Knightley: They’re not.Price: They can do with someone saying, “Come over and have a bowl of pasta. Let me cook for you. Come and have a chat.” And I
Knightley: They’re not.
Price: They can do with someone saying, “Come over and have a bowl of pasta. Let me cook for you. Come and have a chat.” And I’ve found that that is received well. I think we can really support each other, because of course you are riddled with things about how you look, how are you acting, how much sleep you’re getting, whether you’re going to be any good the next day.
Knightley: All of those voices of self-doubt are so deafening when you are in your teens or 20s. But in an adult brain that’s got a lot of experience, you can kind of go, You know what? It’s okay. Today may not be my day, but tomorrow it might be better, and we’re going to try our best. And you can kind of talk yourself down off the edge.
Pike: I remember taking a car from set recently, and there was a teenage girl and she just finished. It was one of those days where everybody’s scrambling to get the shot. They wrap and suddenly, whatever the last take was, that’s the one that has to stand today. I saw her crossing the road and I thought, I know exactly what that face is. And I jumped out of my car and I went up to her and I said, “I know you feel shit. I know that that is never going to be good enough.” I didn’t try and say “don’t worry about it,” because I know she will worry about it. And she’ll go home that night and think and be beating herself up. And the only thing you can do in that situation is to say, “I know exactly how you feel and it’s really awful.” But as you say, tomorrow you get to do something different.
For Black Doves and The Wheel of Time, you both had to transform into characters that seem quite different from you in your real lives. How have you unexpectedly related to those characters?
Pike: I think the single-mindedness. I think if you get my loyalty, you get it 100%. I think that is similar. Once I commit to something, I’m all in. But she has no humor.
Knightley: Very little humor.
Pike: Which is why I’ve made a mental note that in the next few years, I must play characters who get to have a laugh. She gets about one laugh a season, I think. Keira, do you relate to your character in Black Doves? Well, I’ve already told everyone here that you are—
Knightley: Vaguely psychotic?
Pike: A badass. As a mother? Your parenting styles?
Knightley: Well, I’m not an undercover spy who’s constantly betraying their father, which I think, just as parenting goes, means that I’m better than she is. I think I probably lose it at my kids more than she does, pretending to be the perfect mother. And maybe if she lost her kids, then actually it would all be a lot healthier. I think what I liked about her was the idea of multiple personalities in one person, which I think we do, hopefully not to a massive degree, but do to some degree have. And you realize it even more when you become a mother, because the face that you’ve got to your kids is not necessarily the face that you’ve got when you go out and you have a nice time with your mates.
COMMENTS