'Casino Royale' Pair Daniel Craig & Mads Mikkelsen Reunite and Talk That Infamous Chair Scene

i remember it vividly but i'm curious daniel do you remember do i remember the day i met you no no i do remember the casting process very well breaking my heart because i'd seen pushes i was in one of those situations where they were asking me about casting in a james bond movie and i was playing james bond and i still was trying to come to terms with the fact that i was playing james bond and your name came up and i was like yes because all i was all i cared about was getting great actors in the film i mean that sort of yeah your name came up and i just was better handled but you might remember it as a a fitting or custom fitting i was there and they they it's true they dressed me in a tuxedo but i was supposed to do the casting uh the torture scene with you that was it so i was just waiting around and waiting around and you were casting the bond girls so it was a day of complete chaos and we at that point i'm not sure can i say this he was smoking so we had a cigarette all of a sudden together and then martin campbell came up and he he was just so stressed out and he walked up to me and said i'm mass oh sorry i don't have time for you welcome on board and then he left and i was a little confused and he came back he said max you don't understand you got the part i don't want to see you just [ __ ] home and then you took a drag of your cigarette and you said the famous word who did you [ __ ] i did six castings for this that was our first meeting god i had i can't believe how witty i was that's you were so witty but hey you were also smoker then yeah i never understood all these elaborate tortures it's the simplest thing to cause more pain that a man can possibly enjoy it was great yeah it was in the book they take a wicked chair and they cut it out with a butterfly knife i think they kind of do in this in the film yeah it's just a whip it's like a kind of like a horse whip i think in the book oh wow even more painful yeah well it would be it's painful either way but where did the rope come from do you know whether with the knot part yeah don't know but i do remember we had an extensive conversation with martin campbell uh and we were like because we came from rock and roll film we were just diving into that scene and we came up with so many cool ideas and marcin was listening and listening and at a certain point you said guys guys come back come back it's a barn film we just we just left that we were just somewhere else you guys squeezed some stuff in there it was always a scene that was like on the edge we were never sure whether it's going to be in there or not because it was it was on the edge for bonfire so and i have to say so i'm sitting in a chair which had and i'm i'm i'm naked kind of yeah i think so and i had a i don't know what it was made of it wasn't it was not i mean it was fine and it worked but it was a sort of thing that was the shape of my backside in the chair which i sat in to stop the knot was actually swinging that thing right up under the chair and it was hitting me as hard as it the chair as hard as it sounded so i kind of have to kind of give give over to the fact that this thing wouldn't break because he was it didn't break it was made of some plywood so it you got splinters going like that it was a wonderful day for me yeah you maybe not for much i mean it was a brutal day obviously you were just eight hours of you screaming your lungs out it was insane you know what was so fabulous was that one of those it was one of those situations where i was nervous i was nervous about any of everything every day i mean that's why i kind of wonder what i was i can't imagine the person i was that you saw back then because i was so uptight not that tight but just kind of not jangling nerves about everything like because i was just everything was just so important so important and i remember doing that day knowing that the scene was good knowing that it was like kind of on the edge and you came in and you just you just smacked without the part the only question we makes were you healed in time you were so like innit he was all of the things that i did ideas were like oh my sister and then it was joyful because it was just an acting scene i've got a little niche down there would you mind i was just as nervous obviously performing in in not my my mother tongue but at the same time what you were like i would say i mean you would you were bond and and i knew the pressure you you were having on you and i also saw some of the headlines before we even shot one scene and people everybody it's the crown jewels of of of english cinema right and i was just thinking one day and when i saw a headline it was like before we had shut the scene i was like oh my god that is insane pressure you're under but i i remember you as stopping in the way that this is what we're doing let's go for it let's just go for it if you were nervous uh i couldn't tell you just you just grabbed it and then you ran with it aim for the stars i might hit the treetops it was just like it was one of those things where you go i if i if i if i do one you know there you go that's all right i did one is a win-win it's a win-win you know you'll be the second translation be then yeah so what it's okay right be remembered by no to the right to the right to the right you are a funny man mr bond i also remember very vividly like the poker because i mean the poker scenes were quite important i'm sorry that last hand nearly killed me because it was just camera angles and camera angles because right you're like shooting a big dinner party um i mean right gotta get coverage because you've got to get everybody's reactions and you were really into poker and you were playing i remember you were playing quite a lot everyone but you daniel i know we're not interested in because i wouldn't give a [ __ ] i had other things to think about i was i know you did it was literally that was it was you what you were asking me to do was to go offset and relax and i was so not able to do that i was not able to go that's true vocal let's chill out you know yeah i remember getting very drunk i think but maybe a couple of times but but uh but i couldn't do it on set oh god a couple of weeks ago i received a wonderful email from you and i haven't heard from you for quite a few years and um and i could tell it was very genuine uh and i was really really pleased to hear from you and hear that you that you enjoyed the film the the science is correct right or the science sort of pseudoscience the idea it's a paper but we're all not quite drunk enough which in this type of code it feels very kind of like your brain exactly but it is it's very complicated it shows a particular type of masculinity that sort of celebratory is not threatening i don't think is silly sit stupid all of those things where did it begin with him i mean did you i don't know how it works what's the process with him does he send you a script what goes on yeah later on he did but he pitched it to me right after we finished the hunt which we worked on seven years ago so he he had this idea that he has always been thinking about you know alcohol has been around for six seven thousand years