HOW I LIVE NOW comes to the small screen on Monday 10th February. The film was released in cinemas during the tail end of last summer and in doing so found itself lost among some of the bigger budget movies but with its imminent Home Entertainment release, all this is set to change.
Directed by Kevin Macdonald (whom we spoke to earlier this week), the film stars Saoirse Ronan and George MacKay as Daisy and Eddie, cousins who meet and fall in love just as Britain faces war. It is very much a film of two halves with the first being full of love, vibrancy and sunshine and the second being bleak and dark in tone.
George MacKay is a name you will have heard a lot recently, having also starred in last year’s Proclaimers musical SUNSHINE ON LEITH, which received rave reviews. Both parts combined with a solid back catalogue have seen the young actor land a nomination for BAFTA’s EE Rising Star Award, the only BAFTA award voted for by you, the public.
Ahead of the DVD and Blu Ray release we were lucky enough to steal some of his time to have a good old chat about HOW I LIVE NOW, his plans to one day get into directing, musicals, and his chances of winning that much coveted BAFTA.
Firstly congratulations on your EE Rising Star BAFTA nomination, and are you excited for the BAFTAs?
Thank you very much and yeah! It should be mad, it should be mad. It’ll be exciting, it’s going to be a strange night.
You won the Scottish BAFTA last year for THOSE IN PERIL, how do you fancy your chances this time round?
Oh I don’t think so. It’s just lovely to be considered in the group. It’s exciting to be nominated.
Past winners and nominees have all gone on to have brilliant careers. People such as Juno Temple and Tom Hardy have done fantastically well. Are there any past nominees whose careers you’d hope to emulate?
I wouldn’t really want to emulate anyone. Just as much as I can you know, if I can keep doing everything my way, and carve my own path. But I mean actors like Tom Hardy; BRONSON is one of my favourite films. His performance in that is just amazing. The kind of breadth of work he’s done since, the different types of role, that’s what, if I can, I’d like to strike whilst it’s there and do as many roles as possible.
The rising star award is the only one voted for by the public, have you been calling in favours from family and friends?
(Laughs) I think my family have been championing that for me really. We’ve got quite a small family but it seems that extended family, that we see kind of less often [have been roped in], my mum’s been championing that.
How do you get involved with HOW I LIVE NOW?
Normally; I auditioned. It’s funny I actually auditioned a year or so before when it was going to get made, and then didn’t. So I auditioned again and I met with Nina Gold who cast it, and then I met Kevin. After that I met Kevin and I read with Saoirse as well. I was just so chuffed to get it.
I read that you directed when you were younger. Is this something that you would want to do more of?
Yeah I kind of (laughs), it feels odd to call it directing, but yeah I got some friends together and we did a play in the woods near where I live. We did Peter and the Wolf. I’d love to sort of direct one day. I’d be reluctant to say because a lot of people say they’d love to direct. It’s an amazing skill something that takes a lot of, something that you’ve really got to learn a lot about. I think before being able to do it I’d be reluctant to say without having done my homework first. But yeah one day I’d love to. I think it would be really exciting to work that side of things.
Did you learn anything from Kevin about directing?
Kevin’s just so lovely and his body of work speaks for itself. It’s so impressive. My experience of Kevin is that it was not easy to pinpoint what Kevin was doing. He created an atmosphere for us and so it was kind of subliminal and unconscious what he was doing. It felt that he kind of orchestrated it; we felt like we were left to our devices somewhat, which really bonded us as a family group. We all got on really, really well. I think that’s what I’ve learned, just the importance of creating an environment that you feel comfortable and happy with, and that bears relevance to the story that you’re telling.
The film has a very dark tone during the second half. How did you get into that mind set?
I think it was just a case of trying to imagine what he’d [Eddie] been through basically. I mean there’s a lot of darkness in the book and in the script, and just trying to formulate ideas in my head of what has happened. It’s something that never really gets revealed necessarily, but I wanted to have an idea of what. I wanted to know what it was myself. It was just a case of coming up with that and trying to focus on that as much as possible when doing those scenes.
