Transcript of James McAvoy New

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hi. James McAvoy.

I'm being official because his name's James. James McAvoy is our guest today, and James feels official instead of Jim.

I love the name James. It's a good one. I used to say that if I had a daughter, I would name her James.

Oh, that would be a lovely name for— yeah, James Padman.

Do you think it sounds bad?

Well, I love James on its own, but then maybe she's a one-name person. I just don't know how well it pairs with Padman.

James Padman.

I mean, you call her JP.

I call her James Lily Padman and then JLP. Oh, JPL is what I was—

Jet Laboratory Propulsion. Okay. Anyways, James McAvoy is an award-winning actor and a director. His credits include Split, Speak No Evil, Atonement, 4 X-Men, of course, Last King of Scotland. For my money, God, did I love him in that. And he has made his directorial debut It's in theaters now. It's called California Schemin', and it's based on the most impossibly true story of 2 Scottish kids pretending they're American to break into rap in 2003. This is a lovely interview. Please enjoy James McAvoy.

He's an object expert. He's an object expert. He's an object expert.

Now, really quick, I'm bummed I've healed so much. Much different today, right?

What? Oh, he had— okay.

Yeah. So yesterday we had a guest and it was insane. They never asked what was wrong with my face because have you ever been to the dermatologist and they have the machine they can zap things off?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I bought one. Oh, wow. And I've been going nuts getting rid of everything.

That's dangerous, dude. This sounds bad.

So yesterday it looked like I had been hit with buckshot in the head.

Is it like freckles or moles?

Skin tags, hyperplasia. Anything raised I don't like. Anything, you know, when you're just feeling your skin, you're like, what the fuck is this? And especially, I'm 4 years older than you, but at 51, it's like sprouting up everywhere. I'm like, what is happening to me?

Yeah, no, I've got weird stuff all over.

Yeah, you just get barnacles all the time.

Yeah.

Well, we are a ship flowing through the ocean of life.

We are.

You've got to scrape your hull sometimes. I've got something in my eye, which I'm like, oh, am I going to need to get that worked out? So maybe I'll use your machine before I go.

Oh, no.

I'll walk out blind. If I catered 2,000, you would be the first guest that I offered. some kind of surgical services to you.

It's getting out of control. It's like he walks in and then it's just scabs.

Oh, mate.

Scabs. But they heal quickly. So yesterday I was a mess, and today already I'm back to normal.

I had that thing when I was a kid. Have we started recording now?

Hell yeah.

I was a teenager, and you know that way when you don't really think about your appearance too much? I wasn't really up on my appearance. And then I think my aunt said to me, like, oh, you've got tons of blackheads on your nose. And I was like, have I?

What?

And I was like, what's that? And they were like raised.

They really needed to have something done about them.

So I thought, oh, I guess I better do something about that. So I went to town on them, and the next day I looked like I'd been fucking attacked by a Rottweiler or something like that. Then that was the talk of the town in the school as well. Like, James McAvoy, he burst his plukes! He burst his zits! You're like, why is this news?

Was it scabbed, or you just looked like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

It was pretty scabby.

It was scabby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I don't know whether to tell you this story now or when we get to it. I don't know. I've told a story on here about you about 35 times. which is why I'm so excited to finally meet you.

Oh, my God. Is it gonna be bad?

I'm gonna start with it.

It's a good story.

I guess it would've been 2006 or '07. I get a meeting with this guy, Timur.

Oh, yeah.

This Russian director who's going to direct this movie Wanted.

Yeah.

And we have this incredible meeting. I'm at that point thinking, you know, there's no way I'm getting this movie. It's gonna be a huge action movie, but I'd like to meet this guy. That meeting goes really, really well. But there's another actor that's already attached to it. So I'm like, eh, that's a bummer. Whatever. Then randomly, we get called. That actor fell out. fell out for scheduling is what I was told. He wants to meet again, meet again. Then the studio calls, they want my quote. We're beginning that whole process. I'm like, oh, they called and asked for my quote.

This is Lee Wesley?

Yes, yes.

Oh my God.

And I'm like, I can't believe this is happening, right? And then at the 11th hour, they're like, oh no, the actor is now available again. I go, who is this actor? And they go, James McAvoy. And I go, who the fuck is James McAvoy? You're saying that like whatever. I'm so annoyed. Weeks later, I go to Arclight here and I see The Last King of Scotland.

Oh, yeah. Was that right about that time?

Oh, wow. Yes. You were probably getting that role right as that movie was about to come out. And so I'm watching this movie and I'm having the experience that I've only had a couple of times. I'm having the experience I had watching Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting.

What film?

Where I go, who is this fucking actor I'm watching?

He's incredible in it.

He's so—

no, you.

When he was watching Last King of Scotland.

I'm watching Last King of Scotland and I'm like, Oh my God, this guy's a revelation. Who is this guy? And the whole time I'm watching, I'm like, I got to wait till the credits. I'm going to, like, write his name down and watch everything that he's ever been in. And then it gets to the credits and I go, oh my God, that's James McAvoy. I wouldn't have hired 10 of me to play this guy. It was the most satisfying experience with finding out you didn't get something because of someone else. Oh, because I was so blown away.

Oh, thanks, man.

By that performance in Last King of Scotland. And then I've just been a huge fan ever since.

Thanks so much, man. It's really kind of you to say so. I don't know what to say to that.

That's mental.

That is mental. Should I tell you the truth about what was actually going on?

Yes, because I read other shit today that I was like, oh, that's not even what happened, I don't think.

I think Timur wanted me to play the role, and he thought it was me. And then the studio were like, this kid's not big enough. What was it, like a $75 million movie?

Yeah, with Angelina Jolie.

With Angelina Jolie. We need somebody more established and probably more experienced as well, and who's American, for a start.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, I think I camera tested about 3 times for the role. I was never not available.

Really? Wow.

They were just going back and forth on whether they would let Timur have this guy that he liked. And Timur was clearly into you as well, 'cause I don't think he'd have met you more than once if he wasn't. He's a lovely dude.

Oh, I loved— He told this crazy story. Maybe you'd remember it. It was something about being at university and his books getting stolen. Do you remember this crazy tale? No.

I've got the worst memory for things that have been told to me or happened in my life.

Oh, really?

It's really boring on podcasts.

Is it frustrating? Or are you at peace with it?

I'm kind of at peace with it. And it also means you kind of live in the moment a little bit.

Harder to carry grudges? Or are you able to hang on to those?

I don't think I carry too many grudges.

Yeah. My wife has your gift in a sense that she's not burdened by the past because she just simply doesn't remember it.

It's a nice thing. I mean, it's weird sometimes when I'm like, monumental things in my life, and people are talking to me about them from their point of view. And it's not just like, oh, people remember things differently. I'm like, I don't remember half of this. I remember one time my sister said to me— this is a monumental thing— my sister said to me, like, you've worked with so many of the best leading ladies in Hollywood and all that kind of stuff. Who would you love to work with? And I was like, you know what? I think Margot Robbie's, like, an incredible performer. She's proper movie star quality.

Yeah.

But also, she's a proper actor as well. She's the two things. And she's brave and bold and makes strong choices, and she's entertaining even when it's sad, and she just can do many things at once. So, I said her, and she was like, but we've met her. And I was like, what? And apparently, we were at the Empire Awards in London one night, years ago, and we won some award. I can't remember what it was for, a film called Filth that I did a long time ago, maybe. And me and Joy were there together, my sister, and we went downstairs to the party, and apparently, we were, like, tearing up the dance floor and stealing each other's shoes and chucking them behind the DJ booth and all that kind of stuff. But apparently, Margot Robbie was like, oh, those two are having fun. fun, and we partied with her.

She joined you? Like, all night.

Okay. I don't remember this.

Back to the drinking incident, though.

I was drinking back then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the memory might have been a little hazy because of that. I think I've partied with some people I certainly don't remember.

Yeah, I'm sure.

I think you'd remember if you partied with Margot Robbie, though.

Right?

She's very iconic.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a big deal. Have you thought about getting it looked at?

Have you seen a neurologist?

I spent so much in my early— up till about 29, 30, worrying about my mental health. Not worrying about it, but keeping a real good eye on it. I'm sort of— this has gone quite serious in the last sort of like 15 years or so. I'm like, I'm fine, I don't need to worry about it.

I want to get into that. I had a little bit of a preoccupation in my 20s. I felt like I was vulnerable to lose my mind.

Yeah, I was worried about that loads.

What do you suppose that is?

Without going into like finer points and details, because it's other people's stories as well, lots of substance abuse and mental illness in my early years. And I just worried that it was, like, in me.

Also, Mom was a psychiatric nurse.

Yeah, yeah.

So were you hearing tales— this is in Glasgow, let's just set the stage. April 1979, a little baby comes along. He's so cute. His name's James.

What's his middle name?

Don't have one.

Don't need one. He's a junior. He gets 3 things.

Do I need to be named Junior, or am I just like, by default, I'm a junior?

I think if your dad has the exact same name as you—

Everybody's a junior. in my family was named James. I think there's about 10 Jameses. Yeah, no, I was definitely exposed to a lot of that, but also just in the extended family and my community as well. There was a lot of altered state going on.

Would Mom come home and share stories? This is the first thought I had when I saw what your mom did. Was she coming home with some wild stories?

A little bit, yeah.

Yeah. And what was the vibe in Glasgow in the '80s? Shit was popping off. Yeah, mentally speaking.

Yeah, back then it was drug kind of capital. I mean, I don't want to talk down about my hometown. I love my hometown. Yeah, but, um, we've got a massive drug problem, and it was massive back then, and it's become massive again. I think we're the drug death capital of Europe at the moment.

Oh, really?

So there's just a lot of that kicking about. And I think mental illness and drugs and alcohol— just alcohol is a drug— they kind of go hand in hand. They're not always hand in hand. Not everybody who drinks has to get mentally treated, but they can, I think, often go hand in hand, and one kind of empowers the other a little bit. I don't know what the underlying issues or the underlying causes of that are, but it's a real thing.

Yeah. So I'm from Detroit, so that's a very similar vibe, especially in the '80s.

Is Detroit back on its feet now?

It is, shockingly, yes. Mind-blowingly, yeah. Because I left there in '93 and it was as post-apocalyptic as you can imagine a city. And now, yeah, there's farmers markets and stuff. It's wild. It's impressive.

You can get kombucha.

You can get a nice, probably a freshly brewed kombucha.

Fantastic.

The crack epidemic was just sweeping through the entire city. My uncle in recovery, my dad in recovery, you know, the whole scene. Similarly, a child of divorce. So, yeah, maybe that's the seeds, is I saw adults around me that were hanging by a thread, and so maybe it seemed plausible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there was a self-awareness that came to me very young. Actually, is it self-awareness? I think it was an awareness of the extreme things that people around me were going through from a very young age that sort of took me out of the place I think most children are in, for quite a long time, which is, I'm the center of the universe. The world is really just happening to me. Everybody else, you're just all players in the movie that I'm the lead in, aren't you? And then, you know, the process of growing up is a process of sort of looking less inward and looking outward, responsibility to others. But I think that happened to me quite young. And while I didn't have responsibilities to fill to other people, I think that I was sensitized early to what others are going through. which is quite a massive reason why I ended up being an actor, or a performer, and interpreting what it is that other people are going through in their lives, you know, and making that into stories. As an adult, one of the things that I do is I try and fix issues, I try and fix problems, which you might think is a wonderful thing, but I'm kind of coming to the realization that sometimes you gotta let people go through what they're going through.

You can't fix everything. And by fixing it, you're creating more problems. But part of that fixing as well is you become quite malleable, and you can slightly lose yourself. within that.

Yes. Now, I think we share this. So I spent all my summers and all my free time at my grandparents' because, yeah, single mother working around the clock. And when I went there, I think I got the thing that my children have, right? Which is I was the center of the universe when I was at my grandparents' house. They made me whatever I wanted to eat. I got to have snacks. They were available. They had time for me. And I loved it. It was an Eden. Was your experience living with Grandma and Grandpa the same?

Yeah, no, my granny and granddad were incredible and really just sma— like, incredible. I was about to say smashing people. I never use the term smashing. They were smashing.

Yeah, and what does it mean?

Fantastic people. They were smashing. They were amazing. My granny still is amazing.

She's still alive, your granny?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, wow. That's incredible.

Along with the drug death capital of Europe, we were also the teenage pregnancy capital. So she was quite a young—

Oh.

They were incredible, but they were also— So realistic, pragmatic. They had 5 of their own kids, all my aunties and uncles and my mum, obviously. And it's interesting, their point of view on my experience and Joy's experience with my granny and granddad, because they're always like, they were never like that for us. You know what I mean? They're always like, you got a totally different side, which I think happens a lot.

Meaning you got a better version of them than their kids did?

We got them a bit older, a bit more settled, a bit more established financially, maybe a bit more chilled. Also not having to balance 5 kids and 2 jobs, you know?

Yes.

an easier time in their life.

Same. I think my father even resented me a bit that his dad was so gentle and kind to me.

Yeah.

I think that can happen.

We're developing a script at the moment, and that is the key thing about the movie, apart from all the other bits, is the relationship between grandfather, father, and son, and, and the gap in the middle. But the father and the gap between the grandfather and the son, but those two are kind of like circumnavigating the father and having this incredible bond, you know. They were amazing. But I was talking about the other day, I can't remember who it was to, but it was a dad at the school or something like that, and talking about how kids played differently before. And I was like, no, that's true. But if you're going to look at it through the lens of the past, the difference in the past was as well, like, my granny and granddad loved me, and I felt so loved and protected and safe and cherished. They never played with me. I was never played with.

True.

But I think the space that that afforded me allowed me to understand how I could play on my own or with friends. Or, I'm bored, wasn't a thing that would have been accepted. That's on you, mate. Do you know what I mean? So you don't get bored, you invent things, you think as well. I remember I used to go to bed excited to think.

Right.