and and it's been serving its purpose we i mean we all know the flip side of the coin that's been done a lot of films about that beautiful films brutal films but he was just curious why is nobody celebrating what it also does barely none of us has ever met our spouses without having alcohol involved why don't we address what it can do of positive things right of course he was aware that two glasses of wine where you get into the zone and conversations lifts and and you and you and you grow a pair that is a very different thing than drinking two bottles of wine so so he wanted to address that as well but as a starting point it was a tribute to alcohol how it can win wars how it can make people be creative how it can make people pick up the phone and call that special someone that they didn't dare to do without two glasses right so yeah i got the script and i wasn't disappointed it was exactly what i hoped for um in my case it's the man who's standing on the platform the train has left him uh and and it dawns on him that he's he's regretting his path and he he doesn't think he has a future he's simply forgotten activity you do some beautiful work at the beginning of the film where it's there's so much going on and there's nothing going on it's like you're kind of dead but you're not dead and it's like a deer caught in headlights it's it's like exactly you're watching your life slowly slowly happen in front of you and it's what your life is just kind of disagree and it's beautiful it's just do you remember do you like to rehearse a lot i mean on that sort of thing i'm not a big rehearsal when it comes to film i i like to address it with with the director and my fellow actors just touch upon it but not go all the way in there i guess for me there is some kind of butterfly dust that i wanted i want to save it for later uh i might it might be annoying that i that i have that approach but but that's the way i feel thomas do like to rehearse and and for the for this specific film that was a good reason to rehearse i mean so we made a boot camp uh alcohol boot camp which was before we started shooting and it was not because none of us knew how it was to be drunk we have a fair amount of experience combined right it was just to check out those those exact levels that we're dealing with in the film you know zero zero five zero zero eight we wanted to see is there a difference and is there something we can get inspired on you're trying it out so yeah so we did some of the uh the scenes where we where we teach and we hit that exact level uh blowing in the thingy um and we watched it and we had fun and it was fine we couldn't tell a big difference but the day after when we watched the videos whoa it was very obvious there was a difference between two and four and six beers hence all of a sudden you have no you don't know what you're doing with your hands and and you know that less you didn't think you had yeah came up you know uh it was very interesting and very so that enabled us to to dial up and down throughout the process of like a little more a little less there's a scene in the beginning of the film i think it's 12 minutes into the film where we're celebrating uh my friend's 40th birthday where everything dawns on my character all of a sudden it dawns on him that that he's missed his opportunity you know and he just goes silent and he starts drinking and he has a small breakdown just by himself which is a bold move to do in a film where you don't know the character yet you will normally you know place it at the end right and but he he placed it there and it was a very elaborate scene people singing there's a lot of chit chat and a lot of information and i was curious how we should pull this off but but they decided obviously with the camera just moving closer and closer and closer eventually entering my character and everybody else is not there anymore and i think we pulled it off uh but but i was very curious about how to do that because it's not the normal procedure i i would say you're a very brave actor so i don't think that i don't think that you have a problem to these places but when you read a script do you i mean i know i do sometimes i kind of look at things and go [ __ ] i'm gonna do that i mean yeah yeah yeah and and and you don't ever really know i mean because it's not a play but you know yeah and get it and put it on you you kind of have to like you said you have to kind of get a you have to sort of create a moment just before you have a take yes but you know what it is right if you know what it is and it might be that sole reason why we're doing what we're doing because we think it's a little crazy to go there and and and we might be afraid we can't mail it but it's intriguing so it's it's kind of like a magnet you don't want to go to so you can't help saying okay that is that's insane to do but that you might not come back yeah i don't have that issue too much i mean i'm not so troubled with that i mean i i think i always have an exit almost always you're right but yeah what what scares us intrigues us as well right and and that we're drawn to it somehow what about the bar scenes how did they come about they were they were i love them because they felt like a bar we have a couple of bar scenes and we have we have a couple of scenes that goes ballistic comes off and and yeah yeah but those were all like dialing up and down of what we we rehearsed before and then we had the the ones where we just called ballistic where it's just where where you know how it is to play drunk it's like if it's it's like it's normally it's hiding to be drunk that's the normal approach we have when you had a few amounts right but when you had enough amounts where you don't care about what people think about you it's a different story and this is a scary place as well because you can easily miss the target right but we watched a lot of and we watched a lot of youtube and we watched a lot of russian people going crazy and that it gave us a lot of comfort because it was beyond insane what they did but there is a there is an infamous video and it just sounds like something else but it's not it's called two men and a log and this is the two russian guys trying to put this log on a bicycle for no reason at all and it's insane to watch listen i've enjoyed every single bond film that natalia has been it's been absolutely wonderful to see the development of the films and just to wrap it up from where we started there was not one second that was in doubt that you would be the best one ever since we did the first thing together and and i know you were full of doubts and it was a brutal brutal journey but i was sure you nailed it and you showed them all you're very lovely man yeah you're exceptional in this film and really and the movie is just beautiful and uh it's it's it's magnificent work daniel we'll see you out there you

Channel: Variety

Views: 1,135,693

Keywords: Variety, Variety Studio, Mads Mikkelsen, Daniel Craig, Casino Royale, casino royale james bond, james bond, daniel craig james bond, mads mikkelson casino royale, another round, mads mikkelsen another round, no time to die, daniel craig no time to die, Variety Dream Teams

Id: Kuti0OpVJUU

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021