New gender war satire Ladies First arrives on Netflix today – with the comedy boasting a star-studded British and Irish cast led by Rosamund Pike and Sacha Baron Cohen.
The latter plays Damien Sachs, an odious chauvinist and corporate boss who receives a blow to the head and wakes up in a flipped world where all the power rests in the hands of women.
One of those women is Pike’s Alex Fox, who Damien had treated terribly in the real world only to find himself having to severely adjust his behaviour now that the odds aren’t stacked in his favour – leading to all sorts of shenanigans.
To mark the release, Radio Times spoke to the pair for our Film Flashbacks series – discussing everything from their very first film memories to Pike’s film debut in Pierce Brosnan James Bond flick Die Another Day.
What are your earliest memories of going to the cinema and watching films when you were younger?
Rosamund Pike: Well, ET was my first film, and ET is usually my answer for everything: most formative film, best film, most important film of the 20th century. You know, it’s basically my go-to. I think it’s a remarkable thing. I feel very lucky that was my first film.
And then the first film that I realised how an actor could move me was seeing Daniel Day-Lewis in In the Name of the Father. I didn’t realise that you could be devastated by a piece of work like that. I didn’t realise that I could care so much about a character and be moved to sort of sobbing tears of grief. It was an extraordinary thing that I realised the power of cinema at that moment, a different power.
Sacha Baron Cohen: I think for me probably The Life of Brian. It was 1979… I think I was about eight. And I got smuggled in by my two elder brothers, but it was shocking and hilarious.
And then I saw The Meaning of Life when that came out, Monty Python as well. And that really affected me in a deep way in that kind of outrageous comedy that is shocking but also hilarious. And I was too young – this is why you should let young children into adult films. It can either destroy them or they become peculiar like me.
Did you know from that point really early on that that is what you wanted to do as a career?
SBC: That’s an interesting question, because I started doing comedy sketches around the age of six.
RP: What would you do?
SBC: I’d do them in front of adults. Just trying to be funny, and then I’d start writing them down.
RP: Would you play adults or play very extreme people?
SBC: I can’t remember! I mean, they weren’t very funny, but they were from the age of six. I started writing them down and coming up with sketches.
RP: Oh, that’d be a good book to find!
Did you have any comedy actors that you looked up to when you were younger?
RP: I did, but on TV more than film – things like The Good Life, Judi Dench in As Time Goes By, One Foot in the Grave, all those situational social manners comedies, I found very, very funny. It was the specificity of people, I suppose, that’s what I found very funny. And Mr Bean – I mean Rowan [Atkinson], is a genius, I think.
SBC: Prior to that, Not the Nine O’Clock News. Remember that?
RP: No.
SBC: You’re too young for that. Not the Nine O’Clock News, Rowan Atkinson, classic! And then obviously Blackadder. Pre-Mr Bean was incredible.
RP: Yes, Blackadder, but Mr Bean was more my era, so I thought Mr Bean was just… I mean, the funniest thing. Mr Bean going to the swimming pool. Oh my god, I could watch it and watch it and watch it.
And then when I got to be in Johnny English, and I got to see Rowan just make people laugh all day with nothing but a chair, one of those swivel chairs that goes up and down. I mean, it’s a bit like [Sacha], this ability to find comedy in the everyday. It’s wonderful.
Sacha, your first film role I have down as The Jolly Boys’ Last Stand.
SBC: Oh my goodness, wow. Yeah, that really… I was 21, I think. With Andy Serkis.
How do you look back at stuff like that now?
SBC: I mean, I was unemployed, I’d never done a film before. I think the budget was £2,000. It’s not very good, so I encourage people not to watch it. But I think it’s about a day in the life of a camcorder, and I think I had borrowed the camcorder to make a sex tape with my girlfriend and not told her, and that was my little bit. So plus ça change!
It was an interesting experience, because I remember people coming in for auditions because I was technically a producer in it, being really friendly. And I thought, this is bizarre, why are they being friendly to me? And I realised they wanted a role. I had power. And that was where I realised we should make Ladies First!
Rosamund for your very first film role, it can’t get much bigger than starring in a James Bond film [Die Another Day]. What was that like at the time? I know you’d done a bit of TV before.
RP: It’s very different from an English period drama, going to James Bond. It’s a very different world.
SBC: How old were you?
RP: 21. And Pierce [Brosnan] was 52. It was quite an age gap.
SBC: And you had a romantic scene together?
RP: Yeah, we did. But it seemed sort of normal at the time. Isn’t that mad, really? It took me years before I got a co-star who was my own age – I was allowed to play opposite a man my own age. But Pierce couldn’t have been more supportive. I mean, he was very, very gentlemanly and lovely.
I just wish I knew then what I know now. And I did as much as I could. I trained in fencing very hard… but now I might get access to someone actually in MI5 or MI6, who I could talk to. Like I’m on stage playing a judge [in Inter Alia], and I’ve been able to get access to the people who really do that job at the highest level.
But then you don’t know how to ask for the stuff that’s going to make your performance as good as it can be, really. So, I’d love another stab at Miranda Frost, I would love to do that again. But, I mean, just the world. I mean, being at Pinewood on the 007 Stage. They built an ice palace inside. It’s phenomenal.
SBC: I need to rewatch that.
RP: Yeah, go ahead!
Sacha, you’ve obviously done Ali G and Borat, and then you’ve done scripted comedy, and you’ve done some serious roles as well. What do you look for in a role now?
SBC: I think it’s something where I want to play that character. I find it interesting. So working in other people’s stuff is pretty rare, but I did a movie called [The Trial of the] Chicago 7, and there was this character called Abbie Hoffman. I thought, “Wow, that’s an amazing guy to pretend to be for a while.”
And that’s really it. Or sometimes there’ll be an amazing director, and I’ll think, “Oh, that character could be good, but it’s not great yet,” and see if the director wants to make it a little more interesting, which sometimes they do, and if not, then I’m stuck.
Rosamund you’ve not done as much comedy as Sacha, but do you like getting the chance to do something that is overtly comedic?
RP: I love it. I mean, the feeling of making people laugh is the best feeling in the world, isn’t it? I love to laugh. Everyone thinks I’m very serious but actually I love to laugh.
But I haven’t got [Sacha’s] skills. If I’ve got good lines, I know how to deliver them, and I can deliver them when it’s sort of true to life. I don’t think I can do what he does, which is the larger than life. My comedic instincts are in the line of observational.
SBC: But it’s funny characters. Like in this, she plays two characters. In the flipped world, she’s basically playing this equivalent of a misogynistic female. But it’s so well-observed that the moment she did it, it really made me start laughing.
I saw her come into this lingerie store for men called Victor’s Secret, which is a lot of push-up underpants. And it was hilarious, she came in with this young, muscly guy and it really made me laugh, because it was so well-observed.
RP: All you have to do is just think what men would have done in these movies back in the day, or even now, or in real life. So this young actor comes on, and I get to be this sleazy older actor who gets to just kind of check him out and put my hand on his arse. I mean it’s mad, because we’ve seen it the other way around… it’s funny!
SBC: And I suppose what makes it comical is it’s just a simple flip.
RP: It’s an inversion, it’s just an inversion. You know, we did a love scene, and all I had to do was walk towards Sacha, undoing my belt, and we had something that you just think, ‘God, how many times have you seen that shot of, like, the cowboy undoing his belt?’
Ladies First is now streaming on Netflix.
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