The Gentlemen follows American expat Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) who built a highly profitable marijuana empire in London.
When word gets out that he’s looking to cash out of the business forever it triggers plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him. From writer/director Guy Ritchie comes The Gentlemen, a star-studded sophisticated action comedy featuring an all-star ensemble cast including Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell, and Hugh Grant.
We caught up with the film’s stars recently, check out our interviews after the jump.
The Knockturnal: Can we talk about the fashion?
Matthew McConaughey: Yes, absolutely.
The Knockturnal: It was so good, like seriously, like one of the best wardrobes I’ve seen in a movie in a long time.
Matthew McConaughey: Nice.
The Knockturnal: How did the clothes shape each of your character?
Matthew McConaughey: Well, I had incredible suits that were all from the eye and the vision of Guy Ritchie. He loves fashion. He could go and rub your scarf and tell you exactly what thread it was, what thread count, where was it from, and I mean it was hilarious but it’s quite impressive. He’s got a very discerning eye about fashion and so I just took his lead on that and had a good time.
Michelle Dockery: Yes he always dresses really well on set. I mean, I’ve never seen a director dress that sharp on set before. The costumes were fantastic and I absolutely loved my wardrobe. I wanted to take it home with me.
Henry Golding: It was amazing how much inspiration you take from your wardrobe because throughout the entire pre-production Dry Eye was sort of in double-breasted suits and and really kind of elevating himself or trying to elevate himself to a kind of boss level and then I turn up on the first day on set for myself and Guy is like ‘no, now go change that back into the wardrobe and come out with something completely different.’ And so for me thinking like ‘oh maybe Dry Eye sort of gets power in suits.’ They become like an an armor for some people so I had to find a way of switching my character as quickly as possible before we started rolling.
The Knockturnal: I love that. I’ve seen you all before and you’re all amazing actors but you’re so cool in this. Talk about stepping into this world because it’s just like an extra rich, cool factor, like you seem edgier and swaggier in this movie.
Henry Golding: We definitely are.
The Knockturnal: What was it like stepping into this world and working with Guy Ritchie?
Matthew McConaughey: I guess this is the kind of the world that I wanted to step in with Guy Ritchie directing. ‘Lock Stock’ and ‘Snatch’ and this all seemed to be have a sisterhood or a brotherhood as far as how they felt like and smelled like and look like on the page. Every character has their own full identity and what they want. You know you can pull any character out of this film and say, ‘I’m going to do a narrative based on their character alone, they’re going to be the star of they’re own show’ and you can tell eight different stories. Guy always has characters that have a really clear identity of who they are. Each one has a certain security and you know all of them can’t last. You know that not everyone’s going to make it, and part of the fun is wondering who’s not going to make it and how and why but everyone thinks they’re going to make it and everyone thinks they’re going to be king of the jungle but you know that’s impossible.
The Knockturnal: In this movie you’re an amazing businessperson, and you’re a real businessperson in life. What did you bring to this character, business-wise?
Matthew McConaughey: Yeah from a business standpoint this is the one thing that that Guy and I worked on this on the set is like as soon as Mickey wants to sell his empire, he’s got two people that want it, Dry Eye, and Matthew, the Jeremy Strong character.
The Knockturnal: Dry Eye wants it bad.
Matthew McConaughey: I remember going there very quickly because originally in the script I never suspected Matthew. I was like ‘if you’re going to sell your empire and all of a sudden somebody goes and sabotages part of it, they’re trying to devalue it’ so I needed to look at anyone who’s wanting to acquire it as a possible suspect and to keep my eyes on both him and the Matthew because that’s just part of a good business. So I said ‘if you’re going to see anything and something goes wrong with it, if you’re going to sell hot-air balloons and all of a sudden your hot air balloon starts leaking air, you’ve got to know who wants to buy it because they’re trying to devalue your your enterprise.’
The Knockturnal: I imagine you guys spent a lot of time with each other. Tell me a surprising fact about one another while that you learned while filming.
Charlie Hunnam: Hugh is not quite the c*** I thought he would be. I’m just joking! I thought that we could try to get c*** into this interview so I just seized upon the opportunity right off the bat. I don’t know it that’s an appropriate audience or not but you know, for if you have to beep me out, I said ‘see you next Tuesday.’ It was a delightful four days we spent together and I don’t know what I learned about Hugh other than that he’s a tremendously fun fellow to spend four days with.
Hugh Grant: The dirt on Charlie Hunnan, I don’t know where to begin. Tremendous pothead for many years but now no longer, am I correct?
Charlie Hunnam: True story. Keep going.
Hugh Grant: He doesn’t drink anymore except at Christmas.
Charlie Hunnam: Yeah one for one week, sabbatical from sobriety and I take advantage.
Hugh Grant: Writes scripts, which gets sold.
Charlie Hunnam: But not made.
Hugh Grant: But they maybe will.
Charlie Hunnam: Yeah. That’s pretty good. That’s three for three.
The Knockturnal: This movie has a lot of great bribery and crime. Tell me about the shadiest thing you’ve ever done that you can say on camera.
Charlie Hunnam: You know what, something terrible that I did still haunts me and is user friendly, it’s audience friendly. I was in South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin years ago and they were still quite uptight I believe in Texas about marijuana smoking at that point and I was smoking a joint, walking down the street and it’s sort of busy like a bunch of bars and stuff. It was maybe 10 o’clock at night and it was really busy and I saw these two policemen walking towards me and this group of young hooligans came up and were like ‘Yo, can we hit that joint’ and so I went like, ‘Sure’ and I just gave it to them and walked off as the police approached. [Laughs] So that’s kind of how I handled it. Yeah true story, fun little anecdote.
Hugh Grant: I’m clean as a whistle.
The Knockturnal: Guy’s amazing, as we all know. How was working with him as a director?
Hugh Grant: It’s frightening because film acting is quite frightening anyway but if you have a director who might suddenly having given you forty pages of dialogue to learn in your late fifties which is quite hard, and who might suddenly in the middle of the day say ‘we’re going to change all that but here’s three new pages,’ that’s alarming. I didn’t take that very well. He’s someone who might suddenly say just when you think I’m being rather good now, ‘your voice has gone up another octave, it sounds a bit girly now’ and all the air goes out of you. You go, ‘what how long have I’ve been doing that for?’ I’m not sure. Maybe about two days? Terrifying.
The Knockturnal: [Charlie] Similar notes?
Charlie Hunnam: Yeah…I mean the thing is with Guy he really will keep you on your toes. You know he is very unpredictable. He’s pretty mercurial and his tastes you know so it can it can flip and move pretty rapidly. You know it’s quite exciting in a way. It breaks one out of the habit of coming in with too rigid of an idea and just spending time trying to execute it. You have to be pretty fluid and athletic in the process working with Guy but I found that that can be really terrifying but it can also bear delicious fruit, not always but sometimes it can push you in the process at large and can push you to unexpected and wonderful things.
The Knockturnal: Amazing. Well I appreciate it.
Charline Hunnam: Just for the record, I don’t think Hugh Grant is a c***. Just for the record. Just to be clear. That point was he is not a c***. Definitely not a c***.
Hugh Grant: Well, I don’t know. I don’t know.
Charline Hunnam: I didn’t witness it.
The Knockturnal: That’s very sweet.
Charline Hunnam: It is, that’s male bonding right there.
That Knockturnal: That is, that’s good.