00:00I feel like I've come to your very fancy living room.
00:08Well, I wish.
00:13I just got like a Zoom flash memory of actually like working with you.
00:17Yes, yes, yes, which we haven't done for what, nine years?
00:20You know why we're on this thing?
00:22Because we worked together once.
00:23Because we're old now.
00:24I certainly am.
00:25You're not.
00:26You're not allowed to say that.
00:27Do you remember how old I was when I did The Night Manager?
00:29I was twenty-five.
00:30I was twenty-four.
00:31Twenty-four.
00:32I didn't know how to tie my shoes when I was twenty-four.
00:33What did I know?
00:34Wanna come?
00:35I don't think that would be wise.
00:36There's no current.
00:37I think it was the most glam job.
00:38I remember it looked very glamorous, and we were in some very glamorous locations, but
00:55my memory of it was of the four, I think four distinct different identities that I
01:02was playing, and having to jump in, because we were cross-boarding it, having to jump
01:07around in between different identities and different costumes, so I remember it being
01:12quite sort of stressful, in a good way.
01:16It was very fast.
01:17It was very fast for you, yeah.
01:19I was in much less of it than you.
01:24I mean, it's like when you watch a TV show as an actor, and you see the lead of the show,
01:34how many episodes?
01:35Six.
01:36Six, eight, ten, whatever, and you see that that actor is in almost every shot.
01:43You know, as an actor, when I watch that, I think, that must have been a hard job for
01:47them, and I think that was you.
01:49But you've now done that.
01:50Yes, I've done it much more, yeah, but at the time, on our show, I mean, my memory of
01:56it, it's probably very immediately tinged with golden nostalgia, but I was so happy
02:04making that show.
02:05I couldn't believe I got the part to begin with, you know.
02:08Do you remember when we did rehearsals in Marrakesh, in the hotel, in like a conference
02:14loungy room, and it was you, Hugh, Olivia, Tom, Susannah, and myself, and I remember
02:21sitting there, and you were all so incredibly articulate, but you were, and you'd had so
02:29much more experience.
02:31Well they certainly had.
02:32I just remember sitting there, and I honestly had this thought of like, one of these things
02:37is not like the other one, I was like, oh my god, I'm such a pleb.
02:42Like an Australian baby.
02:43No, no, that's not what happened, that's not how I remember it at all.
02:46I remember you just being, it was effortless, that's what I remember, I embarrassed you
02:51briefly.
02:52I remember we were doing a script meeting, it was a room above a room above a conference
02:58room in Holborn or something.
03:00No windows.
03:01In the rain, yeah, and we were talking about the shape of the scripts and threading through
03:04all kinds of different things, the update, and at the end of that meeting, it was like
03:08dark outside, Susannah said, I found Jed.
03:12And they went, oh great, what's her name?
03:15And she said, Elizabeth Debicki.
03:16And she took her laptop out and said, this is her tape, and suddenly we were all watching
03:20your tape for the first time, and I remember it was absolutely astonishing.
03:25I'll never forget that.
03:27And Hugh and I going, wow, okay, that's Jed.
03:29And it was the most brilliant audition.
03:32There were many things that made it a really extraordinary job.
03:35Susannah won, and the cast, gorgeous actors that have ever been shoved together in a thing.
03:42But we really were everywhere that the camera showed us to be, and that is so extraordinarily
03:48rare, and so helpful.
03:51Because it just informs everything about your, that your body begins to feel, and then your
03:57mind catches up with it.
03:58You look grown up.
04:01Very nice.
04:05Thank you.
04:06All right.
04:07It's so funny.
04:08The other day, this is a crap story, but I was, so often people say, oh my God, you're
04:14the night manager.
04:15Or they.
04:16They say that you're the night manager.
04:17You're the night manager.
04:18And I go, my name's Tom, hello, nice to meet you.
04:21The other day I was in a food shop, and I was at the checkout, and somebody, very sweet
04:27lady came up to me and said, are you the manager?
04:30And I said, actually, I'm Tom.
04:32But are you the manager?
04:34I'm looking for roast chicken.
04:35I thought, okay, sorry, sorry.
04:38No, I'm not that manager.
04:39I think you probably, I'm flattered that you think I run this place, but.
04:43Did you help her find the chicken?
04:44I did.
04:45Yeah.
04:46She had other complaints about the store, which I couldn't, I couldn't remedy, sadly.
04:51But anyway.
04:52But anyway, the crown.
04:53Here's what I bet people stop you in the street about.
04:55Diana.
04:56Nobody stops me in the street.
04:58Really?
04:59No, I find that English people are very, they're keen on personal space.
05:02Yes.
05:03I'm from Australia, and I found this here.
05:04Yes, yes, yes.
05:05So, yeah, no, no.
05:06No one's stopping me on the street.
05:07Let it be said, first off, you are magnificent in the crown.
05:12You are absolutely magnificent.
05:14And I don't know how you did it, frankly.
05:17You've taken on a character that exists in the public consciousness in such a luminous,
05:24striking, and personal way for every person.
05:27I kind of don't know how you did it.
05:29I've watched you and gone, how is she doing this?
05:31Because I know you.
05:33And so I'm looking for Elizabeth, but I can't see it.
05:36And yet I see aspects of someone who I knew from a distance as a young person.
05:43Obviously, I had no proximal relationship to Diana at all.
05:47I thought you meant me.
05:48I think I know you a little better than I knew her.
05:52I thought we were friends.
05:54Yeah, of course.
05:55Yeah, come on.
05:56I felt I got to know Diana more intimately through what you were doing.
06:02And it was so human and compassionate and loving and detailed.
06:09I mean, the detail in your performance is astonishing.
