As discussed virtually every week on the Little Gold Men podcast, A Star Is Born remains at the head of the pack of Oscar competition—which means its only a matter of time before another movie comes and knocks it out. Until it happens, though, Bradley Cooper remains in a particularly fascinating position of being likely to win three major Oscars, between his work directing, starring in, and co-writing the film. And no award seems more likely for him than best actor, given the way that his performance anchors the film, given his three previous acting nominations, and given the totally mysterious competition surrounding him.
On this weeks episode of Little Gold Men, Katey Rich and Joanna Robinson discuss the state of the best-actor race, which the Ringer recently described as being the most competitive in years. Competitive for a nomination, at least— Viggo Mortensen is earning raves in the crowd-pleaser Green Book, Rami Malek seems to be the only thing anybody likes about Bohemian Rhapsody, and did you hear that Clint Eastwood is back this year? For Katey and Joanna, though, the race remains Coopers to lose—and given how long we still have until Oscar night, thats very possible.
They also discuss the two screenplay categories, where its possible Marvel Studios could get its first writing nomination for Black Panther, Spike Lee could get his first competitive Oscar win for BlacKkKlansman, or maybe Bo Burnham can gate-crash with his work on the summer indie hit Eighth Grade. The episode ends with Richard Lawsons interview with Richard E. Grant, who stars in Can You Ever Forgive Me?—another major screenplay contender—alongside Melissa McCarthy. Grant said that when he learned the film was mostly being made by women, including director Marielle Heller and co-writer Nicole Holofcener, he knew he was in; “I knew that chances were, it was going to be collaborative, because my experiences working with female directors before had been characterized by that. So I jumped at it and said yes instantly. I didnt need 24 hours.” He also explains why hell never feel ashamed of having done Spice World, the bond he built with McCarthy, and the bit of New York gay history that made its way into the movie.
Take a listen to this weeks episode above, and read the full transcript of the Grant interview below. You can find Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts, where you can also leave a rating and a review.
Vanity Fair: Im thrilled to be on the line now with the great Richard E. Grant, who is so wonderful in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Richard, thank you for being here.
Richard E. Grant: Thank you for having me.
This is quite an exciting movie. It has a great director in Marielle Heller, and its such an interesting story. It played so well at these festivals, and its such a nice, big, juicy role for you. I'm curious . . . what kind of origin do you have, in terms of your involvement with the film?
I got a call [last] November . . . from an agent saying, “Theres a movie that starts shooting mid-January, and you have 24 hours to read it and to decide.” And I said, “Whos pulled out? Whos dropped dead [or] whatever?” She said, “Thats irrelevant.” Yeah, I'm born nosy, so I ask too many questions. And she said, “Dont ask any of these questions. Its absolutely unimportant. Remember that Albert Finney turned down Lawrence of Arabia, and Peter OToole went on and had a big career as a result.” Not that Im comparing myself to that—its just she was just trying to put it into the context of saying, “Dont get stuck in that stuff.” And then I read it, and I knew that Melissa McCarthy was playing Lee Israel and Marielle Heller was directing it, and I had hugely admired The Diary of a Teenage Girl. And it was going to be produced, written, directed, and starred in by women. So I knew that chances were, it was going to be collaborative, because my experiences working with female directors before had been characterized by that. So I jumped at it and said “yes” instantly. I didnt need 24 hours.
When reading the script, did you—I mean, this is maybe kind of a corny actor question, but did you kind of feel like you knew this character, or you had sort of an idea of how to play him?
I had some idea, but its that weird thing . . . what you read on the page and what you have in your head—theres a difference between the dream and the reality, for the shadow. It wasnt until I actually got to New York and I purged Marielle, because I got there on a Wednesday for costume fittings, and we were shooting the following Monday. And I had never met Melissa, and she was coming in late because she was on another project. She only came in on the Thursday night, and I said, “Is there any possibility that on the Friday morning we could have just maybe two hours just to meet each other and go through all of the scenes that we have together?” Because it seemed to me that they had this sort of odd couple-buddy platonic relationship that seemed to me so crucial to make the scene work. I thought, “If Im meeting her for the first time on Monday morning, I would not be sleeping for the next 72 hours.” So it turns out Melissa had exactly the same impulse, and we met, and within about three nanoseconds. We got on really well. All three of us sitting together in a hotel room in downtown Manhattan had the same impulse and the same instinct about what the story was, and what the relationship was. And just reading the scenes out loud with Melissa, it became apparent of how to play it.
