Andrew Garfield is detailing just how much he and co-star Florence Pugh were living in the moment while filming romance drama “We Live in Time.”
Garfield said during the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast taping at the 92nd St Y, in the below video from an audience member, that he and Pugh “never heard ‘cut’” while filming a sex scene. Instead, the duo stayed in character and kept simulating sex, until the director of photography-slash-cameraman had to look away.
“We do the first take of this very intimate, passionate sex scene. And it’s a closed set, which means it’s only me and Florence in a room together and the camera operator, who is our DP, a very lovely man called Stewart,” Garfield said. “The scene becomes passionate and we choreographed it and we get into it, as it were, and we go a little bit further than we were meant to just because we never heard ‘cut’ and it’s feeling safe and we’re like, ‘OK, we’ll go to the next thing and the next thing, we’ll let this progress.’”
Garfield continued that he and Pugh were “telepathically saying to each other, ‘This definitely feels like a longer take.’” However, neither of them heard director John Crowley stop the “We Live in Time” scene.
“I look up, and in the corner is Stewart and our boom operator,” Garfield said. “Stewart has the camera by his side and he’s turned into the wall.”
And that isn’t the most intimate sequence in “We Live in Time,” though: Pugh previously detailed how having Garfield shave her head on-camera was akin to a religious experience.
“I’m so glad I get to talk about it now,” Pugh told British Vogue of shaving her head. “For any actor taking a role like this, it is completely important that you see her head and we see her shaving it – it was just always a no-brainer. You have the honor of doing something to yourself that is totally in support of the character.”
Garfield added, “It was a privilege to be given that job. What if I somehow destroyed the head of one of the best actors of her generation? It was terrifying, but ultimately it was a very beautiful, intimate scene to shoot and thank God she has such a nicely shaped melon.”
