Interview with David Thewlis - March 17th, 2006

Promoting: Basic Instinct 2
Venue: The Dorchester Hotel
Interview type: One-on-one



ViewLondon (VL): How did you get involved with Basic Instinct 2?

David Thewlis (DT: Oh, just in the normal way, my agent sent me a script, you know? There’s no story, apart from I hadn’t seen the original – I’d heard about it, obviously, but I didn’t really know what it was, apart from the fact that it was a bit sexy and Sharon Stone was in it. And, you know, that was enough for me. So I read the script, and they told me it would be set in England, which was a good idea, because if you’re going to do a sequel you might as well make it quite dramatically different, I think. And I really liked Michael Caton-Jones, I’d nearly worked with him on Rob Roy and wished I had. And David Morrissey, who I’d also never worked with but really liked.

VL: How about Sharon Stone?

DT: She was fine – I didn’t really get to know her, because I only had one scene with her. Also, I shot my scenes in quite a short space of time, because I had to get shut out because we were having a baby.

VL: I have to ask, why does your character have a Welsh accent?

DL: I seem to get asked this a lot, for some reason. The Welsh accent, well, it came about in rehearsal, because the detective’s dialogue is quite banal –you know, “Where were you on the night of the murder?” - and it all sounded very flat, and I thought, “What’s a really nice lyrical accent where I can actually put the stress on things in a more entertaining way and actually entertain myself?” And I started doing that and the director liked it, he said, “That’s good, why are you doing that?” and I said, “I don’t know, I know a lot of Welsh people and I quite like it.” And I kept going back to it in rehearsal and I said, “I think I’m going to do it like that” and Michael went, “Yeah, do it” and that was that. So there’s no real backstory – basically, I was having a laugh.