Hugh Grant Breaks Down a Scene from 'The Undoing' with Director Susanne Bier

Jonathan believes that it's inconceivable

that he will go to prison.

He's been a star all his life.

It is inconceivable that this great man

could in fact be found guilty.

[laughs] He's Epstein. Yeah.

We were shooting in New York

when the Epstein case was at the most,

and I kept thinking, This is Epstein in a different shape,

but this is who he is.

My name is Susanne Bier, and I'm the director

and executive producer of The Undoing.

And I'm Hugh Grant, and I play Jonathan.

This is Vanity Fair Notes on a Scene for The Undoing.

Come here. Come here.

[muffled chatter]

[Guard] Hey, no touching. Let's go.

[hand pats back]

It's okay.

All right.

When I used to watch Hugh Grant

with all the romantic comedies,

I always thought there was a certain sadness

to his light, charming performance.

I always thought there was a dark side to that performance.

And I thought that that dark depth

would lend itself very, very well

to playing Jonathan Fraser.

I probably think he was perfect for a whole lot of things,

most things I would say.

[muffled chatter]

Well, another fine mess I've gotten you into.

I begged him, and then I engaged everybody else,

including Nicole and David Kelley

and everybody else to keep paying him

because he's quite difficult to convince about anything.

I don't think he wants to work ever.

With Susanne, whose Danish films I love,

and David Kelley and Nicole, and it all seemed very classy.

And although Susanne's right that I shy away from work,

I couldn't resist it,

but especially if the guy was the murderer.

[muffled chatter]

Well, this is real.

This is how those visiting spaces

in certain prisons actually operate.

So the visitors will be in one side,

and the inmates will be in the other side.

And then the prison guards are being quite observant.

And of course, that tension plays into the scene.

I was mainly just trying to keep the boy's spirits up

and for very, very complex reasons

because Jonathan is a sociopath.

He doesn't really feel proper things,

but he does feel that his job in this scene,

Jonathan's job is to be marvelous

and to be great with the boy and the wonderful dad

and healer that he always was.

So it's actually partly ego that makes him nice

to the boy rather than love.

But you hopefully wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Look, I do think he loves him. I do think he loves Grace.

I just think he is so messed up

that he is actually capable of loving someone

and yet be 100% dishonest with them.

Why did you lie? If you're innocent-

Well, I ran because I'm scared.

I knew how it looked, and I was selfish.

Every time I do something,

I make up specific rules that I adhere to.

Sometimes I don't tell anybody else about them,

but [laughs] it's almost like on a borderline OCD rules

because they have to be kept.

What rules did you have on there?

Not to cross that border where you actually tell a lie.

Push it right to the border,

push it right there where it can't go any further,

but not never cross the line.

It's quite heavy duty or difficult acting,

at least for me.

Did you kill her? No.

[muffled chatter] [baby cries in background]

There I was in New York shooting this series,

which I partly did to get away from my small children

but actually really, really missing them.

So I was drawing on all that,

and what I recall is sitting down on tape

while on my side of this and bursting into tears,

and I'm sure early takes were like that.

And then you quite rightly [laughs] told me to man up

and said, I think he might be trying

to help his son a bit more by being a bit stronger.

[muffled chatter]

How's school? Fine.

Violin? Rosenbaum?

What's the latest on him?

My note to Nicole was, Do not give in, do not give in.

And with Henry, it was, You are so angry with your dad.

You are so angry with him, but you really love him.

It's actually fun doing a scene like that in a prison,

and it's fun being restrained by the environment

because you can't do any sudden movements.

You can't do anything which isn't,

in terms of physicality, very controlled

if you're a visitor in a prison like that.

So whatever Henry might be feeling,

he would have to sit completely still.

I knew I was guilty, but part of my job in this series

was to convince my wife and my son

and a worldwide TV audience that I'm innocent,

and the only way to really do that was to believe it.

So I decided Jonathan was one

of those sociopaths who believes his own lies.

Allowed myself to be persuaded

that a person desperately needed me.

So when I'm saying, I didn't do it, I didn't do it,

I did have an affair, but I do it, I mean it.

In that moment, I think he really believes is he's innocent.

I fucked up. I made a terrible, terrible mistake.

I allowed myself to be persuaded

that a person desperately needed me

because her child was very sick,

and I could help him recover,

and I let that be a reason to lose my strength of character.

