Synopsis : Set in an English seaside town in the early 1980s, EMPIRE OF LIGHT is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema, from Academy Award®-winning director Sam Mendes.
Press Conference with actors Olivia Coleman, Micheal Ward, Tanya Moodie, Toby Jones and director-writer Sam Mendes
Q: Sam, this film is a valentine for the magic of movie theaters. What was the first movie theater you went to? What do you recall about the experience? Do you have any regret that a new generation might not have the same sense of nostalgia about the experience that you did?
SM: I do have a lot of regret that the next generation won’t have the same degree of nostalgia, not just for the places but also for the things that we see in the movie: the projection booths and concession stands. But having said that, there are some amazing cinemas still alive, and I think we should celebrate those and keep those alive rather than worry about the past too much.
My first and favorite cinemas were in Oxford — and in fact Toby probably went to them as well because we grew up in the same place — which is called the Penultimate Picture Palace. And there was another one called Not the Moulin Rouge. They were rerun houses and impossibly amazing places. They showed the movie once and moved on. They had staff of people who literally spent the entire day carrying cans of film, projecting it and taking it out again. Yeah, I loved those places, they were amazing.
Q: Is there a movie theater in your real life that holds meaning, and can you share why? Toby, is it the one Sam alluded to or is there another?
TJ: I do remember those cinemas very well. They are still there. I lived in Paris for a couple of years when I was training, and the cinema culture there where you can see a movie from virtually any era in any genre, pretty much any day of the week. I saw more movies in a two year stretch than I’ve ever seen before, and they were all uniformly well-organized with great information you could pick up. Also impossibly cool clientele that you can associate yourself with.
Q: Tanya?
TM: Well, where I grew up, there was a predominance of multiplexes. But there was one I would say was kind of like an arthouse type of cinema. I can’t remember the name of it. But because I was in my teens and it used to be basically populated by teens who would go see things like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and do all the singing and all the dancing and everything, and the nature of all of these teenagers coming together in the dark. I remember passing fags back and fort — you could smoke in cinemas back then. And there was always the thing of like, that was the place where you got up to all sorts of [things] — kissing, smoking, singing, chucking things about, and you felt the sense of freedom in the dark. And also seeing these stories in a big screen.
Q: Olivia?
OC: I grew up north of Norfolk, we’d travel into Norwich to go see films. There was the Odeon, and I think the Prince of Wales cinema. Also there was the art cinema, so as I got older and became a teen I discovered the art cinema, and it was a game changer. I felt very cool that I was going to see some “arty” films, and I discovered a whole new genre of filmmaking that I didn’t know existed before. But that was a big event: traveling into the city for an hour to go and see a film. Very exciting.
Q: Micheal?
MW: I grew up around the Longford area, and that’s where we used to go a lot of the time to watch some movies. But I remember that we used to go to the Vue cinema a lot, and then they opened a new one called the Premiere cinema, where the tickets were like, four pounds [almost $5]. And when you’re in school, you’re like “four pound cinema”, and I used to go there and watch a lot of films with a lot of my friends. That is special for me.
Q: Olivia and Sam, this movie puts forth the idea of “ad hoc families” — meeting people who become like family to you. Who or what are some of the ad hoc families you have each become a part of in your own lives? Do you see any of what you’ve experienced there reflected in this film?
QC: I think almost every film or job I do, you do have sort of part-time ad hoc family. You become very close, you’re in each other’s pockets day in and day out. When I was younger, I found it quite hard that that always had to change. But I got better at it now. The people that you really love you will stick with. You might not see each other a few years, but you’ll come back. And I’ve always loved that. when I first went into acting, I felt like I’d found my tribe and people that I understood, got on with, emotionally available people. So that is my experience in ad hoc family.
SM: For me, growing up, it was the only real kind of family I knew. I grew up alone with my mum, and a lot of this movie is based around those memories of growing up with somebody as an only child with an only parent who in turn was struggling with mental illness. A lot of what I went through with her is reflected in Hilary’s journey in the movie.
