Eyes of Tammy Faye's Andrew Garfield: 'Britishness and televangelism don't mix'

For British people, the world of televangelism is a rather alien concept, and Garfield admits it was something he knew very little about before he was asked by Chastain, who plays the lead role of Jim's wife Tammy Faye, to read the script.

"Britishness and televangelism don't particularly mix," he explains in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com. "It's kind of, you know, the most cringy thing a British person could ever be a part of. So yeah, I came in just fascinated, I was like, how did this happen? How do these people think? And how do they, you know, justify this, asking for money in the name of God? It's wild. So that's how I entered it from the very British perspective of, how the hell does this go down?"

As a newcomer to the topic of televangelism, Garfield naturally went about doing a great deal of research to get a better handle on Bakker's story. He delved into thousands of hours of footage that exist from the various shows Bakker presented alongside Tammy, as well as speaking to several people who knew him and reading a range of biographies and autobiographies.

This research process, Garfield says, is one of his favourite parts of the job. "I had to kind of focus my attention in the most kind of juicy places, I suppose," he says. "But I love that – that's my favourite part of the process actually, is the research process, because you're just kind of magpieing, you're just kind of absorbing a subject that you're fascinated by, and you become a kind of shallow expert over the course of a few months. And then you move on to the next thing.

"So I absolutely loved it. And for me, what was fascinating, I think, what drew me was, you know, it was about what's the seed of what makes someone equate money with love? And what's the kind of fatal flaw in the soul of that person? And that was, that was kind of where I wanted to really kind of mine in terms of playing Jim."

One thing that he didn't do in preparation for the role, however, is speak to Bakker himself – although not completely for want of trying. Garfield explains that there were vague attempts to arrange a meeting with Bakker – who still runs a TV show and ministry in Missouri – but that these attempts were ultimately fruitless.

"I was very open to it," he says. "I spoke to some of his family, and I kind of put it out there that I would love to speak to him if he was open, but I never heard and I don't blame him.

"You know, I love him," he adds. "And I really care for him. And I hope he's okay. Because, you know, what I felt in playing him, and this is obviously only my interpretation, was there was a real terror, a real terror of being empty, a real terror of not being enough, of not being, you know, a full person. And I think he was... it seemed like he was filling his life up with material things in order to escape something, some sense of inadequacy in himself."

The film covers a time span of more than 30 years, which means Garfield has to play Bakker at various different points of his life. And this is something that he says was "very challenging" especially given that there were only a handful of scenes to cover each specific stage of the journey.

"It was brief snippets, you know what I mean?" he says. "Like I was in and out. So I had to create a whole offscreen life in order to make sure that when I walked on to set and the camera was filming me, it felt like I had walked from another room, you know, alive, another part of Jim. So, it was very, very challenging. It's a lot of time and plotting that journey is very, very hard."

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is released in UK cinemas on Friday 4th February 2022. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.