Hugh Dancy: "Yes. And the difficulty is that Adam is really a very trusting soul, I think, who's learnt to be guarded. But, you know, he would never knowingly mock somebody. He would say if he felt something was stupid, but he would never set out to make somebody feel bad. He would be blunt, but he would be honest. And he’s come to realize that the terms of the world that he's operating in are not necessarily the terms that he knows."
It's almost as if he doesn't have a filter to stop him from saying what's inappropriate.
Hugh Dancy: "Well I think that Adam has got the filter of not wanting to say the wrong thing. In passing comments, he can't help himself and If something seems incomprehensible and irrational to him, he will say so. But, as Max was saying, he has the filter of constantly trying to fit in and is running everything through his mind. 'Okay, what has just been said to me? How have I heard it and have I heard it right? What is this person actually trying to say and how should I respond?' You know, that's a complicated process that most of us don't have to make conscious."
I can kind of see in the movie why Adam falls for Beth, but why is she attracted to him? Why do you think that is?
Hugh Dancy: "I think ultimately it's not something she takes lightly and he has to not only win her over, but be completely oblivious to the fact that she's really not that interested. At a certain point she's trying to gently give him the message that she's not interested and, of course, he doesn’t pick up on it. So that's the first thing to say. I mean I don't think she falls for him in that way. She doesn't actually fall for him - it’s a very gentle, slow process."
Max Mayer: "She slides for him."
Hugh Dancy: "She slides for him. But I think watching the movie, I think there are certain external truths about her life that make it better relevant. She's been in a couple of crappy relationships with people that have lied to her. She's got a kind of domineering father who, as it's revealed, is also maybe not the most honest or upright person. And then she's faced with this guy who is the antithesis of those things. You know, those are the kind of abstract truths. The real truth is though that above and beyond all, that when you see them together I think at a certain point in the movie you realize, when they’ve kind of overcome a lot of the obstacles to understanding each other, that they just are happy together. I think they share some kind of a quality, simplicity, that is very hard to define. And to be honest with you, I think it’s hard to define how any two people really, you know, ultimately what makes them work together. So all those things are true."
They just seem to fit together.
Hugh Dancy: "They do fit, yes. And it’s been partially like, as it always is for all of us, kind of where their lives have brought them up to that point, and it’s partially just the essence of their characters."
How was it connecting with Rose Byrne?
Hugh Dancy: "I didn't. Well it wasn’t that kind of movie."
Max Mayer: "Well they did onscreen."
Exactly. You do onscreen.
Hugh Dancy: "No, no, that’s exactly right, and I've got to say watching the movie for the first time at Sundance, really, I was taken aback by how much it was about connection. Obviously we had a shared experience in some way there physically. But I think particularly for me - and therefore by default for Rose - I was concentrating so hard on getting the details of the nuances of the character right and specifically, I suppose, thinking about, and I hate to just call it thinking about Asperger’s, but thinking about Adam’s specific condition which I did have to kind of constantly work at to make sure I was getting it right – not overstepping, not underselling. And that was just my primary focus. It’s also true that a lot of the relationship, a lot of the time with Rose, that there is a disconnect or there's a miscommunication, you know? So it didn’t lend itself to the kind of coming out of the end of the film feeling like soul mates. It was later on, actually again at Sundance, when we were all there together and able to really celebrate the film and the fact that it started to have this success, that I really got to know her. It’s been a strange and unusual experience."
Interesting. Did you know it would work onscreen between the two? It doesn't sound like on set necessarily, you could see it.
Hugh Dancy: "Well I think I would say that my viewpoint on set was very specific and very subjective."
Max Mayer: "No, I felt it was sort of a perfect match in a certain way in the sense that because of the Asperger thing, Hugh’s focus was on himself essentially, and that's Adam’s focus, you know? But I remember we had two days before Rose started working actually, and the first day was we did the scene on the stoop where she’s bringing her bags up there. I knew that I basically wanted to do that scene in a two-shot so that I could see both of them. By looking at the monitor in that moment it was sort of magical. I thought, 'Oh boy, I think this could be really good.' It was 'chemistry', but it was sort of anti-chemistry in the sense that Hugh was sort of doing his thing and it was entirely charming and truthful, and Rose was responding to him in a totally spontaneous, impulsive kind of, 'Who is his guy?' kind of way that was in fact Rose dealing with an actor who wouldn't look at her and wasn’t responding to all the pretty girl stuff. All of a sudden it was like, 'Oh, this is what I meant. This is it. We have a chance here.' So off we went."
Did Rose ever talk to you about that?
Hugh Dancy: "No. We talked subsequently about it, yes, and both agreed that we both felt that we got to know each other after the movie."