For me, I suppose, if you look at any of the movies I’ve made, there are no functional families in any of them, really. That wasn’t deliberate. It was sort of pointed out to me recently that there aren’t any normal families. In fact, in a way, the most healthy family is the relationship between Stephen and his mum.
So yeah, the collection of eccentrics that gathers in the cinema is very much like the collection of eccentrics that gathers in the theaters that I worked in. The families I found were all cobbled-together outcasts who found somehow a home in those places.
Q: Sam and Olivia, what is your most memorable cinema experience that might have triggered you to become a filmmaker or an actor?
OC: I do remember, it was after I decided that I wanted to be an actress. I watched “Breaking the Waves” [Lars von Trier, 1996] in the cinema in Bristol when I was a drama student. That work was so breathtaking. I never wanted to watch it again, it was too upsetting. But Emily Watson blew my mind, and that’s when I went, I want to work like she works.
SM: I guess there’s two different parts of me. [For] the nine-year-old, “Live and Let Die” [Guy Hamilton, 1973] at the Odeon in Camdentown, probably 1975-76. Yeah, I remember that vividly all the years — the black magic and all the voodoo which, retrospectively, perhaps doesn’t hold up quite so well. But at the time, it was thrilling and dangerous and weird and sexy.
Then when I was a student, I [saw] a movie called “Paris, Texas”, Wim Wenders’ movie. That really was the first when I thought maybe I could make movies. It was the first time I was introduced to the notion of being able to see the contemporary world as a mythic landscape rather than as something domestic and small.
So those two things, I think, were probably my pivotal experiences in cinema.
Q: What are your favorite films that you saw growing up that were formative?
TJ: Well, I think when I was growing up — I’m sort of nostalgic about this, about films that I wasn’t meant to see at the age I was. They were aimed at an age slightly older than me, and they promised a kind of adult world that I was in a hurry to get into.
I remember seeing on TV a couple of Joseph Losey films, particularly “The Go-Between” which I found deeply upsetting. But I didn’t know why I found it upsetting. I understood everything that was going on, I understood the plot; but there was something about the atmosphere. To a certain extent, you are the hero — you go with the hero of the story through it, so you identify with it, and he is ignorant until the very end. But that had a huge impact on me.
I remember going in for one movie and then trying to sneak out and get into the “X” film — all of that. And film and cinema seemed to embody and encapsulate that feeling of, somewhere in this building there will be a taboo experience that you can get access to when you’re young. And in a way, you never lose that sense of there being the potential of those buildings for that experience.
TM: I remember being very emotionally sort of permeable when I was younger, and things having a massive impact on me. I don’t know if kids nowadays because they have so much access to things that for us would have been quite upsetting. For them, eh, they get inured eventually.
So I remember seeing “A Clockwork Orange” [Stanley Kubrick, 1971] probably when I was too young to see it. I’d be really really freaked out by the violence and everything. And also, even “Elephant Man” [David Lynch, 1980] as well, and feeling desperately sad and affected by this man who was treated so badly. I think he’s given a gift of a brush and a comb and stuff, and [I’m] just weeping, “My god, this poor man!”
Apart from that, “Pink Panther” films. They’re always a treat, right? They came on the telly, it was an event at home to watch Pink Panther.
MW: For me, a movie that comes to mind is a Jamaican film called “Shottas” [Cess Silvera, 2002]. I thought that the reason why I had a mad connection with this film is because I didn’t know what Jamaica was like. I moved to England when I was quite young. So for me it was this connection in an intimate way with Jamaica. You can watch music videos and stuff and formulate what it would feel like. This movie felt like it was a documentary film — very real and authentic, and I used to love it. It’s something I watched time and time again.
OC: Toby’s answer did remind me of sleepovers where we’d all try to get scary films. I am not one for scary films. When it was my turn for a sleepover, at about 10 or 11, I said to Mum, “Please can you get a really scary film? Because all the other girls have had “Nightmare on Elm Street’. I just want it to be as cool as them.” And my mum went to the video shop, and she said “I’ve got you “Christmas Carol”. “What?” She said “well, it’s got ghosts. I thought that would be scary.” I was so embarrassed. I pretended that the video shop was closed. Yeah, really not cool.