The film is made up of a predominantly young cast. How was it working on a set full of youngsters? When I spoke to Kevin he likened it to a summer camp, would you agree?
Yeah (laughs) definitely. Me and Tom worked out, you kind of work out what you can do. You start just playing about more and you kind of work out odd tricks that you can do [between takes]. Me and Tom had a thing with grapes that we did between takes. He’s like a ninja at catching grapes in his mouth, grapes from literally 30 yards away. Then it became a case of sitting on opposite sides of the table and spitting it into each other’s mouths, and trying to catch it and get a rally going as much as we could. You get a close brotherly carefree attitude to everything. It was just really good fun. We were in this beautiful part of Wales and in the middle of nowhere really, so we just had each other and the world around us to just play really. It was lovely, yeah. It was odd being one of the eldest on set out of the cast I guess. I’ve been used to usually being one of the younger lot, so it was nice. I felt very elderly brotherly to everyone there.
How was it working with the animals? Your character Eddie has a Hawk, what was that like to work with?
The Hawk was beautiful. We had Griff who was the hawk handler, who – or the falcon – because I think it was actually a falcon. I’m trying to get this right, I think the difference between a hawk and falcon is like calling a Canadian an American or something.
Right. So important to get it right.
(Laughs) Easily done sometimes ignorantly, but it’s quite an insult if you get it wrong. The Hawk was actually a girl and it was called Raj and she was beautiful. It was really, really, I remember Kevin saying at one of the auditions, we were chatting away and he said ‘How’d you feel about him having a hawk?” and I said ‘It’d be great!’
What was it like working with Saoirse?
She was wonderful, so lovely, so brilliant. It was really exciting to work with someone who’s both so hugely experienced but then also a peer as well. It was just really exciting to see her, because she’s so great she becomes so real and you find yourself being genuinely shocked by her. Because things feel so fresh every time she does them. So it was wonderful to watch her work and get to work with her.
One thing I was wondering was about her accent, in the film she plays an American whilst she’s actually Irish. Did she keep the American up the whole time or not?
No, in-between takes she was back into Irish. It’s amazing how she can just go between the two so convincingly. Her American is perfect so it was always a shock to hear a really strong Irish accent.
After the success of SUNSHINE ON LEITH do you have any plans to do more musicals?
I haven’t really thought about it. I don’t know what I’m doing next so I mean if another one suitable were to come up then yeah; most definitely. It was a wonderful time. It was quite scary to begin with; Dexter gave us the confidence in the idea that going all out was better, and if we fail, fail hard. But therefore we just, I think that liberated everyone in feeling very comfortable because when we did fall we fell pretty hard, and so everyone was on the same page really, supporting each other. Then you give into the fun of it once you get over yourself singing. So yeah if there was another musical then I’d love to.
Is there any musical in particular you’d want to do?
I don’t know. I think, not that I could do it, because I think that Tim Curry did it so amazingly, but Frank-N-Furter. I remember, I saw that film, I used to love that film of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. I think Meatloaf’s part in that, all of those song are amazing but that films so special that they couldn’t ever remake that. I know I’m just listing ones gone past but the last tango scene in MOULIN ROUGE is so amazing, so I don’t know something really odd I think. Maybe something new, but kind of crazy like those two.
So what have you got your eye on for your next project?
I guess it’s more about learning at the minute, anything that will facilitate another learning experience, something that you can really get your teeth into, be that in the story or the character. I think as well I want to try as many types of characters and as much work as possible. At the minute I’m doing a play, which will take me through until March, which is a wonderful new experience. I’m having a great time getting to grips with that. I haven’t really thought too much past that at the minute so I don’t know what I’m doing, but just something, it’s difficult to pinpoint a particular character or story, those are the things you find out as you go, but as many different types of work as possible.
You have a lot of fans here at THN and we wish you the best of luck next Sunday.
Thank you very much!
HOW I LIVE NOW is released on DVD and Blu Ray through Entertainment One on Monday 10th February. Don’t forget to cast your vote for the EE Rising Star BAFTA here.