06:14I suppose it's already too late to stop this.
06:20Yes.
06:24I just thought it was amazing.
06:25Thank you.
06:27How has it been?
06:28How was it?
06:29It felt like it was the right sized challenge for what I wanted to try and do as an actor.
06:36That's a retrospective.
06:39Yeah, you can't think about that.
06:40No, at the time I felt, beforehand I felt very, very nervous.
06:45I mean, like very nervous.
06:47Understandably so.
06:48Which has translated into me becoming quite fixated on the technicality of everything in the beginning.
06:53But that keeps you safe, doesn't it?
06:54It felt like it was keeping me safe until actually it felt like it was sort of a hindrance.
07:00Yeah.
07:01I watched a lot.
07:02I thought maybe by osmosis I would just absorb, which I think I sort of did once you sit with enough hours.
07:08It was a very all-consuming two and a bit years.
07:12Yeah.
07:13I feel that I have a strange encyclopedic knowledge of certain strange things.
07:17Yeah.
07:18I also have like a vast treasure chest of stories because once you play somebody like that, most people have had a,
07:25when I was on the King's Road, I got out of a cab and there she was walking into a hat shop or, you know, whatever it was.
07:31And they'll say it was the 16th of May.
07:33It was a Thursday.
07:34You know, it's burned into people's memories.
07:36I don't know.
07:37I'm very clear about the fact that it was a character that I created.
07:40But it was a great gift.
07:43It taught me a lot about being a person.
07:45That's so interesting.
07:46Yeah.
07:47It taught me a lot.
07:48I think it opened up my heart a lot.
07:50Wow.
07:51Yeah.
07:52What an amazing thing to say.
07:53Yeah, what a gift.
07:54Yeah.
07:55You know, I don't know a terrible amount about Marvel.
07:58Apart from having been in one of the films.
08:00Yes, I've been in two of them.
08:02Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
08:03I feel that when I was working with you on The Night Manager, how many films had you already done by then where you played Loki?
08:10Two?
08:11Three.
08:12Three.
08:13Yeah.
08:14That was sort of the…
08:15I was 33.
08:16And it was this massive thing.
08:17And you were a massive star.
08:19And it was this big thing.
08:21Well, it's definitely…
08:23Well, that's very sweet of you.
08:25And that character has been with you for how many years?
08:2915 years now.
08:30Yeah.
08:31So I was cast…
08:32I'm now 43.
08:34And I was cast when I was 28, which is…
08:39What does it feel like to be with someone for that long?
08:45Definitely there was a moment of…
08:47It was a big…
08:48Maybe kind of similar to what you were saying about being cast in The Night Manager.
08:51A very lengthy audition process.
08:54And then Kevin Feige saying, actually, we've got plans for Loki.
08:59And they were plans far above and beyond my expectations.
09:02I thought I was just doing it for one film.
09:04That Loki would be the antagonist in the first Avengers film.
09:09Because he was the antagonist in the first Avengers comic.
09:12And suddenly I was standing in a circle with Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans.
09:21All of us in our vibrant, multicolored outfits.
09:26And I remember the film came out and it changed all of our lives, I think.
09:31It changed my life forever.
09:32Oh, I've heard.
09:34The mind is beast.
09:37Makes play he's still a man.
09:40How desperate are you?
09:43You call on such lost creatures to defend you.
09:46How desperate am I?
09:48And then the joy of continuing to play the character.
09:52Having built Loki as a…
09:55I always saw him as a broken soul with a shattered heart.
10:00I won't touch Barton.
10:02Not until I make him kill you.
10:04Slowly, intimately.
10:06Across the journey, all the way up to the show.
10:09I wanted to find a way of redeeming, to sort of find his way back to the light.
10:14And to have had the chance to do that across 15 years is really rare.
10:19Because the audience are coming with you, too.
10:21The audience are invested in who the character is and you get…
10:24Because I think he's such a complex character, the mask of the character is full of wit and charm and playfulness.
10:30But the mask is hiding all the loneliness and the pain and the loss.
10:35There's a great vulnerability inside of him.
10:37I love that.
10:39In a way, he and Pyne are quite connected in that way.
10:43There's a presentation of something.
10:45There's an external.
10:47And then behind that, on the inside, there's something much more turbulent, much more broken, much more on fire.
10:55And occasionally you get to see these windows where you get to look into these lonely characters, I guess.
11:02But is it fun to play someone who has magical powers?
11:05Yes!
11:07And then to try and connect the magical powers to something honest and soulful.
11:13I think the key is to try and fill the silhouette with something really honest.
11:20So that the audience goes, wow, he's the god of mischief.
11:24He's immortal, but he's full of very human…
11:27Yes, he seems so human.
11:29Feelings, yeah.
11:30The whole thing has been like a little essay on identity, actually.
11:33You know, you say, like, Diana has left you with this…
11:37It was almost like a lesson in love or open-heartedness.
11:41And it's similar in a way.
11:43At the end of the show, Loki finally understands that his purpose is to give his own life for his friends and the people he loves.
11:52In the end, it was all about love.
11:54And finally give him, I suppose, that peace, which you hope everyone gets in life.
12:01See you again soon.
12:03Do you have my number that's still working?
12:07I think so. Is it the same number? Have you changed it?
12:09I don't know.
12:10I guess I'll find out.
12:12I'll send someone a text.
12:14Like, hi, Debicki.
12:16And I'll get a response back saying, this number has not been recognised.
12:19Someone else rap on top. We can't do it because we're going to see each other in a second.
12:22I'll see you sooner than ten years. Let's do this again.
12:25I hope so.
12:26On a blue sofa near you.
12:27Yeah.
12:28In less than ten years' time.
12:30Please.
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