'The Ballad of Wallis Island' director James Griffiths and stars stars Carey Mulligan, Tim Key and Tom Basden stop by THR's studio at Park City to talk all about their new film. The stars revealed what they loved most about filming, writing songs for the film and more.
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00:00Who would you hire for a private concert?
00:03Can they be dead?
00:04Yeah, sure.
00:05I guess they're dead, guys.
00:06I think I'd probably go, oh, straight down the line, Beatles.
00:09Oh, yeah.
00:10Well, they're not all dead.
00:11Well, I wouldn't kill them and bring them back.
00:13The ones that were alive, I'd have, and then bring the other ones back from the dead.
00:22We looked at a lot of islands off the coast, but most of them are just, you know, very,
00:26very difficult to get to.
00:27So we had, even the beach we chose was very, very difficult to get to.
00:31But we shot on the coast of Wales, and then the house is slightly more inland.
00:36So with the magic of cinema, we created our island.
00:39That was like where I grew up going on holiday.
00:42My family's Welsh.
00:43My mum's Welsh.
00:44So we're near Temby.
00:46Temby is where I went on all my summer holidays when I was a kid.
00:49And then the house, the big house that was Charles's house in the film, was in the town
00:53where my mum was born and lived until she went to university.
00:57So lots of family around there.
00:59My Welsh family are thrilled.
01:00So that is a very magical part of the British Isles, that corner of Wales.
01:06Yeah, the coastline there is unbelievably beautiful.
01:08It really is.
01:09I mean, Dylan Thomas wrote all of his work in that, literally around the corner from
01:12the beach we were filming in.
01:14So it's a very sort of artistic kind of corner.
01:16It's very creative.
01:17I've been writing and recording songs for this film for quite a while.
01:20And some of the songs date back to the original short film that was 18 odd years ago.
01:24And then some I wrote...
01:26Yeah, that's the short film we based it on.
01:29We made it a very long time ago.
01:31And some of the songs I was keen to reuse and some wanted to, you know, just come at
01:35it fresh and try new stuff.
01:38But yeah, I had to record them on just on my laptop at home when the kids were quiet
01:44and then kind of send them all to Carrie knowing that she listened to them with Marcus.
01:49That was quite nerve-wracking that.
01:51I was quite worried about how you'd respond.
01:53I think they're so brilliant.
01:55I watched the film for the first time yesterday and I just kept thinking...
01:59I always love them.
02:00I just think you're such a good songwriter.
02:02Oh, thank you.
02:03They were both very, very lovely about it and very supportive.
02:06It's true that they're so good.
02:07They're so...
02:08Like, in and of itself, even if you...
02:09They're quite good.
02:10No, but it's...
02:11Also, he's done such a good...
02:12Sorry.
02:13No, no.
02:14No, I was saying he's done such a good job of kind of telling the backstory and filling
02:18all the gaps of what their relationship was musically.
02:21Because often, Carrie's playing kind of backing vocals into some of those songs
02:25and then you can feel her move his music into a kind of more pop space.
02:29And just that journey is told through the music, the songs themselves,
02:32which is really clever.
02:34It's a testament to how much I think James and the boys have made something amazing,
02:39that I...
02:40How easy I found it to watch, not myself, but the film.
02:43Like, I was so...
02:44I just was in hysterics last night watching the film.
02:46I thought it was so funny.
02:47And then I cried.
02:48And I normally just went...
02:49You cried during the singing?
02:51I did.
02:52Just my tone.
02:53No, but like, I...
02:55Yeah, I don't like it at all.
02:57But...
02:58And it's like listening to your voice on an answering machine.
03:00Everyone hates that.
03:01And your face that big on a screen is upsetting.
03:03But I just was...
03:05That all kind of went into the background because I was so...
03:08I just thought these guys were so incredible in the film.
03:10Griff had done such an amazing job.
03:12So it was nice for once to be like, oh.
03:14Yeah, that was quite funny.
03:15There's one bit in the film where it's a close-up on me.
03:18And so there's an enormous face on the screen last night.
03:21And then I know the next thing that happens is it zooms in.
03:24LAUGHTER
03:27Braces up.
03:29I feel like I had the best view in the house.
03:32You know, because obviously you're there watching them live and doing it.
03:35And that, for me, was like the best.
