We Live in Time director takes us BTS on Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield's "dazzling chemistry"

They excel both in the film's lighter moments and its deeply tragic ones, and so when we spoke exclusively to the film's director John Crowley, we asked how early he knew the two of them would work so well together.

"I mean, an inkling is about as much as I had," was his response. "Probably even less than an inkling.

"I had an instinct that the two of them would work well together, and that's not based on anything. That's just a hunch, right? So it's very unscientific."

Crowley went on to explain how he had worked with Garfield before (on the 2007 feature Boy A) and knew his work very well, to the point that he was sure he'd be "a wonderful Tobias".

"The sort of emotionality that he has as an actor, his range emotionally and how comfortable he is with his own emotions as a bloke," he said.

"And also his humour. He's very, very funny, and he's a very funny physical comedian, and I thought that combination of those two things was not something that he perhaps had shown in one role up until now."

When it came to Pugh, he'd never previously met her, but had admired several of her previous performances and thought of her as an "extraordinary young actor who had displayed such an incredibly resilient, tough quality".

"And the task [that] would be really a great challenge for her, which she more than met, would be to sort of see if she would also be able to handle that with the vulnerability that was needed in the final stages of the film," he added.

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After the pair were cast, it only took until the second day of rehearsals before Crowley saw "flashes of brilliance" between them.

He said: "We were rehearsing in a way which was not about warming up the emotion of the scene. We were reading very sort of gingerly to just... so they understood the task of every scene.

"But it's almost like they were like a pair of racehorses. They were kicking at the stalls. They couldn't wait to get going at it.

"And then day four of the actual shoot, when we shot the big underground car park scene, the first big conversation they have in the film, that was the first really big piece of heavy lifting they did, acting-wise.

"It's a tough scene, and it's all about what's not being said between the two of them. And Florence was sort of knocked sideways by being able to do it with a degree of ease.

"I think that the connection they had in the scene, and Andrew was so present with her when he was off camera and she with him, that the pair of them just landed into that scene in a way that was really beautiful to watch. And they grew from there, and not all too [focused on] sort of heartbreaking emotions.

"Sometimes they'd be in the middle of a very dark scene and there'd be a moment of levity. They're very funny and playful. So it was quite a light set as well, and their ability to spin between all those tones was dazzling."

We Live in Time is released in UK cinemas on New Year's Day 2025.

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