How love is just a careless whisper away for Emilia
Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding were shooting a scene for the romantic comedy last Christmas as director Paul Feig con-sulted with the cinematographer, and writer and actress Emma Thompson watched from the sidelines with fellow producer David livingstone.
missing was the man who inspired the picture that’s filming on locations from Bond Street to Brick lane.
George michael, who died on Christmas Day 2016, met with Thompson after livingstone had the idea of creating a story inspired by last Christmas, the track michael wrote in 1984 and originally performed with fellow Wham! star andrew Ridgeley.
‘i’d met with George michael,’ Thompson explained on a fake snow-covered set in Bond Street. ‘He was concerned about the homeless, which is a large part of this story. We spoke a lot about life and death, and there’s a lot of that in this film as well.’
Thompson stressed that ‘this is not a George michael-mamma mia movie. it’s inspired by the songs, and inspired by him. it’s a dramatic romantic comedy,’ she told me emphatically.
She came up with the storyline, but got writer Bryony Kimmings to flesh out the drafts. Thompson then spent two years finessing it before emailing it to director Feig under the heading ‘Here’s a Script What i Wrote’.
Feig, who’d been wanting to work with Thompson, jumped at the opportunity. He also realised there was a main role in it for Emilia Clarke, whom he’d met two years previously. and he knew the male lead would be perfect for Henry Golding, after working with him on the black comedy a Simple Favor. Golding’s red hot thanks to the phenomenal success of the film Crazy Rich asians.
‘it’s first and foremost a love story set in 2016, against a backdrop of Brexit and Trump, and a chance to go against so much intolerance and see what a melting pot london, and the world, is,’ Feig told me.
in the film, which is being backed by Universal Pictures, Clarke plays Kate. Thompson plays her mother. ‘She had to leave the former Yugoslavia to come to Britain and now feels unwelcome because of Brexit,’ Thompson said.
CLARKE described her character as ‘not quite fully formed as an adult’. The actress explained that Kate is working as an elf in a naff Christ-mas shop. ‘She hasn’t got her act together, she’s just lost . . . this hopeless young lady carrying her belongings in a wheelie bag.’
Serendipitously, Kate meets Golding’s Tom. They’re the com-plete antithesis of each other.
‘She’s always on her phone, always on Tinder, always getting drunk,’ Clarke explained when we came in from the cold night air and sat with Golding in a hotel lobby. meanwhile, Tom doesn’t even have a phone. He’s a night- time courier who volunteers at a homeless shelter.
‘ He’s out of sync with the modern world,’ Golding told me. ‘i think he sees her as a bit of a lost soul and tries to bring her out of herself.’
Filming continues in some of the coolest parts of london into next month. Various stars such as michelle Yeoh, who played Golding’s mother in Crazy Rich asians, and Patti Lupone, from the hit show Company, have small roles in the picture, which opens here on November 15.
Once filming has been com-pleted, Clarke will concentrate on the final season of Game Of Thrones. ‘it’s the grand finale. This is it. it’s over and i cried like a baby on the last day. i felt completely lost. it was very strange and wonderful to get this [ last Christmas]. This part couldn’t be more opposite, because dragons ain’t funny.
‘Ten years is a long time. it’s like losing an actual limb. i was 22 — a child — when i first walked on the Game Of Thrones set. i grew up with her,’ Clarke told me of her character Daenerys Targaryen. She said the last chapter of the epic show is ‘a real whopper, especially for Daenerys’.