Daniel Craig Don Johnson

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Can you talk about writing this film and bringing these characters to life?
Rian Johnson: It all started with me loving Agatha Christie growing up. I always wanted to do a “who done it.” I thought it would be really interesting; I’m a “who done it” junkie. I watch all of them that come out. I love them all. Usually when you see them today, they’re period pieces, because they’re usually Christie adaptations. The idea of doing a “who done it” set in America in 2019, and really using that to plug into America in 2019 and to draw the characters the way Christie drew the characters from British society when she was writing, to draw that out of today and right now, seemed really interesting. Tonally, you need really good actors to ride that line of going as big as we did with this movie and still having it feel grounded to work as a movie and not tip over into parody. That’s why you hire the best actors on the planet and then it all sorts itself out.

make it feel like a roller coaster ride and not a crossword puzzle

Don, can you talk about the characters and how all of their misanthropy is tempered by some sort of internal pain?
Don Johnson: Well all of them except for my character, who does nothing happily. He’s kind of the personification of the entitled family vibe. It was fun for me to do, because I have never played a character like that before, I loved how obsequious he was and how deferential he was to Jamie Lee’s character. It was fun.

Daniel, can you talk about your character and the way he carries himself and his accent?
Daniel Craig: I was just lucky to get a script that was as richly and as well drawn out as this one. I read it and I saw it. I think it has a lot to do with Rian and I sharing a love for “who done it” films. I grew up watching the same movies as he did and watched them religiously over and over again. I kind of understood the language that Rian was using. So we looked it up and it was a gentle southern language. I inhabited the character immediately in one reading, I talked about this the other day, about as actors and how arrogant we are, we go and change this and that during our first read-through, as though we know for sure… but that did not happen when I read this script. I just read it and said to myself, “I know who this is.” I want to play it. I sort of then picked a few people, Tennesse Williams, his voice has a high pitched accent and was not very suited. Then I landed on Shelby Foote, the historian, who has this beautiful Mississippi rolling accent. He speaks slowly, but has this incredible speed of thought. He talks about things with authority and I nailed it with a great accent coach. We sat for a few hours a day for months on end. Then when we got to set, and Jenny our costume designer, whom I’ve worked with before and is great to work with, gave me the physical material and we paired the two together.
Did you have to change anything in the language so that the characters and the house functioned in the plot together?
RJ: These guys clicked into it really easily. The only thing we would adjust on set were expository scenes. I wanted to be really tuned in if the actors could not follow the through line of what was happening in any given scene. I wanted to make sure every scene was clear to everybody, because I figured if it was clear to you guys then it would be clear to the audience. That’s where ninety percent of the work on a script like this goes into is making it feel easy for the audience, making it feel like a roller coaster ride and not a crossword puzzle at the end of the day. That was the main way we did tweaks on set.
Knowing that you’re in a “Who Done It,” do you play up to that and twirl your spiritual mustache a bit?
Jamie Lee Curtis: When I first had a phone call with Rian, the only questions I had were about tone. I had done a few different types of things, I just wanted to know where he was on the scale of tone. Because it does not matter where he is. I’ll go to whatever place he wanted. He said he wanted it to be heightened reality. Very much real, but with a slight accent of heightened reality. For me as an actor, the only question is how to tell the truth. It doesn’t matter to me, I don’t care what it is. Also I’m just like Don, I’m not a fan of the genre, I don’t care about the genre, I don’t watch those movies. There are other movies that I enjoy very much, but I’m not a particular fan of this genre, but it doesn’t matter. That is the beauty of this collaborative medium. It doesn’t matter if I’m a fan or not. As an actor, it’s simply my job to tell the truth. If you’re telling the truth through Linda’s point of view, she’s in grief. She loved her father. I think she may be the only one in the family who really loved him and she lost him. That was my truth, and the rest of it was just dross as we say. It was just hilarious.

He's best known for playing TV police detectives in Miami Vice and Nash Bridges, but Don Johnson has told Sky News it's not just on screen that he's good at solving problems.

The actor, who stars in new whodunnit Knives Out, says he could not do his job without using some investigative skills.

'Actors by definition are detectives,' he said, 'because when you get a character you go on a search, because sometimes you don't get a lot of description.

'You get some vague background stuff about the characters, so you have to fill it in and that takes a little bit of detective work.'

'Knives Out' director Rian Johnson and cast members Jamie Lee Curtis, Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas and Don Johnson talk about mixing entertainment with contemporary social issues. Donald Wayne Johnson (born December 15, 1949) is an American actor, producer, director, singer, and songwriter. He played the role of James 'Sonny' Crockett in the 1980s television series Miami Vice, winning a Golden Globe for his work in the role.

Johnson says there is a lot he considers when rounding out a character.

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'I use all kinds of techniques to find out more. What is the emotional make-up of this character? What was it like when he was a child? How did he get to be that way?

'Does he have childhood trauma like most of us do? What was the childhood trauma? How would he react to it? And how does it relate to this situation?

Melanie Griffith

'It's not an uncomplicated process.'

Knives Out is director and writer Rian Johnson's first film since Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and is the culmination of 20 years of work for the film-maker.

The movie features a huge and starry ensemble cast, including Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans and Toni Collette.

It came together quickly as it had to be made during a break in Craig's filming for James Bond, and Johnson says he was delighted he could be involved.

'I couldn't believe my good fortune. I mean, a beautifully written script with arguably the top one or two directors in the world right now - screenwriter and director in the world right now.

'And then the opportunity to play this character, I mean, goodness.'

Daniel Craig Don Johnson Jamie Lee Curtis

The cast have all talked in interviews about the fun they had while on the set of the murder mystery.

Jamie

I asked Johnson if with so many big names there was a risk of egos getting in the way.

'Professionals who are not insecure about how they do their work… are confident in their abilities,' he said.

'They generally have learned that ego is not their friend, and so everyone generally shows up for the joy of actually doing the work and to work with these other people, and that was the experience here.'

The 69-year-old said the cast 'had a blast' while shooting.

'Between shots we would all get together down in the room… that we affectionately called the green room, and we would congregate down there and talk about our films and experiences and relationships,' he said.

'And a lie or two might have been told, a lot of jokes and just funny, funny stuff.'

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Daniel Craig's Wife

While Johnson admitted there were many conversations he couldn't share with me, he did give me an idea of what the stars chatted about.

Daniel Craig And Don Johnson

'We'll talk about philosophy and children and our experiences in childhood and so on and so forth.

'We make each other laugh like crazy by being so painfully honest.'

'Some things that you go, whoa! Maybe I didn't need to know that.'

Knives Out is out in cinemas in the UK on 27 November