If Together feels like a stage play, that's because it very nearly was. The incisive sneak peek into a nameless quarantined couple's relationship as it falls apart at the seams was originally conceived as a stage play by writer Dennis Kelly (the original Utopia), but eventually, he and director Stephen Daldry (The Crown) opted for the screen as its medium instead.
The result is equal parts unsettling and fascinating, as He (James McAvoy, His Dark Materials) and She (Sharon Horgan, Everybody's Talking About Jamie) take turns explaining the lockdown situation in England to the audience in between bouts of premarital tension. While their feuds are exacerbated by being trapped at home together for over a year, their young son Artie watches the difference in their behavior towards him versus each other.
Horgan and McAvoy spoke to Screen Rant about how they approached characters who were dealing with a universal struggle while still making their relationship problems specific to them and discussed how Artie affected their views on parenting.
Screen Rant: How do you combine what is essentially a very well-deserved civil rights rant with actually getting into your character? Because you're discussing these really specific political and health-related aspects about England yet having to really dive into the couple's story.
James McAvoy: I guess we all lived it, we'd all been through it, and we were all still going through it when we were shooting it. It wasn't very difficult to just imagine myself a slightly more conservative person than I am - or maybe massively more so. And maybe imagine myself in a different kind of relationship than the one that I'm actually in.
It was like stepping to the left, or stepping to the right in this case, and stepping into his shoes. But I feel like it's always like that. You can be playing a mass-murdering, despotic leader of Scotland, do you know what I mean? And yet, it doesn't feel like that much [more] of a shift than it does to play this guy. Maybe that just means I play everything the exact same.
Sharon, you have a full monologue that feels very theatrical and yet is full of statistics and England's history with the virus. How do you approach that?
Sharon Horgan: Luckily - and I might, might be misremembering this, but - I think we shot it in order. That kind of helped because we were able to follow the narrative of the film, obviously, and the narrative of the lockdown as well - when it started and what stage you're at when you're at the second lockdown.
And so really, their trauma and institutionalization and their anger at the government built up over the course of the film. When we dove in first, it was much more about their relationship, and the hate and all that. And then as it progressed, other things transpired to either push them apart or bring them together. Then by the time you got to the point where we're calling the government to task, that's where everyone's heads were at nationally.
I love your child, Artie, and how he's always there yet the parents can't even agree on his name. Can you talk about his role in your relationship and the story?
James McAvoy: Yeah. I think some people think we ignore him too much, or we let him hear too much of what's going on. But I think the truth is that kids do hear tons of what's going on - and maybe it's not entirely wrong that they hear tons of what's going on.
I think that sometimes we try and protect our kids from way too much, and we end up not preparing them for the world that they're going to have to step into. Which is why they're all staying with their parents until they're 35 at the moment. I want mine out the door when he's 18.
Look, Artie hears too much in this movie, undoubtedly. But I don't know. I'm a loving, cuddly parent, but I do think that we worry too much about what we're letting our kids hear.
He's certainly well-adjusted at the end, so he seems fine.
Sharon Horgan: I mean, it was really important to the story. It gave it a whole different color, which was really interesting for us because we weren't entirely sure. I was worried about it throughout that it's going to make her so unlikeable, but in actual fact, the love that they do give him - even if it's just a stroke of a head or touching his hand as he goes by, or the way they lower their voices - they think about him all the time.
He's obviously a worry, and they think about him all the time. But it's a lockdown. My kids saw me lying on the floor crying during lockdown. I wish they hadn't seen that, but there was no other way around it. We were imprisoned in our own home. So, I think it was really truthful in this story that he saw too much.
Together is out in theaters on August 27.
Key Release Dates
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Together
Release Date:2021-08-27
