I think I said yes before my agent even finished the sentence, even though I was quite astonished.
I was a combination of thrilled and terrified.
At least you had tons of research to draw from.Yes.
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I started doing a lot of reading and seeing as much video and audio as I could.
I was so fascinated by his childhood and his young years.
He was really a miserably unhappy boy.
What went into your physical transformation?I spent two days just fitting the fat suit.
It extended all the way around to my back.
He had a sort of fat back, Churchill.
Those helped me speak more like Churchill.
I consider it a fairly modest performance of Churchill.
In some of the material I found of him talking, you literally cant understand what hes saying.
He spoke extremely fast for one thing.
There really are two different voices the public Churchill and the private Churchill.
All of these things make him kaleidoscopically interesting.
Thats his story in season 1 and its a marvelously neglected part of English history.
Peter Morgan just wrote amazing dialogue and it was very speculative.
Whats your favorite episode or scene?Episode 9, Assassins, is just delicious writing.
Each of them opens up to the other.
Its all extremely powerful stuff.
Its not history; its very much interpersonal emotional writing.
you could look it up onYouTubeand find it.
We dont completely imitate it, but its extremely authentic.
It is known that Churchill had an extremely sentimental, almost maudlin side, that he cried extremely easily.
This was the ingenious idea of the young director Ben Caron who directed that episode.
And any scene with Claire [Foy, who plays Queen Elizabeth II].
We made each other laugh so hard that sometimes it really was a problem.
People started getting a little worried.
Both of us felt this giddy anticipation when we knew we had a scene together.
It gave such a sparkle to the scene.
Mischievous is the word for it.
