By: Izumi Hasegawa September 10, 2014
Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway play wife and husband in Honeymoon. It is a female-driven sci-fi horror-ish film. The Game of Thrones actress and the Penny Dreadful actor were able to juggle their time in order to join this film but the shooting schedule was quite brutal. There was no time for pranks and everything had to be well prepared. Did the Game of Thrones experience help Rose with the shooting conditions? Did Harry ad-lib anything? We also asked some of your questions!
Q: Could you talk about the preparation for this project?
Harry: We did start planning the sort of aggressive stuff together. Because the nature of a film like this is four weeks shooting it, you know six to eight weeks, four weeks, it’s not a lot of time on the day to work things out. So we started to put in place stunt rehearsals for the more physical elements of the story because we knew that we couldn’t turn up and go, “Right.”
Rose: “Let’s wing it.”
Harry: “How should we do this one?” Because it’s such a big number. And there’s scenes, it felt sometimes like it was a play. There was just one other person in it. It was a set. It was like a stage at the location, the cabin, and we pretty much had dressing rooms which was a mini cottage behind it where our base was. So certain scenes were 10 pages or 15 pages, big physical numbers. So we started working with stunt people and choreographers and talking about our ideas for it and these ideas for it.
Rose: It was a real collaboration between all of us. So it was very much a team work and team effort all going into one.
Q: Is there any ad-lib you put in?
Harry: It was all scripted. We shot what was scripted. There were elements that I think cropped up on the day, you know, the odd thing that comes just from the process of doing it and exploring it. But going back to it being a four week thing, we pretty much shot what was written. But there were some changes to it during it. In terms of what attracted me to it was I think just the intimacy of a project like this. And it’s quite unique. I’ve never read something that was just basically two people. So if what we like [about] acting which is an explanation of human psychology and the drama that comes from that, then this is a very concentrated version of that. To go from the fact that it was rooted, the foundations and such, in the reality of the couple and I felt like I was reading a real couple. They had idiosyncrasies which seemed true and real to a human couple. The fact that they had Indian wedding food because the first date they had ended in a disaster from Paul being in the bathroom for too long after eating Indian food, that just feels real.
Rose: There’s a history there.
Harry: It’s a history. So the way that it was drawn when you’re reading the first third of the film, it feels like because it’s so real and happy, and you actually genuinely believe in it. You start investing in these characters in a way that when the knife starts to go metaphorically in there and burst their bubble, it’s more pronounced and sharp because of the time you’ve been allowed with the couple. So it kept me guessing. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know whether he was losing his mind or whether she was losing her mind or whether they both were or whether something bigger was at work here. So it just felt quite unique, quite a unique script, and I hadn’t read something which pulled the rug out from underneath me as much as when I found out what was actually going on in it.
Q: Rose, speaking of this being your first film, you had some awkward scenes to film. You had blood coming out of your shorts, Harry had to pull something out from between your legs. Did your Game of Thrones experience help these scenes?
Rose: I didn’t really come across a lot of gore or blood in Game of Thrones. Luckily I was up north beyond the wall where everything kind of froze in that respect. But Harry and I were well aware of what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to commit to this project. And so we knew that there would be blood and gore in the end but we also trusted that it wouldn’t be so for long and so in your face that you ended up reacting in a negative way of being like, “Oh God. I don’t need to see that.” And I’m talking about the one when we were on the bed.
Q: Did you have any fun things happen on the set during shooting?
Rose: It was a blast. It genuinely was. And there was a kind of lovely atmosphere on set, a great ambience whereby Harry and I were able to kind of like tap into the character and then tap out just so we weren’t feeling this horrible aura, certainly when things started to turn for the worse, of this impending doom.
Q: No pranks?
Rose: No pranks. No time.
Harry: Four weeks. No time. I mean, her character was hiding the keys. Not too many pranks.
Rose: Harry has a wonderful ability to crack me up when I don’t want to crack up. So there was that.
Harry: Literally, we were this close or closer for five weeks making the film. So if we hadn’t got on, it would have been harder work.
Rose: A harder task.
Harry: There were very graphic scenes and very harrowing scenes that we had to do, so to make each other laugh and to talk about it in between was kind of essential.
Rose: But prank wise, you were absolutely right. There was absolutely no time. It was kind of like, “We have to carry on and get going.”
Honeymoon opens theatrically and on VOD on September 12, 2014.
