Interviews: All in Good Time – Nigel Cole and Cast

When you look at the poster for All in Good Time after viewing the film, you will genuinely feel that this heartwarming tale is being sold short as a comedy in its tagline. The latest film from director Nigel Cole of Saving Grace and Made in Dagenham fame, a reworking of the play written by Bill Naughton, will charm you far more than you will expect. And that twist? Yes, it’s definitely a game changer. We were lucky enough to catch up with the cast and crew last week in London ahead of their 11th of May release date.

On entering the room Nigel Cole enquires, “are you going to ask me why did I decide to make a film that was a play?” Me: No. Nigel “Ah yes you have ten minutes then”.

Your background was strongly grounded in documentary and current affairs, why the move into feature film? Was this something you have always wanted to do?

Nigel Cole: All I have ever wanted to do is tell stories and work with actors. I had worked in the theatre a little bit; I wanted to be an actor. I just wasn’t very good. (Laughs) It seemed like a small thing but you know… I don’t think I looked like a movie star. That was a bit disappointing. I spent a long long time failing to tell stories with actors. I didn’t mind if it was television drama or what it was. My aim had always been to make good TV drama. I got out of university thinking this is what I will do. Ten years later, I still hadn’t achieved it. I had done everything! Location manager, Assistant Director, Driver, Producer, Production Manager, I had every bloody job in the film industry! I had not persuaded anyone to let me direct. I was almost close to giving up. I had been doing commercials, I had done these documentaries, nothing quite got me any closer. One day I managed to persuade a wonderful woman called Michelle Butler to let me direct an episode of Peak Practice and although it was series six of a very long running TV series, it was like I had King Lear! Somebody died in the episode and people cried! I approached it like it was a movie, like it was my life’s ambition to make it great. I got spotted just from this one episode of Peak Practice and by the end of the year I was doing the first series of Cold Feet.

I loved Cold Feet…

NC: It was a gift! It was one of those great shows. It was beautifully written and had a great cast. I always wanted to be a storyteller and I was well into my 30’s before I achieved it. And out of Cold Feet, I got this TV film for Sky Television called Saving Grace. I didn’t even think of it as a movie, it was a full length TV film. 20th Century Fox decided to release it in cinemas here. We took it to Sundance and at the time I didn’t even know what Sundance was! Within 48 hours the movie was a hit. We sold it for a fortune, I can’t remember how much. Several million dollars, I think. And then we win a prize! Overnight, I went from completely unknown TV director to an international movie director overnight. It’s like someone just said, “you’re in.” I went straight from Sundance to L.A. and hung out in Hollywood for a few months. I couldn’t quite believe that.  

With All in Good Time, you worked with a lot of the cast from the play, did you want to put a completely different spin on the subject material or did you want to bring the play to the screen?

NC: I wanted to capture the same magic that the play had captured. I knew I would have to do that in a slightly different way. If you try to capture magic, it’s slightly mercurial anyway. You might not be able to do it. I knew the play had this weird ability to suck you in with a kind of strong broad comedy and then completely surprise and shock an audience by the way it turns in the second half.

When you get to the last ten minutes, you feel like you have to watch the entire film again…

NC: Yes! That’s the whole idea! And you will! It almost has a Sixth Sense twist! I knew how brilliantly that had worked in the theatre. I thought, I want to try and get that too. I want to capture that sense of this being a real surprise. I wanted it to really work its charms on the audience and then when you least expect it, throwing them a curve ball. I didn’t want to deviate from that in any way. Clearly, in a film you have a wildly different set of techniques to achieve that but we have more time, more scenes, less talk and more action. You can get right in close to those eyes and see what’s going on. The rhythm of it, the structure of it, it’s different, it flows in a different way.

A lot of people have commented that you are a feminist director, would that be correct?

NC: Yes. Absolutely. I much prefer women. I am more beguiled and fascinated by them. I am a guy… And I don’t find men nearly as interesting. Since I was a child, I’ve been absolutely delighted by women. I think also, if you make women’s films you are seen as different. I don’t want to make the same films as everyone else. I just don’t do guns and cars. (Both of us laugh) I’m not interested. I’m not interested in cars in my own life and I’ve never seen a gun, never mind hold one. That rules out 90% of films for me! I don’t disapprove of them! I love them and I watch them but I just don’t do them. And they are boring to shoot! Car chases are really boring. Get in the car, drive from A to B, what’s interesting about that?!?

Meera Syal

Meera, you really knew your character inside out. You had played her for nine months in the play on stage. Did you try and reinvent her in any way?

MS: I think the play changed a little. I know it was the same story but on film you have a chance to play things so differently. You can play things a lot more subtlety and you can have a lot more that is unspoken that the camera picks up. Obviously, you don’t need as many words, so you’re just using your eyes to say a lot of things. It’s such a completely different way of working.

 

Towards the end you feel like you have to go back and watch the film more closely, but this is especially true in relation to your character, was this always intentional?

 

MS: Oh yeah, all the way through. Obviously with my character, her big secret isn’t revealed until the closing moments of the film and suddenly, there’s that “oh my god” moment where everything makes sense. We had to be so careful about how we threaded that into the story, giving enough hints but not giving it away. Also, the playing of it, you had to believe that this was a woman who had lived with this secret for about twenty years. How could you live with something like that day to day? When the spotlight is on you, how much can you let out? I think very little if you’re used to carrying a secret around. You know there’s a scene where she almost spills the beans and I feel like that is how it would be in real life. You wouldn’t tell anybody, it wouldn’t come out that quickly, it would be wrenched out of you. So you see a little chink and you get a horrible sense of a whole world of pain inside and then she shuts it back up again.

With Harish and the fact that you had worked together for so long on this project, wa

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