The Order according to Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult

by Gill Pringle

After launching his career more than three decades ago with a series of star-making roles, Jude Law was looking to start a new chapter.

He was tired of waiting for the good roles to drop in his lap, instead deciding to take his career by the reins and plot his own course.

And if that meant taking on character roles rather than relying on his good looks, then, even better.

In fact, for his latest role in Justin Kurzel’s thriller The Order, he gladly concealed his usual sparkling charisma in exchange for looking sick and burned out.

Based on a true story, The Order follows Law’s FBI agent Terry Husk as he hunts down Nicholas Hoult’s malevolent neo-Nazi, Bob Mathews, who left law enforcement baffled after a series of bold daylight bank robberies throughout America’s Pacific Northwest in the ‘80s.

Since Agent Husk is an amalgam of FBI agents rather than one actual person, it wasn’t immediately evident to Law how he would portray the character. “I was adding to the DNA of the guy and, physically, I was waiting for a click to occur,” recalls Law.

“And that came about because I got sick and I was very, very run down and tired and our director Justin Kurzel saw something in me one day when I was sniffling and coughing and haggard. He was like, ‘Okay, this is him; this is the guy; we’ve got to keep this guy!’

“I just wanted him to feel broken. I wanted you to worry that he wasn’t actually going to make it; that there was a sense of doubt … did he have it in him?” Law says.

“I let myself go. I got more and more hairy and unkept,” he says talking about how he found inspiration looking at photos of FBI agents from the ‘80s.

“They all had a big old moustache, so it just seemed apparent to me that the beard had to come off and the ‘tash’ had to stay. But the challenge, of course, was it couldn’t be a suggestive moustache. Those guys had the hair right up here – a real Ned Flanders moustache!” he jokes, pointing up his nostrils in reference to the character on The Simpsons.

If Law’s FBI agent is pure creation, then Nicholas Hoult had his work cut out for him in bringing the sinister Bob Mathews to life.

“Luckily, The Silent Brotherhood – the book that the film’s based on – is a great wealth of knowledge about this story and the people,” says Hoult. “Then, when it comes to Bob… I’d worked with Justin before [True History of the Kelly Gang], so I felt comfortable going into this character, eveb though it’s a tricky one. But I really trusted Justin – he is filled with warmth and encouragement and kindness on set, which I think you need when you’re taking on something like this.

“Justin gave us manifestos for our characters that were filled with things like, ‘Wake up as Bob Mathews’ and ‘what would you be doing in your morning?’ And then you piece together all the information you’re learning from these books, and then add that to these tasks that Justin has given you. I know that Jude followed me around for a day . . .”

He’s not kidding.

“I didn’t know Jude was tailing me!” Hoult laughs today.

“Then it was lots of things like reading what Bob would read, just trying to create an environment.

“And for all the evil and horrible things Bob was preaching – he’s also selling this idealistic lifestyle and living off the land with community and family. So, it’s also then trying to create that community, and that’s something that I knew about from the first time working with Justin.

“In The Order, it was my job to work with our group to build that. We’d go fishing and hang out and do tasks together and build things, whatever it would be.

“And then, in playing Bob, just reading all the horrible things and researching all these ideologies. I also found a recording of the speech Bob gave, so I’d listen to that and try and understand what he was and who he was. And actually, that speech I give in the film – that was something that I stole from Bob’s real speech.”

Both Law and Hoult appreciated Kurzel’s directing style. “Justin is married to a wonderful actress, but it goes beyond that,” says Law referring to the director’s actress wife and frequent collaborator, Essie Davis.

“He has an innate understanding of the process and really relishes the importance of it. As actors, we do an odd thing, and our job is not always understood – even by great directors. You turn up, and they don’t really know what we’re doing. It’s just like, ‘stand over there and I’m gonna point the camera. You do your thing.’ But Justin really embraces it, and gives us the time, and then just the generosity in letting us build our characters,” Law adds.

Jude Law launched his own production company Riff Raff Entertainment almost two decades ago – co-producing Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Sleuth, and the company serves as co-producer on The Order.

“I’ve always had a curiosity in developing stuff and finding ideas, not just for myself, but putting people together, whether it’s writers and directors or actors – but my company’s taken a leap forward in the last couple of years.

“Honestly, it feels for the first time like I’ve got the reins of my career. It’s a funny role as an actor, you spend so much time waiting for someone else to think you’re right to do something…

“Also, what’s wonderful with the company, is I feel like I can get things moving and find stuff like The Order that I think should be made, needs to be seen and needs to be heard,” he adds.

Not that he claims any of this is easy. “It’s really hard and there’s endless fights. Some you win, some you lose. But getting it made is hard, getting the right amount of money, getting the schedule right, getting the people you want, and then getting it seen, and really trying to make sure it’s in the cinema so that people experience it like that. . . I mean, every stage is a fight,” he says.

He hopes The Order will attract serious attention, not least because of its sobering message about the threat of racism and white supremacism.

“I was amazed that no one had done it before, and it seemed like a very timely story for unfortunate reasons. And it just felt like, if not now, then when?

“I hope people come away with a better understanding of how and why people behave like this. History is littered with these kinds of people. It’s not just an American problem. It’s a global problem. And to hopefully one day pull it out, roots and all, we have to look at why that behaviour occurs.”

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