Do you know what I mean? We don't do that anymore because we go to bed and we do that before we go to bed. And I guess a lot of teenagers are doing that now too, the pure excitement of going like, right, what am I going to think of? and fantasize about and sort of like build in my brain at a young age. But anyway, the playing with things— I love that I play with my kids, and I love that I'm attentive and that I'm present and all these things. But I do wonder sometimes if this wonderful time that feels so fragile and on the precipice at the moment, but we still have a hold of it at the moment, where people with a certain amount of money in the bank have time to play with their kids. And we should take advantage of it. Of course we should. But are we also taking something away from the kid by not allowing them space to just—

Yeah.

Wonder.

I think if you feel like it is your job to entertain them constantly, yeah, I think you're gonna have a problem. But if when they want to kick off some fake world and you join them, no, then just, they're the author of this experience.

Totally.

It is different though, because I would never have asked my parents to play with me. That wasn't even an option. No.

Right, right.

To be like, hey, will you play house with, like, no, either you're doing it in your own head, or you have a friend over. But like, now I do think parents are behaving more as friends.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many parents I see, and I'm not criticizing parents because it's too easy a pastime to fall into, I think, is to criticize other parents. But I do see so many parents so concerned with being liked by their children, and I don't know if that necessarily should be your super objective.

Yeah, my parents could care less.

Your job is to help them to grow into people who are potentially capable of happiness and functionality. That doesn't necessarily mean they need to like you every minute.

Often they shouldn't like you.

If they're relying on the gratification of your pleasure, they're going to be needy people in relationships going forward. I don't know, I'm getting very specific about something that is pseudo-psychology. Who knows?

Okay, I just had to learn this term today because it sounded fancy. What would you say a council estate is? If you found out someone grew up on a council estate in Scotland, what do you think that means?

A council estate. Okay, so I'm gonna say, like, a government property. Someone who worked as an ambassador or something has their own property?

Yeah, and are we picturing, like, some acreage maybe and some fencing?

Or is it a lawyer's house?

Well, it's what they call the projects.

Whoa!

So I keep reading you were from the council estates, and then you were helping an actor kind of prepare for the first thing you were in. Oh, yeah.

It was Andy Serkis.

And he wanted to know about your accent. He said, are you from a proper council estate? When I read that, I was like, I'm like, wait, he grew up kind of fucking fancy?

Fancy.

It does sound fancy.

Okay, okay, that's a different thing.

The other name that we would have for it is a council scheme.

Scheme.

Which is why the film that I directed is called California Schemin', which I never really explained in the movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, so that was a kind of colloquial term for it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you live in a scheme, you're a schemie, that kind of thing.

And was there shame about being Not from us.

Some people might have, but there was also a bit of, like, local pride. And it's strange, isn't it? Like, Drumchapel, that's the scheme that I come from. I had a great time growing up there, and my days were full of adventure and potential and peril and chases and drama and tons of kids running wild. And it felt exciting. My opportunities were limited, and my horizons were very close, but it still felt like I was in the Wild West sometimes. And yet, I look back at it, Like, there's something that keeps coming up on Instagram at the moment, which is this documentary made about Drumchapel at the time, in the '80s, and it is what it was like. And I'm just kind of shocked to look at it and see how bad it was then, 'cause it felt so vibrant. And so, when I see movies about people who come from the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder— and a lot of these films are brilliant, by the way, and it's fine to make films about people like this, but they're often sort of wallowing in the deprivation or the suffering. It becomes almost titillating in the pornography of poverty.

Uh-huh.

And some of that is really valid, totally brilliant. You need it. But you don't really get too many rom-coms set in a project. You don't get too many buddy movies about 2 kids from the project. Actually, you used to a little bit. That's kind of what I wanted to do with this. Even though it's a true story and there's some real big emotional consequences in the movie, the reason that it appealed to me so much is because it was about people who came from a place like I did, but it was entertaining, and it was aspirational, and it was, like, propellant. Like, you went in a nice neighborhood, and people were protecting their property, you know? I mean, in ours, we lived in a row of 20 homes, and up the back there was all these flats and apartments and just hundreds of gardens in the middle with middens, what we call middens, like where you put the trash out and all that stuff. And basically all but I'd say 10% of the neighbors were just like, you can go into our gardens, do what you want.

Yeah.

So we had like this wild area that when you're like 8 or 9 feels so vast that you can adventure through. And the kids that were in that close, like an apartment building, we call it close, The kids that were that close, they were our enemies, do you know what I mean? But the kids that close, they would help us sometimes. You know what I mean? It was proper. You'd get locked in stone-throwing battles for 4 hours at a time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trapped in a den that you couldn't leave. There was this amazing bit between— there's 2 schemes in Drumchapel, Scheme 1 and Scheme 2, and I'm from Scheme 1. In between Scheme 1 and 2 is this vast sort of valley with a burn, a stream that goes right through the middle of it. We call it a burn. And it was a huge hill that went down like that to the burn, and then it would go back up to the other side in Scheme 2. And I remember I was in Scheme 2, which even within Scheme 2, my neighborhood, you're like, that's not my territory. I can't be in Scheme 2, Jim.

And we get chased out of Scheme 2. And I just remember I felt like I was in the Dukes of Hazzard because I had to make it to the county line. It's like, if I could make it to the burn, I could make it to the burn and I leapt over the burn, I'd be safe. Do you know what I mean? Which of course the bigger boys who were chasing me just jumped over the burn and beat the shit out of me anyway. Oh, you don't respect borders.

Okay, cool.

That was another one of my curiosities about your childhood. What was your kind of trajectory with masculinity? Was that complicated without Dad present?

I had my granddad, and I had my Uncle Johnny. My Uncle Johnny and my Auntie Tricia were like another set of grandparents I had as well. They were incredible too. So, they were two particularly, I would say, kind, funny, gentle, not self-serious, never presenting masculinely, but—

Were masculine figures. And they gave you the attaboys.

Yeah, no, totally. There was a kind of tempered thing with my granny and granddad. They sort of tempered the sort of— of attaboy, you can do anything you want to do vibe with, you've got the right to try and do whatever you want to do, but it doesn't mean you can do it. You'll need to make it happen. And sometimes you won't, you'll just need to pivot. Because I think that sometimes when the message to our children is so much— maybe it isn't so much these days, I think it is though, you know, you can do anything. And the pressure that comes with that is that it's implied that they should be capable of achieving anything.

I thought that was a uniquely American thing. I know that's huge here.

No, I think it's definitely back home as well. And look, I'm not dissing it. It's better than being down on your kid and telling them they're never going to amount to anything.

Absolutely.

But there's a pressure that comes with that as well. It's just in how we phrase it, really. And maybe there's a way to phrase it that propels but doesn't add weight. I don't know if it was because of the way my grandparents sort of framed it, or it's who I was as well, but I felt like I'd be all right.

He did.

And I didn't necessarily expect to make it as an actor. I was very aware that the statistic of 95% of actors are out of work at any one time. Really, you don't see that many movies coming out of Scotland. How many Scottish movie stars are there? There was nobody there for me to, like, see it to be it. I was like, well, look, I'll do this. I did a movie when I was 16, out of the blue, out of nowhere.

That's worth telling. So there's this famous Scottish actor.

Famous Scottish actor, director, producer, philanthropist, all-around good guy, David Heyman. Not to be confused with the producer of the Harry Potter movies. He came to my school. He'd famously played Lady Macbeth in the '70s in an all-male production at the Citizens Theater. He lived next door to my English teacher. We were studying Macbeth in class, just for English, not for performance. And he came in to talk to us. He took a bit of flak from the kids in the class, giving him shit for being a poofy actor or whatever they were calling him. But I was like, I've seen this guy in movies. He's been in a movie with Arnold.

He was in Sid and Nancy, for Christ's sake.

He was legit. And I was like, oh, wow. So I went up to him at the end and I said, look, when you're making a movie again, can I come and make tea? or make coffee for you for, like, a week.

Be a runner.

'Cause we all had to do, like, work placement, whatever you could do in the corner shop or the bank or go plaster walls with your uncle. And he said, yeah, yeah, sure. So, 6 months later, he was making this movie called The Near Room. He called the school, he said, is that wee guy still there? Send him in. I went in, and he gave me the script. He said, right, this part, this part, this part, these scenes here, read that, try and learn that, and then come back. And I was like, what? Am I acting?

What the fuck?

Wow!

So, I read it with him, and he went, can you do it again? I think you need to use your you voice. get quite upset? Can you make yourself cry? And I was like, I don't know. Luckily, I am quite emotionally incontinent. We walked out of the room, his arms around me, in a nice way, consensual.

Yeah, in an appropriate way.

Yeah, and it was fully appropriate. And he went, right, this is the guy that's going to play Kevin. And then the next thing that happened, Andy Serkis walked in with dreads.

He's the one asking you about the accent?

He was playing a Glaswegian pimp. And David, the director, goes like, he's the real thing. Sit down with him and he'll sort you out. So, my first seconds as an actor were sitting down with the great Andy Serkis, who I loved from a kids' TV show that he was doing called Streetwise, which is about crime-fighting mountain bike couriers in London.

Oh, wonderful.

Wait, so did you want to be an actor?

Never thought about it.

Wow!

Isn't that crazy?

I never thought about it.

The lore goes, though, that you then fell in love with your co-star, and then you were like, okay, I want to stick with acting.

I didn't fall in love with her. There was that actor in the movie who played my sister. She was really nice to me, got on, and I fancied her. And so she said, you should come to Paisley Youth Theater. So I got on the train every Thursday night or something like that and went all the way out to Paisley because I fancied this lovely young woman.

Yeah, here we would say you were in love with her, but there we're not saying that. That's like—

Yeah, that's a big distinction. Fancy, in love.

When you're a little kid, like when you're 15, yeah, I was falling in love with like people in line at the amusement park.

In love. Oh no, I definitely— I would like imprint. It would be like, I'm gonna get married like 1,000 times.

dozen times at 15 if I would've been allowed to.

Do you know the Boy Scouts?

Yeah, yeah.

Do you have the thing before it, the Cubs?

Yeah, Cub Scouts.

So we had Cub Scouts back home, and I was in the Cubs. I lasted a week in the Scouts and then I gave up, but I was in the Cubs. We went away on camp for the week, and the Girl Guides were also there, and they were staying on one side of this chalet. We were staying on the other side of this big scout hall out in the mountains of Scotland. And there was this young girl, she must have been about 13, she was called Linda. Linda, if you remember this, you made a big impression.

This is a man who doesn't remember anything, Linda.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I know, I remember some stuff. And she was good deed for the day because I was complaining. I was like, I didn't bring enough socks and all my socks are full of mud and they're soaking and like, oh God.

Not very resourceful as a Boy Scout.

Yeah, I know, right? And she said, give them to me, I'll clean them for you tonight. That'll be my good deed for the day. And I swear to you, for about a year after that, I thought about Linda.

Yeah.

In making her your wife.

I thought about subjugating Linda. But a year after that.

Yeah, these first crushes.

Oh, they're incredible. Okay, I've got kind of like a loose theory. The 2 things that you've done in your early life that boggle me. One is you were considering priesthood for a minute.

Yeah.

Like, that seemed appealing. It would take you places, potentially.

Essentially, I was like, I always wanted to travel. I had a sense of the world outside, and I wanted to meet it. So missionary work, I thought, would be a good way to do that.

Right, right. Good travel plan.

Then you met Linda, and you're like, I don't think I can do that anymore.

The celibacy part.

Yeah, that part.

Then the second thing that I can't imagine doing is you had enlisted for the Royal Navy.

No, I was accepted— what'd you call it? Conditionally? What was it?

Probationary?

No, the police was like assured if I wanted it.

Okay. So I'm wondering, those 2 things also are turnkey stability.

You mean you're locked into a life?

It's one-stop shopping. You join the priesthood, everything is mapped out for you. it has the appeal of built-in structural stability.

And I think as well, the other thing that they both have, which maybe helped pull me in, was notwithstanding the countless negatives and atrocities that have happened in both those institutions, yeah, yeah, there's a romance to them as well. There's a romance to the idea of the travel, but also the endeavor, the profound feeling of being part of a team and purpose, which I think appeals to me. That was something I was looking for. And it wasn't until I kind of half-heartedly said to myself, I do like acting, I have done it a few times, like on TV or film, and I've done this youth theater thing for like a year. Maybe I should just try out for acting school as well. Because really, that is what I should have been doing. But I only tried out for one acting school because I couldn't afford to relocate to London where most of the acting schools are. There's one major one in Scotland, and that was in my hometown of Glasgow, thankfully. So I tried out for it, and luckily I got in, because if I hadn't, I might have been on a boat somewhere. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

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I don't know if I am sort of remembering things differently or not, but I had a sort of security and sense that whatever happened, I'd be okay. Which I have less these days, which is nuts. And I just knew that whatever happened, I'd have a roof over my head and I'd be able to feed myself. I'd make it happen. And I think that's part of the childhood as well. Not everybody who goes through some mad stuff in their childhood comes out like this, but I think it did help me. I don't know if this is all true. It's pseudo-physiological stuff, maybe. So if you want to argue with it, please do. But I've heard the science behind having a freezing cold shower in the morning. The reason why it's so good for you is It puts you into a fight or flight first thing in the morning. Your body also understands, and your brain also understands, I could deal with that, and I'm still breathing, and I'm still alive. So when you miss the bus or you miss the meeting, it doesn't become this fucking thing.

Yeah, yeah, you're not defeated easily. Yeah.

And I think I kind of like, in terms of my whole life, that happened to me early in my life. I'd say the last 10 years or the last few years, it sort of tested me a little bit more again. I'm further away from that. I'm almost a different person, I guess. Do you know what I mean?

You've gotten soft. I think I have.

You're starting to wonder if you're still scrappy.

Do you know what? I think I just trusted that I would be the kind of keeping an eye on myself that I did until I was almost 30. I'm speaking very sort of respectfully about mental illness, but I'm literally doing this.

