The Life of Chuck is a singular and surprising cinematic experience: a story told in reverse, spanning one man’s life from his death at the end of the world to his quiet, wondrous childhood. Based on Stephen King’s novella, the film charts a path through global catastrophe, intimate memory, and transcendent hope, revealing how even the most ordinary life can be a universe unto itself.
The movie was written, directed, and produced by Mike Flanagan and stars Tom Hiddleston, Mark Hamill, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Benjaman Pajak and Kate Siegel. We caught up with the cast to learn more about the filming process.
Interviewed for Family Entourage
Family Entourage: When people hear the name Stephen King, they have a natural association for the kinds of stories that he’s gonna tell, but also if you know his work, you know that he is interested in the human condition. What was it about the tone of the story that you wanted to capture, and how was that reflected, not only in what you wrote, but how you approached directing it?
Mike Flanagan: There’s a tone that Steve achieves in a lot of his kind of non-horror work. And I’m thinking about The Body, which became Stand by Me. Or Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The Green Mile, to an extent, although that’s a little more supernatural. It’s that when he’s being earnest, he isn’t being maudlin. He isn’t overdoing that, and when he’s being apocalyptic in the story, he’s being gentle at the same time.
And I think he creates the poles that you have to kind of make sure you’re staying between when it comes to tone. But fortunately, I think constant readers will recognize that Steve has that. He very famously says there’s no horror in the world without love. You know, his stories, even the scary ones, aren’t about the monsters. They’re about the people. Like, it isn’t about the clown, it’s about the kids. It’s about the friendship. It’s about the love. You know, I think as long as you keep that in mind, it’s very easy to kind of zero in on his tone.
FE: You know what’s gonna happen to your character. How much are you trying to be conscious of that idea to a small degree in how it informs your performance?
Tom Hiddleston: Well, I think what was crystallized for me when I read the script for the first time was that feeling that we all share, or it’s a knowledge none of us have. Which is none of us know what the last day of our lives will be. None of us know the last date. None of us know how it’s gonna end. And we all live, each of us every day in that uncertainty. And we do the best we can with the life we have. And that awareness, I think, is something that comes in and out of focus in our lives. That actually this is not a dress rehearsal. What’s the Voltaire quote? We all have two lives, the second begins when you realize you only have one. And you don’t know when that life is gonna run out. And I don’t know that Chuck knows that it’s going to end at the moment of putting his briefcase down and moving his hips to the beat of the drums. But I knew on Chuck’s behalf. And what Mike’s screenplay and what Stephen King’s story describes so beautifully is the magic of those small moments in our lives which will become the brightest stars in our memories in the last hours of our lives. And so there was this, I had this awareness of the preciousness and the fragility of living, but also the magic and the majesty of connection in the every day. And so, I’m just getting to dance that out, I suppose, as Chuck. And it’s so beautifully described in the story, that this is, this moment on the sidewalk on a Thursday afternoon is maybe a moment of an expression of the most intense freedom of his entire life. He’s completely free. He’s completely in the present moment. He’s completely alive. And in six months’ time, his life will be over. We all have, inside the soul of every human being, is an internal world of infinite connections, memories, experiences, and possibilities. And we should never submit to the reduction that we’re just one thing. Our lives are magic. Yes, our lives are full of struggle and suffering and grief and pain and loss, that’s true as well. But they’re also magic. And there’s so much joy there. And that’s the bit I found moving is that Charles Krantz, to the external world, he seems to be the gray man in the gray suit. Mr. Businessman, walking to the business conference with his business briefcase. He’s never gonna stop and listen to the music. But actually, inside the soul of this, you know, accountant who loves his job and loves his wife and loves his son, is this dancer. And that might be true of anyone you know or anyone you see on the street, is inside that human being is greater breadth and depth and range than we could possibly imagine.
FE: Mark, you play a character who is not only imparting a lot of wisdom, including a profound love of math, but also says something that’s a little contrary, perhaps, to what artists need to hear, which is don’t pursue your art. That’s a ridiculous idea. Become a banker or an accountant because that dancing thing is never gonna work. So, it feels as if you’re both this great sharer of wisdom, but the wisdom you’re sharing isn’t a hundred percent perfect.
