Hugh Jackman & Laura Dern Break Down 'The Son' Scene with Director Florian Zeller

It would be super embarrassing [laughs]

as actors and director if we watch

and we're just like sobbing and there's like tears all over.

Hi, I'm Florian Zeller.

Hi, I'm Hugh Jackman.

And I'm Laura Dern.

And this is Notes on the Scene.

I feel like a complete failure.

What are you talking about?

Kate, you're not a failure in any way.

Sorry.

It's just I never imagined he'd leave home.

So this is a scene

20 minutes from the beginning of the film.

And so it's basically the parents trying to deal

with this mystery of having a son in pain.

And this is the first time, for years maybe,

that they are together.

We made a decision to go closer and closer.

And so that's the action, in a way,

in that scene is the emotions.

You know, I mean, he's the one who asked me.

Yes, the problem started with me.

Of course it didn't.

Yes.

He doesn't wanna live with me anymore.

I call and he doesn't even pick up.

What's incredible about dancing,

well I guess literally and figuratively with Hugh Jackman

is every take was, you know, this delicious surprise

of their broken humanity.

And I'm just remembering there was one take

that was less open, but such an important teacher for me

in terms of my coverage.

You can't have two people falling apart.

And I felt almost embarrassed

to have been so vulnerable in front of you.

But here you chose the take where

we are so locked into each other.

But we did all kinds of, I was resistant,

I was overly emotional.

I mean that's what's so beautiful about exploring

and then how gorgeous to watch

how your director chooses the story.

A few days ago I found this photo of him.

I want to give some context here

on something that Laura did.

We were sitting opposite each other at the table

and there's this incredible moment,

which I think you did in rehearsal

on one of the first takes where you just shifted,

you were looking in your bag for a photo

of our boy when he was young

and she just shifted her seat to come around.

So there's an intimacy and a slight break

of the formality of a table

and that somehow cracked something open-

Yeah. -in the scene.

That was, I don't know if that was instinctive

but it was very sort of disarming and beautiful.

When I look at that photo, I'm devastated.

We're connecting over our worry of where he's at

and also reminiscing and feeling the pain of what,

of the joy that he had, a natural joyous kid who's,

that joy seems to have gone

and so we're connecting over that.

She looks at the photo a lot.

I think it cuts back to me for a bit.

I'm looking at the photo too.

You see that connection even when she's saying, in you.

I loved you so much Peter.

And what's interesting is I am running

from all that I'm feeling in the earlier part of the scene.

But once the shift happens and you come in that tight,

there's no more escaping.

So this is the willingness that we both

had to be completely transparent with each other.

[Hugh] Yeah. And I see it

so beautifully on your face too.

What you're saying is don't be so upset.

[Hugh] Right.

But, personally, that's not at all what I see you saying.

If you knew how much I loved you.

It takes a long time for the eyes to come up

because it's safer for us.

And what we're hoping is really come together over our son.

What is then revealed is all the pain

and that's so incredible the way you do that.

It's a beautifully written scene.

I just had to turn up.

That's why the scene start with, in that moment,

with there was so much joy in our family, with pure regrets,

and that was one sentence that was so dear to me

when I wrote the script

and I really loved the way you did you, you said back then,

I mean to slightly detach from the whole sentence.

There was so much joy in our family back then.

I don't know what happened.

What I got, in that moment, looking into Laura's eyes

was little doubt

about what he has done about leaving her.

He can see and believe real unconditional love

that this woman had, may still have.

I so believe this love that she had for him,

that was so deep,

that, how could I do that to another person?

Why did I let it go?

Why is that not enough?

It makes me so sad to watch this,

to think that before they broke up,

I don't think any version of this conversation happened.

But this calm, truthful, naked, vulnerable admission

of love and the intensity of it.

When you think about it,

there is so much joy in our family back then.

So this is the first time we hear,

and she must go, in the film.

And I remember when we thought about

including music here

it was about trying to create like waves

and the idea was to create something

that was connected to the idea of being on the beach

with waves and basically throughout the whole film

it's the same few notes,

the same waves, growing and growing.

So I really liked the idea that

through that picture the music starts

and will overwhelm us throughout the film.

The destination of that scene was

to be as close as possible cause I knew that

what would matter here would be

what they would try to conceal

and not what they were saying.

And I knew that

to catch these invisible parts of their performance,

but also, somehow to have both

of them in the same frame.

This black space between the two of them,

so that you feel the presence, is already,

is also in the frame, but out of focus

and there is like a a connection and attraction

between the two of them

and they are completely together in the same moment.

And we completely forget that we are in a public space,

in the restaurant, at the beginning of the scene

we had like people talking, you know,

the atmosphere of a public space.

Everything is gone now.

We are just in the black hole of love regrets.

We don't know exactly what his is feelings at that moment.

It's layers of different things

and the fact that there are many things at the same time,

we can feel that he's about to embrace her or to run away.

I mean both at the same time.

Right. But the guilt is here

already as well.

Yes it will. It will.

Believe me Kate, everything will be fine.

You think so?

Yeah. We shot the whole scene

in one day and because we started very wide,

and we come closer and closer,

but step by step, these two last shots

we did them like in the 10 last minutes.

What was important for me is that

I think what you can feel in these performances

is everything that we explored all together, during the day.

So it was a long journey to catch that moment.

I remember feeling

kind of elated

and so grateful and alive.

It was one of those scenes, you went,

that's a perfectly written scene

and I'm with Laura Dern

and I just can't wait to shoot that.

It felt timeless while we were doing it

and at the end of it

it felt, I felt elated.

I felt so grateful.

It's one of those days I'll never forget.