Eddie Redmayne pulls off a tremendous effort in The Theory of Everything , playing Stephen Hawking from the early 1960s to the late 1980s . Not surprisingly , he ’s already getting a circumstances of Oscar bombilation . We sat down with Redmayne for an exclusive interview and he told us what it was like to meet the existent Hawking .
How does Stephen Hawking feel about this moving-picture show ? Because it ’s base on a Good Book by his ex - married woman . What was it like speak to him about it ?
First off , when I became attached to the picture show , I heard that he had read the playscript and had okayed it . But [ during ] the cognitive process of meet him in prep , and the process of cinematography , he became improbably generous and helpful . And then of trend , the fear was , ‘ What will he think when he sees this ? ’
And when we made the film , we used this synthesized estimation of his voice . And after seeing the film , he give us his voice . And for me , that was the most wonderful thing . He ’s been really generous . He has right of first publication to the “ Hawking articulation ” that we be intimate , so that was jolly moving .
The production had done a pretty confining , really salutary approximation of the voice . But when they put his voice into the film , it just raise it to somewhere else .
The thing that really sticks with me about this film is this grin that you have afterward in the film , when Hawking is losing his mobility and his power to speak . You have this petty smile . Did that arrive from meeting him ? Or just your own idea of what he would be like ?
That do from a miscellany of thing . It [ partly ] came from meet him — because it exact him so long to communicate now , quite often he ’ll expend a smile or a grimace to say yes or no . But also , he ’s laughable . He ’s right funny , and one of the most witty and energized hoi polloi that I ’ve ever met . And when he smiles , the way just kind of opens . And his mum and his first married woman Jane talk about his grinning a lot . So it was something that I drop a lot of prison term [ see at ] my iPad , with all this footage on it , look at the mirror , assay to repeat . I wish there was a more glamourous room of [ doing that ] .
I understand that you filmed this movie out of order , so you had to keep going back and off between the young Hawking and the Old , more disabled Hawking . Did you worry about overplaying his symptom of ALS ? Or doing a impersonation ?
I did . When I first father the part , that was absolutely something [ I worry about ] . And there was no means of getting over that worry , other than just doing as much research as potential . And meeting as many citizenry with ALS [ as possible ] , and being as specific as potential .
So the only way to get over [ the peril of ] parody was to see as much as I perhaps could , and to hope [ that was enough ] . But there was always that fear .
The cinema really carry the scary idea of being trapped in your forefront with all these glorious ideas , but being unable to express them at all .
Someone described it to me as being like , you ’re in a prison and the walls are just getting belittled every daytime . But I do think that the idea of being given that set of restriction — whilst these strong-arm limitations were come , his mind was going to newfangled frontiers . It was like a uncanny sort of anti - correspondence going on .
There ’s a great tantrum where he gets a perspirer trap halfway over his head and has an insight that leads to the find of pitch radiation .
It ’s true , that . That ’s absolutely on-key . And James [ Marsh ] , our director , was convey by Jane to the room and the bed where that happened , that epiphany . [ A hatful of ] people are like , ‘ Oh , you ’ve made these heavy metaphor , these moments of bully epiphany . ’ But that one was actually true .
So in the film , you not only have to capture the progress of Hawking ’s illness , but you also have to take a lot of really complicated scientific discipline . How much did you have to study the science to do that , and did you try dissimilar ways of manage it ?
I did , I strain every way . I ’m useless at science . I contribute up when I was 12 . I majored in history of nontextual matter . So I went to every method potential . I went to Wikipedia , to read all of Stephen ’s work , to reading all of Stephen ’s students . I commend Stephen ’s scholarly person pop out to explicate some of the specific of space time . And I was like , ‘ No , no . Imagine I ’m seven . ’ But also , the thing that I took ease in was the fact that when I was at Cambridge , you meet some extraordinary minds . Those formidable minds incline not to shove it down your throat . And it ’s the same with Stephen . He does n’t have to attest his tidings , [ because ] it ’s so apparent in his work .