Q: Sam, what casting director did you work with [for “1917” as well] and can you describe that relationship in terms of how you worked together, how you found this cast and what the audition process was?
SM: The casting director is Nina Gold, and she’s wonderful. The casting directors I like working with — and there’s two, mainly, Nina and Debbie Zane, who cast my movies in the U.S. People who a) love actors — and that is not always the case with casting directors, strangely, in my experience, and b) who are very opinionated and tell me when they think I’m wrong.
The process of casting, for me, is there were certain “givens” in this movie, and I was very fortunate in that the person I wrote Hilary for, which was Olivia, wanted to do it. So that was very straightforward. Then I had in my head Toby, and Toby did it. So those are the easy ones.
Then I felt like I had missed out. I needed to meet an entire generation of British black talent for the role of Stephen. I said to Nina, “Your goal is to show me everyone I feel I need to meet. Then I read them, and for me personally, I get much more out of meeting them and talking with them than I often do when they read.
I find reading generally a little fake, and it’s so stressful for them. They’re nervous, and they’re in some weird room, and they’ve got a script and they’re reading to me or to someone else. Sometimes in that protest you get a flicker, just get a moment where you feel “Ah, there it is. There’s the person that I’m looking for.” I’m talking about the character.
That’s what happened with Micheal. He read maybe two or three times, and every time he came in, I saw a little bit more of Stephen and a little bit more of him until I thought “Yeah, he’s there.” And that was it. He happens to be a joyful presence as a human being, which I also loved. That was really good fortune on my part, rather than anything else.
And Tanya, the same. I cast Tanya because of the conversation we had. I think you did read, but I knew she was a wonderful actress, I had seen her before. So it’s really the feeling you get when you’re in the room with somebody.
Same with George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, who played the two boys in “1917”, neither of whom I really knew that well. Nina just gently steered me towards them until I saw the part, the person, the character emerge from underneath them.
Q: Tanya and Micheal, Nina is very prolific, she works on numerous movies every year. Did you two already know her?
MW: I’d been introduced to Nina before through her friend Carmen Cuba. I had done a movie that Carmen cast, and then she introduced me to Nina, actually around the same time. She said to me that she was basically trying to cast me in something — not something specific. So she basically held [out] a promise, she said that “When an opportunity presents itself, we will definitely find something for you.”
I remember when this came through my agent, and I found out Nina was doing it, I was like, “This is it.” So it was kind of full circle. But I feel it is definitely important to know important casting directors and understand the work that they want to do as well. I feel that the stuff that Nina’s cast, even when she cast John Boyega back in the day, it means she’s interested in young black actors. For me that’s really important.
TM: Well, I’ve been around for about thirty years now. I’m at the stage where works for you won’t go by you. Nina and I have come across one another, and I think great casting directors like her would have seen my work, and I really trust that. Whatever is the right thing will come up, they will consider me.
Q: Olivia, besides the opportunity to work with Sam, what was irresistible to you about this film that made you say yes?
OC: Well, I said yes before I’d seen the script. I can’t imagine many actors when they speak to Sam Medes on a Zoom in their kitchen going “Nah, not that interested.” So I said yes and you told me a bit about it, didn’t you? And then the script came through, and I was so thrilled that I’d said yes. Because Hilary is a part I hadn’t played before and I found a little bit scary, which is exciting to me.
Also, playing a woman of my age who’s having a love affair with a younger man, that’s the most terrifying part of the whole thing for me. But then, Micheal and I met, and you actually made me feel more at ease. Micheal was much more mature about it than I was. The whole journey, to work with the people that were involved, it was all very exciting, very flattering, that Sam considered me.
Q: During a difficult time, what is a movie that brought the most comfort to you while you were watching it, possibly in a movie theater?
