Anya Taylor-Joy & Nicholas Hoult Break Down the Breadless Scene with 'The Menu' Director

must give you know massive props this one did not throw up once and he ate all day long for two and a half months and I was very very proud did it taste okay or was it just horrible A lot of it was very delicious I think the only day it was tough was there's a scene when the bread does arrive later right and my cat is very upset about him not getting to try the bread and so Gorge is on it I call it that was a long day only bread it was genuinely concerned about him hi I'm Nick hi I'm Mark hi I'm Anya and this is notes on a scene haven't touched your food there there is no food we joined the scene at a point in the story where the wheels have not yet come off we're still as an audience trying to work out who these people are what these relationships are and specifically this table they want to be seen in this exclusive Club they want to belong to this family to this movement with this cult leader of Chef slowik up there is there's so much this human need to belong on some level are you gonna try it no no this is great stuff so what I'm trying is this is the breadless bread plate part of the menu so we've all been delivered no bread but just the condiments and sauces that would come with them I ate quite a lot of oil that was what I was having my little spoon right now I was just licking oil throughout the day how did it taste oily delicious I don't know I remember asking you know when you have too much oil in your mouth after a while you're like it starts to feel a bit funny in there yeah I started to have that feeling occasionally I'm gonna stop at it just to tell you how long we've spent trying to get the sound effect right for the glass smashing you know the obvious if something really scary happens when you do the strings and so we did want to create an unease whenever we could with that I think it took us about two weeks to get the sound effect right of going back and forth Just for a glass smash but if you hear it in a big Cinema speaker it's really cool it was worth it but also if you listen to this one so like I did a little bit of a squeal I did that maybe like 79 times in ADR really to get the right level of school so yeah two weeks of a glass Smash and a moment for one little moment for one little moment we were in the edit with Chris taylorson I wanted to be kind of over Chef's shoulder when he comes down to and experience that fear of like when the head teacher is coming over to your table but it was all lasting a bit too long so I wanted someone to fall short in it but I didn't want to turn through at the moment and then Chris found this little look from Paul if you just keep looking at the stuff I didn't even notice on the monitor on the time you just find little nuggets of gold that everybody was given all the time and Paul just gave me this lovely little kind of teacher's pet look perfect and I just loved it and it's interesting also because the way that this restaurant is set up we the diners are in our own little Worlds at each table but we are all out there on a stage and then you've got Chef slowex wherever he walks all heads turn and he is presenting from his own stage so it really is all performances within performances within retention I remember saying to Mark I feel like I need to have my back to Chef sluric because as the way I feel about it he should be a presence behind me and it's a choice the back problems I now have from twisting into this s shape so I could look at Rafe he's also when Chef sluric speaks it's a monologue so I just hold this position and be like I'm fine I still maintained it was a good choice it was a fantastic just shuffled that chair around a bit I know I'm so sorry you haven't touched your food all right there is no food I love Margot very very much because she is the character that I've played that's the most comfortable in their skin I've never been a particularly passive aggressive person and I deeply enjoyed being like passive aggressive and so on this I'm just gonna write um sass level 1 000. I'm just gonna keep writing those yeah you can feel happy to enjoyed it but the character is enjoying the moment there is no food well no this is food so um lots more food to come don't want to fill up that would not be possible I've precisely designed the portions to account for that so I remember a conversation that you and I had where you said Margot is an enigma that we as the audience are trying to figure out and that kind of led me down a path of okay I need to figure out who this individual is at her core and it also made me feel a lot calmer because I think I initially went in wanting to know like exactly who she was in every single moment and I was like oh of course it is a performance within a performance and allowing that curtain to rise and fall was really helpful and fun as the story reveals itself you kind of realize that they're not what they appear to be at all so it's very fun to watch that Veil drop occasionally and then yeah quiet go straight back up so quickly I was like it was incredible foreign that is not what I meant Madame these two characters who obviously for more intents and purposes taken instant loading to one another he wants this character to eat you don't want him to tell you what to do and yet eye contact is right too yeah and actually there's an enjoyment of the connection there's already a dance going on between the central conversation had to be this conflict stroke connection between this character Margot this this force of light and this character who sees nothing but Darkness because I knew that actually you up against Rafe would be absolutely fascinating would feel like a really equal combative and yet had this underlying warmth and connection because of their shared empathy that both of you have you can both see that Foundation I think really works and we build out to those other relationships from from that place that is not what I meant mad at me you know it well thank you for your concern but I am perfectly capable of deciding when I eat and what there's a joint empathy because they both work in the service industry I think both of us enjoy our scenes together but I think the characters weirdly enjoy discourse because there's a massive part of Chef I think that wants to be told no yeah or that wants somebody that's not just you know following everything that he says all the time and potentially she's been holding her tongue for a little bit and so having somebody to just immediately be able to be like no and an intellectual