How did you and Harrison build up that relationship since your characters have to be so deeply connected?
We worked together a long time ago [on 1986’s The Mosquito Coast], and I’d loved working with him a long time ago, but we were very different people then. A lot has happened to both of us since those days, but I just felt utterly at ease with him. I didn’t have any real reason to because, you know, he’s “Harrison Fucking Ford.” There was every reason for me to feel awkward and like, “oh God, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here.” But I felt utterly at ease with him. Maybe it’s in the nature of the characters that we are playing, I don’t know. But I think it was down to Harrison actually, and how he’s developed into the person that he’s developed into.
I hear that a lot of Harrison Ford, but I also imagine people feel that way about being in a scene with “Helen Fucking Mirren” sometimes. How do you welcome in young actors who may be working with you and feeling nervous?
I try to be as totally normal and professional as I can be. I think it helps because I’m so admiring of the young actors that I work with, especially on 1923. I watch them and I learn from them, and I can’t wait to play a scene with them. I don’t know. I love being on the set with them. I enjoy their company. I laugh, I make jokes. I tried to make the set as exciting and as open and as free and as accepting a space as it can possibly be. Because I know that’s what I welcome as an actor.
The show has already been renewed for a second season, but now we’re in a writers strike. Where are you in the process for season two?
Taylor being the extraordinary powerhouse that he is of writing, it’s almost as if he writes in his sleep or something. But I have to say, when the scripts arrive, they are perfect. You don’t want to change a word. You don’t. No scene is too long.No scene is too short. They’re beautifully constructed. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’d already written some before the strike. If he has, then we can start work. But if that’s not the case, I guess we’ll have to put it off for a while.
So you haven’t seen anything yet?
No, I suspect we’ll be jumping in not knowing what’s happening. I have to say I love that process. I don’t particularly like prepping, you know? I love cold reading something. As an actor, your very first response to something, where it’s just pure instinct and pure invention — that moment of pure invention, that I love. I’d be perfectly happy to get the scripts the night before we shoot them, and just jump in and do it.
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