SM: My comfort viewing is in a movie theater. I guess our minds immediately go to the pandemic, weirdly. So the idea that what comforted us during the pandemic is not a movie theater, sadly. We weren’t able to go.
But I find that as a filmmaker, I go back always to the same films to remind me how to make films. “Godfather II” would be the obvious one, that I must have seen a thousand times. I tend to watch to remind me how to do it: the economy of means, the astonishing performances, the way it shifts back and forth in time, the lighting — everything, really. It’s unbelievable — both the “Godfather” movies, the first two. I find that comforting. I find being reminded of sheer excellence comforting.
TJ: I always feel in debt to all the films I haven’t seen. I feel a constant sense of lack, almost like, I’ve got to see something new. That said, for some reason I love films about New York, and I find films about New York very comforting. It’s something about the layout of the apartments, there’s something about watching actors’ characters cross streets, wander down streets that I always dreamt that one day I would have the opportunity to do.
Literally just behavior. I find after not watching the story, I’m literally just watching behavior, and I find that absolutely fascinating in New York. Because I suppose New York is to a lot of British people, it’s a landscape of dreams anyway. It’s what we grow up dreaming that one day we’ll have some relationship with it. I think that’s also tied up with films about New York. So obviously people like Scorsese and Woody Allen had a profound effect on me.
TM: Yeah, like Toby, I think it’s about place, really. I spent quite a few years living in and out Sweden and so any Swedish film for me I find brings me comfort because it brings me back to that time. So anything by Bergman if I sit down and watch it. “Fanny and Alexander”, which is probably about ten hours long, I can sit and watch it. And I haven’t seen it in ages, because normally that’s the one. If someone says “What do you want to watch?” I go “Fanny and Alexander”. So I don’t really see it anymore. It brings me immense comfort to see those films again.
MW: What brings me comfort in film is watching someone I really love and really admire, but their earlier work. So one that comes to mind for me is “Soul Plane” [Jessy Terrero, 2004] because I really, really love Kevin Hart. That was I think his first movie that he was the leader of stuff like that. It’s just so funny. I find comfort in laughter as well — being able to let go and just laugh with the characters. For me, that’s really, really fun. It’s a wild story, but I love it. People like Snoop Dogg in there, who are also people that I love and admire. Yeah, “Soul Plane” — I’ve probably watched that over a hundred times.
Where I used to live in London when I was younger, it was me and my momma and my sister in this one room. So we had the CD that we’d bought and every time after school I’d watch it, literally every single day. It was the only thing we had. I never had a Playstation and stuff like that. So I knew all the words, and everything. It’s one of my favorite films.
OC: I like kids’ films. For comfort, I could watch “Paddington” all day, every day. I need a happy ending. It will always, always break your heart at some point in the film. “Toy Story 3”, heartbreaking. But if I was going for comfort I would go for, I’m thinking of being at home — not in the cinema, sorry — DuBarry cup of tea, kid’s film.
Q: Olivia, where do you stand on “Paddington 2”? Because most people think it’s even better than the first one.
OC: Yeah. It is. It’s a bit like “The Godfather” [films].
SM: I can say one more, which is the one film that gets better every single time I watch it: “Withnail and I” [Bruce Robinson, 1987]. I can watch it now, quietly.
Q: Micheal, since you are the newcomer to the industry compared to this outstanding cast, how was the experience of working with these veterans in the industry, and playing Olivia’s lover?
MW: For me, it was a joyful experience. But I really learned a lot, and I really, really enjoyed my time embodying a character and seeing how the others would take to that. Every actor was different. I had intimate scenes with Olivia, with Toby, Tom Brooke as well, and obviously Tanya. So it was seeing how everyone processes things and how everyone works.
I soaked up all that information. It was really helpful because now, moving forward, I know stuff that works for me, and being assured in that is what I really learned. Because sometimes you’re thinking “Oh, I need to do this, I need to do that.” Then I see Olivia come in and she just “becomes”; Toby comes in, he’s going over the words, and I’m thinking maybe I should do that.
