17-02-2025
'My Fault: London' stars, directors on crafting English version of one of Prime Video's biggest hits: 'Filmmaking is about taste'
Starring Asha Banks, Matthew Broome, Enva Lewis, Jason Flemyng, Kerim Hassan and Sam Buchanan, the first book in Mercedes Ron's "The Cupables" trilogy has gotten an English on-screen adaptation with My Fault: London (now on Prime Video). The movie follows the 2023 release of the Spanish-language film, based on the same book, which quickly became the most-watched non-English language film in the streaming platform's history.
The film's stars and directors, Charlotte Fassler and Dani Girdwood, spoke to Yahoo Canada about creating this movie after the success of the Spanish-language version. They also talked about the experience of working with two directors for this film.
Everyone kept telling me that London would be a fresh start.
But I had no idea.
This is interesting because it's, you know, from a book that people really love, then we have the Spanish language movie, now it's this, um, did you feel that pressure to make sure that it still felt like fresh and you were bringing something kind of new to an audience that may come in with some expectations of what this is supposed to look like?
Yeah, completely.
I think that it was kind of daunting to um come into it, you know, with filling um.
We're stepping into big shoes.
Um, so it was, yeah, it was exciting, but it was a bit scary to come into it.
But I mean, what a blessing to have such a passionate fan base like that already exists that are kind of intrigued by what we're going to bring to it.
So I think it was really important for us to, um, bring a new life to it and and see what we could change and make different and it being in London was a massive part of that.
Um, but it was exciting overall.
Matt for you for your hair, there's something interesting where I think um.
It, you can feel like it takes a lot for him to necessarily like open up or be vulnerable.
Like, he very much has this facade and like, he fights and he drives fast cars and like a lot of this is the kind of, I think you can tell to to kind of compensate for some of those emotions.
Um, is it interesting to play a character where, you know, he does have all of these different outlets, but I think deep down inside, it's kind of, we get to see him slowly kind of unpeel that onion and open up to to Ash's character, particularly.
Did you get a You, you, you can judge, you can was it don't judge a book by its cover.
He does all these things and you can judge it.
That's right, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, OK, good.
Um, but then as an actor, you get to, you get to, like you said, peel all the layers down and get to what's at the center, and I think um.
That's the most interesting part, I think, and then also then how he uh navigates that and expresses that or like deals with it um.
Jason, I'd love to start with you because your character's not necessarily winning like Father of the Year award anytime soon here.
Um, but when he comes into the story, he has this kind of like presence throughout, but when we finally see him, it gets quite intense.
Anything that particularly appealed to you about just the kind of extreme nature of just his entry into the story.
I think um.
I think that villainy has so many different shades, and over, you know, 160 movies playing villains.
Um, I've kind of tested most of those shades.
But the shade that is, um, the betrayal and possible murder of your kin is an interesting one.
So I was really, really.
Up for that because I, I could find no empathy and could find no part of my own life that could inform those decisions I was making, because, you know, I've got twin boys who I adore and who I cut my hands off, you know, if, if necessary.
Um, so yeah, that was really interesting cos that's a dark, dark place to be, um, and you know it comes through addiction and through.
All sorts of reasons that he gets into that place, but wow, that's, that's something else.
Same for you, for your character kind of going off of that.
I think, you know, at one point you're just kind of thinking he has like other motivations.
He's not necessarily like super.
Particularly interested in what happens with Noah.
You're, you're spot on, like it it, for, for Ronnie, it's not about Norah at all, she's collateral, like it's all about his kind of vendetta and what he has against Nick, which clearly when we meet them has been an ongoing thing for the, from before anyway.
um, so yeah, for me there was a lot of playing with, um, you know, that.
Quite toxically masculine trait of not feeling good enough, like he's, he's, he's better looking, he's, he's more successful, he's wealthier, he's got all these things that I've just been in prison, like there's that real kind of hatred for that person which is and and Noah Blesser just gets caught up in the middle of that.
I'd love to know just a little bit about both of you working together and collaborating on your work broadly, you know, what's kind of the particular pleasure of having you both have each other to bounce ideas off of and to really collaborate for projects like, like this and others.
Oh my gosh, it's so much more fun.
You know, I mean, we started our careers together, um, and, you know, we're collaborative, I think, both of us down to our very core and so being able to be on this journey together is so much fun being, you know, Having a shared brain in many ways, you know, we, we often say we're quite ambidextrous.
Like it's not like one of us is more comfortable doing something than the other.
In many ways it's like, you know, just being able to kind of have that shared instinct and, um, and I don't know, directors left and right brain, but you know, we talk out loud.
I really like working for two directors at the same time.
I, I, I've done it with the Hughes Brothers and a couple of other times that I've worked with two directors because you always think, oh that's never gonna work, you know, how's that gonna work?
And it's not as simple as saying.
Which it was the case with the Hughes brothers where one will be technical and one will work the actors.
But with Danny and Charlotte it's really amazing because they they actually swap, there's no, they're very fluid about about the notes, and yet they, they basically have a very similar taste.
They've got the same taste.
They're brilliant.
And that's what the key is.
Filmmaking is about taste.
You know, Matt Vaughan has amazing taste, and he knows what's, he knows instinctively what's right and what's wrong.
And that I think they both have that, and they both have the same taste and it works really well.
They're kind of like two sides of the same mind, like they, they, they, they both know exactly what the other one needs and wants, but also like have their own individual ideas.
So you're getting like two brilliant.
Perspectives, which, which is great cos there's no tunnel vision and also immensely collaborative, the amount of times that we would just want to change things just to try a different one, and they were always like, yes, great idea, try that, doesn't work, it doesn't matter.
So we felt really free in that, didn't we?
I think at first all of us were quite intimidated by having two directors cause it can go really one way or really the other way, they're constantly butting heads and you have like this mash up crazy film, or you could have something like this where these two people work in such beautiful unison together that.
Each of them bounces off of the other and like, like if Danny ever struggled with something, Char was there to pick her up and like likewise vice versa, like both of them just really come in for each other constantly and for us it was like we had two people who were wholly there for us and wholly there for this film to call on constantly.
So I, I, I think that the clear indicator was we played charades on our first week and Danny and Shar got each other's answers like that and I was like, OK, these, these, these two know each other through and through, and I think like that it was like one hive brain.
Do you know what I mean?
So it just, it was, it was joy, we always had somewhere to turn.