One of the fascinating things in the moving-picture show is the part where Stephen starts to stray forth from his wife and flow in love with his new nurse — and that ’s dramatize by the fact that Jane takes a prospicient time to try and convey with him using a card where he has to blink when she says the correct missive of the first principle . Whereas Elaine , his new nursemaid , assumes that he ’s already memorized the display panel , and thus no longer needs her to linger over every alphabetic character . So he ’s able to communicate much more cursorily with Elaine . Where did that come from ?
The idea of them falling in love through this board was something we created — that came from me being in these ALS clinics , where the nanny I spent time with , Jan Clark , would say ‘ The matter with thesee - trans boardsis , the nursemaid are always slower than the patient . ’ Because with the patients , these boards are their only mode of communication . And they get really straightaway at it . And they ca n’t speak quick enough . Whereas the nurses do n’t have to live with it every day , so they do n’t [ move as quickly through the alphabet . ]
So I thought , ‘ God , this could be an interesting means ’ [ to show their new bond ] . But what was important was the fact that Elaine fell in love with Stephen at the story he was at — lessen for him for who he was then rather than [ who he ’d been before he became handicapped ] . And so I think the idea of that flirtation was something we felt emboldened to use through the process — and through her strength , as well . From the documentaries I ’ve seen , Elaine was so hard . And Stephen ’s an incredibly unassailable person as well . So I mean there was this quite aphrodisiacal sort of clash of [ personalities ] .
Did you interest about Hawking being too unsympathetic , given that his married woman sacrifice her career for him and then he bequeath her for another woman ?
I desire our flick evidence the complications of that . And that it was n’t as simple . Jonathan [ Jane ’s second hubby ] was already in Jane ’s life at the clock time . And I think [ Stephen and Jane ] were so symbiotically intertwine at that point that I never thought of it as a detachment , I think of it as letting each other go . And I cogitate that , above and beyond that , my absolute modus operandi was to not judge the character — because you ca n’t be present playing a character while also judging them . So I hope we found a counterweight . What I really wanted people to do was leave the cinema going , ‘ What would you do in that berth ? ’ Because each character reference is extraordinary and flawed , and that ’s what we were kind of aiming for .
One thing I love in the photographic film is the way of life Stephen Hawking comes across as a bomb - ceramist , who just constantly want to override people ’s expectation . If he ’s convinced everyone of one thing , then he has to go and convince them of the opposite word . Sort of a prankish pattern .
Definitely ! puckish is the correct password . I had three figure of speech in my trailer , which I distilled everything down to . One of them was Einstein with his natural language out — that sort of playful [ caliber ] , plus patently the gravitational stuff and nonsense that [ get with ] General Relativity . But then one was James Dean , because attend at untried photos of Stephen at Cambridge , he ’s like by rights cool — effortlessly cool , in a kind of disheveled style . And there is something ikon about that him . And he ’s also a complete ma’am ’ man , Stephen . When [ Jane Hawking doer ] Felicity [ Jones ] met him , electric discharge were vaporize . But then the third [ figure ] was a Joker in a face pack of card , with a puppet . Because he absolutely controls a room . And the mischievous timber is something that ’s so present now , and even in some of the anecdotes his nanny were tell us — he is the lord of misgovernment . [ Laughs ] .
Your version of the young Hawking is a ladies Isle of Man but also sort of a wild shape , who seems consciously playing to the pilot of the quirky , oddball scientist .
Yeah . It ’s interesting as far as the physicality is touch on . By look at exposure [ of ] when he was untried , you see that cumbersome gait . And what ’s interesting to me is with motor neuron disease , you never know when it starts . That ’s the job . People go and get diagnosed after having fallen , and by that compass point the disease has already manifested . So what was interesting to me was playing this idea that at the beginning of the flick , he already had [ ALS ] in some capacity . So some of the physicality , that awkwardness of gait , came through [ the idea of ] piffling parts of it already being in his body .
But having his handicap , he apply his middle and his part to control the elbow room without physically predominate it .