But now I know what I want to do. Now I’m more self-assured and trusting my instincts, and seeing where that can take me. Being able to be directed by someone like Sam and being open to that. I learned a lot of that from the guys. So it was amazing.
Q: Sam, the film indicates the idea of cinema as a shelter, a physical shelter and a mental one. Is that something you wanted to explore?
SM: Yes. The film at its core is about mental illness, Hilary’s mental illness. I know there’s a lot of talk, even today, about celebration of movies, but in a sense, that’s not why I wrote the film. I didn’t set out to write a movie about what movies can do.
It’s about in many ways how if you’re broken, or you’re an outcast like Hilary or Stephen is — for different reasons — that movies and music and words can help put you back together again. For me, as a kid growing up in an unstable environment, cinema was an escape in a way that probably young people now don’t even understand.
There were no such things as movies on television [in the UK]. Maybe you got them once or twice a year. You had to go to the cinema to see a movie. It was an escape into an entirely different part of yourself. I tried to put that in the film. I tried to put it in the mouth of Stephen who says, with the fervor and the passion of someone who’s just discovered it himself: “You should go and sit in the dark amongst people who don’t even know what you look like, who can’t even see you. That little beam of light is an escape.”
I still feel that, and I am still pulled back to the cinema despite the availability of movies on streaming. I still find myself wanting to go back into the dark and to sit with people I don’t know. For me, that fulfills a big need in human beings for story, for escape into worlds of imagination. And I hope that post-pandemic, the taste for that — because we didn’t have it for so long — as we begin to have the courage to go out of our homes again, that that will come back in the way that it did after the wars. There was a huge surge in creativity and the desire to be with other people and to see things that you can’t see at home.
Q: We’re seeing a lot of films this year that are love letters to cinema. Is that a reaction to the pandemic or closing of cinemas or the expansion of streaming? Are we living in a time of nostalgia?
SM: I wouldn’t say “nostalgia”, I would say “longing”. I think we were trapped. We were taken away from our jobs — we couldn’t define ourselves by what we did for a living anymore for a couple of years. We were only parents or children or brothers or sisters. I think that during that time of reflection — we have short memories, but I think we all felt, “Maybe it’s gone.”Of course, there was vaccinations, but for nine months there was no such thing.
And we really did think, “Maybe that’s it, man.” And we ‘re not going to sit in a theater or a cinema, or even be able to get on a bus or go in a cafe again. I think that’s what’s behind that. So the filmmakers probably reflected on how lucky we were to have it and how much we miss it now it’s gone, and that’s probably gone into a lot of the movies that you’re talking about.
Q: Olivia and Micheal, what are the life lessons that you think can be taken away from this movie?
OC: I don’t know. I think I already agreed with a lot of what was being said. The boundaries that other people put up don’t matter: age, color. What happened in the Eighties, as Sam was saying, I agree that was all wrong. So I felt lucky to be part of this storytelling, to talk about mental health issues, to look after each other. These two characters saw each other, looked out for each other, and I agreed with that anyway. I would still do that.
MW: For me, because I did a lot of work on this character and watched a lot of films from the screenplay and the stuff that Stephen was interested in, it made me realize as an actor that I really need to know about previously — what was done for me to be able to do what I do.
Seeing someone like Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder films, having black and white people do films together as leads, I felt that was really important and instrumental for black actors to be able to be leads in stories. I really felt those things and those movies, and I want to watch loads more of those movies because they really inspire me. And it felt like the tone and stuff has changed a lot more now for sure, so it was good to understand what it was like then and compare it to now. Not necessarily comparing it, but seeing what was done before and what’s happening now, it builds up knowledge of film and actors and stories. It inspires me to tell more different kinds of stories.
SM: Can I just add something? I was watching the movie last night for the first time in awhile because it was the premiere here in L.A. It struck me that there were two crises in the movie: there’s Hilary’s inward crisis and the chaos that’s going on in her that’s reflected by the outer chaos, which is the political chaos in the world at the time. Those two stories run concurrently, the inner fight and the outer fight.
