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.

Interview with David Morrissey - March 14th, 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? Were you a fan of the original film?

David Morrissey (DM): I was in London and I got a phone call from my agent to say that they were interested in me for Basic Instinct 2. I remembered really enjoying the first one although I hadn’t seen it for ages. I read the script, which I really liked – it was set in New York when I read it but I knew that they were going to transpose it to London. And I got the first one out again and I really thought it was great, seeing it a second time, it had a real Hitchcockian feel to it. And I met Michael Caton-Jones and we got on immediately, and the next thing they fly me to L.A. and I meet Sharon and I get to stay in the Four Seasons Hotel and I’m all very swanky and then I go down and I meet her and we get on. I’d prepared three scenes to do with her and they’d blocked out an hour for me to be with her and I was there for two hours and about an hour and a half of that was just chatting, so we got on well. And then we did the scenes and then I went home and they told me I’d got it. But in my pessimistic way I thought “This’ll never happen”, but it did.

VL: A couple of explicit deleted scenes from the film have ended up on the internet. Can you explain why they were cut out?

DM: I can’t really answer the question about why they were cut out because I wasn’t privy to those decisions, really. Probably because my arse wasn’t good enough. But I think one of the things about the time that’s gone on between the two films is that we do live in a different time, and not that it’s a more prurient time but I think that with the internet and advertising, sex is pretty much out there and available to us in a way that it wasn’t with the first film. So the first film was quite full on but now I think less is more and that might have been behind the decision to pull the threesome scene. But there’s also that maxim, that I think is very true, that you set out to make one film, you actually shoot a second film and you edit a third.

VL: Have you ever been cut out of anything?

DM: Yeah, I was cut out of Girl With A Pearl Earring, which was fine, actually, I mean I was really, well, not happy about it, but as a director you can see why those decisions were made and you don’t take it personally. And I liked the film and I think it benefited from me not being in it!