Yeah, yeah, sure. The cartoon version of crazy for the listeners. Yeah, where you spin your finger around your temple.

This sort of self-awareness and this sort of self-care, I guess, that I would sort of practice up until I was like 30, I then became sort of like, you know what, I can relax. I think I maybe relaxed a bit too much, and I need to kind of keep an eye on myself.

Well, okay, that's one explanation. What about— it's actually weirdly less scary to have nothing and be trying to get something than it is to have something and it occurs to you, I might lose it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's like, yeah, what was at stake for you?

When?

At the beginning, virtually nothing. You're not going to make a decision whereby you walk away from something fantastic. It's all out there to gather.

You can only go up.

Yeah. I remember having a conversation with an actor who described their early career coming out of acting school, feeling like, well, I guess what happens is you come out of acting school, and then you spend a year or two doing smaller things, and then you become Brad Pitt.

Yeah.

And I never had that. My idea was, if I can pay the bills as an actor, that's my ambition. And that would be massive success. That will almost be, like, at the top end of what I allow myself to expect. And so, setting, I guess, achievable goals, but also, So, having a fair understanding of just how hard it is. And I get maybe that's 'cause I wasn't looking inward, I was looking outward. I could see how hard it was for everybody. Didn't expect it to just happen for myself. Also, just the brass tacks of it is, like I say, there wasn't 20 Scottish movie stars getting produced every single year. So you're kind of going like, how's this going to happen for me? You know?

Yeah. So, after you get out of school, you graduate in 2000, you have this pretty long period post-graduation where you're just doing a lot of television, and you're doing plays. And Joe Wright sees you at a play, and he— virtually, over the years, offers you kind of a couple different movie roles. You want nothing to do with it.

It wasn't that I didn't want anything to do with it. It was Joe asked me to be in a BBC costume drama, Charles II. And it was a fairly small part that I was up for doing. And then I got offered, like, a lead role, one of the main characters in the original version of— you know that show William H. Macy does, Shameless?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, the original version of that was set in Manchester, and I was in the original cast of that.

Oh, my God. You know how dumb I am? That's '04, '05. I didn't realize you were in the original one. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When I did my research, I thought you were on the Showtime version.

No, no, no. It was nuts. Like, watching the first episode of the American one, I watched the first 20 minutes of it, watching actors and that do stuff that we improvised on the day, and you're like, this is wild!

Oh, yeah.

Is it the Jeremy Allen White character?

I think so.

Wow!

I don't know. I couldn't be held to account enough for that.

We'll find out later.

I said, look, I've got to go and do this show. My agent was like, you've got to go and do this show. You're gonna get paid more.

It's a really good writer. It's good.

It could be a really good thing, and it's a bigger part. You'd be daft not to do it. And I remember Joe was really annoyed with me. He was really angry with me. And then he got me back when he was going to do a movie version of Birdsong, which later became a really good TV version. And he brought me in, and we worked on that. And then, for some reason, somebody was going to do Atonement. They pulled out, and Working Title said to Joe, get off Birdsong. We want you to do Atonement. And so, he brought me in for that, and I camera tested a bunch of times with Keira, And I knew who I was up against. I think it was me, Cillian, Jake Gyllenhaal apparently, and Jude Law.

Oh, fuck, all the handsomest guys in the world.

Yeah. I think Last King had come out. Wanted hadn't happened. Narnia had happened.

Yeah, '05 is Narnia, '06 is Scotland, and then '07 is Atonement.

Yeah, so I shot it in 2006. I loved playing that part. I loved the process of working with Joe on that. He was like one of the best. best actors-directors I've ever worked with. And I totally stole from him when I directed my first movie. Not actually with how I talked to the actors, but how I talked to the crew.

Why? How does he talk to the crew?

He did this thing that maybe other directors will be angry at me for saying this because they say, oh, do you do that? I don't know. But he's the only director I feel like I've ever seen do this, which is you do the rehearsal, and usually the DP's there and the first AD's there, and the actors and the director. And then you go talk about shots a little bit, and then the crew come in for the crew show. That's the end of that. And then the AD will start telling people, like, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, we're gonna do that. And then we all filter away, the movie starts, they kind of come together. We would do the crew show, and at the end of the crew show, Joe would go, right, so that was the scene, and this is what it is to me, and this is what I feel about it. This is what I want maybe the audience to feel about it. This is what James's character's going through here, part of the arc here. The pivotal point for his arc is at this point. And then for Keira's character, this is happening.

And what we're really going to do— and he's playing music through all this as well.

Oh my God.

And he goes like, okay, And everybody steps away feeling like a moviemaker.

Right. They're all on the same page, same tone.

Rather than like, did I get a script? What are we making? Is this Downton Abbey or what?

Oh, that's beautiful.

It welcomes everybody in and makes them invest, I think.

It gives them ownership over it. Yeah.

You might talk to my crew and they'll be like, oh, yeah, didn't notice you did that. But it felt like you are making it. It is a miracle. And he said this, Joe, and I've said it for years since, filmmaking is a miracle of collaboration. The more you can accept that and rely on that, the more you welcome in the great technical professionals and artists that are at your disposal. Yeah, we've made way more movies in their department than you have as a director. It's really hard, I think, for a director sometimes to do that because they're sitting there having done maybe 2 shorts and a music video, and suddenly they've got like $5 million budget, and they're like, okay, I need to have the answers to all these questions. Or they just kick the can down the road a little bit. 'Cause I feel like they're scared to say, I don't have the answer. Whereas for me, I was like, I've been booed on stage, I've watched people leave, my movies have been slaughtered. My ego can take you thinking I'm not a good director, but I need to find the answer here. So, if I didn't have the answer, I'd be like, help me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, quickly, how did you go from Shameless to getting Narnia? That's kind of a big— was there some fortuitous meeting or something?

I was kind of on the up in British TV, and I got Shameless, and Shameless had done really well with its first season. It kind of became, like, a big thing quite quickly. And so, maybe that helped get me on the radar a wee bit. But, I mean, I'd been kicking about for a few years by this point, 4 or 5 years. I hear, and I don't know if this is wrong, I heard they had an older actor who was, like, in his 30s at the time, who was a really well-known comedian. They did a chemistry test or something with one of the wee girls that was potentially gonna play Lucy, and they all went, this is creepy.

It felt creepy.

This is creepy as shit. So, they needed to find a sort of fairly experienced, who looked like a child. And I looked like a child until I was about 29 or 30, I'd say.

And you have a little sister.

Yeah, only 2 years younger, but yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but you have experience. Yeah.

So they wanted the lack of threat because, you know, Mr. Tumnus essentially kidnaps Lucy.

I know.

And drugs her.

Yeah.

Well, not drugs her, puts her to sleep with music. Drugs her with music.

Yeah.

And then hands her over to the White Witch. It is a bit creepy. Pretty intense when you think about it.

You're really making me rethink Narnia.

Well, you know, another story to embarrass you. So I saw it in the movie theater with my best friend, Callie, and we walked out and she goes, Mr. Tumnus is so hot.

What?

This is so mental.

She was and is obsessed. And I'll be honest, I was like, the half animal?

Half goat guy?

Yeah. I was like that.

What?

So it was a joke for a long time that she was in love with Mr. Tumnus.

There's definitely been some Tumnus over the years. Yeah!

It definitely makes me like Kelly more.

She's kinky, I guess.

Yeah, that's great.

You know the weird thing? C.S. Lewis, when he wrote that, he writes a scene where the wee girl comes to the wardrobe, she meets a gentleman, they get on famously, they go back home, they have a brilliant conversation, and then he puts her to sleep and he hands her over and kidnaps her, right? For that role, he chose the faun, or the satyr, which in Greek mythology anyway, is the not just follower, but disciples really, of Dionysus. The Bacchae, the Bacchus, who engaged in in major raves and orgies. Like, they were, they were a promiscuous sexual entity.

The pan figure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

I guess she could sense it.

Yeah, she was looking for something a little—

She really is.

God bless Kelly. She was a good Mr. Tumnus. Um, that movie was an enormous success. I mean, it made $500 million. Were you experiencing after that movie Like, oh, I'm in a major hit, people are seeing me on the street? Were you having that moment after that movie?

I don't know, actually, if I was, because I looked so different. I'm not sure that it really did that. Shameless was the biggest thing back home anyway. It was Shameless.

And it's on TV every— you're in everyone's living room.

Exactly. And that was such a sort of, we must tune into Shameless because it was just, what's going to happen this week? It's mental. I think Shameless was a big one, and then it was probably Wanted for a long time, then X-Men, of course.

Well, there's one interesting thing about Last King of Scotland, my favorite movie. I love that movie so much. I stole one of the songs for the second movie I directed. I just put it straight in there.

Which song?

That incredible Afro-Cuban song that's playing. I can't, off the top of my head, remember the name.

It's a great soundtrack on that.

It's the most incredible soundtrack. But I learned today that Forest Whitaker suggested you to Kevin Macdonald?

I don't think so. I thought I was on board before Forest.

Oh, okay.

I was on board from, like, I was 22 or something. And again, I got lucky 'cause we had a Scottish director, Kevin Macdonald, Donald, and we had a movie that kind of needed a star in it for Fox Searchlight to back it and make it work. And we were pretty low budget, but still. I think they were out to Sam Jackson, who I've later worked with and love, but he wasn't available in the end, so Forrest came in. But before that, I was offered the job. I take the job. I'm going to do the job. But it was like a year of, like, are we going to get greenlit? Are we going to find the right guy for Erie? And in that time, kind of what happened on Wanted happened on this as well, where there were they were like, this is a low-budget independent feature. And they were like, we need a star in that role. Nobody knows who this kid James McAvoy is. The director, who was Scottish, I think, was like, well, we need somebody who's Scottish because the role is Scottish. The film's called Last King of Scotland. It's important. And I don't want somebody doing an accent that's bad.

And they made him see lots of people who were stars already, and he just fought for me. And I was so lucky. And he asked me to camera test a year after I'd got the part. And I was like, ah, fuck.

I feel like you could only lose it.

Yeah, totally. And I think I gained I gave a really bad audition, and somehow he still fought for me to get the part. So thank you, Kevin Macdonald.

You're so outrageously good in it.

Thank you.

Is it a movie you're proud of?

Yeah, definitely.

It's such a fucking incredible movie. The texture of the movie, the colors of the movie.

Anthony Dodds-Mantle and Kevin, their work together in that was just stunning. And I've worked with Anthony again, the DP, when I did a Danny Boyle film. He's just so, so good.

He felt very Danny Boyle. The movie felt pretty Danny Boyle, in a good way.

Anthony's work is so dynamic. Always on the edge, always trying to push the forefront of a new technology or something, which I don't think necessarily he was doing in Last King, but it felt really dynamic. And it's a beautiful film to look at as well. Yeah, I'm really proud of it.

Yeah, it's so spectacular. And you were so young when you got to do that.

I was a kid, man.

Yeah, yeah, 25, 26.

I look at myself in that, and I'm like, I look 16. This is so weird.

Yeah. Okay, then Atonement comes along, and we talked about that. And you were nominated for a Golden Globe for that, you and Keira Knightley. Nominated for a BAFTA. Now, this is not to be mean, but I noticed this happened twice where Atonement is based on a novel and the author came out and said that she did not agree with the casting of you, right?

No, that happened on a—

well, it also happened.

Zadie Smith on White Teeth.

Well, then there's—

oh no, you don't want to be on this.

Third, because the one that I wrote down, was it His Dark Materials? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Never said that. That's not But I kind of stayed away from Philip 'cause I was scared to meet him. And I also, on Atonement, chose to stay out of the way of Ian McEwan 'cause I was just like, I'm nothing like the character you wrote physically, and I don't want you to tell me that to my face. It's crazy. I remember on that set, I was playing the lover of Cecilia, or Celia. Cecilia or Cecilia? Played by Keira Knightley. Incredible actor, one of the most beautiful women in the world.

Yeah, outstanding.

And I was like, pwoah! And I'm like, I scraped into the room. I had to do endless camera tests past people who already had big movie careers.

I was like, whoa, I'm kind of lucky to be here.

And the character's written as this— I think the word Adonis is how he's described. He's like 6'5, working class, but going to private school, kind of like Adonis belt and all that. And I'm like 5' nothing and skinny and pale as shit. And still been able to do my job and feeling entitled enough to be there.

It was a wild success.

They say action in a film, But then I also remember Akira's boyfriend at the time was on set a lot, and we were filming this beautiful, beautiful country house outside Ludlow in Shropshire, and it was the middle of, like, a heat wave in summer. And I just remember, like, one of these moments, I was thinking to myself, like, I hope people believe that she'd actually fall in love with me or whatever, and, like, oh, God, that we'd actually be a couple. And I just looked up, and I saw her boyfriend at the time, who was no top on, 6-foot-odd, jacked, long, flowing hair... Gorgeous. ...just coming over the hill like Heathcliff, do you know what I mean?

And I'm just like...

Ah, fuck.

If I ever needed a shriveler, that was it.

Yeah. Okay, now you start X-Men. That franchise starts in 2011. You play Professor X. I guess I was wondering, when you go into that movie and it's Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence and that gang, how does that relationship evolve? Are you ever intimidated? How does it evolve? You end up doing 4 together. Is it like, do you keep returning to summer camp? What's the vibe of of doing 4 of those movies?

Yeah, the first ones were nuts, actually. The first one, I was like the most senior member of the cast, really, in terms of movie experience and age. And then getting to be on the other side of the decision-making process a little bit, 'cause I was part of the camera tests with all these different actors, like Moira and Magneto even. I remember we saw a few great actors for Magneto who were incredible and have gone on to have amazing careers. But when Michael came in, it was just like, whoa! As a movie star, but again, a real actor as well. And we thought that we could definitely build something and have good chemistry together. I think the first one's great. It's a lot of fun, and it's a bit of a reboot in terms of tone from any of the other X-Men movies.

