The King of Cool
by Damianista | Fan Fun with Damian Lewis | November 12, 2018
“Quentin’s film is going to blow people away.” – Damian Lewis on Britannia Awards Red Carpet
Well, some dreams come true and we have been living the dream since we got word late April that Damian Lewis would play the iconic Hollywood actor Steve McQueen in Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood!
As our long-time readers know, we have been rooting for Damian to play Steve McQueen for more than three years now. JaniaJania wrote this article about why Damian Lewis should play Steve McQueen when we got word back in 2015 that a Steve McQueen biopic was in works. And she also tweeted a question to be asked to Damian at NY Times Talks in 2016 about whether he would consider playing McQueen.
“I considered it a lot. But I’m not sure if anybody else has…
…and he’s had a reputation which I think has been revised somewhat… Steve McQueen seems to get cooler with age… because I think he had his demons… But yes Steve McQueen… American icon… And yeah If for no other reason than to just drive nice cars quite quickly and to ride motorbikes.”
You can watch Damian’s answer below and catch a glimpse of yours truly in the audience, too.
Well, Damian is in good company because it seems Quentin Tarantino considered it, too! And while we seriously hope he does have a chance to drive nice cars quite quickly and ride motorbikes in the movie, Damian does not give away much when asked about his part in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the Britannia Awards Red Carpet interviews.
While you can see Damian on Ross King LIVE on the Britannia Awards Red Carpet at 00:52 below talking about playing Steve McQueen, I am transcribing the relevant parts for our non-English speaking readers who prefer written English to spoken English.
“Yes, I’ve done it, I’ve done it, I’ve done it. Done it with Quentin. We had too much fun, it was really really great fun… A lot of fun stuff with Leo…”
King jumps in here to ask whether there has been any competition between Leonardo de Caprio and Brad Pitt on set:
“Yeah, Leo, Brad, Damo… No. It was… Just working with Quentin was fantastic. He’s old school, he’s old school, he’s furious that movies don’t get made in LA anymore, ‘I’m going to make my movie in LA’ and he dresses up, and there is enormous generosity, and cocktails come out after every hundred reels completed, when they have every hundred reels of film shot, cocktails come out… There is a real sense of occasion and he clearly loves being on set. But it’s infectious. Everybody loves being there. It’s really really… But don’t bring your mobile phone.”
Damian is asked about how it feels to play Steve McQueen in the Red Carpet interview with Variety. You can watch his response below and the transcription of the relevant parts follows.
Damian Lewis describes playing Steve McQueen in Quentin Tarantino's #OnceUponATimeInHollywood as … "scary" pic.twitter.com/fGwOf3y10G
— Variety (@Variety) October 29, 2018
“It’s scary… because it’s a little bit like saying ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll play Elvis.’ You know, people have views, people have views about that. But I…hopefully we’ve had a good stab at it.”
How did he prepare for the role?
“Same way I prepare for everything. Endless material, video material, film material, literature, dialect coaching, physicalizing him, getting into his body and then….
What about wearing a pair of Ray-Bans in the film?
“And a pair of Ray…there was a pair…maybe, maybe. I’m not going to give anything away at this point.”
And, believe me, it is not only Damian that does not give anything away about the movie at this point. While we have been able to see and report on damian-lewis.com about the wonderful set on which Quentin Tarantino has created the Los Angeles of the late 1960s, information about the movie has pretty much been kept on lock.
So here is what we know about Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and what we think Damian’s role could be about in the movie.
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood uses Manson Family murders in the summer of 1969 in Los Angeles as a backdrop to tell a largely fictional story. The title, Tarantino being a student of Spaghetti Westerns, looks like a tribute to Sergio Leone who is credited as the inventor of the genre and his films Once Upon a Time in America and Once Upon a Time in the West. And the cast is a Who’s Who in Hollywood with Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in the lead roles.
Read the rest of the original article at Fan Fun with Damian Lewis