Colin Firth "questioned" how mean he was to Emma Stone in Magic in the Moonlight.
The 53-year-old actor stars in Woody Allen's latest movie as Stanley, a stage magician sent to debunk a so-called psychic named Sophie (Emma). To make the storyline convincing Colin found himself acting meaner than he'd of liked to towards Emma on screen.
"Yes, I questioned it. I think I even questioned it to Woody Allen himself, just wondering if, 'We’ve laid this on pretty thick by now, do we really need to...'” Colin explained to craveonline.co.uk. "But no, he wanted the full thing, and there were moments I thought I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret some of the later scenes where he’s still doing that, particularly when it’s clear that he’s softening to him."
Colin found the project amusing with its whimsical atmosphere. However, the British icon found himself thrown in at the deep end due to the filmmaker's unique style of directing.
"[Stanley's] a performer. He’s got a sense of himself and he’s always performing. We catch a glimpse of his magic act at the beginning. It’s high theatricality. But he makes a bit of a theatrical performance out of himself as well," Colin explained.
"I didn’t know what to expect because Woody Allen doesn’t prepare you for anything. He doesn’t rehearse. There’s no preamble. But the style with which he wanted the story told had a theatricality as well."
His alter ego is in almost every scene of the feature, which Colin feels grateful for as he managed to get a better understanding of his character and the film itself.
"I was lucky in that respect, because yeah, to give me only my pages he would have probably only had to take out about five. And so I did have an overview.
"I also wouldn’t have stood a chance if I didn’t have some time to familiarise myself with it, particularly as, as I said, there is no rehearsal, and also because he shoots a lot of stuff in one shot. Which means that you don’t have any room to make any mistakes," he added.