I didn't realize Matthew Vaughn directed that until today.

Yeah, and he really put his own stamp on it. I loved it for that. The movie kind of, like, survives on the chemistry of the buddies, you know what I mean? Of the buddy movie.

Well, not to be cruel to previous comic book movies, but this one was actor first. I don't think I had ever seen a cast assembled that was so actor-driven. Favreau did the directing, that with having Downey play Iron Man. I think that was very like actor first. But other than that, this one is just, oh, this is so cool, these are the superheroes.

That was Matthew totally, totally going for that. Character arc was like so important to the plot progression. But everybody that came in after that was just like one after the other, incredible actor, incredible actor, incredible energy as well. I'll never forget the first time I met Jen, and she like flew in. She's already picking up awards and up for an Oscar for like Winter's Bone or something like that. Was she up for an Oscar for that?

Anyway, but winning She hadn't done Silver Linings yet, or she had?

No, no, no. That was a good few years later. She was 18. She got off the plane, came in, costume fitting, rehearsed all day, and then took a plane out that night. You know what I mean? I didn't see her again for 2 weeks. But the energy and the kind of quality of charisma of that person, it was like standing in front of a high-powered fan.

You were just like, whoa, she's amazing.

One of the fastest wits I've been around in the movie business is Jen Lawrence. Her and Stephen Fry, just—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's very funny.

Okay, Split, I want to talk about just because you got jacked.

You know what? I didn't get that jacked for Split. I didn't have time.

Okay, Glass, the sequel.

Split, I got the gig like 2 weeks before we shot it, 'cause it was meant to be— I get in trouble naming the actor who was— I've done it too many times, and apparently I should stop doing it. But anyway, there was another actor playing the part, and he, for whatever reason, decided not to do it fairly last minute. I got the job 2 or 3 weeks beforehand, so I really didn't have a chance to get too big. And I was toned and all that, so it was fine. And we made the most out of it with lighting and stuff. But Glass, I'd actually been in hospital, For what? I had a—

Split personality?

I had a split personality. I had a lung puncture because they saw a shadow on my lung, so they wanted to biopsy it to see if it was cancer, which it wasn't, which was great. But that was botched and I nearly died.

Because you got an infection?

Yeah, I was at home 2 days later and my lungs just collapsed in bed one night, and I was on my own as well, so it was crazy.

Oh my goodness.

Crazy. So I spent like 2 or 3 weeks in hospital. They tried everything to clean it out, nothing was working. So they were like, we're gonna need to cut you open big style. go in with, like, dish soap, basically, and just clean you out. Scoop it all out. So, I had to then go from that to one of the X-Men movies. And I knew I had the time of that X-Men movie, which is like 4 or 5 months, to get ready for Glass. And Glass, unlike Split, I was the Beast most of the movie, and I was just outside in broad daylight as well. So, you don't have too much cool studio lighting to give you, like—

The contours. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, I was like, I'm really gonna need to do the real thing. I'm gonna need to go for it. I remember saying to Nate, like, you're gonna need to get me a trainer. Oh, yeah, we'll get you down to the local gym and one of the trainers or whatever. I was like, no.

I want the Marvel trainers.

I've worked with those guys before, and they're great, you know what I mean? But I'm gonna need somebody that can make you look like a Greek fucking figure from mythology, you know what I mean? The people who know how to do it. And they're expensive. But the guy that worked me was amazing, and he came to Montreal where I was making the movie for X-Men.

It wasn't Duffy, by chance?

No, no, no, no, no, no. It was Magnus. Magnus Liggbak.

Perfect name for that.

He looks like a Viking. He didn't move in with me, but he was just with me a lot and kind of regulated what I ate and trained me just right. just right. And basically, for the first 4 weeks, he rehabilitated me. I could walk, but I couldn't run, couldn't cycle, couldn't jog. And I was, like, on set every day as well, doing crazy hours as Charles. And so he did a lot of rehabilitation and functional movement and then put the pounds on me really fast.

And do you not get addicted to it? Like, I'm so addicted to it.

I was addicted to it for about 3 years, and I was, like, honestly the biggest I've ever been. I was in the film Speak No Evil, there's a shot in it where people are like, you were CGI there. You were CGI. And I'm like, no, I wasn't.

Was it a decision to like, all right, I'm gonna not—

Yeah, I got a movie in Germany back in 2024, and it was like, this is not good for this character. I stopped doing that. I started running. I started walking and just eating a hell of a lot less and got skinny again for the first time in years. My neck kind of disappeared. My traps disappeared. My traps get too big too quick.

Oh, poor you.

Oh, darling, it's such a shame.

My muscles are just—

they just develop.

They just grow so easily.

They're out of control.

And then kind of liked the hours that I got back in my day. And then I started directing, and you give your whole life to that for like 2 years. This is 2 years since I wrapped the movie. I started properly working on the movie about 3 years ago, and I'm still here. 3 years later, I'm still here trying to sell my movie. It's different as a director. You never let it go.

Oh, I know.

You think about it all the time. You sweat and blood about it all the time. You're anxious about it all the time. You're loving it all the time. Hopefully you are loving it all the time. I did. I was lucky enough. to be able to love it. But I think that's why it's important to do something, if you're capable, and, you know, not everybody's in this position as a director, but if you're lucky enough to be able to choose your work and create your work, you really need to be trying to create the stuff that you feel genuinely passionate about because you are going to sweat blood for it. And if you're doing that for something that you're not really invested in, oh my God, that'd be soul-destroying.

So how do you decide to take on California Scheme and do it? Do you read the script? Because you're so employed as an actor. We could have gone for another 2 hours on all the things you're doing. And then also you're doing fucking plays in the West End. Why at that moment do you decide, yeah, okay, I'm gonna make the time for it now? What's happening in life?

First of all, it's the professional thing of I've not reached the end goal. I've not completed acting, but I am at a place where I'm really quite comfortable. You know, if I've got the right kind of role that I'm suitable for, yeah, then I'm pretty And so, it was about kind of putting myself in a place where I'm not comfortable again, I guess, and challenging myself.

Were you getting a little bit bored? I heard you say it in other interviews that this probably does correlate to a midlife crisis to some degree.

Directing?

Yeah.

It was either a Porsche or directing. I don't think directing was part of the midlife crisis. That's something that I felt I needed to do for years and years and years, and since I was in my 20s, really. But having a nice career as an actor got in the way of it, I guess. What was it about this one at this time? I don't know. I put the word out there that I wanted to direct. And look, how many first-time directors get to do that? Hey, I'm just gonna tell my agent I fancy directing a film, and then I'll start to get scripts. I'm really, very genuinely aware of what a privileged position that is to be in. But everything that was coming to me was the kind of stuff that— like, for example, I've played like 5 or 6 Scottish people in my entire career, 'cause there's just not that many movies made about Scottish people. And when I say I want to be a director, it's a privilege. I get furnished with scripts. Every one of them are Scottish. A lot of them are, like, the poverty kind of exploitation a little bit.

I think the writers would argue that it's not exploitation, it's an examination and a sort of revelation. But I wanted to do something that was entertaining. So, when this came along, it kind of ticked those boxes because it was about that end of the socioeconomic ladder. It was also about my home country. And it was also about something that I've experienced. The boys in this film, to make it in the business, in show business, they had to sacrifice their authenticity, their integrity, and their identity in a very specific set of circumstances where they're almost told they need to do that. Now, that doesn't necessarily get told to everybody, but that is a path, as an artist, you are going to walk. The path that they walk in that film is one that I still feel like I've walked a version of for 30 years, which is, how much of myself am I sacrificing to get what I want? And what do you want? Do you want a bigger part, a better part, more money, awards? Like, what is it? is it? And at what point— because everybody has sacrificed something. The postman sacrifices his time with his family every time he walks out the house to go and be a postman.

So we all sacrifice something for our jobs. But when is it too much?

When are you sacrificing your identity?

Your identity, your health, your whatever. But when is it too much? Because the business is, I think, based on sacrifice. The whole idea of the show must go on, you wear it as a badge of honor and you adhere to that principle. The show must go on. But you're like, fuck, if the show must go on, it's really easy to exploit people.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's really easy to hurt people. And also, your bosses are usually only your bosses for a few months, or a season, or whatever. You're somebody else's problem on the next one. So just get what you need to get out of them, no matter what it does to them. Which is why it's a dangerous place for kids, I think. And so the idea of The Show Must Go On being based on this idea that I've always got in my head, which is like, the first play was an animal or a person being sacrificed, and they were trying to make the rain come, or whatever. and there was smoke, and there was production values, and all that kind of stuff. And everybody was just there to try and make the rain come for the crop. But at the same time, everybody was like, that was really fucking cool. Can we do that again next Saturday night?

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

So, I think our relationship with what's on stage and what's on screen, and any kind of performance, or part of the contract is the audience expect you to sacrifice something.

Yeah.

They expect you to leave something of yourself on the table or on the screen, you know?

Because they're going to openly admire and adore you adore you, and we know intrinsically that you should have to pay something in return.

Yeah, I think so.

You shouldn't.

I know, but I think that is the— that is the intrinsic bargain on the table. We are social primates. We are status animals. For us to willingly give up status, which is what you do as an audience member, you've got to give me something. I want to see you bleed a little bit. You got to earn it.

That's the artistic dynamic between you and the audience. Yeah, but that permeates, I think, through the business side and the kind of institution of the business as well, It's like, it's all about sacrifice. So everybody just sort of willingly sacrifices, and that's why a lot of people get hurt, I think.

Yes. Okay, so let's just start with the fact that this is based on a true story, which is kind of mind-blowing. And I wonder, did you have any awareness of Billy and Gavin in 2003?

Do you know what? My sister was in a Scottish hip-hop group at the time called Streetside, and she— I seem to remember her mentioning something about these mad guys, Cylabone Brains. But no, I really didn't know anything until the script came across my desk, and then I had a look at the documentary. There's a really good documentary called The Great Hip-Hop Hoax. And I was like, this is wild. And it gives me the opportunity to entertain, but also talk about something that is part of the collective kind of Scottish experience as well.

Yeah. So, okay, so there's these 2 boys in Scotland, Billy and Gavin, and they're of low economic status. They're getting bullied when we meet them. They're not the studs of their school, right? They're getting chased everywhere they go, and they're super into rapping. And then they hear about this record label that's open auditions trying to find the next Eminem, basically. Yeah.

The flyer at the time, I think, was the next D12, the next Eminem.

Right. So these 2 kids go down to London, which is its own huge journey.

Huge.

The thing that I loved about it that you immediately capture is like, I just remember being that age, and whatever I did, I thought I was in a fucking famous novel. Like, just the enthusiasm I had to go to downtown London. downtown Detroit or to go do this thing.

I used to listen to music on my way to work. I felt like I was in a movie. It was amazing. And I don't know if I just don't have that anymore because I'm old.

Yeah.

Or if I don't have that anymore because we're never just alone with our thoughts as much as we are because of like social media or whatever.

Is that it? I think it's just the fantasy. There's so much unknown ahead of you. And so because it's unknown, you're free to just pick the most spectacular version of what the unknown might be. But But then over your 47 years, a lot's known, a lot's been experienced. If I could implant into 17-year-old James, your life currently on paper, what you would have thought that was going to feel like versus what it has felt like. The gap between those, right, would be so enormous.

Huge. Yeah, huge. And I think I'd look at some of the decisions I've made or some of the sort of ways that I live my life. I'd be like, no, don't do that, man. I think I would judge myself a little harshly.

Sure.

I don't know about you as a performer and as an actor, but one of the reasons why I think performance art in education for young children is really valuable, especially for kids who come from neighborhoods without many opportunities, is that it— for me, standing on stage or standing in front of the camera, getting bad reviews, failing, and then still realizing I'm still alive, and I get to go again, and I get to try again, and I learn, or I don't. It makes me understand that the next time I need to go into a room and speak to people, whether you become an actor or not, putting your kids on stage, not for work, just for fun, it can really help them understand that when the spotlight is on them in everyday walk of life, they'll be okay.

They'll survive.

That doesn't become a fight-or-flight response. It becomes like, no, I just need to tell them what my plan is for the next week of this business. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Death is not on the other side.

No, if I can't speak properly, it doesn't mean I'll die, and it doesn't mean I'm going to get fired and all these things. And I think that when you get a certain level of higher education and people say entitlement, I think the biggest thing that they come away with is not more intelligence necessarily, but a feeling of entitlement. Entitlement is not a bad thing. Everybody should feel entitled to be there, to be present, to have value, to have their place in the room. The only thing that's wrong is that there's only a certain pocket of people in society who get to feel entitled.

Yes. Yes. So these 2 kids, they make their way to London and they rap for these scouts and they're so fucking Scottish.

Yeah.

And I guess what would be funny to us over here is like, we don't know all the rungs of the status ladder as far as these accents go, but what is clear is that it's pretty looked down upon. Yeah.

Yeah, there's definitely a regional bias. It's not just to do with Scotland, actually. It's like to do with even the north of England and Certain regional parts.

We have it obviously with the South, right? Like the North makes fun of the South, and the implication is that they talk dumb. I'm learning that's a similar—

It's definitely a part of our culture. It's not every single person, but it's been enough that I can 100% back it up that it happens, you know what I mean? Is it the worst kind of bias? Is it the worst kind of prejudice? No, there are many kinds, but this is the one that I've experienced in my life, and it's also a movie that I resonated with because of it.

But it also gives you a fun chip on your shoulder.

