How comfortable or uncomfortable were the outfits that you had to wear?
Hailee Steinfeld: The only reason I’d say they were uncomfortable is that they never really cooperated with the weather.
Douglas Booth: It was freezing cold and you can see the breath in the movie. Hailee’s chest was open and it’s not that warm. I had a bit more padding which makes it a lot harder for me to go to the toilet. It’s uncomfortable in a sense, but every single costume in this movie was custom-made for it and made for us.
Hailee Steinfeld: They are so beautiful too. Even if they are uncomfortable, the way they are structured really has an impact on how you carry yourself which is so helpful.
Julian, you have two characters on Downton Abbey who are now widowers and you have now moved on to this tragic love story. Why do you think people are so fascinated with watching tragedy in love?
Julian Fellowes: Well this whole business of love ending in death, I grew up on it. Remember those songs “Tell Laura I Love Her” and “Leader of the Pack?” They were all ending up with the guy dying on the motorbike or being smashed in the car race or whatever. That was really my sort of adolescent culture, so I got there before Twilight.
What we have to remember is that the whole world got there before Twilight with Romeo and Juliet, and there is something about the ultimate sacrifice to preserve your love which is completely pure and takes over your life that we all find very appealing because it’s a sort of an ideal that most of us don’t live up to.
There is a moment in some incredibly unhappy pursuit where most of us think oh the hell with it and then we just go home, but what we love about these lovers is that they don’t think that. They go all the way and in the end they would rather die than be apart. It somehow chimes with the memory of first love and early love which we’ve all been through. Most of us didn’t marry our first love, thank god, but we all went through it and we went through that moment of thinking if she doesn’t just turn around one more time I’ll die. This story of Romeo and Juliet, more than any other, brings that back to us and takes us back into an emotion, and I suppose I respond to that as much as anyone else.
When you are approached to take on these classic, iconic roles, is it met with doubt and fear, or excitement and thrilled to be considered?
Douglas Booth: It’s a bit of both. You’re sort of terrified but you’re excited and I live for challenges. In my career all I want to do is to try and challenge myself and sort of bring about a varied career. This was something I hadn’t really done before. I took on Boy George so I wasn’t scared of iconic characters, but I think it’s more excitement than fear.
Hailee Steinfeld: In the beginning, it is a little bit of everything because you have a bunch of different people saying a bunch of different things, but it comes down to loving the project and being passionate about it. I read this and I was so honored to be considered. I remember our table read with most of the cast. All of us were together in Italy, and before we had started, Julian said something to us that stuck with me, ever since. He said, “This generation deserves their own Romeo and Juliet.” I really think that is true, and I am really excited. That is what I have been thinking about ever since, the excitement of introducing this to this generation. I think everybody deserves to discover and rediscover this story.
Julian Fellowes: I think that’s the point actually. There are certain stories that won’t die and they just continually get re-invented. A lot of them are kind of generic like Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella, which is invented in the kind of folklore of Italy or France or Germany or whatever. But this is a play written by guy who sat down at the table to write a play for a company of actors he was leading nearly a half a millennium ago, and he touched something in it that means every generation wants to reinvent it and re-see it.
Sometimes it’s been turned into a modern musical about the back streets of New York or it’s been made modern and set in an ice rink or it’s in an underground garage or everyone’s in Nazi uniforms, but the point is we keep going back to it. I think the reason we go back to it is that it touches something at our very core, and that’s why it seemed right to give this generation their own Romeo and Juliet and not constantly get out a fuzzy VHS of Zeffirelli’s film.
Also, for once we got to make it about the romantic story and not put everyone in jackboots or ballet pumps. That hadn’t been done for quite a while. For a long time the breakout productions were the ones that were in Nazi jackboots, but now it’s the ones that are in any sense traditional, that are out of the ordinary because the established way of doing Shakespeare is to take it out of its original setting and turn it on its head. We’re turning that on its head and we’re going back to the original heartbreak story. I must say it seemed very exciting because there won’t be another of these for a long time and I’m sure I’ll either be dead or certainly unable to hold a pen by the time it comes back, so it was very thrilling to be allowed to be part of this film.
Carlo Carlei: It’s been an honor and a privilege to be able to create two immortal characters like this, and hopefully they will stay in the memory of cinemas for a long time, with two actors that surprised me every day. They were incredibly smart, well prepared. I was blessed by the fact that I had at my disposal two incredible talents who could be the next Meryl Streep or the next Leonardo DiCaprio because they are incredibly talented. You can have beautiful writing, you can have great direction, but you don’t create characters like that if you don’t have inspiration. These actors have it.
That concludes our interview, but we’d like to thank everyone for taking the time to talk with us. Be sure to check out Romeo and Juliet, in theatres this Friday.