- 1 day ago
Guy Pearce, Jack O’Connell and Danny Boyle attended the London Film Festival’s screening of their new film ‘Ink’ which tells the story of the infamous rise of The Sun newspaper.
On an energetic night, Jack revealed his fear of calling his director “Daddy,” while proud dad Guy revealed how his son got him emotional during his recent birthday.
Director Danny spoke about The Sun’s history with the north, and how he can relate to the subject of the film as a northerner with a “chip on his shoulder.”
Jack plays former editor Larry Lamb, while Guy plays Australian magnate Rupert Murdoch. ‘Ink’ launches in UK & Irish cinemas on 9th January 2027. Report by Burtonj. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
On an energetic night, Jack revealed his fear of calling his director “Daddy,” while proud dad Guy revealed how his son got him emotional during his recent birthday.
Director Danny spoke about The Sun’s history with the north, and how he can relate to the subject of the film as a northerner with a “chip on his shoulder.”
Jack plays former editor Larry Lamb, while Guy plays Australian magnate Rupert Murdoch. ‘Ink’ launches in UK & Irish cinemas on 9th January 2027. Report by Burtonj. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00There it's like...
00:02I'm not joking, that was a real concern of mine on a daily basis.
00:06But it's a weird number, I'm 59.
00:08And I have one of these, so I don't mind saying it, chip on the shoulder.
00:11You know, the page three and all that, just me in a quiet corner in the British Library.
00:15It was all a little bit questionable.
00:31Jack, thanks for your time, I appreciate you.
00:33Not quite.
00:34Let's play like we are, don't we?
00:36I'm going to start with a question which I know you're not going to be asked by anyone else tonight.
00:39I overheard you say that you were worried about accidentally calling Danny, Daddy on set.
00:44I know you're joking, but did you ever accidentally call a teacher?
00:47No, I'm not.
00:47Yeah, yeah, yeah, gotcha, yeah, yeah.
00:49It's the same fear, it's the same strand of fear.
00:52Never goes away.
00:52Yeah, yeah, I'm not joking, that was a real concern of mine on a daily basis.
00:57For those who aren't lucky enough to know, describe what a Danny Boyle film set is like
01:01from your point of view.
01:04He's non-stop, man.
01:06He never sits down, which I love.
01:09I love, he's in the helm with you, so it's such a treat.
01:15You can't ask for more.
01:17Was there a piece of direction that he gave you which you were like,
01:19I've never heard that before for a director?
01:21Yeah, quite a lot, all the time.
01:23It's amazing to be working with someone whose work I adore so much.
01:29So yeah, I was all eyes and ears.
01:31You mentioned school, I was at school, you know.
01:35You obviously played Larry Lamb in this, and you know, it's a real person.
01:39What was the most valuable resource available to you which helped inform your character and your role?
01:43I got a library card.
01:45I went down to the British Library.
01:47Amazing space.
01:50You know, a national treasure.
01:53And I got in there and I looked at old Sun newspapers prior to Larry being appointed and then after.
02:01And it's day and night.
02:04That was sort of the first thing I did really.
02:06I looked a bit weird pulling out all these, you know, the page three and all that.
02:10Just me in a quiet corner in the British Library.
02:13It was all a little bit questionable.
02:17Obviously, this is taking the name of the Sun, focusing on the Sun in the 70s onwards.
02:22What do you think Sun readers today might take away from watching Inc?
02:28Sun readers?
02:28I mean, I don't know.
02:30I think it's an origin story.
02:31You know, I think it's applicable to a much grander audience than that, I hope.
02:40So, yeah, yeah, I think it's a commentary on sort of how we got here.
02:47Doomscrolling and post-truth and all that stuff, you know?
02:59Hey.
03:00Hi, CM. Hello.
03:01Thanks so much for your time, I appreciate you.
03:02How are you? No worries.
03:02Sorry to start on a personal question.
03:05But how did you celebrate your birthday last week?
