Over the past decade, Guy Ritchie has favoured Excalibur and blue genies over Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. However, his vacation outside his comfort zone is over, as he marks a return to the gangster genre that made him a household name with The Gentlemen.
To mark the occasion, UNILAD sat down with two of the film’s biggest stars. We had the Oscar-winning Matthew McConaughey, most famous for his roles in, erm, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Failure to Launch. We were also treated to the dreamboat himself, Daniel Cleaver – who also goes by the name Hugh Grant. When he walked in, pop (!) went our hearts.
If you’re looking for an insightful deep-dive into the all-star production, look no further. Seriously, look no further, as we used our time together to run through The Ten.
Alright, alright, alright, you’ve endured this introduction long enough. Expect the unexpected, though – ‘all bets are off’.
UNILAD: Matthew… You have a time machine, where’s the first place that you’re going?
Matthew: Oh! Let’s go to the death bed and have a look back – see if it all added up the way I thought it might.
Hugh: Your death bed?
Matthew: Yeah.
Hugh: Dark!
Matthew: No! Not dark [laughs].
Hugh: Do you think you’d die like a man or like a pussy?
Matthew: I think it happens in the Niger river, actually. Not with a hippo, it’d be a crocodile. I had a dream about that three times.
Hugh: Really?
Matthew: Yeah, but it wasn’t a sad dream. It was a very good dream, somehow.
Hugh: Dark and weird.
Matthew: Definitely weird.
UNILAD: Hugh… What’s something out of the ordinary you’ve been able to do because of your fame?
Hugh: Well, I mean, I’ve embarrassed myself. I had a terrible time last winter skiing, and we were in a ski restaurant, and there was some guy who kept filming me, standing there with his bloody camera filming me. I lost my temper, I had a little starry tantrum and I got up and I said: ‘Look, for god’s sake, how about some privacy?’ And he said: ‘No, no, no, look!’ On the screen it was just him watching his family skiing. So I did feel like a wanker.
UNILAD: How do you recover from that?
Hugh: No recovery.
UNILAD: Matthew… If you weren’t an actor, what do you think you’d be doing with your life?
Matthew: Conducting a symphony.
UNILAD: Can you please elaborate?
Matthew: Conducting… a symphony.
Hugh: Can you do that?
Matthew: Yeah.
Hugh: [Pauses] Bollocks. Can you?
Matthew: Yeah!
Hugh: Go on, show me.
Matthew: You have to have music. But if we have our own, [gestures] it’s just movement.
UNILAD: Did you play loads of musical instruments when you were younger?
Matthew: Yeah! Not many horns, but cello, lots of percussion, sang a bit, danced a bit – I’m kind of a song and dance guy.
UNILAD: Hugh… You have one wish and it has to be selfish. What do you wish for?
Hugh: Oh… I don’t know. To be absolutely honest, I’m desperate to go to the loo, if we could move on. That would be my dream.
UNILAD: Matthew… Whose career are you secretly jealous of?
Matthew: Jealousy of someone’s career is a bit strong. Tell you what, I really appreciate the work of Tom Hardy. I can watch anything Joaquin Phoenix does.
Hugh: What am I? Chopped liver?
Matthew: Love, actually.
Hugh: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Matthew: I still have so much fun watching a lot of the old Nic Cage stuff.
UNILAD: Hugh… What is your strongest-held opinion?
Hugh: I have always believed that anyone who uses a leaf-blower, or compels someone else to use one, should be made to wear one up their bum for a week.
Matthew: We have a neighbour who likes to blow his leaves on the driveway early in the morning.
Hugh: I mean, what’s the point of them? The leaves are fine where they are. Yeah, I don’t like noise.
Matthew: It’s the noise, it’s not the blowing of the leaves. I don’t mind a broom.
Hugh: I say to them nastily: ‘Why don’t you use a rake or a broom, you might lose some weight?’
UNILAD: Matthew…. What’s something you’ve never admitted publicly, but you might tell me now?
Matthew: Oh gosh… I mean, one of my favourite pastimes is clipping my nails. I’ll sit down with a cocktail and a headlamp, and a really sharp, new pair of nail clippers and have a good 45-minute session with all 10 of my fingers and toes. All 20, make a full little evening of it.
Hugh: What do you do with the clippings? Do you devour them?
Matthew: I just leaf-blow them away.
UNILAD: Hugh… You’re stuck living the same day over and over. What day would it be and why?
Hugh: I’ve never had a good day.
Matthew: Have you ever had a good hour?
Hugh: When we beat Emanuel School on the last day of school, we’d never beaten those b*stards before. I’d gotten into university and we went for a drink in a really vile pub, somewhere up near Wormwood Scrubs, and I remember thinking I might be possibly be happy at this moment.
UNILAD: Matthew… Have you ever been left convinced, or at least persuaded, by a fake news story about yourself?
Matthew: No, I haven’t. But as you know when you go out, you can walk out the door and go to the same place in front of the same people you were around the day before the news came out and people just kind of look at you a bit differently, and you can pick them out like, ‘Yep, they read it.’ That’s the bugger about it, but no I wasn’t convinced.
Hugh: Which one was it?
Matthew: Hell, I don’t know.
Hugh: I’m going to Google you to death.
UNILAD: Hugh… If you had to remove one colour from the world forever, which would it be and why?
Hugh: Well, I think green should be banned – particularly lime green. Terrifying! Do you know the colour of a green Quality Street? What the hell is that all about?
Matthew: What is it about the lime green?
Hugh: It’s just terrifying, it gives me nightmares thinking about it.
The Gentleman is set to be released on January 1.
After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.