an intellectual equal also perhaps the chef also feels seen by this character something he's such a commodity such a badge of honor I am perfectly capable of deciding when I eat and what some wonderful acting from Nicole I'm embarrassed this isn't going well that's just like and the dream has just started which is Awkward the fact that you're defying him he's my hero I just want everything to go smoothly you're not playing his game Suddenly It's yeah disastrous from the worst date can we to go back to Rafe yeah like how he manages to be so warm and intimidating and look straight through your soul all at the same time yeah is incredible to watch his approachment is also kind of a monastic you know that there's this kind of Monk in his art form a good 90 of the performance is in that just meticulously everything is perfect and smooth it's like I would love to have a little kind of bedtime story from Chef Floyd because yeah he's at peace yeah exactly thank you that little thank you that I gave just before he walked off thank you I remember doing it and thinking oh God very fines is going to think I'm an absolute brat because that was not scripted and I was just like oh God oh God oh God but I'm glad you kept it in because it meant that it worked yep so thanks thanks for that humiliating yeah Tyler the guy's a prick he goes and um has a deep moment with uh mummy I don't know I said can you go up and kiss her and we went for the take and he went down to kiss her and then changed his mind and British put his head on and I think it was completely in the moment yeah absolutely loved it um it was just a perfect rapism of just a character who cannot show that much intimacy a character who could not show that much effect and with all that luck it just speaks so much of what we hear about and that troubled past of the character is so eloquent in that one gesture I just loved it as a choice yeah another excellent Moment by Janet mctear I know right I mean the side eye action Peter deming's photography or just give my location because we hadn't put these skies in at this point with the green screen so he had to kind of Imagine That from Shots we shot earlier and light the foreground so it would match when the green screen went and the way that he will frame it here this is beautiful foreground action but there's also you getting this lovely insight into Nick's humiliation upstage so it makes the frame so rich something that um Mark does was he wanted us all on stage essentially the whole time and improvising because you never knew when you were going to be caught on camera um which was such a fascinating way of working but the other wonderful thing which I've not experienced in any other film is usually if it's someone else's close-up you'll go and rest in your trailer we never left this set we were constantly on set improvising or watching everybody else around us and it was such a supportive environment we've got such great stuff out of that in the edit of those extra layers from what I was Finding from you there's one point where um where the camera is primarily over with Amy and John leguizamo's characters and I've got the two of you in the background and I'm just seeing this Dynamic of the two of you I have the most lovely date we've just connected it's one of those things where if you just rag the focus and see that going you think oh they look what a lovely young couple I mean so we we committed to The Improv like pretty hardcore the first couple of days and then there was definitely a certain point where I'd like like take it away well ultimately we were like we couldn't continue to improvise that deeply then we just started kind of getting to know each other through improv stories about the characters that would be partially true but then also partially false so udl cut and then we'd say okay I think this bit was true I think this bit was a lie and I think this bit was fabricated I think whatever and we got to know each other on camera there was one day when it was like I remember telling you a story about being force-fed like cheese or an onion as like as punishment as a child and this is why I don't like cheese anymore because it gave me nightmares but I can eat an onion like an apple and just random inner trauma apparently entry my friends all the actors that played all the chefs were incredible in their ability to kind of be so intimidating kind of soldiers of chefs you had them do training it was all like choreographed faultlessly yeah we had this one week boot camp with you know Lauren Candela our second ad and John Ben Hayes in our local brilliant chef from Savannah and also overseen by Dominique crown of course you know three Michelin starred you know literally the only woman in America still to have three Michelin stars getting that kind of uh backup in the kitchen was a massive thing for me to to make sure we had that authenticity literally everything they're doing is completely correct for for whatever course is being prepared interestingly I don't think any of us necessarily describe ourselves as Foodies but I do I do remember um we have really hard jobs you know we have to watch a chef's table and go to nice restaurants as research um but I remember when Dominique came on set all of us were really Starstruck because we'd been obsessed she's a rock star as well don't mess it up don't mess it up something that I thought was really interesting about how we're such ritualistic creatures and that was something that you talked about a lot at the very beginning where it's like we do not switch tables even when we leave when something shocking happens we stay in our position because that's our only grasp of familiarity where it makes us feel safe there were so many um you know psychological studies on that where when things become threatening in this restaurant there's so many studies backing it up that given the choice of can you believe that something is really bad could be happening here or do you just want to pretend it's all you know all a show every you know nine out of ten people will just go it's a show and choose to believe that as a you know rather than faced up to an uncomfortable truth I think we get saved in these movies when they get dark because Mike hired very kind wonderful people so it's quite shocking when staff or the chefs will look so serious and then the El cotton it's like so how's your book like how are you doing today are you having a great you're

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Id: 06vvAAEXFqc

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2022