Mark Hamill: Yeah, it was relatable because I remember telling my parents what I wanted to do. And they said, “You’re out of your mind.” What are the odds of you, we don’t know anybody in show business. We don’t know anybody who knows anybody in show business. Get your teacher’s degree. So, that’s common advice, because the odds are against you. But yeah, it tickled me because he’s a very common man, and he probably drinks a little too much, but the thing that turns him on is the glory of mathematics. He just is rhapsodic about the joys of math. This one is looking at me like I’m from Jupiter. But I lived in a very insular world in this production ’cause Mia Sara plays my wife and Benjamin Pajak is what I call the adolescent Chuck, and Cody Flanagan is like the first grade Chuck. And that was it. You know, I didn’t even meet Tom until the film wrapped at some press thing. And same with Karen and Chiwetel. Carl Lumbly, who I worked with in Fall of the House of Usher. Nobody. I was completely isolated. And it’s only when it all came together where, I mean, I understood it in stages. And by the way, I’m reading probably my favorite Stephen King book right now. It’s Stephen King on writing. Oh, my gosh. I wish I’d got ahold of that before. But at least I’ve got it now. So, yeah, all I had to do was love my family, and that was very easy to do ’cause I loved all the people that I worked with.
FE: You get to experience your own end of the world. And you are seeing something as an actor, and then you’re seeing what the finished film has with those great sound effects about how your character is thinking. I’m curious about how your character’s thinking as the stars literally vanish from the sky.
Chiwetel Ejiofor: It’s such an incredible moment in the film and incredible to play and to read. And yeah, I think all of those beats felt very personal. You know, they just felt very connected. And I was actually saying earlier that dropping the phone was [laugh] actually a really big moment for me. You know, the idea of just leaving behind all of the things that we leave behind, and actually those moments are connected. I think for us in the modern day, you know, something that is so integral to our experience of life as our mobile phone, and just dropping it and walking off and just knowing that that is the end of that feels akin to me to watching the stars go out. It’s this kind of profound association with anything that we know to be our own sort of spiritual self, you know. And I found it was really rich in the kind of — I mean, that moment is filled with love. And actually, the whole Marty side of the story is filled with love. But it’s not just the romantic love. There’s a kind of sense of this depth of emotional feeling and understanding of his own place in the world. And it felt like it really related to everyone. You know, it felt truthful, I guess is what I’m saying. It just felt sort of very honest to me. And that’s what connected me to it.
FE: Karen, I think your character and Chiwetel’s character also realized that, yes, we could have done more, but the thing that matters the most is how we connect to each other. Is that what you hope people will take away from this particular part of the story in your film?
Karen Gillan: Yeah, I think that it’s interesting to kind of think about what you would do in your own life if it really was the end of everything. Like, and I think we all get so obsessed with things in our lives, like, whether it’s material possessions or accolades or money, and all of that will probably just fall away, and we will reach out to the person that matters the most to us in that type of situation. And so I think that’s valuable to remember now.
TH: I think he’s raising a really interesting question about the quality of our connections as they stand. And as things start to break down, you know, as traffic grinds to a halt, as the Internet goes down, as the phone lines go down, as you start seeing images of whole land masses sliding into the sea, the immediacy of, to Chiwetel’s point, I don’t need this. I have two legs. I’m gonna walk over there, and we’re gonna have a real conversation. And maybe Stephen is asking questions like, perhaps we don’t do that enough. That we have the resources we need, but we lean on our technologies, which are simulating real connection, but they’re not actually the substance of human connection.
MF: To very emphatically yes, and that, what strikes me about the story Steve constructed is as Marty takes that walk, every stranger he encounters engages in conversation, and kind of meaningful conversation, kind of open conversation. And I think as connected as we all are technologically, that kind of connection is increasingly rare. And I think he points to a very interesting thing about that.
