The sequel to Knives Out which is officially titled Glass Onion: A KnivesOut Mystery wears, can now be viewed on Netflix for a week and has alreadyset several records to his name. The cast came together in its entirety forthe first time since the start of the corona pandemic during the BFI LondonFilm Festival and FOK! were only too happy to hear what they had to say aboutthe hugely successful film.
It was initially difficult to get back into the role of Benoit Blanc forDaniel Craig: _ “In the end I’m looking for the big speeches that Benoit givesin the film and I’m going to focus on that. Rian (Johnson, ed.) knows how tobring rhythm to his scripts and once you’ve found that it’s very easy to giveit your own interpretation. Then I talked to Rian a number of times to see howwe could best bring this character back to the screen. “_
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Edward Norton plays Miles Bron, a tech billionaire who Johnson has alreadyadmitted takes inspiration from the billionaires who dominated the news in2020 and 2021: _ “It was fantastic to look for the essence of this man, butevery week there was new inspiration, you just had to turn on the news andthere was another source of new information that we could use to make this oneof the most bizarre characters in the movie, ultimately if you put in acharacter like that where people can recognize things that they’ve seen on TV,it’s also important that there are characters that people can recognizethemselves in and I think Rian did a fantastic job.”_
Janelle Monáe has one of the most interesting characters in the film, but youdon’t really notice that until well into the story: ” It was nice to see thatwe were all slowly dropping hints, so you actually have to watch this movietwice if you want to see them all. When I read the script for the first time Iwas blown away by the twist anyway and I immediately thought that people wouldreally enjoy this, maybe they will end up watching it five or six times. Ihope people enjoy it as much as possible. “
Leslie Odom Jr., who rose to fame for his role in the hit musical Hamilton_plays the inventor in Miles Bron’s company: ” For inspiration for this role,I went looking for the black rock stars in the history of science. I found outabout an inventor at NASA, but he invented the Super Soaker there at the sametime, purely by chance. So the motivation for Lionel for me was why he hasn’tgotten that Super Soaker with his inventions yet, when he does have thecapacity and has shown it time and time again.”_
The film was shot in the middle of the pandemic under very strict conditionsin Greece. Kathryn Hahn, who plays jittery politician Claire Debella, wassecretly having the time of her life and is now more than happy to admit it: “Filming in Greece was wonderful and precisely because there was such a strictway of recording, we quickly became this warm bubble with cast and crew thatwe are now again. It actually felt like you see in the film, because we reallyweren’t allowed to go anywhere except when you were called on set. By the way,I still dream about those divine Greek salads every day.”
In the end, it was important for Rian Jonhson to tell a good story that couldstand on its own, separate from the first Knives Out movie, althoughpeople’s hunger for murder mysteries seems to have grown again: _ “For me, asa huge Agatha Christie fan, it only makes sense to make a movie like this. Ifshe were alive now, she would write 100 percent about tech billionaires andcharacters like this. She didn’t write period drama, she wrote what happenedin her time. The characterizations she uses for the genre in her books work sowell because there’s a certain amount of recognition in them. That’s also whythe genre will always be there.”_
And whether there was any change for the film, now that it will be exclusivelyon Netflix? Johnson also has something to say about that: ” The script wasalready written before Netflix was involved, but what I really like aboutNetflix is that they allowed the film to be shown in theaters for a certainperiod of time, which I thought was very important because this is a film issomething you have to experience together with people.”
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery can be seen on Netflix. Also read Peter’s