Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield say their new romantic drama changed them as actors: ‘I’ve never had an experience like that before’

On December 27, 2024By Littum

The first time We Live in Time director John Crowley saw Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield together on screen was at the 2023 Academy Awards, where they presented the award for Best Original Screenplay. Even from that brief segment, he knew the pair had something special together — a feeling that only grew when rehearsals for their new film began.

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“I started to find that there were moments when little glimpses of life started to sparkle, moments where they played off each other, like two extraordinary tennis players knocking the ball around,” he tells GamesRadar+. “Then all of a sudden one of them would hit the ball really hard and the other one would hit it back.”

It is transferred to the screen in We Live in Time, where Garfield and Pugh are electric as the couple Tobias and Almut. The film charts their relationship from their first meeting-cute, where Almut runs Tobias over, through the great highs and deep lows of their partnership. It’s upbeat and heartbreaking in equal measure, and the duo is believable on every repeat.

Time flies

We live in the time

(Image credit: Studiocanal)

It’s no mean feat either, as the film charts three different time periods in their lives and flashes back and forth between them. These were also not filmed chronologically, leaving Pugh and Garfield to navigate their younger and older selves.

Even with the difficult task, Pugh was undaunted. “I would also say that every scene had such intention and such precision in where those people were at that point in their lives,” she says. “As much as it’s obviously difficult to jump into a movie and a story when you don’t really know each other, it really made it clear what we were trying to come out the other end with, what product it was.” As Garfield adds, that was part of this story’s unique challenge. “It was actually a really fun part of the puzzle trying to figure out where we were at any given moment,” he smiles.

Scripted by Nick Payne, no stranger to time-jumping narratives thanks to his acclaimed play Constellations, it seems the hardest part was pulling it all together. “Nick’s script had that built in from the start,” Crowley explains of the non-linear structure. “But then we had to break it all apart and put it in a completely different order. So the beginning, middle and end were again all over the floor and had to be put back together like a giant Lego set painstakingly in the cutting room, because it really didn’t played as it was written, and the emphasis in scenes had to land in slightly different areas.”

A complete partnership

We live in the time

(Image credit: Studiocanal)

Time aside, one aspect that may surprise audiences for a romantic drama is the film’s R rating in the US and 15 in the UK, rated for strong language and sex. Especially the latter has often become a thing of the past in romantic comedies and in Hollywood in general. Crowley explains that it felt essential in Tobias and Almut’s story to tell the full breadth of their relationship. “I know that intimate scenes are definitely less popular, shall we say, than they were, and a lot of people react against them,” he explains. “So it’s kind of risky to involve them or include them in a movie today.”

The director cites two specific scenes in the film that he believes justify their existence. The first comes at the end of the couple’s first date, when they are reckless and young lovers, and the second is a contrasting intimate scene when they are much older and in a more emotionally vulnerable moment.

“You couldn’t include one without the other if the point was that (there are) the different facets of that marriage and that it’s a very full-bodied, happy, loving, nurturing relationship, so that the things that are challenging in bringing the relationship to the fore,” explains Crowley. “So I know it was a bit of a risk, but I think it’s a risk worth taking because if you can convince viewers that those scenes have an emotional truth and a specificity, hopefully they argue for their inclusion towards fashion.”

In We live in time, Almut and Tobias also learn a lot from each other, and change drastically as they grow in their relationship together. “He’s someone who transforms so much in the sense that he starts out so rigid and controlling and afraid of life,” Garfield says of his character Tobias. “He is on the outside of the window at a party, looking in, longing to be inside, but not having the courage to actually say, ‘Where is the door to this party?'”

Almut, a no-nonsense chef with endless ambitions, changes this for him. “It’s her big hearts, her courage, her boldness, just her as a soul,” Garfield elaborates. “It’s like, ‘I need to be with you.’ I will spend my life with you. I don’t know why, but this is such a calling to life that he feels, and he needs to find more courage. of course – we all do.”

Pugh is also meditative about how her character grows and is changed by Tobias. “She needs to allow someone to take care of her and allow someone to care for her and love her. Maybe she doesn’t need to be so bulldozer-y and always be on her way to that one thing she wants .And I love it because it taught me a bit of a lesson too.

Connection

Florence Pugh in We Live in the Time

(Image credit: A24)

For Pugh and Garfield, it was not only their characters that learned from each other, but also them as actors. Pugh smiles fondly as she explains how proud she is of their work on the film. “We created those two people, and the life and the intensity, the life that we made was so real and full and colorful, and it was because we were brave enough to do it together,” she explains. “We were brave enough to go to those places and what an amazing experience it was actually for me to see and witness and know that we did it.”

She adds: “I love talking about it because of that and I feel really proud of the work we’ve done. I’ve never had an experience like that before and I doubt I’ll do it on the way we did it.”

Garfield completely echoes her sentiment, adding, “It’s so nice to find another actor who’s vulnerable enough to say, ‘I really want this to be this deep and this nuanced and this detailed.’ It’s really scary to want it and really try to do it, because then you’re setting yourself up for either great success or great failure.”

The truth about Tobias and Almut’s relationship is one of the factors that makes the film so powerful for those who also see it. And part of the joy of We Live in Time is that it will mean something different to each audience member who comes to it.

“People have very specific individual connections to something thematic in the film,” agrees Crowley. “I’ve already come across a handful of people who need to tell you that they’ve come across something in the film that’s very important to them, and they don’t necessarily have to articulate it. So it’s very special when people feel it’s speaking to the experience. That’s exactly what we wanted to do with the film, to try to express something ineffable.”

We Live in Time is out in UK cinemas on 1 January 2025 and available to buy on digital platforms in the US. For more on what you should see, read our Big Screen Spotlight series.