Felicity Jones gives a career defining performance in ‘The Theory Of Everything” out this Friday.
We sat down with her to discuss playing Jane Hawking in the film. You can read our review here.
Jane has to deal with all of these complicated relationships. Can you speak about that?
I love that. When I read that script … there is a moment when she has got two men in her life because she likes both, but in different ways. This is incredible you know and so it’s just finding the nuance of why those relationships are different. But you know Stephen and Jane were almost a competitive relationship, quite antagonistic. That’s probably why it lasted for so long because there were intellectual feuds between them. I feel like Jonathon was little more common, maybe it’s a relationship that came when you’re a bit older and there is more support and understanding and being more of a team.
Did you read Jane’s book?
Yes that was a huge reference and before I would go on to the set, I would remind myself that Jane in the 70’s had a big period of depression and had lost a lot of weight actually and then all these physical ailments were happening and just to remind myself of those … I had a book this big to refer to. It was my bible … it had so much information because she is so academic it was so detailed … it was a great document to have.
Can you talk about what a great female character she is?
I feel lucky that I have had opportunities to do that and that’s always my ambition with playing these characters is to try and show nuance to characters though I guess I would just hope to be able to keep finding that and finding women with different ideologies.
Do you think this film would work well for the stage?
In many respects there is something very play like about it and actually when we were watching rushes then I suddently realized how exposed we were as actors and so it was an intentional move by James … to make sets very, very bare. If you look, they are almost like play stages … he said that the focus is going to be on you guys and I thought “Oh god, we really got to up our game, there’s isn’t going to be any explosions” … and minute detail which Benoît Delhomme was shooting that when I looked on rushes, he was looking at my hand. I didn’t realize that that was what happening, capturing little details, yes and it was sort of serendipitous and it was two people who love working on the stage and love theater and you don’t get these opportunities to make films that are so character driven, but also hopefully entertaining at the same time.
What was Jane’s reaction to the film?
I spoke to her recently on the telephone and she was very complimentary. She loved the performances and she said “you got my voice,” which meant so much to her because I was so obsessed with her voice. It took hours listening to her over and over again … I was so nervous before speaking to her … It is a responsibility because both of them, they are so brave and they are rock and roll. They truly are and they don’t care what people think and Eddie and I wanted to show that – wanted to show their humor. And with disability there is so much awkwardness, people don’t know how to approach people with disabilities and I feel that Stephen Hawking particularly has paved the way for it not being a complicated thing … They were fearless, they weren’t going to let it define who they were as a couple.
Felicity Jones attends a special screening of “Theory of Everything” hosted by Forevermark.