I wish I could say that I knew that there was an enormous amount of preparation that had gone on beforehand that informed what it was going to be—but it was working with her, and seeing how absolutely straight-down-the-line dead-seriously she took the role and played the part, that informed her of how I was doing. I knew that I was the total opposite contrast to her hedgehogs-conundrum-type character, and my garrulous Labrador going up and licking everybody in sight opposite to that. I always try to find a movie reference of what a relationship would be, just to get in my head where the thing is coming from, and I immediately thought of two movies from the 60s. One was the Neil Simon play The Odd Couple, with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, which was like a male marriage. But given their banter backward and forward, it was complete opposites.
And then, the other one was the John Schlesinger movie Midnight Cowboy, with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, where, again, there were two people, [on] completely different sides of the social track, who formed this weird sort of semiotic relationship. So, that's as much as I have and the only clue that I had about this character was that he walked around Manhattan using a small stubby cigarette holder because he thought that was going to ward off cancer because he was a chainsmoker. So, obviously he thought that he had a certain particular style to pull that off.
He's got a panache certainly. I'm curious about the importance of getting along with a costar. You guys have such an intense chemistry and dynamic throughout the film that's both loving and antagonistic. Do you find that you can only really get to such a credible place if, off camera, you have a good rapport with that person? Or can there ever be sort of antagonism offscreen that works onscreen?
If there's going to be a basis of real affection which they can't all pick up and magnify a thousand times, that I don't know that I've ever seen a movie or a play where the people have been really antagonistic towards each other in real life or there's been no chemistry that the relationship has worked. I mean you may immediately give me ten examples of where it has done. But, I thought that it was absolutely crucial that certainly for my supporting character to work with hers we had to have a real connection.
As I said when I introduced my bit, first of all working with Melissa McCarthy is a real challenge because she's very difficult. She never knows her lines, she's grumpy, she hated me on sight, all of those. . . I don't know how to say this without it sounding pretentious but she is incredibly emotionally present in that when she talks about anything you never feel that it's guarded or it's being screened or through a gulf of intellectualization in advance. She's like litmus paper. You say something to her and she's instantly affected in the best possible way. So, working with her felt very truthful at all times and I think that comes across in how the relationship works on the screen. I'm sorry. I've gone down rabbit hole trying to describe that. I'm sure there must be a simpler way of doing it.
No, no, that's good. There really is a sort of palpable bond that comes of the screen and I think it's really interesting too that this is a kind of queer friendship that we don't see a ton of in film for a variety of reasons I'm sure. What was the discussion like or your thinking about placing this movie where it is? Because this is a different time, in the 90's and there were certain different realities for gay people and all of that. Was that stuff that you were sort of conscious of trying to communicate or was it just on the page and you didn't need to worry about contextualizing it like that?
We certainly did. We talked about it. We certainly discussed that in detail because what you don't want to do is do anything that is disrespectful or characterizing in any way. And, the fact that Lee Israel as a lesbian woman was one of the few women in the Julius bar as a regular meant that she was very often wore a Walkman with headphones on to say, "Fuck the world. Don't come and mess with me." Which Jack Hock, he rides through that. He doesn't give put off because he thinks if he can get a free drink out of her and then the subsequent friendship he's not going to take no for an answer. And, the fact that in the early 90's the aids crisis was so predominant in New York. I can remember I'd done a film film called Hudson Hawk playing the husband of Sandra Bernhard in a Bruce Willis big action adventure thing. And, when I went to see Sandra, we were living in a meat packing district at that time in 1991. I had never seen Caucasian men on street corners with begging bowls and cardboard signs saying, "I've been abandoned by my family. I've been abandoned by my friends. I'm dying of AIDS, please youre the only help that I can get." That was so shocking. And, there had been in the film where she asks me if she can confide in me about what she is, her forgery scam. She said, "You can't tell anybody", and I said, "Well I can't tell anybody because all of my friends are dead." That was absolutely informed by the visceral memory of seeing that and I was so shocked by it and I still am now. So, I think that's, and I lost two great friends one of whom played the Scottish runner who wouldn't run on a Sunday in Chariots of Fire. He died of AIDS in 1990. So, that, I was very very aware of that history that time while I wasn't living in New York. So, the reality of what people were dealing with is something that's certainly informed in how we did the scenes and especially the final scene that I have where I say goodbye to her.
