Mr. Law, when you play a character like this, what does that do to you over the duration of the production?
Well, you pick up a lot of unhealthy habits! I was very ready to let him go, when we wrapped.


Mr. Law, when you play a character like this, what does that do to you over the duration of the production?
Well, you pick up a lot of unhealthy habits! I was very ready to let him go, when we wrapped.

How did you get on this project? How did it come to you?
John Krasinski: So I was about to start pre-production on Jack Ryan, and some of the producers on Jack Ryan were Platinum Dunes, and they said, “Would you ever act in a genre movie?” And I said, “Oh no, I can’t do that, I don’t do horror movies.”

Mr. McConaughey, how did you approach Cooper?
I always saw Cooper as a man out of time.

What was your emotional reaction as a filmmaker while telling this story?
Part of the impetus for me in making a project is that I’m already emotionally affected by something.

What was the process of making this film?
Meryl Streep: It came together very quickly because Steven Spielberg was making another film with everything ready to go in Italy, except the lead wasn’t cast yet.

Can you each talk about your first impression of the painting that inspired this film?
Mbatha-Raw: I first saw a postcard reproduction of it that I bought in a gift shop.

Can you talk about the decision to set the film in 2013, and why that specific year was the right choice for this story?
Austin Peters: If you think about where we, as a country, were at in 2013… It was such a different time.

We’d been trying to cast Sam for months. And we were having a really hard time. My younger sister was, at the time, an eighteen-year-old senior in high school. Almost as a joke, I asked her, do you know any actors? Like, help me out here! And that was how I found Lily. I still can’t believe that’s our story.