Interview with Amelia Warner and Ringan Ledwidge (star and director of Gone) - February 27th, 2007

Promoting: Gone
Venue: Soho House
Interview type (one-on-two)


Question(Q): Where did the idea come from? Was it based on any of your own nightmare backpacking experiences?

Ringan Ledwidge (RL): Well, the script was something that Working Title brought to me, so it didn’t originate with me, but funnily enough, I have had a slightly sort of obsessive American lock onto me when I’ve been travelling before and had to leave under cover of darkness one morning to shake him, only to bump into him again two months later with another group that he’d locked onto. So, yeah, I know those guys that you just cannot get rid of and part of that fed into the script.

Amelia Warner (AW): I haven’t actually had any back-packing experiences, I need to get out there and do it. I kind of missed the gap where all my friends kind of did it. I’m going to try and do it soon, so maybe I’ll get some horrible stories then.

Q: How did you get involved in the film?

AW: I just read the script and liked it and went in and auditioned. Several times.

RL: Ha ha! Poor Amelia. I did have her sort of coming back and repeatedly doing the rather more extreme moments in the film, round the table, pretending the room was the Outback.

Q: The film’s a fairly intensive three-hander, was that at all reflected in terms of your off-screen relationships with Shaun and Scott?

AW: Yeah, I think it was, in that Shaun and I rehearsed with Ringan in London before we went out there. We had two weeks of unconventional rehearsals, you know, going to art galleries, sitting in a park, swapping music, that sort of thing. So when we went out to Australia there was definitely a friendship there already and I think Scott deliberately kept his distance a bit. Also, being English, there’s all that weird kind of stuff, so that definitely played in real life, I mean that was just our dynamic. Obviously there was the occasional moment of tension because it was just the three of us and it was so claustrophobic at times.

[At this point a mouse runs out from behind the skirting board in Soho House]

AW: MOUSE!

RL: That’s odd. This is really high up for a mouse.

AW: That’s so weird. I have mice in my flat and I swear they’re following me around London.

Q: What are your next projects?

AW: I’m working on something called The Dark is Rising in Romania. It’s a series of books about a little boy in an English town who gets magical powers. It’s directed by David Cunningham and co-stars Christopher Eccleston and Ian McShane and, er, some kids.

RL: I’ve just finished a screenplay about a guy in a tollbooth and this vast accident happens right in front of him and brings a new person into his life. So hopefully that’s what I’ll be moving onto next year.

Note: I've posted several notes for this interview in the comments section below. They're basically questions that I didn't end up typing out for the interview.