Yeah, I mean it's powerful and I think a lot of its power comes from the fact that it's not a story about AIDS but that's just part of the reality of these people's lives and I think that in showing that people who were suffering from HIV or from aids that they had other things going on. They had their lives to sort of carry on as long as they could and I think that's really nicely illustrated. You'd mentioned Hudson Hawk and Chariots of Fire, I'm curious about your, if we can take a step back. You had really just a fascinating kind of peripatetic career I guess you could call it, journeymen, actor. Some questions about that narrative, the first being, and I'm sure you get this all the time, but is Withnail the kind of big thing that you, 'cause it's such a cult hit. Do you still get a lot of attention for that or recognition when you're out and about?
I have done, especially in England.
Yeah, I'm sure
Because it's now almost part of the student curriculum if you like because I know this from Twitter, and Instagram, and emails, and letters that I still get when people take the trouble to write that that coming of age story that even though it's set in 1969 still seems to have some reverberation, or relevance, or call it what you will identifiability with people who are going through that phase in their lives leaving home and having to become an adult. So, it's on the student circle in England particularly so I'm very aware that it just doesn't go away and there's literally because I live in London there's not a day that goes by where somebody doesn't shout out a quote or ask me for a selfie to say a line from that movie. So, it's one that just hasn't gone away and the irony has not escaped me that the first screen role that I ever had playing a unemployed actor has led ironically to every single director that I've worked with as a result of being in that film so I really owe it everything and I'm very grateful that Daniel Lewis turned it down.
Oh wow is that right?
Otherwise I know absolutely unequivocally that I'm sitting here talking to you today.
Wow, I mean it's such an enduring film that one of our co-hosts on this podcast, he's jealous that he couldn't be here talking to you. I'll tell you that. Another movie that I would be remiss not to mention just because of my own association with it is of course Spice World. Is that something that people bring up to you as well?
Yeah, and what's interesting about that is that they expect me to feel shame of having been in Spice World but my response to that is that my daughter was eight at the time and it was still the era of answering machines. And, a message from a agent with the little red blinking light at the end of the day and she listened to the answering machine before I got back. She had come back from school and put it on. And, they said, "Oh please call agent about role to play Spice Girls manager in Spice World the movie". And, she said, even at that age she said, "Even if Disney offered you a lifelong contract you have to be in Spice World the movie because all of my friends want to meet them and I want to meet them". So, and they were hilarious to work with. They were so disingenuous and so taken aback by the global fame that walloped them sideways and made them all that money and there was no … They didn't really learn lines, everything was off the cuff and they were given a general idea of what the scene was and then they just improvised so it was a hilarious experience and I've stayed friends with them. So, I think back and it was great affection and I had some amazing clothes too.
Yeah, no, absolutely and I think that affection is exactly what you should feel about it from an outside perspective it was a sentimental film for a lot of people and kind of distilled a certain energy from that era so well that it's obviously stood the test of time which is I guess the …
Well, what was bizarre as a result of that, I found out that Adele wanted to meet me because she was a fan of this movie and I got four episodes in Girls because Lena Dunham had seen Spice World the movie. So, that's the best possible answer to, "Do you feel ashamed of having done Spice World the movie?" Not at all.
And, you know I'm just curious in general with all of the many roles you've done, the incredible directors you've worked with. Is there any sort of particular experience that stands out? I mean obviously Withnail was the beginning of things but anything along the way that you also kind of see as a major road post on your career?
I had seen, in 1976 when I was a first year drama student theater school I saw Nashville and this was pre mobile phones, pre video, pre DVD. I went to a cinema to see Nashville and I saw that 27 times. And, I thought the chances of ever being in a movie or certainly meeting or working with Robert Altman was a complete pipe dream. And then, Gosford Park was such an unexpected bonus and we were such great friends that I feel indebted to him for his loyalty to actors and how liberating he was for somebody to work with.
Yeah he was really one of a kind, I guess you could say.
Yeah.
Now, in sort of navigating all of this long lucrative career, that's really rich with different kinds of textures and genres, is there a strategy in your head when you're navigating all this or is it just sort of one thing at a time as you go along?
One thing at a time. As a journeyman actor, you rightly described this earlier, you take the best offer that you have and unless you're an A lister where you have the choice of every script, you know that every job is one that you hope is going to be, that you're going to work with the right people with a good script and a good director. But, to say that there's a career strategy I have no idea because my final assessment when I left drama school and university was the drama professor said to me, he said, "I think that you're going to have a career as a director because you're very odd looking, you've got a face like a sort of mortician's assistant. I don't think you're ever going to really have a career as an actor." So, the fact that I've ended up having a career as long as I have done and all this stuff is absolutely astonishing to me.
And such a varied one, I'm just looking forward to later this season. I mean you're in the Nutcracker and the Four Realms and you're in this wonderful smaller film with Melissa McCarthy. Is there anything you feel like you haven't yet done that you are curious to do?