The outer fight was a fight against social injustice, against high unemployment, against terrible racial policies. And those two run concurrently but the moment that the riot happens and they smash the window is when one breaks in on the other. That’s when they both come together in a way.
I’ve been struck by people who feel that one [crisis] is enough — and of course, that’s true. You can make a whole movie — you can make many movies — about mental illness or about race. But for me, the relationship between the two characters is mirrored in those two shifting of the tectonic plates –the inner and the outer. That’s what I suppose I was reaching for in some way.
Q: Sam, what was it like working with Roger Deakins, your DP, Oscar winner for “1917”? He did such a fabulous job.
SM: He’s a nice man. He’s an absolutely [nice man]. What can I say? He’s a master — he’s a rock star — and there are very few [DPs] who have achieved that level. What I admire about Roger — and I’ve worked with him about twenty years now — is his refusal to rest on his laurels, his refusal to repeat himself, his desire to do the right thing for the story, and never show off. He never does something that reflects on him.
He only wants to tell the story in the best way. If it’s a movie like “Fargo” [Joel & Ethan Coen, 1996], for example, he’ll adopt a very observational, measured style. But then he can work on something like “Barton Fink” [Joel & Ethan Coen, 1991], for example, very expressionistic, almost comically caricatured. And between those two poles, he has an immense control of tone and range.
So the movies I worked with him on — “Jarhead” [2005], we shot on handheld cameras, there was not a straight line in the movie. Then you go somewhere like this, which is very composed, very still. Or in “1917”, which was one long, unbroken shot, or “Skyfall” [2012] which was on a totally different scale. On each one, it’s like starting afresh, it’s as if he’s never made a movie before. And I think there’s a lesson there for everybody.
Q: For the four actors: what was your favorite scene to film?
TJ: I loved all the scenes. It’s a very [honest] answer. There’s a moment towards the end of the film when Olivia, Tom and I are drinking a cup of tea and I’m smoking a cigarette, and we’re looking out at the sea, as we were doing. And there is a sense of something very, very prosaic and everyday of people just having a cup of tea before work starts. But at the same time — and this is a great strength of Sam and Roger — the thing felt absolutely like a family reuniting and a bond being forged.
I remember the atmosphere on set, and it was very calm. It was a big counter to the string of lots of things happening. And yet as we were shooting it I felt, this is a major bit of punctuation in the film. It feels great, that openness of the horizon but it’s looking out. You got this tight little group of people doing something quite small and gentle. And there was something about that that I found it touched me in the moment quite unexpectedly.
Unlike some scenes, which you know you’re approaching and you go “This scene will operate like this” — you have a vague preparation whether it does or doesn’t.
TM: The scene when we’re having dinner and I’m saying goodbye to my son with his girlfriend and all that. We were all quite tired and Sam wanted the atmosphere to be more jovial so he was shouting “Knock, Knock” jokes, and jokes like that to make us laugh.
SM: Really bad ones.
TM: They were really good.
[laughter]
MW: I think one of my favorite scenes to film was the scene where we come in just before New Year’s Eve and we come into the locker room. Because we started with that one from earlier in the rehearsal to see how it transformed that with the set and stuff. It was really interesting. It felt like I was onstage, and I never really had that experience in film before. I really enjoyed it. I gave myself loads of ideas, different ways of saying stuff, and gave so many options. It was just fun, because it felt new every single time. Also to see how other actors would do their thing. For that scene, not for the whole film. We filmed that scene all day. I learned so much that day.
OC: I particularly love the moment when Tanya took my hand. I really struggled to keep it together. It was such a beautiful tiny little gesture that meant so much. I loved looking at Tanya’s eyes.
And also, weirdly, I really loved the breakdown scene in Hilary’s flat with Stephen. We filmed that twice, actually, and I’m so grateful to Sam for letting us do it a second time. I felt the second time, I felt no barriers, just let rip, and having you there was just beautiful. I loved that. I loved it.
Q: Thank you.
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Here’s the trailer of the film.