[soft dramatic music]

Digging into that notion of a psychopath,

I would claim it's a really interesting place

to go for an actor, and it certainly is for a director

because the one thing that

would have made this whole show a complete failure

would have been to actually lie with it as storytellers.

That's why after we finished shooting,

I went on murdering people for a few weeks,

and I blame Susanne.

[Susanne laughs]

And then after everything, instead of being grateful

for everything I'd done for her and for her son,

she became unsound, threatening.

Got to the point where I felt she wanted

to destroy us as a family,

so I went to confront her about that, and that's it.

That's all I did.

You're right.

[laughs] Equally, I couldn't do anything too fake because,

although I wanted to fool everyone all the way through,

my dream was that if anyone ever watched the series twice,

they'd think watching it the second time,

Yeah, well, of course he's guilty.

You can see that. It would make sense.

Quite a difficult balancing act.

Why did you lie? If you're innocent-

Well, I ran, because I'm scared.

I knew how it looked, and I was selfish.

In that moment, I was completely selfish.

I thought only about myself and what might happen to me.

Other interesting thing I've learned

about the way you directed this

from just doing these interviews together

is that thing you said last time

about making this a kind fairytale.

Like, is that right? Yeah, yeah.

The halo behind him, which is the very wide windows,

which are in this huge, big space

and all the wide shots as well is a weird attempt

to make this space magical even if it's horrible.

It has this soft, yes, and almost divine-like lightning,

which, in a weird way, doesn't take away the brutality

of the space but just reminds us that,

outside the walls of this space,

there is actually an amazing world.

Also, it's just very boring to shoot

against a blank wall, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

But you can make different choices with the room like that,

and you can do things which would look different

and which wouldn't be a drab wall.

This was reminding the audience

that the world outside has a magic presence

which is gonna make Jonathan's loss even deeper.

[muffled chatter]

Did you kill her? No.

[baby cries in background]

You were fucking her.

[exhales loudly and scoffs] Okay.

Well, it's straight to the net with that one.

[Henry] Were you?

Yeah, we were romantically involved. Yeah.

I think weirdly that this scene

is where Grace decides to be supportive of Jonathan,

and it's because of Henry.

It's because she sees Henry and Jonathan together,

and she realizes the strong bond between them,

and she realizes that she's gotta have to help him.

How's school? Fine.

Violin? Rosenbaum?

What's the latest on him?

Did you kill her? No.

I was trying to play the scene with two people

who were in a very different state.

Grace is in a very different state to the boy.

It's also edited very much between you and Henry

Yeah. for that very reason.

This is the moment where we realize the tightness

between the two of them and that being a monumental reason

for Grace to have to be supportive of Jonathan.

[muffled chatter]

Well, another fine mess I've gotten you into.

That right there is an example of me being the kind

of actor I was always told not to be.

The first job I ever did in the 80s,

the operator said, Don't turn into one of those old actors

who knows exactly where the camera is.

And I realize I have

because I actually pause my line slightly

'cause I'm aware of the camera is behind Noah's head,

and I wait until it emerges again

before I say the next word.

Well, another fine mess I've gotten you into.

I'm quite in the mood here. I'm quite in the moment.

The last thing you want is for someone to say afterwards,

Can we just go again because we lost half your line

behind the boy's head?

So you just don't want to lose a good take

for some stupid technical reason.

But you don't do that thing

because it's very, very visible.

When actors are playing to the camera,

You go, Ah, let me get out of here. [laughs]

And you haven't done that once, even, not remotely.

Did you kill her? No.

[baby cries in background]

This would be a terrible conversation

to have with your son, nevermind having it in a prison,

and Hugh plays this with such a depth and such a rawness.

I thought about you, Mom,

[soft tense music]

so I came back, which may have been selfish again,

but, you see, I wanted my family back.

We're never gonna be a family again.

Well, I desperately hope we will be.

Come here, come here.

At this point, Henry has found the hammer.

We just don't know he's found it.

The whole thing of this whole series

is that nothing is what it seems.

At that point, Henry know his dad has done it

but still love his dad.

Jonathan believes that it's inconceivable

that he will go to prison.

He's too great. He's a star doctor, star healer.

He's been a star all his life.

All right. Come on, Henry.

[footsteps thud]

[Henry sobs]

There's so many things right now where you go,

What is definition of truth?

How do we relate to it?

And that is the subtext of this whole series.

It's right in front of Grace all the time,

and she refuses to see it, as does the audience.

And everybody seem to be wanting Jonathan not

to be the killer in spite of it being blatantly clear

that he was and he always was.