Well, I'm in the middle of Star Wars at the moment and that is something that I saw in 1977 when I was a second year student. So, the fact that I'm now in it four decades later is a complete astonishment to me.
Yeah, I'm guessing that you probably can't tell us anything about who you're playing in that?
Yes, that's right, otherwise they'd chop my knees off or I'd just be fired.
Yeah. I'm curious also as your career's gone on and as the industry has changed what have the lessons been? You see now bigger movie star type people coming down, I'm saying down, or going across to television, crossing a barrier that once was sort of impenetrable, is there anything you've taken away from this kind of development, anything that you were once reluctant to do and now say, "Sure why not?"
I think that the, in England because the industry is so tiny compared to, it's a cottage sized industry compared to the US, the migration from doing everything from a theater play, a fringe of West End off Broadway, radio, television, or a movie has always been the sort of status quo of a life as an actor there. But, that change over in America of you say alias people doing long form television roles where there's amazing writing and directors. I think that's, I might be the first to say it but it seems to me like literally a golden age of television drama at the moment and stuff that I see on a weekly basis that's coming out of Netflix and Amazon, and all of the other big studios is absolutely astonishing. So, I think that has finished, the divide has gone.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely and I think that everyone benefits from it it feels like. Are you a big consumer of movies and television? Are you an actor who kind of feeds off of that?
If I tell you that I watched all series of Breaking Bad over five days from dawn till almost the next dawn that'll answer your question.
Yeah, one of those kind of just itchy red eye binges where you just can't pull yourself away.
Exactly. Are you the same?
I am the same yeah. It's funny because when I binge a show though I feel like a week later I couldn't tell you anything that happened.
Yeah, what have you just binged?
What have I just binged? Oh, I just binged a show, I guess it's less of a binge because it's half an hour but I did a show called Forever that's on Amazon with Maya Rudolph that's really good. And, I binge a lot for work so I'll have to review a whole season of a Netflix show.
How wonderful that you get paid to do that.
Yeah. It's really something, and I get paid to go to film festivals which you've been doing the rounds certainly at, and were you in Toronto as well?
I was, yeah.
Did you get a chance to speak with people who've seen Can You Ever Forgive Me? Was there anything surprising about the experience of taking a film like that to these kind of awards pointed big festivals?
What genuinely astonished me is that I got to Telluride, that I've been to Toronto a few times before but I've never been to Telluride before. And, there were no previews, I had no idea that the movie would be reviewed within two hours of it showing for the first time that afternoon or Saturday. And, when the first great one came from one of the trade I was pretty astonished and taken aback. And then, they kept coming and they've kept on coming and now having told that it has 100% pre consensus which is out of the ballpark in my experience. And, the thing that struck me more than anything both in Toronto and in Telluride was that people came up and would grab me by the arm as I'm sure they do with Melissa as well and they would say this movie really made them feel something, and they cared for the people, and they really felt something. And so, this was something that a lot of movies didn't afford anymore. And, they said that this was human, and touching, and dealt with people in real life, and they identified with them. So, that was the thing that really took me aback and continues to do so. I keep sort of waiting for somebody to go, "No, no you've got it all wrong", but that has surprised me enormously.
From my perspective I saw it at Telluride and really liked it and was like, "I wonder how this will play in Toronto which is such a big festival". And, I don't mean this in a pejorative sense at all but this is a smaller film, a quieter film. What I saw in Toronto was just more and more, the film sort of seemed to only exponentially grow in stature which was really exciting because it's not always that these kinds of stories get that sort of uplift which is I think really important. And, as a frequent purveyor or rather I go to Julius pretty often that was a nice thing to see that that place was honored not just 'cause it's a nice looking bar but for actually what that place was.
It's the oldest gay bar in Manhattan is that true?
Yeah, and you still see a pretty nicely mixed crowd. It's older, younger, it's a nice kind of communal meeting spot and I feel like the film really honored that which is among many other great, good things.
I thought it was very generous of them to have allowed us to film in there because Lee Israel was such a regular in there as well. That we didn't have to create that in a studio in Queens or anything like that, we could actually do it in the place where it happened. So, that feeling of authenticity I think was really important and all of the book shops in the film as well many of which were closing down and have since closed down. There isn't a single studio book shop, every single one was the real thing.
That's great. You can tell it has just sort of added texture to it which really makes the film so special. Well, also you and Melissa McCarthy obviously doing a lot of that. I mean I wish you luck with the rest of the kind of release of the film and with Star Wars and maybe I don't know maybe we will see you around Oscar time.
Okay, thank you very much.
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