03:06It was very quiet.
03:08It was very quiet.
03:10My beautiful son and his mum gave me a lovely piece of artwork.
03:15That was a collage of all my son's artwork that an artist had compiled together and framed.
03:23So, it was really quite special.
03:25As well as some blown up prints of my son.
03:30So, I was like, that's all I need.
03:32You know, so I woke up to that, yeah.
03:34I wanted to get emotional as a dad.
03:36Yeah, totally.
03:37But it's a weird number.
03:38I'm 59.
03:39So, next year I'll have a party, but this year was a quiet one.
03:42But, you know, as I say, Carice and Monty gave me some really lovely gifts and, you know, it was
03:48as simple as that.
03:49Hey, let's talk about him.
03:50I don't know how you see and you view Rupert Murdoch growing up in Australia.
03:54Obviously, he's been, you know, ever-present during all your life, certainly.
03:58What was your opinion of him then?
04:00And has your opinion of him changed throughout all of this research and having played him now?
04:04I don't know that my opinion of him has changed.
04:08It's expanded.
04:12You know, in doing the work for this film, I needed to sort of let go of what the modern
04:17perspective of him is
04:19and focus on who he was back in 69 and try and get a sense of that sort of personality
04:28and that psychology.
04:31I suppose that added to my perspective on him, but I can't really profess to sort of know who he
04:39is and, you know, etc.
04:40But, you know, I just needed to find the right person that suited the script that James had created and
04:47sort of adhere to that, you know.
04:52Final question from me.
04:54For those uninitiated who aren't lucky enough to know what's a Danny Boyle film set like?
04:59It's great fun.
05:00Yeah, I mean, he's full of enthusiasm.
05:03He's very honest.
05:04He has great energy.
05:05He's inspiring.
05:08Yeah, he's the best.
05:09He really is.
05:17Hello.
05:18Thanks so much for your time.
05:18I appreciate you.
05:19That's all right.
05:20That's good.
05:20Congratulations on another fascinating story.
05:23You're so polite compared to the American crews.
05:25Oh, really?
05:26Have you ever been on the American press lines?
05:29I thought we, like, think...
05:30Well, you're so polite.
05:32It's like...
05:33Everybody's so...
05:34There it's like...
05:36It's like that.
05:37You know what it is?
05:38We're northern.
05:38That's why...
05:40Anyway, sorry.
05:41I interrupted you.
05:41That brings me into my first question though.
05:43Yes.
05:43I feel like the sun, you know, has had an impact in various ways over the decades on life in
05:49the North.
05:50You're obviously a proud northerner as well.
05:52Like, how do you approach that?
05:54And what the sun means to you and bring it to a national audience?
05:57Does, like, being a northerner ever come into consideration for you when describing the story of the sun and its
06:02many effects on the areas over the years?
06:04Well, obviously, its history, particularly to do with Liverpool, is appalling.
06:08And we tried to use that headline.
06:11We'd not been permitted to use that headline in our epilogue at the end, which is something that we're still
06:17trying to get.
06:18We've done our own version of it so that people who do know, people from Liverpool who see the film,
06:22can see that we are aware of that.
06:26The northerner question is interesting because the character that Jack plays, Larry Lamb, is from Yorkshire.
06:34And he's the first editor of the tabloid song.
06:36And he set the template, which is obviously what the film is about.
06:41So it has very much, it's very much rooted in his, and I have one of these so I don't
06:47mind saying it, chip on the shoulder.
06:49Which is that you come to London and the establishment excludes you.
06:52It's judgmental, and it's also true of the Australian in the film as well, who is also judged.
06:59And so they both feel like underdogs.
07:02And the underdog, in this case, gets its revenge. Proves itself.
07:06I like to prove myself against that kind of establishment.
07:09I always kind of have that feeling.
07:11And we couldn't raise enough money for this film.
07:13So it was an act of, it was a very deliberate act making it.
