STACK Aug #154

CINEMA FEATURE

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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

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.”

I t'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

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

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

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,

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.

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.”

The Big Sick is in cinemas on Aug 3

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AUGUST 2017

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21/7/17 2:20 pm