A chip, a chip, a chip. I don't know if I've had a chip on my shoulder. I used to a little bit when I was in my early 20s. I was looking for the fight, 'cause it made you feel like you were solid, and you were on solid ground, you knew where you were. Just find the injustice and fight it. Whereas I'm a bit more forgiving and kind of take it on with conversation more now. But I think that one of the reasons why the story's fairly universal, even though it is very specifically Scottish, is because that happens everywhere. There's whole swathes of North America who get left out when it comes to the people that are allowed to be seen on TV. All over the world, all over Britain, there's parts of it where, no, you don't get to be an artist in that way. You don't get to be on screen in this way. There's whole swathes of our society that aren't served culturally or represented culturally, as we know. It's a reductive thing for me to say. We know this. But this example of it was something that I noticed. And sometimes people go to me, oh, but there's so many Scottish actors.

And I'm like, name me 10.

Right. Yeah.

Go. Like, name me 10 Scottish movies. Like, name me 10 in the last 10 years. You kind of go, boo-hoo. It's nobody's responsibility to serve the cultural needs of Scotland other than Scotland. We need to do better. It's not Hollywood's responsibility to make movies about Scottish people. But that's why I wanted to make this. I wanted to make a film that was about the Scottish experience, but which is also sort of celebratory of Scottish culture and also entertaining. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

If you dare. Yeah, so these kids, they do this audition, and of course, they're promptly told, like, we can't even fucking understand you.

They literally get called the Rapping Proclaimers, and that's a line that the 2 guys say that they heard right then. And by the way, the Proclaimers rapping? I'm here for that.

What are the Proclaimers? The Proclaimers!

And I would walk 500 miles an hour.

Oh, okay, right.

for the Rapping Proclaimers, honestly. But for these 2 guys who were so in love with American culture and hip-hop and comic books, that was the worst thing you could have said. Not even being rejected, but like, to be likened to these arguably quite straight, square, folksy rockers from Scotland and told that nobody wants you doing this.

So then they decide they're going to present themselves as rappers from California. And this is a real story.

Yeah, they invent these whole guys. They basically engage in method acting. acting for 2 and a half years of their life. And the real story was 2 and a half years.

It was 2 and a half years.

Our movie feels like 2 and a half months.

There's a Milli Vanilli parallel a little bit.

There is, except these guys could actually perform, they could rap, they could write as well.

Yeah, they were quite good.

But there was a lie at the heart of it.

Yeah, so they start pretending they're from LA, but then they don't know anything about LA. At one point they say, where in LA? And they go like, Beverly Hills. And they're like, oh, that was a miss.

We're from the projects.

Which projects?

You know, the ones in Beverly Hills. And they're like, what? There's a bit where they go like, where are you from? One of them goes, Sandy, and the other one goes, Angeles. And they're like, yeah, Sandy Angeles.

Yes, yes. They don't know shit. So they gotta fucking get their story straight. And then lo and behold, they go and perform somewhere as these American rappers who are apparently on tour in Europe. And there's a scout in the audience from the same record label of which you play the CEO or the president of that. And they get now round 2 audition with the same company. Now they're as American and they get signed.

The same music. The same songs, same music. Just like with a few lyric tweaks and different accents.

And they get a record contract.

Wow.

And then they start performing. And then now this pressure of like, when are they gonna finally announce?

Yeah, the jig is up.

So the idea was that they were gonna go down there, hopefully get the deal, and then the game was, as soon as we release something, we're gonna come out and expose the industry for this regional bias. that we've suffered. Because here we are with the exact same tracks, and you all love it. And here we are on MTV. And they did go on MTV a lot. And then, of course, when they get that moment in the movie, they get that moment where they release the track, and they're on MTV, and here's the moment they're gonna come clean. They're gonna embarrass the music industry, or at least this label that they've been working with. And of course, they can't not enjoy the fame.

Okay, back to the thing that we just said about you too, is like, they were fearless when they had nothing to lose. And then the second they had something, they were overrun with fear of losing it.

It's weird though. I don't think I've ever been afraid of losing my career. Ah, yes, I have. I don't know. What is it that made me mental in the last few years?

You would concede you'd have to adjust your lifestyle now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a legitimate fear. It's like, I live this way, I enjoy living this way, and I'd have to change that.

I guess so. I guess so. But I don't really feel fear. It's weird. I don't get motivated by fear. So it's an interesting question for me, but I think one that I'll bore everybody by sitting here pondering. Why did I go off the rails just recently?

Yeah, it's weird to think about. You can rest on a big moral high ground when you don't have anything. You know, like, I mean, this is going to be an unpopular opinion, I think, but I do think it's true. And when I listen to people on podcasts and stuff and they're they're always taking down, like, people who have money or people who are famous. And I'm like, it's really easy for you to say because you don't have it. And when you have it, of course you want to keep it. Of course you like it. Of course it changes you. I don't know, it's a tricky—

Judgmentalism, I find it so hard to accept. I'm not patting myself on the back saying I never judge people. We judge people every day. We do it subconsciously.

Well, you have to to not You make an assessment of the person you're chatting with. Are they going for my wallet or not? Do I trust this person to get in their car?

Exactly.

There's nothing wrong with a certain level of it.

Yeah, you have to to survive.

But going out of your way to express your opinions on how other people are living their lives that have got no bearing on your day, how they parent, how they park, it does not affect me. Let them be. Do you know what I mean?

Yes, yes, yes.

It's hard enough being yourself without having opinions about other people's shit.

Yeah.

Anyway, That's a weird one.

There's a lot of different uses for it. Some of them are just vile. Some of them are to shore up your own motivation, which is like, ah, that's why I work really hard on the thing so that I'm not like that.

Do you spend time like in the playground with like other parents, people you've never met before, but your kids are playing together? So the other parents kind of telling you their parental choices with conviction, like, no, no, it's the only way. You must, you must, you must. And you're like, I know when you go home, you're doing the exact same thing as me, which is, this isn't working. Is this right? I don't know. Should we be trying something else? But you're in the park proselytizing to me, editorializing to me, preaching to me like you have completed parenting.

Yes.

But that's to make you feel better.

That's the great illusion of parenting is you do figure it out. And then one week later, they're different.

Yeah, they've moved the goalposts.

Yes. And you're like, oh no, I need a new strategy this week. And then they become teenagers. And you're like, oh my God, now I need an entirely like like I'm re-meeting them almost as totally different people now.

Because there's quite a lot of years between my eldest and my youngest.

You're 16 and 4?

Yeah, yeah. I'm doing it all again, and it's kind of hilarious being back in the park and all the dynamics with other parents. Yeah, there's this thing that guys do quite a lot where you'll be watching your kid playing with some other kid, and we've never met before, but our kids are suddenly like tight. And you're like standing beside this guy you've never met before, and you'll go like, oh, your kid's really like— he can really run. Or like, oh, he can really hold the monkey bars brilliantly. That's, that's And like, what age is, uh, what age is your kid? You know what I mean? Because he's trying to like gauge it. Gauge like, is my kid failing? Should my kid be doing better? And you're like, oh, it's a weird thing we do with this kind of comparison. I always want to say like, oh, he's 3, actually.

It comes from a sweetness because I do think you don't know when you have a baby, you don't know what they're supposed to be doing. So you are, you are kind of looking to see like, are they on track?

Yeah. Do I need a specialist? You're always waiting to find out if you need a specialist or not. Yeah. Like, oh, but she's been making this weird noise really loudly for a month and a half. Is it time for a specialist? And then it just goes away and you're like, oh, thank God we didn't need a specialist. Oh, thank God.

I know, I know. It's a wild thing you do being a parent.

Well, the other fun thing that it exposes, once you turn on the light switch to being popular, the intoxication of that and the availability of drink and drugs and attractive people and late nights, the rapidity at which that took over these two.

Right, right.

How one navigates in a healthy manner is beyond me. Anyone who can do that, I'm impressed.

Especially when you're young as well, and you're still forming and all that. Look, I navigated it a little bit with— for a lot of my 20s, I was kind of keeping an eye on myself. And I think I went too far, but I was like, work ethic, work really hard, be super professional. That was my life. It was kind of devout actor. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Were you not going out and partying at all?

A little bit, but nothing regular.

You were married really young too.

I was married pretty young. And nobody at home was going, oh, we are working class, and always remember you're working class. working class, but it's in you. You come from it. And I left it really young, but so in my head it was like the whole idea of stay true to where you come from, don't forget where you came from, all that, which is a good thing in some ways. I think I went too far away a little bit. All my hatred of judgmentalism— I was way more judgy when I was in my early 20s and all that.

Of your peers and how they were.

Yeah, the decisions they were making and all that. And so that stopped me from really taking advantage of all the opportunities I could have had that could have also messed me right up.

Do you think some of it too is driven by the fact that you didn't feel like you belonged there? So you had to really prove with this crazy work ethic and this crazy dedication...

Maybe.

...as this piece of shit from Scotland, this terrible place with this ugly accent.

Not just that. Not just even the regional bias, even just physically as well. Like I say, again, you're playing a romantic lead against Keira Knightley in an amazingly beautiful costume drama that you just know is one of the best things you've ever worked on and will ever work on in your life. And you're like, I'm like 5'7, malnourished, pasty, transparent skin looking.

They wouldn't have cast you if people saw you like that though.

Yeah, that's just using you.

No, no, but like in terms of your self-perception. And by the way, all these things that I've just said are true as well. They're not really arguable about me at the time. And so you go like, I'm not the usual thing that would get here. So I realize how lucky I am. I better not fuck it up.

I gotta work extra hard.

On Atonement, I remember Joel wanted to live with some of the key crew and all of the actors in Shropshire, near Ludlow, where we were filming. They all stayed in this big manor house, kind of like the manor house that was used as a location. And I remember thinking to myself, I can't do that, 'cause I was scared of it.

Them seeing the real you? Maybe.

Or drinking too much, going off. If it's parties every night or whatever, I don't know if that's what happened there, but if it was like that, would I be able to kind of, like, resist that? And would I then be able to do my job and all that? So, I remember it being a bit of a thing, and it became quite clear that it was like, no, he definitely wanted us all to stay together. So, I kind of framed it as an actor, and I was just like, look, Robbie is— he's the only one of the whole group who's working class. He is separate. He speaks like them, but he isn't like them. And I think I should be separate.

You convinced them?

Yeah. I lived in, like, the gardener's cottage of the property that the film was shot on. It was amazing. It was really beautiful. I was there for, like, 3 months. It was gorgeous.

Okay, so to finish up California Scheme, it obviously comes to a head. This lie is gonna come out, and then their life just kind of collapses.

Yeah.

And the title sequence, we see footage of these real guys, and it's so rad to see it because it's a very unbelievable story, and it kind of cements it for me.

At the beginning, when it comes up at the beginning, it says, based on a true story, and then we flip the word story to lie.

Uh-huh.

Does that make you think that you're watching a true story, or does that make you think you think it's possibly fictional?

No, I didn't do that. Not the latter.

Because I think sometimes we did have a version of it without that at all at the beginning, so people just thought they were watching a rags-to-riches-to-rags story. And then at the end, they dropped the information that, holy shit, this actually happened.

It's way more rewarding, in my opinion, to know what actually happened. All right. But I also love nonfiction over fiction. But whatever. The notion these 2 guys are gonna pull off being American— they're not even that good at it.

You know what, if you ever watch the documentary, which is a really good documentary, The Great Hip-Hop Hoax, the guys' accents are not really good. They're slipping left, right, and center.

You'd have to be in England for you to believe that these guys were American.

They were on MTV and no one's catching it.

They were on MTV multiple times. It was TRL was the show back then. Yeah, I loved TRL. But copyright, we couldn't— we could say it was MTV, but we couldn't say it was TRL. Back then, I would be able to tell you if somebody was doing a bad American accent. Like in 2003, I'd be able to go, you're doing an accent. But here's the thing, there was execs from the record label, because the record label was a massive international record label, they had the American offices arm and all that kind of stuff. They had the execs from the American office coming over to Britain going, what are you guys doing here? You need to get on a plane. We're going to take you over. We're going to go wild in America. That's where you need to be.

Yeah.

And the guys the whole time are just going like, we've got British passports. They still hadn't signed a contract because how could they sign a contract? They've got no ID.

Yeah.

That is anything other than Scottish. They couldn't get ID. It would be judged to be fake if they made it. So they had to just keep dodging and swerving. That was all in the script at one point, but we condensed it down.

Yeah, yeah. Were they involved in the movie?

Gavin and Billy were involved in the movie.

That's why I was asking about the title sequence. So did you spend time with these guys?

Yeah, Gavin at first more so, because Billy was weirdly affiliated with a different film that was going to be about their journey, but from his point of view more. And then that film never happened, unfortunately, and Billy came on years later. But Gavin was really involved with the music. What we realized when we got the rights to the music from Gavin, who held all the rights back then, only 20-odd years ago, you know, you were releasing hip-hop tracks, you were sampling, sampling, sampling, building the backing track, and then you were putting it out there. And you kind of went like, that's a bit of Sting, that's a bit of so-and-so, that's a bit of Aretha Franklin, whatever. And nobody cared. Now people care. Now people are like that. So we got the rights to all the music and then realized we couldn't use any of the music.

Because it had millions of dollars worth of samples in it.

Exactly. So we had to rebuild everything from the ground up to sound exactly the same but have no samples in.

Yes.

Which was nuts. So he was really involved in that, along with our amazing music supervisor and music editor. And then Billy, when he came on board, we found ourselves needing some— there was like some freestyle rap moments in it that are meant to be like freestyle rap moments. And our writers, Archie and Elaine, who are brilliant, they ain't rappers. So they were like doing their version To be fair to them, like, they even held their hands up and were like, you're gonna need to get somebody from the culture to do this. So, we got in touch with Billy, and he was like, what do you want it to feel like? What do you want to be talking about? Where's the character at this point? And I just gave him a whole list of what I thought it could be, and he gave me, like, 20 things back in, like, 20 minutes.

Wow!

And it was amazing. So, his off-the-cuff, kind of threw it out in about half an hour, freestyles open and close the movie.

That's awesome. I'm assuming they both must look back on that and go, What an incredible, wonderful chapter. I'm so glad that was part of our life.

I think so.

I think so.

I mean, look, I think it was a really complex time for—

During the fallout.