07:19And making it as good as possible to prove that we could make it, you know.
07:23It's interesting, it is a celebration of the changes that the sun wrought early on.
07:29But then the film moves into a much darker space.
07:32I love that, like, I've read about the, obviously, the attempt to get more funding as well.
07:36And it just creates sort of a camaraderie, us against the world kind of mentality.
07:40Is that kind of drove the cast and the crew and all the team behind it when it came to,
07:44like, battling to get more funding?
07:45Yeah, we did. We did exactly what, I mean, when Murdoch recruits him at the beginning, he wants him to
07:51recruit a team of spited underdogs who have a chip on their shoulder and want to prove themselves.
07:57And, of course, we did exactly the same with our crew. We wanted to make it feel like, yeah, a
08:03siege mentality, really.
08:05You know, it's like Alex Ferguson used to, that's how he built that great, the class of 92 team.
08:11You know, the siege mentality, it works. He thinks everybody's against us, but we're going to prove ourselves, you know.
08:24I think it's more to do with, when you see the way that the film updates at the end, it's
08:29really to do with what we are all complicit in,
08:32rather than just pointing at some readers themselves. That you can't, you know, in its heyday when it was selling
08:39four or five million copies a day,
08:41you can't say that those people, they weren't buying it because it was a bad newspaper.
08:47They were buying it because it delivered something. And that something has developed in, and you can trace it really
08:54quite clearly,
08:55into a world we now occupy of the attention economy, of clickbait, and the easy swipe, and what's next.
09:04It's right at the beginning of the film, he says, it doesn't matter why, it's what's next is what matters.
09:08And so it's really about all of us, really, rather than any particular readers of any particular paper.
09:15Danny, I've got to let you go, but I've got to finish with this. Where do we stand on finishing
09:18the 28 years trilogy? What's the current...?
09:20Oh yeah, no, there's a script, a very good script by Alex Garland, and I mean, he's off making his
09:28own film at the moment,
09:29and it's a big film, I believe, so it'll have to wait on the back burner until he's finished that.
09:34But it's, you know, we'll have to raise the money for it, and all those kind of things, and cast
09:39it, and all the usual shenanigans.
09:41But it's done, and it's, well, there's a first draft of it, which is very good.
09:46I wasn't sure about this, is it like...
09:48You nailed it.
09:49We are where we are.
09:50You've got to take swings on a red carpet.
09:51You've got to take a big swing.
09:52Yeah.
09:53But I also like a playwright, like I need to punch you with my weight.
09:56But anyway, here we are.
09:57It's wonderful, you've nailed it.
09:58Congratulations on, I guess, all of the success which Inc has had.
10:03In 2016?
10:042017, yeah.
10:05So nearly 10 years, yeah, on stage and screen, yeah.
10:07Do you foresee, do you have a level of dream in the back of your mind, like, this will be
10:11a film one day?
10:12Absolutely not.
10:13And if anyone ever tells you that, it's a lie.
10:15It's, no, I mean, I knew, I was really confident about the story, that it was a...
10:21I really love finding these little pockets of British history that somehow draw a line from the recent past to
10:26where we are now.
10:27And also, like, celebrating the idiosyncrasies of British culture.
10:35So I thought there'd be an audience for it.
10:37But no, when you, like, do a play, you think it could, like, close in a week or...
10:41And we were so lucky we went to the West End and then Broadway.
10:45And then I think because it's such a, it's such a strong narrative, and that's nothing to do with me.
10:51The literal story of how this newspaper in one year went from an unknown posh broadsheet called The Sun that
10:59no one was buying,
11:00to almost one of the biggest selling papers in the world.
11:03And how they did that over the course of a year, it's like a kind of sports movie.
11:08It's like, like, it's, but it, but it obviously has affected all of our lives.
11:11So I really thought it could be a movie. I sent a script to Danny Boyle, expecting him to reject
11:16me out of hand.
11:18And he was so generous in meeting with me and working with me on the script.
