Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon are both blown away by Ridley Scott’s impeccable direction.
The actors star in the acclaimed filmmaker’s forthcoming sci-fi offering The Martian, which is based on the eponymous 2011 novel written by Andy Weir.
The Martian centres on Matt’s character Mark Watney, an astronaut who is left stranded on Mars after his team assumes he’s dead.
And Matt is in awe over how Ridley managed the entire cast and crew while they filmed the epic project.
“I was here a month, month and a half ago for a week just sitting and going over the script with him every day,” the actor told Collider. “And all of the crafts people, all of his keys, they’ve been with him forever. Some of these guys have been with him for 35 years.
“You have sidebar conversations with them and their level of detail in their specific field and how granular they can get with what they’re planning on doing; they’ll show you all the drawings, so by the time you arrive, you’ve got kind of everybody’s playbook and everyone kind of opens the kimono and then Ridley’s the arbiter of taste at the end of the day. ‘More of this, less of that, yes, no, f**k off.’ And then you get a Ridley Scott movie.”
Jessica starred in director Christopher Nolan’s Academy Award-winning sci-fi Interstellar too.
And she believes Christopher’s work ethic is similar to Ridley’s.
“Well, you know what was really sweet? I feel strange saying this but he said this at screening the other day, someone asked Chris his favourite directors, his inspirations, and of course he said [Stanley] Kubrick and all that but then he said Ridley Scott’s his favourite director, and I was like, ‘What!?’” she laughed to the outlet. “They’re both guys that are making up their own rules in the way that they’re shooting and the visuals that they’re using, they’re always pushing the bar and challenging something and also the similarity I see is that they’re making things on an epic scale, this is my first experience this past year with doing films like that.”
The Martian, which also stars Kate Mara, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover and Mackenzie Davis, reaches American theatres on October 2.
