice. And I guess the reason they’ve been around for so long is because they are so nice. Nicole was like a mother, and she really cared about me and gave me a lot of advice.
Oakes, you also had time with Nicole, what was that like?
Oakes: I can definitely agree with Ansel that she is very motherly. At the beginning of working with her, I was like ‘dude, I am going to work with Nicole Kidman, that’s awesome!’ And then as you start to work with her, you can really see her change her entire personality as she’s going through the work.
Ansel, how do you that you’ve changed since the last time you were in Amsterdam doing a big movie [Fault in Our Stars]?
Ansel: This was so different. I remember John [Crowley] pulled me aside before I went to Amsterdam and he had this way of talking to us… almost like he was grabbing my lapels… ‘when you go to Amsterdam, I need you to be in a really dark place, and I need you to really be there…’ So I went a few days early, and I had a hat and a hooded jacket, and I just walked around the streets at least ten hours a day not interacting with anybody. Just walking and walking and walking and getting cold, and then going to my room. I was really disconnected. Versus Fault in our Stars, which was going and being romantic and having fun and feeling the last hurrah… I didn’t let anyone know that I was there filming, so fans didn’t catch on that I was filming, so it was a completely different experience.
How did you switch off?
Ansel: You can’t really, sometimes it gets kinda hard. It starts flowing into your real life and then your girlfriend doesn’t like you. ‘Why aren’t you texting while you’re in Amsterdam, what are you doing?’ ‘I’m not in the red light district…’
What about the rest of you?
Finn: Our character is… for someone who is so messed up, he’s also a happy go lucky kind of guy. He’s damaged goods but he’s still making it work.
Aneurin: He’s so dark that he’s over it.
Finn: He got through when he was 4.
Aneurin: We also have the accent which is pretty good. So you finish the day and you go ‘what do I sound like?’
Finn: Going into it for me… we were doing rehearsals and stuff, and I went to the hospital for 3 days because I got so sick. We went to New Mexico. I got really sick, I just couldn’t stop throwing up, I got really dehydrated. I was in the hospital and my heart was just going crazy. Eventually they let me out, I got a day to chill, and then I showed up to the first day we’re filming, which was outside… When you go through something like that, anything after that you can take it on, you feel powerful, I guess. So I had a lot of confidence going into it, which is nice. I remember we were shooting, and the director John pulled my dad aside, and he was like ‘I don’t know what happened in that hospital, but that boy is literally glowing, you can see through him, he’s so pale. Keep him under the sun, keep him under an umbrella. He looks terrible’, and he was smiling. ‘We can not let him get tanned’.
The Goldfinch is in cinemas September 26, 2019