11:22Because I, like, I have a lot to learn about film writing.
11:25And I think I take films so seriously that I didn't assume I could just, like, cut and paste a
11:31play into a final draft software.
11:33I really wanted to make it a good piece of cinema. So, yeah, here we are. I'm really excited.
11:37Well, I guess as, like, an artist, a creator, collaborating must be so rewarding.
11:43Yeah.
11:43So, like, I know that you're going to collaborate with Danny Boyle and bring your script from stage to the
11:47screen.
11:48Are there any, like, any parts from Danny or nuggets from him that you got?
11:52You're like, only Danny could have given me that.
11:55Loads. I mean, I, um, what I loved about what Danny did is we had, I don't know if this
11:59is normal,
11:59but we had, like, two weeks of rehearsal where I worked with the actors in the room and worked on
12:05the script and kept rewriting.
12:07We had, like, research days where people would come in from Fleet Street from the newspapers and help us on
12:12research.
12:13So, actually, it felt really theatrical. It felt like we were building this thing together.
12:18But I learned so much from Danny in terms of the rhythm, the grammar, the power of the lens and
12:25what that gives you that a theatre play obviously doesn't.
12:28I love theatre. I'm a playwright through and through. I love the event and the collective sharing of a play.
12:35I guess cinema's more about psychology, character. And also, they built Fleet Street in the 60s.
12:43They built this incredible newsroom and, um, and we created London in the 1960s.
12:49And that's so, you feel so lucky that, as you know, like, not many films are being made at the
12:53moment.
12:55And, uh, as a writer, you go, if I'm getting a film made, I, uh, I want to, I want
12:59to take this shot.
13:00So, yeah, I'm so lucky. Thank you.
13:02I, well, I'm very proud to be here. I was here for, um, well, the last time I was at
13:07the Royal Festival Hall for a premiere
13:09was for The Woman in Black, which was about 15 years ago, uh, because I played the woman in black.
13:14Little known fact. So, um, it feels very evocative to be back here.
13:21And please, uh, introduce your parents that you play in your meeting for.
13:25I played Joan Lamb, who is Larry Lamb's wife. A long, kind of, as you gather through the film, quite
13:31a long-suffering wife.
13:33And really representative of the way marriage worked for a long time, which was that you're stuck by your man
13:39through thick and thin.
13:41And, um, you know, it wasn't a particularly happy marriage. She wasn't, uh, she was betrayed, as you see in
13:49the film.
13:50But the, they did endure and stayed together until Larry died.
13:56I'm asking every actor tonight, uh, for those who are not lucky enough to know what it's like, describe a
14:02Danny Boyle film set to us.
14:04How would you, how would you describe it if it's possible even?
14:07Energetic. Really fast and energetic and alive. Like, Danny's this amazing presence. He's like a bee.
14:13You can see his mind working and he's really interactive with all the actors and the crew that are on
14:19set.
14:19You feel like you're being really kind of, yeah, you feel like you're being well shepherded, you know?
14:27And, um, he literally, you feel his direction, uh, and it was really exciting for me.
14:34I'd never worked with Danny before. And, and you know, he's got, he's Northern like me.
14:39So immediately I felt an affinity. Um, and yeah, I, I really loved working with him.
14:47What's the, uh, cause he's got such like a unique, specific vision and like way about it.
14:51What's the direction you've heard him give, which you've never heard of at all before?
14:55Um, I remember working on the set. There's a press awards do that happens in the film.
15:03And, uh, it wasn't something that specific that he said, but it was just the way that he got everybody
15:09in that room to pay attention and, and act as if they were actually at this event in the sixties,
15:17which would be much more raucous and ill behave than it will be these days.
15:21You know, everyone's smoking, everyone's everyone's falling off chairs.
15:25It was, it was really good fun.
15:28Love this shirt.
15:29Thanks so much.
15:29Uh, please explain it to me. I really like it.