For Gavin.

Yeah.

And, you know, as much as I was really keen to exploit the opportunities that this journey presented me as a filmmaker, which was to make a really propulsive, momentum-driven, entertaining mainstream movie that's funny and all that, there's a guy in it who almost pays the ultimate price because of the effect it has on his mental health. You're trying to, like, weigh that up and also not be exploitative. of the guy's experience, honor it, and explore it, but not exploit it in a titillating fashion.

And not make fun of it.

Exactly.

That's it.

And also, even for Billy, although things never got quite as mortal for him, he felt more certain in who he was going into it, so he was more certain when it was time to leave. But we're also showing him, and who's now still married to Mary and has 3 kids, we're showing him making some pretty dodgy decisions at the time as well. And his kids have got to watch that and all that. So that was very aware aware of all that. I was really grateful to Gavin and Billy for coming with us and trusting me to handle those moments sensitively and not just expose them sort of titillatingly.

In a cartoonish way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, my last question for you is, you were premiering this movie at the Toronto Film Festival.

Yes.

And you got belted by a Canadian?

He told me he was from Mexico.

Oh, okay.

What do you mean belted?

Hit with a belt? You got punched at a bar.

Yeah, I was sitting like this. I was sitting at the bar. Bar's here. and I'm sitting, producer on this side, producer on this side. We've done like 6 days selling the hell out of our film. I'm exhausted, and it's the end. We're just going and having a little roundup. Well done, guys. We did it. And somebody just cold-cocks me in the back of the head.

Oh, God!

Not that much of a slap.

And I looked at the producer, Danny, and John as well. And I was looking at them kind of laughing. It was really sore, but I was like, what the fuck, guys? And then I looked over, then I saw the guy storming out. He'd been getting thrown out because he was really drunk and dangerous. doing something weird around the corner. We'd never laid eyes on each other.

Oh, he just randomly picked you out.

He just randomly smacked a dude. And so I immediately kind of went from 0 to 90 and went after him.

Sure.

And then the 2 producers, they came after me and they put their hands on me. The minute they put their hands on me, I was like, I need to get on a plane. I need to get back to my wife and kids. If I end up with the police or something— and I immediately went from 90 to 0. But by this point, the guy turned around and he just sees me getting held back. So that then makes him come at me again.

Oh my God, we're disasters.

And so I'm getting held back even though I'm not looking for a fight anymore. I've never gone that hot to cold in my life that quick. And he's coming at me and he's getting held back. And then he starts to do this thing that I don't know if you've ever experienced when you're in a fight. It used to happen all the time when I was a kid. When you're squaring up to somebody or somebody's coming at you, just before they throw a punch, whatever, they're telling you where they're They're from. You know what I mean? I'm from Mexico, he goes. And I was like, what the fuck? And I almost went, I'm fucking Drumchapel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why do we feel the need to give our zip code and postal?

Because you're trying to establish your bona fide. You're trying to intimidate the person into backing down because that would be preferred.

It's like, you know, Game of Thrones. They're like, for fucking Westeros. It's like medieval times.

For Northumbria.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's so—

it is. It's like an honor thing.

If a guy says, I'm from Beverly Hills, versus, I'm from Baltimore, these are relevant details.

Yes. Nobody goes like, I'm from Chipping Norton. Yeah, yeah.

All things equal, I would prefer to fight the guy from Beverly Hills than the one from Baltimore.

Look, it was a whole lot of something and nothing. I've said as well, if I saw that guy, I'm 100% sure he'd be an all right guy. 90% sure.

The reverse engineering I would have done was like, people knew you were there. The dude knew there was a hotshot there. He didn't like that someone was getting a lot of attention. Do you think it was fully random, or do you think it might have had something to do with the fact that you're in movies?

I think it was fully random from the way that the bar staff were talking to me. They didn't even think he could see properly at that point.

Yeah, he's just swinging.

The bar staff said he thought he was in the bathroom and he was urinating in the bar around the corner, but he was so far around the other side of the bar that we hadn't even laid eyes on each other.

Some people will say that they have a punchable face, but you could say you have a punchable back of your head. Like, you probably never even occurred to you that you have, like, maybe an inviting back of your head.

I've had some pretty offensive haircuts. I'm desperately in need of a haircut right now.

Oh, I cut hair. That's true.

You cut hair?

Fantastic.

You ever had this thing as an actor where they're like, could you just keep growing your hair? Could you just keep growing your hair? And then the movie keeps going like that, and you're like, this is not a haircut. This is just grown-out hair.

This is bad.

So, yeah, I need a haircut.

There is no shape to this.

There is no— I've got to premiere a film and I don't have a haircut.

Well, James, it's been a delight to meet you. I thoroughly enjoyed your movie.

Thank you.

What an incredible first time out directing. It's called California Schemin', and it's out right now.

Thank you. That's so much to peddle you.

Yeah. I feel like this is so full circle for me.

Yeah, it is.

To have hated you, then admired you and worshiped you, and now to sit and talk with you is the delight.

That is wild, that story, man.

Yeah. I hated this guy, James McAvoy. Who is James McAvoy?

I'm so glad that you got to see, um, Last King of Scotland without knowing that that was the guy. Yes, because that might have skewed your opinion of my performance.

I hope I'm more objective than that, but no, it probably would have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, thank you guys.

Everyone see California Schemin'. It's out October 9th. Go see it. She's got to let them have the facts. Why do you think we need 2 words? Excuse yourself or recuse yourself?

Yeah.

Don't they mean the same thing? If you have some conflict of legal issues, you have to recuse. Well, you would do the same as if you excused yourself from the proceedings.

Yeah, but I think recuse must have been an old word.

An old-timey legal Latin. Yeah, it's more official duty. You recuse yourself.

And then excuse is the more layman's term.

You know, I keep trying to add words to my vocabulary. I don't know if you— are you act— do you actively try to still? I do.

I should. I should. I know that you do. Every— because you'll say— will you just say words that I know you've never said?

Well, the other day I used decamped, I think successfully, and I was so delighted because I've like heard that term and I've read it a few times and I just heard it coming out of my mouth. my mouth, like, we need to decamp to this location.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, you were present.

Where?

That means it must have come out very organically.

You don't even know.

Or maybe I—

or maybe you don't even think of the word decamp.

I don't. I don't think of that word.

It's a weird word.

And, and where were we decamping?

Well, it was like someone was telling a story and I said, so you had to decamp to blank. Oh, you weren't listening maybe at that moment is also Okay, um, okay, so decamp is new.

What else is new?

Well, we were taught by an armchairie in an interview, Edenic. I love that word, and I've, I found that it's applicable pretty often to say Edenic.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like that one.

You do use new words. I think you used a new word today, I heard.

Oh.

I don't remember what it was.

Okay.

But I was like, hmm, he's never— that's new.

That's clunky.

No, it wasn't clunky, but I was like, that's new, and that's I'm going to start hearing this come out of his mouth a bit. This is the cost of being around each other so much, the cost and the benefit. If I start saying a new word—

I'll know.

You will know because you're used to the way I speak.

If you see me once a year, you might assume I use the word all the time.

Yeah. Or even sparingly, but not like, oh, that's the first time he's trying it out.

Right.

Because you love now And now you love, love.

Oh, here's one. Let's see if I know about it.

Well, we were taught it here, prima facie. We were taught it by Stephen Dubner, and we discussed it in the episode. He said it and I was like, oh, wow. Oh, I like that. I'm going to start using that. And when you say, I'm going to start using that, you mean it.

I mean it.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do love prima facie.

Yeah, it's a good word.

Yeah. I was defending myself about prima facie in my head, laying in bed.

What do you mean?

Well, I'm like, some of these words, they're identical to other words that are more colloquial or more well known. So then do you come across as trying to be snobby or seem elite? But I was like, no. So often these words, they're just a little bit different. And then I was even thinking, so prima facie is on the surface. So minimally, it's more efficient. It's just 2 words as opposed to 3.

You don't need to— this is twisting yourself into a pretzel when you just like it.

Because I lay in bed and I hear criticisms from my hometown.

Yeah, that's what you're hearing.

That's right. And I defend myself against these criticisms from my hometown a lot of the day.

Yeah.

It's a big preoccupation of mine.

It's funny because maybe in this very specific case, for some reason, we're I don't know why, but I— because I don't care if people think I'm snobby.

Right.

But I do when I notice people using 10-cent— what is it?

Yeah, 20-cent words.

20-cent words, quarter, 25-cent words or whatever. I'm always like, it doesn't make me think anything bad, but it does pull me out for a second.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so I don't really do that. And I don't think I use 25-cent words.

I think I was heavily rewarded in my teenage years for having a big vocabulary. But me too, because I liked older girls, and I would be on the phone all the time with older girls just talking for hours. And they would say that they like that about me.

Yeah. I like people who have strong vocabularies, and I think I'm going in the opposite direction.

I think I used to Yeah. It's healthy, I think.

I am dumbing down.

Yeah. You're getting real simple.

That's not good. That's not good.

I also think, again, I think it's genetic. Well, how would we know? Because my mother was horny for words. Still is. She's the only one left in my life. I'll say something and she'll go, ooh, I love that word. What does that mean? She still gets piqued when she hears a new word. And I certainly have it. And Lincoln has it tremendously. She is collecting words as fast as she can. So I'm inclined to think there's some genetic component. Like, it's just— it's very curious that the 3 of us are obsessed.

But what's the— well, then why have I changed? Because I—

Why are you sliding away from that?

Yeah, because I used to— maybe it's just I really, really— I— maybe I used to do that because I wanted to sound smart, and now I really don't care about that?

That's likely. If I gave it a percentage, I would say I was only really 25% motivated out of sounding smart. I love— I love, like, I just love words, and I love having to say them in my mind a bunch of times before I, I feel confident enough to say them out loud. I don't know why. I just— I think there's a genuine love. I don't do any flashcards.

Should I get you some for your birthday?

A stack of flashcards?

I do. I was— last time I was home, I saw these old SAT flashcards I saved the cards. They made me laugh. They brought me back to a time.

You had saved them?

Oh, I saved everything.

You saved every damn thing. Why not?

You should see my parents' basement. It is horrifying.

Well, I've been on many a Zoom call with you in that basement.

Oh yeah.

And I've seen this, this stack, the shelves of your belongings.

Those—

no, those are my mom's pots and pans, her extra pots and pans, her second location.

That she will never ever pull out and use.

No, she uses— she goes— she uses them all the time.

Runs down the stairs.

She doesn't have space in the kitchen for it.

Oh, okay.

So she does that. But there's another room that has all the old stuff, and I don't know what happened. Some tornado went through there and it's a full disaster. I think it was my brother.

Pouring into all the collections looking for something?

Yeah.

Okay.

But you'll find really fun treats in there.

Yeah.

Old Beanie Baby. Well, yeah, remember I found Valentino?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's fun to go look through your I am so excited.

This is the most excited I've been in a while. I'm like counting down the minutes.

Till your—

Because I'm meeting Tyrell and Weekly.

Yes.

In just days in Las Vegas. I am so excited, like it's my first time going to Las Vegas.

That's fun.

What do you think about me wearing shorts to a Metallica concert? I'm like struggling with this for some reason.

What kind?

It's too hot.

hot, right?

And there'll be a lot of walking.

I think it's fine.

To wear shorts to a concert?

It's at the Sphere, right?

Yeah.

I think so.

Yeah, I don't know why I am questioning it.

Yeah, it's not like— is there like a step and repeat or something?

Well, we are going to a steakhouse beforehand. They might not want me in shorts.

That might be— but in Vegas, do you think they have rules?

I also think anything goes in Vegas.

That's what they say. Well, they say Everything stays. I don't know about everything goes, but can you, um, what kind of shorts are jean shorts?

The ones I wear every day. You see me in them. I have 3 different pair of Marine Layer dressy pants that I've cut off. Shorts are totally, shorts are totally fine for Metallica. Okay. All right. And what about the steakhouse beforehand? That might be more questionable. Okay. Maybe I'll buy a pair of disposable pants.

Why don't you look on the website? It'll say if there's a dress code.

You could probably call them too, give them a shout.

I think it's easier to just look on the website, but—

I don't know, where are they going to bury that info? I feel like it might be—

If there's a dress code, it would definitely be on the website.

Okay, but they do have to expect people are like, it's $100, they're coming off of, I guess, a golf course. People go to steakhouses after a golf course?

Like, yeah, I think in Vegas.

I'm overthinking it.

I think it's fine.

Okay, shirtless?

No.

Okay, that's— that's absolutely not.

Draw the line there.

Maybe at the Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder what the age range will be at the concert.

Yeah, I do too. I'm presuming a bunch of old guys like Aaron and Erin and I, but you never know. Like, now The Smiths, their huge fan base is young Latinas.

The Smiths?

Yes. In California, there's this huge subculture of Latinas and Latinos that are super into The Smiths.

Cool.

But what I'm aware of is how different now. Like, when I was a kid, Metallica came to Pine Knob in Detroit with The Cult. Aaron went. We had a friend whose older sister took those 2, and I was, like, so jealous that I didn't get to go. But also, I was so scared to go to that concert, as was Aaron. And we were just talking about the other day, he went, and yeah, there was, like, 20 or 30 fights he saw, and it's a bunch of aggressive dudes with long hair and drugs. And so it's just funny now, like, I'm going to see Metallica at the Sphere and I think, oh, it's going to be a quite lovely evening with a bunch of normal people because we've all aged out of that craziness. It's wild how differently I feel about this concert and previous ones.

Are you going to buy a t-shirt? Do they sell them?

There's nothing in life I want other than the safety of my children that's worth me standing in an hour-long In fact, you know, I did when I went to Sabrina Carpenter. I stood in a half-hour line, but for Delta.

I know, but it is for them because one day that will be a vintage shirt.

Sure.

And it might even for their kids. That's a good shirt to have.