03:37It was an amazing private concert
03:38because they had so much great chemistry with each other through the music.
03:43I mean, just generally.
03:44Everyone gets on, as you can see.
03:46Everyone, you know, gets it.
03:48But in those moments, it was just finding that connection.
03:51It moved the crew to tears when we were watching those scenes.
03:55The thing that I'm most proud of as well
03:57is that all of the music that's in the film is the live stuff we record on set.
04:00You know, we did go back and re-record things in the studio
04:04and spent quite a lot of time getting it all exactly to time,
04:07thinking we might use that and we'd kind of polish it afterwards.
04:12But actually, when we were watching it in post,
04:15it was just so clear that the live performances just had a kind of...
04:19They had a reality to them.
04:20They had a sort of slight roughness to them,
04:22a slight kind of like, you know, just an authenticity
04:25that just felt really right for the way the music's presented in the film.
04:29Which is how it should be, really.
04:31Because there's a scene where they sing to me
04:33and I hear them for the first time.
04:35And, yeah, it should feel like I'm hearing them in my living room
04:38or dining room, rather than a polished track
04:41which is played over the top of, you know, the picture.
04:44And it was kind of a very moving experience, as Griff says.
04:48Yeah, I was in the same boat as the crew, really,
04:52where I don't have any lines, I'm just watching them.
04:55And it was really... Yeah, it was very beautiful.
04:57I just wanted to be in the film in any way, you know.
05:00So singing was...
05:02And it's so fun to be in that world and to sort of...
05:05You know, if it's not your world.
05:08But, yeah, the onus was on him.
05:11And I was like, backing vocals for me.
05:14Don't make me sing on my own.
05:16It was great. That was what it was.
05:18I was never as...
05:19And she's meant to be the kind of keys player, backing...
05:23She's not like the front man of the thing, in that sense.
05:26And wrote all the lyrics, didn't she?
05:28In the backstory, she writes a lot of the lyrics to all that.
05:31So it's her kind of wordsmith.
05:33First time on Starstruck, I met Cliff Richard.
05:38Really?
05:39Yeah.
05:40When we were living in Germany, when I was a kid,
05:42my dad was a hotel manager, and Cliff Richard came to stay.
05:45I had a Fanta with him.
05:47Yeah, with my family.
05:52We sat with Cliff Richard and had a Fanta.
05:54I remember having a Fanta.
05:56I didn't probably have one at all.
05:58Yeah, that's big. Cliff's big.
06:00It's huge.
06:01I was six or seven when I was fairly short.
06:04Yeah.
06:05This was a big deal.
06:06I was 48 when I met John Murray,
06:08so I could keep my shit together.
06:10There's a guy called John Murray.
06:13I don't know how big he is here,
06:15but he's a radio football commentator in England.
06:18Yeah.
06:20Well, there's John Murray, Connor McNamara, Cornelius Slicer...
06:24Not a little big ear.
06:25No.
06:26Cornelius Slicer.
06:27And Jonathan Overhead.
06:29But basically, I always listen to sport all the time,
06:32and about two weeks ago, we were in a bar,
06:35and there was four people, and my friend recognised one.
06:37You never see these people.
06:39I was listening to one an hour ago on the radio,
06:41but you never see them, and they're always the most...
06:43And I love these people, and we introduced ourselves
06:46and met the sports commentators.
06:48Because the thing is, you meet a lot of people doing what we do,
06:51and actually, we're all doing the same thing,
06:54so it has to be from another field.
06:56For me, a particular sport where it's just insane
07:00that you're talking to this person.
07:02I mean, yeah, I've had some sports people that I've met,
07:05which have always, as you say, outside your field,
07:07like Johnny Wilkinson, who's one of my all-time heroes.
07:11But I think John Cleese was fun.
07:14I grew up on all the Python.
07:16My dad educated me in a lot of radio comedy,
07:19Round the Horn, and then Python.
07:22Life Prime, literally one of my favourite films.
07:24And so I did a Zoom with him when he was in Dubai,
07:27and we had a full chat for a good hour
07:29while he was eating some scrambled egg.
07:31And I couldn't tell him he had some egg on his face.
07:34I was like, oh God, it's John Cleese.
07:36Now I've got to tell him he's got egg on his face.