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before I got down to 145 pounds,” recalls the actor
who, on his better days, is famed for his awesome
abs and rock-hard torso.
“Obviously that’s a big physical challenge but
it’s something that also has an emotional and a
psychological effect so it’s not for nothing. If it
was just the physical challenge, it may have been
boring but I got into a really deep, clear zone
starving myself so it was really something for me,"
says the actor who actually took over the role from
Benedict Cumberbatch who, in turn, had inherited
it from Brad Pitt after he aged out of the character.
“Losing all the weight was almost like an injury.
I don’t know if you have ever had this experience
where you’ve been injured and you have to crack
on and get on with your life and it sort of focuses
you in a way where you have to be very mindful
about the day, how you are going to get to the
office and how you are going to leave yourself
enough time while you’re nursing this thing. That
is sort of like being hungry all the time. It has
this focusing and also a spiritual and emotional
component that was actually very, very positive for
me,” says Hunnam who co-stars with fellow Brits
Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller and Tom Holland.
During the early 1900s, the real-life Colonel
Fawcett had made several expeditions to the
Amazon - determined he could find the lost
civilization - before he mysteriously vanished.
“The real tragedy is that he was right - he just
hadn’t anticipated how quickly the jungle would
reclaim its territory. But he was literally walking
around on top of the foot print of the city,” says
the actor who infamously turned down the role of
Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey.
“This role took on an enormous amount of
importance to me in terms of proving my own
capabilities to myself. It was an opportunity to go
as deeply into the work as I’ve always craved.”
014 AUGUST 2017
visit CINEMA FEATURE
It's been a long time coming, but Charlie
Hunnam today finally basks in the warm glow
of box-office stardom following a 20-year career
which really only gained momentum after he was
cast in TV’s Sons of Anarchy.
If many actors are content with careers as
character actors working in ensembles - very few
are anointed with the weight of shouldering a film
all the way to the box office.
But Hunnam, 37, has done that not once but
twice this year, firstly in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur
and now with James Gray’s The Lost City of Z ,
co-produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B.
Filmed on locations around Northern Ireland and
Colombia, The Lost City of Z was, by far, the more
difficult role, shedding 40lbs to play starving British
explorer Percy Fawcett, a man in search of an
unknown civilization who vanished in the Amazon
jungle in 1925.
“I lost almost 40 pounds for that film, shedding
15 pounds in the final eight days of shooting
Charlie Hunnam talks about his most challenging role to date, as
British explorer Percy Fawcett in The Lost City of Z. Words Gill Pringle
From Camelot to
the Amazon
S ilicon Valley’s Kumail
Nanjiani and his wife
Emily V Gordon didn’t just
co-write the script for The Big Sick
- they put their own painful-funny
real-life romance up there on the
screen for the world to dissect.
While Nanjiani plays himself, the
couple cast Zoe Kazan to play Emily
on the big screen with Hollywood
heavyweights Ray Romano and
Holly Hunter enlisted to play her
screen parents.
Produced by Judd Apatow, the
resultant dramedy melted hearts
at this year’s Sundance, followed
by rave reviews and even Oscar
talk.
STACK met with the adorable
real-life couple at this year’s
CinemaCon where they finished
one another’s sentences. “It’s
the true story of the first year of
our relationship. It’s your basic
boy meets girl. . .” begins Gordon
as Nanjiani adds, “Boy keeps girl
secret from his family because
he’s supposed to get an arranged
marriage”.
Gordon: “Boy and girl break-up
and girl gets really sick and has to
be put into a coma.”
Nanjiani: “Boy has to call girl’s
parents and then hang out with
them while girl is hospitalized. And
it’s a comedy. It really is.”
If this sounds heavy, Gordon
swears there are plenty of
moments of levity. “It's got a lot
of romantic stuff and then some
intense scenes but it's really a
movie about love and families
and how funny and ridiculous and
amazing life can be.”
“This is the best movie you will
see about a Pakistani stand-up
comedian and a girl in a coma - that
is coming out this year,” promises
Nanjiani, who also enjoyed small
roles in Sex Tape, Mike and Dave
Need Wedding Dates and Fist Fight.
“It’s a movie that will make
you feel good when you leave the
cinema and make you wonder
what happened after the
credits roll,” says Gordon who
began her career as a couples
and family therapist before
quitting her day job to produce
and book her husband’s live
stand-up show, The Meltdown.
“But now that we’re
married, my wife is a walking,
The Lost City of Z is in cinemas on Aug 24
Lovesick
Real-life couple Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V.
Gordon's relationship is the basis of the Judd
Apatow-produced rom-com The Big Sick.
Words Gill Pringle
talking spoiler alert,” quips Nanjiani.
“So it’s a happy ending! Don’t let
the coma scare you - cause she
wakes up and it’s all good. It’s a
family movie - even if we do say
‘f-ck’ a few times - but it’s a Judd
Apatow movie so he has a quota
to meet.”
The couple worked on their
script for three years with Apatow.
“He was always challenging us to
get to the messy truth of every
scene - and then make it hilarious,”
recalls Gordon. “He was like:
Nothing about a coma is funny, so
the challenge is: Can you make it
funny?”
“But I think we did it,” says
Nanjiani. “Now we call it a rom-
coma-dy.”
Playfully engaging in a spat
about who had it worse during
Gordon’s coma, Nanjiani insists it
was tougher on him. “It was much
harder for me because you were
f-cking asleep.”
“We’re married. It's cool. He’s
allowed to say stuff like that,” his
wife grins.
The Big Sick is in cinemas on Aug 3
st154_014_CINEMA-LostCityBigSick.indd 1 21/7/17 2:20 pm