I mean, I'll also be with Aaron and Erin. They're going to have a vote in whether or not we stay in line. But I also might just say, like, hey, Hey, see you at the seats.

Yeah. You know, see you at the seats. I'm gonna go get some vintage shirts.

See you at the seats. That's my new saying. That's my new motto. See you at the seats.

Okay.

I'm just wondering if you get in line if I want you to get me one too.

Oh, wow. Okay, so this was ultimately maybe about—

Thinking about the vintage shirt.

I can't imagine I cannot get the shirt that's for sale there on the internet. That feels impossible.

No, sometimes they have ones you can only get there and you can Which ones can I only get here?

Yeah. They have some very famous shirts, Metallica.

See?

Do you know about Metal Up Your Ass?

Yes.

Okay. Well, there's a song, Metal Up Your Ass, very early on.

Okay.

And the iconography on the shirt was a toilet bowl with a sword coming out of it.

Okay.

Yeah. That's pretty extreme.

That is.

Yeah. Metal Up Your Ass.

I mean—

Better than snakes up your ass, right?

Yeah. And it's a ding, ding, ding to Armchair Anonymous foreign objects prompt.

Right.

People have metal up there.

They do.

And it gets stuck.

Yeah.

Um, this is remind—

oh, there it is.

Wow.

That's the tee. Did you get that? That's probably worth $30.

$30?

I don't know. I'm, I'm just throwing it out there. You can get it for $16 on eBay right now.

Oh, really?

Yep.

Yeah.

Aaron had that shirt, as you can imagine. And the vice principal of our school did not appreciate anyone wearing that shirt to school.

Wait, you said '16?

Yeah.

Oh, no.

I mean, it looks like a remake though, so.

Oh, it's a fake one.

Yeah, it doesn't even look— There's one on Etsy for $300 that looks authentic.

Okay, that's what I'm talking about.

That might be in a Ridge?

Yeah, that would be in a Ridge.

Okay, nice and thin, cheese puffy.

Oh, I hope it's thin. I love tees.

You love 'em thin?

I love thin tees. I love vintage tees.

You love LaBertease.

I do. Yeah.

What do you think about— I healed up shockingly fast. No, yesterday I was an absolute mess.

Oh, this is going to be confusing shit. Okay.

Because the episode comes out on Monday.

This episode comes out on Monday, but Wednesday's episode we did yesterday. I'll just tell people, Wednesday's Fact Check we did yesterday.

Oh, so this will be a reverse.

This is a reverse back.

Oh.

So on Wednesday, you'll see Dax's face is all scarred up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tremendously so.

To be fair, you are right that within 24 hours—

I was almost excited for today's episode. I was assuming I would have as many scabs all over my forehead and cheeks and nose to see if our guest today would say anything because I really wanted to be able to use my whole metal grinder thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, they don't know about yet.

All right.

Anyways, but then I woke up this morning and to my dismay, not a new word, I saw that I had very little scab at all.

Yeah, you, in 24 hours, you really shed a lot of those scabs.

I think that's a testament to how good I am at the Hyphricator 2000.

I don't think that's it, but I—

I asked, it's rare that I request a Christmas present. Come Christmas, I'm like, I don't know, just forget about me.

Okay.

But I did request that Kristen make me a Hyfrecator 2000 t-shirt. I want Hyfrecator 2000 written, and then I want an image of the device. Okay.

Kind of like that Metallica shirt.

Yes. Metallica. Kind of like metal up your ass. So yeah, that request has been made.

Okay. That sounds nice.

Yeah. Because I got new air conditioners that are finally the right size for my house. You're still dealing with that itchy ear. Have you tried putting any hydrocortisone?

No.

Why not?

Do you think that's good?

Of course.

You think it might be bad for my hearing?

No, that's what I'm putting on. You're not going to put it on your eardrum. You're going to put it on the—

I need to go deep.

Okay, well, let's start midway or maybe.

I feel crazy with this ear thing.

Yeah, you need to definitely put some hydrocortisone in.

Okay. Yeah. It's making me feel—

I even have the perfect thing. No, I have an ointment that was given to me specifically for this.

Oh, really? Okay. Maybe.

Yeah. I'll try it. I'll give that a shot.

Because I— For bugs?

For bug infestation.

For bugs.

It's called Raid. Have you heard of this? Raid your booty.

I'm ready to just spray some Raid right in there.

You can spray it on a Q-tip and then—

Yeah. Yeah. Well, people haven't heard yet.

We have a bug in your system.

People haven't— no, we've heard that, but people haven't heard yet that what I learned is that itchy ear canals, also horrible phrase, itchy ear canals, also sounds like a band. Itchy ear canals are a sign of perimenopause. And so I hate that reality mixed with, this is like, I wake up in the night and I have to itch.

That's rough. We got to put some hydrocortisone in there.

Okay.

And I just remember hurting it. And give it a couple zaps just for good measure. Get the hyphricator in there. Zap, zap, zap. Once you have scabs in there, that'll distract you from the itching.

Yeah, probably.

A lot of people want me to tell you that the guy you're upset with betraying his friend—

Who I think is hot.

Yeah.

Rob R.

Rob R. That he bought her a Birkin bag.

I do know this.

People really wanted me to let you know, and that's just a testament to his hotness. Like, people are defending him.

Oh, they're saying like, it's actually fine.

Yeah. Remember when we had on— this was a fun thing to observe— when we had on Scott Eastwood and he told a story about working with Shia LaBeouf that he didn't like? The amount of people that were outraged someone had anything negative to say about Shia was noticeable.

Wait, wait, wait.

When we had Scott Eastwood on, people were upset because the clip had to do with this dustup he had with Shia on the Tank movie. And people were coming out in droves to defend Shia, really mad at Scott, as if he was reporting his opinion. He's just reporting these facts of what happened.

The story he was involved in.

Yes. Right. And so when I saw this really passionate thing, I was like, oh, man, the power of having a crush on someone is so strong. Yeah, you know, because I adore Shia as an actor. I think he is unbelievably talented.

Yeah, he is.

I also deeply admire his level of honesty I've seen him have in public. Also, he's beating up guys and saying he's a homophobe and has hit his girlfriend. So it's like, it's very interesting to see these women come out in such droves to defend him.

I think he's an incredible actor. I think if you're hitting women, to like that, that is a problem. Or not like that, obviously, but in some ways you are. You're endorsing a person that does that. I'm drawing the line there.

Yeah, but it was a real unabashed— so this thing with Rob mirrored that. It was so important people knew, no, he is a good guy. And that's just the power of being cute. Same with Shia.

That was my whole point of that whole story. is like, wow, what a handsome white man can get away with.

Yeah.

Is that everyone in this entire house just thinks he's perfect and good and nice.

Yeah.

And I'm sure he's nice, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like, that he could never be a traitor because he's hot.

Because he's enjoyable to look at.

Yeah. That is upsetting. I did know that he got more a Birkin bag and—

or said he was going to. Did that help alleviate your anger towards him?

I mean, I'm glad he did that. Yeah, that's nice.

How much did he win on this show?

I think you win like $250,000.

And then how much does a Birkin bag cost?

Range. I hope she— I hope he got her a nice one. I hope he got her a $30,000 one.

So they can be 30 grand. $16,000 apparently was the bag.

The one he got her?

Yeah, but he won $220,000. Okay. So of that, he got $110,000. Yeah. And if he bought her a $16,000 bag, he, he gave her basically 15% of his winnings.

That doesn't matter. No, that doesn't matter to me.

Okay.

It's not about that. That's, see, that's the thing. They're trying to be like, no, but he got her a Birkin bag, so it's fine. It's not fine to pinky promise her and, and, and humiliate her. I mean, that's really It is humility.

That's where you're projecting a little bit.

No, she said it was really hard to watch. I really kind of couldn't watch it.

Projecting is not the right word. You were easily able to imagine yourself being made a fool.

Oh, I could empathize. Of course. And that doesn't get fixed by a burger.

And so that doesn't even bother me because I can't even imagine. Imagine being made a fool by him, you know?

Well, he could. Yeah, of course he could do that. You might believe him.

Well, his superpowers wouldn't be powerful on me.

They were. They were powerful on every person.

That's why I don't trust anyone good looking.

Well, you would have trusted Rob R. I don't know how he did that, but every person trusted him.

It is funny though to have people mad at you for entering a game which we already know what the goal of the game is, and then he did well and won. And to be mad at a winner is counter.

I don't think he should have pinky promised.

Oh.

Oh.

Now you like him.

No. Okay, first of all, I mean, look, I like Rabar 'cause he's hot.

Yeah.

And he is seemingly nice. And I like that he got her the Birkin. But look at— look, she's wearing a t-shirt that says, I'm dumb question mark. 'Cause I guess it's like, I'm dumb, but I'm not because I got this Birkin out of it.

I'm dumb? Like, you think I'm dumb? I'm holding the Birkin back here.

Yeah.

I don't know what her intention is with that shirt.

I think that's what it is. But really then it's like, this is upsetting. See, she lives with this. Like, now she lives with this contention that she's dumb.

But you don't think she's dumb, do you? You just think she trusted a handsome man. So maybe everyone thinks that.

See? Okay. This is deep, right? Everyone trusted Rob R because I don't know why. I wasn't there. Part of it I do believe is his handsomeness. mixed with his kindness. I think he was kind to everyone. And I think he— and he said this, and I— this is not his fault. This is everyone else's fault. But he said, people just think I'm a dumb guy from Alabama.

Right.

And then another guy was like, I don't think that. I think you're really not. Whatever. That was a sweet exchange. But I do think some people might think that. They might think like, well, he wouldn't really be able to get one over on me. Yes. So that's on everybody else.

They deserve that.

They do deserve that if they believe that. Um, but Maura and Rob R had a special connection and very flirty.

Were they fucking, do you think?

So they say no.

Okay. They say no.

They say no.

And I—

and I—

You gotta take it.

I gotta take it at face value, but—

But you felt like maybe they were fucking.

I feel like they had an intimacy.

Ooh.

Whether or not it was fucking, They definitely did have an intimacy. She felt like she had this special— I guess I am putting words in her mouth a little bit.

Yeah.

But not really. She says on the show, like, Rob and I, you know, they're best friends who might fuck.

Right.

And kiss and cuddle.

And hold each other, yeah.

And snuggle.

Stare into each other's eyes and say, good night.

Yeah.

And, like, you can tell she felt like, no, I know him. She would say like, there's no way I would know.

I was sleeping with him last night. I know him.

And that's— no, that's bad.

Well, what I'm saying is she's also gotta acknowledge she's in a game.

She probably thinks the fucking part is not connected, that he's not— that if he—

Well, I don't think he— I think he would love to fuck her whether he's in a game or not.

Yeah, but he needs to be— that's not Nice. If you are a traitor, yeah, that's not nice.

What's not nice is intentionally fucking her to gain her trust to win a game. Not good. But you're trying to win a game. That's one thing. Another thing is you're attracted to this woman in the house and you guys start hooking up.

Yeah, you can't— you have to be kind enough to be aware of what that means for the other person, that, that in intimacy see whether it's not compartmentalized. Maybe it is for these— him, hot men.

Okay.

Maybe they can compartmentalize like, oh, this part is—

Well, yeah, he's just like, I'm trying to win the game. She's trying to win the game. We're all trying to win the game and we're sleeping together.

No, no.

You don't think that's—

That's not nice.

That's not nice.

It's not.

So would it be nicer if she was like, please sleep with me? He's like, no.

No.

Let's just say, you think that's nice? If a girl says, please sleep with me, you say no, thank you. I'm not interested.

Stop. That's not what he would say.

What would he say?

He would say, I don't think it's ethical for me to do that in this game.

Oh, so you're the wolf?

Huh?

The only reason it wouldn't be ethical is if you weren't— you know, you'd be exposing the fact that he's the wolf.

No, we're here for 2 weeks. Yeah, I don't know. You don't know me. I don't know you. I— this isn't—

it wouldn't be fair. It could only be unethical if you were the traitor.

No, it could just be like—

Because if you're just both— what are the other people called? Losers? Traitor and what?

No, traitors and faithfuls. Thank you.

Faithfuls. Faithfuls should be free to fuck, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So if he says no, he's kind of blowing up his spot.

But he doesn't have to. He could just be like, I have a girlfriend. Just lie. God. Okay, he's lying throughout this entire game. Of course it's preferred if you're the girl and you've just had sex. Okay, again, I don't know if they've had sex.

They really haven't. But really quick, what if you found out that she's glad they had sex? Would that change things for you? That she doesn't feel betrayed by that aspect of it?

Then sure.

Yeah, then all good.

But that's also part of why the, the bottom fell out so hard for her where she was like, lit— like, could not—

She's sleeping with the enemy.

She doesn't know if she can trust herself anymore.

Right.

This is a very upsetting thing for her. Maura.

Yeah.

She's now on Dancing with the Stars. Maybe.

Hold on. Uh, I don't— I say this without ever having seen one frame of the show, so I— yeah, this is a theoretical question. I don't know her at all. But if she's learned she can't trust herself, that's a good thing to learn. Like, I need to be a little more savvy.

No, no, because someone manipulated her, she can't trust herself. That's not fair. He manipulated her. He manipulated everyone. He manipulated everyone, which is fine, right? That's the game. That's the game.

Okay.

But with her specifically, because of this intimacy, that was built. That is a step too far, I believe.

Okay.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Yeah, this is a common— I'm gonna leave it. I'm gonna leave it.

I want you to imagine it as Delta.

Yeah. As a father of 2 daughters, I would Just like you have to evaluate whether the person you're about to get in a car with, an Uber, is crazy or not. You have to evaluate people. That's part of life.

Yeah.

You have to be realistic about people. And if not, if you're wanting the world to change and the world to be everyone's got perfect intentions, I'm here to say that's not going to happen. So your only choice in life is to be discerning. You have to be discerning. I had to be discerning. about the people I dated, and women have to be discerning about who they date. That's also true. I don't think you can say that you're powerless over the ways of manipulation. I think that's like, then what, are you also going to give your credit card number to somebody that's trustworthy? Like, there's all these areas and realms where we all realize we have to be discerning. And I think in love, you have to be discerning too. Yeah.

