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Every second of Guy Ritchie’s new film The Gentlemen, which is about a drug lord looking to sell his marijuana empire, draws you in and keeps your attention for the duration. All while wondering how everything will unfold between Mickey Pearson (played by Matthew McConaughey ) and his right-hand guy Ray (played by Charlie Hunnam), Fletcher (played by Hugh Grant ), Dry Eye (played by Henry Golding), Coach (played by Colin Farrell) and Matthew (played by Jeremy Strong). Michelle Dockery, who plays Mickey’s wife Rosalind, is the sole leading lady amongst the men, and as Henry Golding puts it, “is [Mickey’s] weakest and strongest link.”
It’s hard to believe that this ensemble cast didn’t all see or meet each other while filming but instead got to know one another during the press tour. Keep reading to learn more about that and other fun tidbits from the roundtables HOLA! USA was able to attend with Matthew, Henry, Michelle, Hugh and Charlie in NYC.
Gentleman defined
Matthew kicks it off with, “I've found that a gentleman doesn't intrude or trespass on someone else's property, and I mean even in physical space, unless I'm invited in such a way.” Hugh acknowledges, “A gentleman punches up but doesn’t punch down.” Charlie concludes: “I always know, somewhere deep down in the gut, I know the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do. Sometimes it's inconvenient or requires some courage or a myriad of reasons not to do the right thing, but I think that a gentleman endeavors to do the right thing in any given occasion as does a lady.”
First meeting
“Hugh and I have been doing some press together,” Matthew reveals. “We didn't have one scene together. We just got to know each other a couple of weeks ago in England. Obviously in scheduling a movie... You go, ‘Okay, let's pack that into this nine days of shooting,’ and it's scheduled different.” Michelle adds, “We get to see it unfold and the things that you weren’t part of.”
The Guy Ritchie Process
“He writes dialogue the way he speaks,” Charlie tells HOLA! USA. “I find that to a certain degree, we're all kind of playing versions of Guy Ritchie in his movies. And you can try to deny that or just surrender to it.” Michelle also reveals, “Guy works in this way like you come on to the set and spent all night learning your lines, and then you read the scene out loud and he goes, ‘No, now we're not going to do that.’ We all had to learn quite quickly that that was the way it was going to be.”
Henry, who plays the definite villain in the movie, chimes in: “It's about those changes that we do in the moment with him behind the monitor shouting at you like, ‘No no no! Try this one! All right, rolling!’ And you have to integrate that.” Hugh is no stranger to Guy’s ways. The Man from Uncle actor says, “Well, all filming is frightening, but particularly with Guy because you don't know when he's suddenly going to pull the rug from under your feet by giving you three new pages of dialogue or in my case just whispering quite casually, ‘You've gone up an octave, mate.’ I said how long have I been doing that? He said, ‘I think it might be a couple of days.’ It was awful!”
What Matthew wants, he gets
“I got away with it. A lot of the suits,” the dad-of-three jokes of stealing his wardrobe. “They were custom made for me. They were bad ass. I was like, ‘Those aren't going to fit anyone else. Those don't need to go in the wax museum. I'm taking them home.’ I got like eight of those.” Michelle and Henry admit they didn’t take anything while Charlie was astonished at learning this. “That was absolutely infuriating to hear because I went shopping with Guy to buy my wardrobe, and it was promised to me on more than one occasion that I would get to keep it all,” the Sons of Anarchy star notes. “And then at the end I wasn't able to keep anything and now, I actually went out and bought myself the suit that I'm wearing in that poster because I liked it so much.”
Matthew meet Mickey
“I got to play the heavy guy that was a very successful businessman who's created his own universe. I'm already established. I'm the king of the jungle, and I've got my institution. I'm ready to sell it for a fair price and fade out and spend some time with my wife. They're a team together. The only person that actually Mickey I think would ever talk to about any of these things would be Rosalind, his wife and never in a sentimental way at all. You have your own set of rules. Mickey follows those rules until his wife's threatened and then the rules are off and it's like, ‘okay, there's no honor among thieves anymore. There's no more verbal threats. There's no more talking about the deal. It's all about eliminate the adversary.”
Back to his roots
“Well, the thing is, before I ever did Four Weddings and a Funeral, in fact, before I really did films, I made a living doing silly voices as well. I did radio commercials,” Hugh says. “And so I always thought I'm all right doing character parts, but just no one ever gave them to me –especially after Four Weddings. I saw dollar signs and thought, well I'll just do that same character 20 times in a row. Part of it's my own fault as well.”
The British actor also shows off his sense of humor by comparing his vulgar and brash character to fatherhood. “Well, I have five children, so, small children. It was very like home life.”
Better Late than Never
The Downton Abbey actress says, “It was great. I mean this was a really, really, really fun job, and obviously I was brought into it quite late in the day, without much preparation, but I was just flown into it, and I loved it.” Her leading man in the film adds: “You sure were flown into it; not come in to do two lines but come in to do two pages.”
No actors were harmed in the making of this movie
“It wasn't an action adventure for me,” Matthew admits. “I didn't come out of this thing injured and needed to go sit in an ice bucket for days. No, [the car accident] was really the only main action sequence and that wasn't that bad.” Michelle, who has a fight scene against Henry’s character Dry Eye mentions, “Those scenes in any job are very well rehearsed and choreographed. It obviously looks much, much more painful than it actually is because we work it out and we work with great stunt teams. When he's grabbing my hair that's when it's us and the magic of movie making.”
Guy’s a ‘funny guy’
“He originally offered me the part of the editor of the newspaper. I think that was his favorite joke,” the king of romantic comedies reveals. “I read the script and said that maybe the private investigator is more interesting. We had a long debate about whether it would be too ridiculous for me, given all these romantic comedies to make that big transition. In the end I auditioned myself. I made some versions of Fletcher on my iPhone and sent it to Guy, and he thought it would work. So I took the plunge.”
Charlie doesn’t like watching himself... until now
“I have historically not, but I've started, and I'm actually eager to see this,” he shares. “They offered to put a screening on for me this morning, but I decided I want to see it with an audience. I'm actually going to go on opening night and take a couple of my pals and my girlfriend, and we're just going to go see it with a real audience. I remember actually one of the best experiences I've ever had with an audience was watching Snatch. It was just an absolutely electric atmosphere coming out. People sort of were congregating and talking about the film, and it was like a really a sort of really inspiring community style experience of watching a film together.”
The Gentlemen opens in theaters January 24, and we have no doubt you will gather after to discuss.