15:31Well this shirt, this is the Burberry thing I got ages ago and never wore.
15:34So it's like, I'm like, and I was actually just, I live around the corner.
15:37I was like, I haven't really got dressed for tonight. This will do.
15:39Nailed it.
15:39Yeah. And it's raining. I had to cycle here.
15:42So it works well on a bike in the rain.
15:44I love that.
15:45And hey, congratulations on a great experience, Scott Pink.
15:48Obviously not the first time you worked with Danny Boyle.
15:50I know that you've worked with like many a big name director and like, you know, producing a score for
15:54a film.
15:55How was your collaborations with him? How would you describe your work?
15:58Uh, working with Danny's fantastic.
16:00Like every director you work with is very different.
16:02And that like having done a few films with Danny and some other projects, um, he's a, he is a
16:08very punk rock director.
16:09Like his approach is very instant and very raw.
16:15And, and that's something that sometimes takes a while to work out.
16:18It's really exciting because you always just thrown into things.
16:21He loves immediacy.
16:22He loves rough edges.
16:23You know, if I make something too polished, he's not into it.
16:26And so with this film, I definitely went in a, like, in a slight more spirit of anarchy with the
16:31score than I would if I was writing somewhere on an epic orchestral piece.
16:34That sounds so good. Like, you know, absolute freedom. And with that kind of MO for yourself or that, sorry,
16:39that directive, what do you incorporate, which you wouldn't have usually allowed?
16:43Well, I mean, there's loads of different things in his score, but I mean, one of the things we did
16:48was we used the sound of printing presses.
16:50It's like in, in the time this, this film set in the sixties in Fleet Street, the printing presses are
16:55huge. You can hear them now.
16:56You can literally hear them now on the red carpet. They're a huge part of the, uh, of the atmosphere
17:01of Fleet Street having talking to people.
17:02They talk around the film. So I want to incorporate that into the score. So we've got these like printing
17:06presses, which, which tracks are built on top of.
17:08I mean, we can literally hear one in the background here. And then, and there's another element, which is a
17:14sort of like punk rough rawness, because these guys are outsiders.
17:18You know, these journalists, you kind of root these journalists, which is slightly odd these days, because the sun is
17:22a complicated newspaper of anyone who's British.
17:26But at the time they're ripping up the rule book. And so I want the music to have that sense
17:30of anarchy and rawness to it.
17:35It was a perfect kind of like a link to the bands of the time, music of the time, you
17:39know, Sex Pistols and just punk rock in general.
17:41Yeah.
17:42It's a perfect accompaniment. Do you then like source musicians who are...
17:48Well, yeah, I mean, I work with so many different types of musicians. And so on this, there's like, there's
17:53some like really like sort of distorted electric cello.
17:56There's a whole stuff I did with a band where we just turned the distortion up to maximum and just
18:01messed about.
18:02And, and then there's other textures in it, which are, you know, we've got like a medieval instrument called a
18:07nickel harper.
18:07And that's in some ways a subliminal hark back to the medieval printing press.
18:12And the printing press sort of changed how we consume information, how we understand the world.
18:17And I want a link from that to the modern day now.
18:21If you're allowed to tell me, you know, these things are often globe and dagger, but like, what are the
18:26upcoming projects and films that you're working on?
18:29I've just finished another film about the media landscape called Musk with Alex Gibney, which is a fantastic documentary looking
18:37at Elon Musk and got to write a song with David Byrne from Talking Heads.
18:41And that was amazing. David Byrne, such a great artist and storyteller and commentator on our times.
18:48And I think it's very hard to escape the shadow that Elon Musk has cast over today's world.
18:53And that's another movie of like trying to help you understand the world we're in.
18:57Finishing Slow Horse in season seven and Spider-Verse three, just about to start work on that and some other
19:04top secret things.
19:05You know, he's like a good thing.
19:05That's going to happen.
19:05It's a good time.
19:05That's a good time.
19:06And it's a good time.