And you can expect that people who you grow to care about or have intimacy with or tell you they care about you, that you should— you can believe them. You shouldn't— you should not have your guard up for your entire life. That's bad.

I think you have to have a re— a reasonable size fence, not to the sky, but it has to be realistic. You know, I had a I have a friend who met a guy who was on a TV show who was gorgeous and rich and young, and within a week of dating, he was saying he wanted to have a baby with her. And I said that, hey, I'm waving my hand over here. That's crazy and not normal. That's not how it works. You may have found the one person. That's how it's going to work. But I'm here to say that's crazy. No guy in that situation is trying to have a baby with somebody he's known for 2 weeks. And that person did not want to hear that at all.

Okay.

And then that person was later revealed to be like an addict and all this. There was a lot of other stuff going on.

Yes.

But my point is, no, it was on her to be realistic about that.

No, no, it's on him to not lie to her.

Well, yes, absolutely. Well, first of all, I don't even think he was lying. He was an addict thinking this life raft had just appeared. appeared, and he was going to pull that to save him from this opiate addiction. So I think he might have been dead sincere at that moment that he thought, this is the solution. This is my way out of this and my way forward in life. But—

Well, I know who you're talking about. And also, this person was very vulnerable to hearing that. This person who was told that—

Yes, but I'm saying, but here's my overall thought. is like, is the lesson to be learned from that, that she shouldn't be more realistic about things going forward? And that she should just hope that no other— she doesn't meet another person who's trying to pull themselves out of something? Like, ultimately, it's on her to choose her partners.

It is. But you also have to take what people are saying in.

You can't just evaluate it.

You can't just be like in a vacuum, in a relationship. Part of it is what's going on between the two of you.

You have to be able to assess if someone has love addicty behavior. You have to, unless you want to be in an endless cycle of falling in love with people who are just love addicts.

I know, but you're not giving any responsibility to the love addict who's causing wreckage.

No, I am.

Okay. I just want to hear that part because you're saying—

Any guy who's telling a woman that he loves her and he doesn't love her so that he can have sex is a piece of Yes.

Okay, thank you. Yes.

But I'm not raising those boys. I have 2 daughters, and it would be my goal and my desire that they are realistic about assessing behavior. Like, well, this is very unconventional that a dude wants to get married in a week, that a dude's telling me he loves me in 2 weeks. You might be swept up in the emotions, but you do have to go like, well, this is abnormal. Someone's saying I love you in 2 weeks.

That's a very short amount of time to determine whether But also some people do that and they get married and they're in love for the rest of their lives.

I think it's a very low percentage. Yes, that happens.

Yes, but it happens. So to be like, I don't know. I don't know.

What I'm saying is one sounds very victimy and that you're just going to endlessly be a victim if you're not willing to say, no, I got to get realistic about the real behavior of people. And I can see this dude's never been with someone for more than a year. Let's take immediately— let's take that into account. You're 30 years old, you're meeting a guy who's telling you he loves you in 2 weeks. He's never been with someone for more than a year. That is relevant information that you are either choosing to ignore or not savvy enough. But once it happens once, I think anyone who wants to protect themselves should go like, oh, I got to be on the lookout for this pattern. I'm meeting a 40-year-old dude who's never had a relationship for more than 2 years, and he's telling me he loves me in 10 days. Pretty big red flags.

Sure, you can be aware of abnormalities, and like, you You can have awareness, but I don't think when someone lies to you, it's not your fault. It's not your fault when someone lies to you. It's just not.

It's not your fault. It's your responsibility. It's just like addiction. It's like, it's not my fault I'm an addict. It is my responsibility. So it's like, it's not your fault that guys are out there trying to lie to you.

It's your responsibility, I guess, moving forward.

If you don't want to be hurt all the time.

To be aware. But it is not— yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Rob R. is hot. Okay. Some facts for another hot person, James McAvoy.

Oh, yes. Yes.

James McAvoy. As I said in the episode, he's Kali's first— maybe not first, but biggest, deepest celebrity crush. Mr. Tumnus is the fawn. Specifically, Mr. Tumnus is the faun.

Yeah. And will you ask her right now if in her fantasies about him at that time, she would be hooking up with an animal?

I don't think she's comfortable with me asking that. And I think the answer is no. Maybe can I ask her? Um, she should probably not.

See, this is a question from Dax. Like, did you want in your fantasy him to be half animal, half person, or all James McAvoy?

I think she wanted all James McAvoy.

Can we ask her?

She's gonna be mad.

She's pretty private. I'm asking— say, I'm asking— She's private.

She's at work.

Oh, wow.

At Netflix.

Right in the middle of an important meeting. She's running out.

Hi.

She knew it was coming. I'll get back to you on this.

Okay, great.

But I have a strong— I'm sure I asked back then because I was very— the story— her and I were at the movie theater We left. She was just kerfuffled. She was kerplumped. What's it? Verklemped. She's a lot of those things. And she was obsessed with Mr. Toad.

It makes me quickly go through my memory and try to see if there was any moment I wanted to have sex with a half-human creature.

I've never had that.

I did desperately. I would have loved to have had sex with the gnome.

Oh, you did want to?

Absolutely.

Right.

But that's not really— I can't connect my tail with theirs.

Right. They were on 2 feet, though, right?

Yeah, yeah. They were bipedal.

Yeah. So—

But they were big blue creatures. But—

That feels— they feel more human.

I would've loved to have—

I think a lot of people wanted that because Zoe Saldana's beautiful.

But it's not her. It's just her voice. But it's Zoe. But the haunches of the creature were just extraordinary. And then the face was pretty. It was definitely not human, but it was beautiful.

But it kind of had a human-like face.

So athletic.

What was— what was it? Avatar.

Well, there's her, right? So that's not a human for sure. You're making no mistake. Those ears popping out at the way up the side.

The ears, but the lips are human.

Yeah, the lips are good to go. The eyes are incredible.

The nose is kind of human.

It looks like a lion's.

Yeah, but someone's nose could look like that. Like that.

Yeah, they might get it fixed, but yeah.

No, I think this is a beautiful human.

Both the ears and the eyes.

I know, but I'm just saying, I think this is way more human.

Yeah, I would love to make love to her. Okay.

Yeah, we get it.

Do you have a full body shot, Rob?

Oh Jesus.

Yeah, that's also a human body.

Well, they're way big though. Remember when the humans are actually with them, there's so much This is not the same as Mr.

Tumnus. I'm sorry, but can you pull up Mr. Tumnus?

Okay. Such a silly name too, Mr. Tumnus.

I know! The whole thing, I was so confused, which I grew to respect. I grew to respect her love for Mr. Tumnus, but at first I was judgmental.

Yeah. First stop is sometimes judgment.

Yeah.

And then insight. Intrigue.

And then at what— yeah, at some point I saw him in something else.

You get curious. That's what they say. That's the antidote to judgment is curiosity.

Yeah.

Once you start going like, oh, well, tell me why. What is it? Is his haunches?

Well, it's like, I do think it's giving, um, furry, or, you know, like you, you're into animal sex and I don't condone that. Oh, he actually is on 2 feet too.

He's pan. Yeah, he's fine. He's go—

he's In my head, he had 4 legs. Ugh.

God.

Okay. Oh, wow. She wanted— good for her. He's got crazy ears too. And a crazy nose.

He's wearing prosthetics. This is not how I remember Mr. Tumnus.

Wow.

Wow. Are you sure that's Mr. Tumnus? Oh my—

oh.

Oh, yeah. It was more this. It was more this, which still is weird. But you can see more of his body. This is making sense.

The human skin.

You can see his human skin and human torso.

I think now that I've seen an image of Mr. Tumnus, I don't need to ask her the question. I already know the answer because he is all lower half. I mean, he's leading with—

No, I think she liked this. I do. I think she liked that part.

Okay. So it's clear to you and it's clear to me.

I know her.

You do. I know you do.

Okay. I know what she likes. She likes human bodies.

You're only basing that on her past lovers. She hasn't had as an option half a goat.

No, because you know what? I'm actually—

She wanted to feel the goat fur on her legs as he was pumping away like only a goat could do.

God, this is why she doesn't want me to talk about her on the show. But I can actually now, if I'm taking just the torso, Mm-hmm.

You're in?

I, yeah, I like it.

What about the legs?

I don't like the legs.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

You lose me at the legs.

Okay. You gotta wonder if that creature has a human penis or a goat penis.

You gotta wonder.

I think it's a very obvious question.

I think it's a goat. Because if the bottom half is goat—

Yeah, everything from the waist down is goat.

But then why only 2 legs? They should have made him on 4 legs.

I think Pan was on 4 I legs. think he was bipedal.

Who's Pan?

Pan is the Greek god of, like, well, music. He played the flute, but merriment and temptation. He's very sexual. A siren towards the debauchery. Yeah. So that's how he's doing. Oh, no, I see he's got 4 in back too. He's got 2 prominent ones up front. He's crossed his legs, but in back I'm seeing 2 little tiny legs that he's not In there, leaning against the wall.

I don't think those are— are those legs?

Yeah, look at the hooves. They match perfectly.

That looks like a scarf on his—

It does. They're so tiny and disproportionate that they might dangle behind him when he's bipedal.

Wait, I thought—

Oh, there he is. He doesn't have 4. He's just got the 2.

I thought Pan was god of the woods.

He was in the woods.

Okay. I think because there's a book I was really into called God of the Woods.

But I think he would play his flute and people would get really horny. It was like a hypnotic He had a panflute. That was his power. He'd start tooting on that thing and people would be like, let's do stuff with goats. He was the god of shepherds and flocks and wild nature, especially of mountain and forest wild.

So I think also, yeah, god of the woods.

I think he's appealing to man's naturalistic, animalistic side.

Well, and the word panic comes from that.

It does.

I learned that in my book.

Okay. Great goats of the 18th century.

He's standing upright, though.

Yeah, he's bipedal.

Okay. Wow. In Harry Potter, the centaurs are on 4. So I think that's what's in my head.

You're conflating.

Yeah, I'm conflating. Okay.

Let's give Rob a shout out for doing these facts real time.

Yes. Rob did the facts real time. We just finished this interview.

He just left seconds ago.

So Rob took on the facts today. Empire Awards. He won awards for filth when he met Margot Robbie. It says in 2014, James won Best Actor for Filth, defeating Leonardo DiCaprio for Wolf of Wall Street and Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips.

He wasn't sure what movie he was there for.

It was filth. Yes.

Can you imagine having won so many awards you can't remember?

Do you automatically get the suffix junior added to your name if your parent has the same name? No. Oh, junior suffix is not added automatically to a name. It must be requested and recorded explicitly on the birth certificate.

Oh, okay.

That kind of makes sense.

Yeah, my— I don't think my brother doesn't have that. My brother is a junior, right? And people did call Dave Senior and Dave Junior, right? But I don't, I don't think it's anywhere in writing. Do you think that's gone out of fad? Like, men love to name their firstborns their own name. I would have never allowed, if we had a boy, for him to be named Dax.

Yeah.

But I would've been open to a girl named Ax.

Interesting.

Yeah. I mean, women never pass on their— there's no girl Junior.

You're going to lose your last name anyways.

Even more reason to have the first name get passed.

That's why we gave the girls Bella as a middle name. They can't ever lose it.

Right. But it's like, I'm saying no one's like Kristen. You're not having a kid Kristen.

Right.

Which is weird.

Yeah. girl juniors that I know about. I'm going to make one. Monica Lily Padman. It feels egomaniacal, doesn't it? That's what I'm saying. Culture has changed.

It does. But no one thinks that. I don't think people think that about boys. I don't think like, oh, it's egomaniacal to name you after your dad.

I think today it would be like in LA. I think it'd be a bad look for a dad if he had a junior. But in the past, not— you wouldn't even think anything of it. It's almost standard.

I don't know. Um, did James play the Jeremy Allen White character in Shameless? No, James played Steve McBride in the original UK Shameless. Fiona's boyfriend, his American counterpart, is Jimmy Lishman, played by Justin Chatwin.

Love Justin. He was in Chips. He's a phenomenal guy.

Oh, Justin.

Yeah, he's gorgeous. Oh yeah, super into motorcycles. In fact, I think he has a book out right now about motorcycles. Everyone should buy it. I saw it on Instagram.

That's cool.

Yeah, I adore him.

He'd probably do great on Traders.

Yeah, yeah. He's gorgeous and he's an incredible actor.

Yeah.

He played a junkie, junkie, the junkie son of Vincent D'Onofrio in Chips, and he was better than the movie.

Was he in a scene with me? Did he pull me out of that car?

Yeah, but I don't know that it was him. It was a stunt double.

I think he couldn't make it that day.

Well, he's a busy guy. He's doing me a very large favor by doing the small role he did.

Song in The Last King of Scotland and Hit and Run, Fever by Jingo.

That's right. I did know the name of that, Fever.

Had Jennifer Lawrence already won an Oscar before X-Men? She was nominated for Winter's Bone, but did not win that. Oh, that year Natalie Portman won for Black Swan.

Rightly so.

Great, great movie. What a performance.

And Mila was so incredible in that movie.

Yeah, she was. Also nominated, I believe.

I hope.

Yeah, she got Best Supporting Actress.

Nice.

Nice nomination.

You know, they call it a nom and a nod.

Yeah. Pick your picks. Pick your poison.

It's kind of like recuse, excuse.

Pick your poison.

That's it.

That's everything.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, I just— again, I said it in the interview, but what a fun full circle for me.

Yeah, me too, Mr.

Yeah, we each have— we all come in with some history with his 30-year career.

Yeah, he's a great actor.

He sure is.

Check out his stuff.

Give him a look. All right, love you.

Love you.