And when you come across him now , he absolutely hunt the room . There ’s great index [ in that ] , and I would say a huge amount of Stephen ’s success is the fact that he has to distill thing down to [ a few thing ] . He has to make great pick with what words [ to use ] and when he uses those words , so language becomes fabulously important .
And once he becomes a celebrity in the late fourscore , do you see him using that on a declamatory scale ?
Yes , but also , today when Stephen does interviews , because it carry him so long spontaneously to respond , every consultation gets place to him . So he then works the questions , and what comes with that is that you could articulate precisely what you want to say . And that dominance is very interesting to me — that idea of always being capable to show the adept side of yourself in some ways .
And there ’s an amazing [ installment of the radio show ] Desert Island Discs with Stephen , where Sue Lawley questions him on that . Because she ’s had to send all her questions to him . She read , ‘ you may so overtly mold your range of a function because you get clip to think about how you ’re die to respond . ’ And he says , there ’s some truth to that .
Does the film downplay how voiceless it is for him to communicate ad libitum ?
Definitely , because of the prison term that it would take . We dart some of those vista , particularly the breakup panorama [ between Stephen and Jane ] in existent time . And the scene was 20 moment long , as far as typecast out each letter - word . And now it ’s even more unmanageable because he just apply this [ one ] middle muscle . He has this detector on his glasses , and on the calculator screen , rather than the autotext thing he had back then . It ’s just the cursor run short across the alphabet , and when he does that [ blinks ] it stops on one letter .
I spent peradventure two or three hours with him [ when I first met him ] . But he probably said twelve sentences in those three hours . So it ’s really , really hard . So we sure , for picture show time , compressed that , because otherwise it would have been really really slow .
But that ’s why I think that scene of when they part is such an interesting [ one . ] It was the most interesting scene to shoot , because you ca n’t habituate your voice . You ca n’t interrupt intelligence gently , you ca n’t pull wires with tone or sound , you just literally press play , and it ’s all about when you choose to do that , where you ’re looking when you do that , [ and ] what your font is giving off . And that was very interesting .
Was Jane Hawking on put the whole sentence ?
Our first Clarence Shepard Day Jr. of shooting , Jane was on set , and she said , ‘ No , no , no , no . His hair would be much messier ! ’ So being able-bodied to endure there with Jane Hawking literally styling my hair was the most amazing thing . It was really special . [ But ] she was there a wee bit . Neither Jane nor Stephen were on every day . Mostly they were there that first week in Cambridge .
There was an astonishing moment [ shooting ] the May Ball — we had three goes at the fireworks video display , because obviously fireworks are expensive . And there was this amazing moment when , on cue , just before the fireworks went off , there was a drumroll and Stephen go far — flanked by his carers , uplit by his blind . And the pyrotechnic went off . It was amazing .
I was n’t sure about whether we should see them snog then — whether that should fall out so early [ in the film ] . But Jane writes about how that was the most quixotic present moment of their life together . Even though he did genuinely tattle to her about [ the scientific discipline of ] fluorescence and Tide [ detergent ] .
But that ’s sexy , because he ’s explain stuff . There ’s a slew in this motion picture about the amativeness of explaining and geeking out .
And I notice , the erotism of passion . Of being passionate about anything — when people have a rage about things , it ’s instantly attractive .
At the start of the film , Hawking is surrounded by man , and as he becomes more ill , he starts to be more wall by women . Does that change his part ?
I think that ’s absolutely correct . And I also think the period of the film prove it was an extraordinary time of change in the relationship between military personnel and fair sex . I commemorate there was one docudrama about Stephen [ from the early 1980s ] that I found very utilitarian called Horizon from the BBC . There ’s one part where Jane goes to visit Stephen with Robert , their eldest boy . And this student of Stephen ’s , who had voice the documentary film , was made to do some dubbing afterwards , and it was like , “ Jane and Robert go to visit Stephen after lunch , but they have no sake , so we do n’t speak to them . ” And Jane was furious , because Jane has a Ph.D. in her own right wing — she ’s a sensationally hopeful cleaning woman . And when you see the infotainment , you see it as being the United States Department of State of the period .
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