[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The Life of Chuck.]

Summary

In an interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Karen Gillan and Chiwetel Ejiofor discuss their roles in Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck.

Ejiofor and Gillan play Marty and Felicia, respectively, in the Stephen King adaptation, starring Tom Hiddleston as Charles “Chuck” Krantz.

The pair discuss their characters’ backstories, working with top-tier scene partners, and more.

The latest Stephen King adaptation, The Life of Chuck, opened in theaters this week, with Mike Flanagan in the director’s chair. The genre-bending film follows the life of Charles “Chuck” Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death and working backwards to his childhood, exploring how his mysterious life is impacting the world on a larger, apocalyptic scale, and why. Already considered a contender for the best Stephen King adaptation to date, The Life of Chuck is unlike anything audiences have seen adapted from the author before. At the heart of The Life of Chuck is Tom Hiddleston, who anchors the narrative with nuance as the titular character. Joining Hiddleston in the cast to portray key roles in Chuck’s life are Mark Hamill, Matthew Lillard, Kate Siegel, Mia Sara, Carl Lumbly, David Dastmalchian, Rahul Kohli, Benjamin Pajak, and more. Also in the cast are Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan, who portray Marty Anderson, a schoolteacher struggling to understand the strange events unfolding in the world around him, and Felicia Gordon, a dedicated nurse and Marty’s ex-wife. In an interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Gillan and Ejiofor dive into their characters’ backstories, sharing who Marty and Felicia were before the apocalypse began. They both also reflect on the emotional weight and process of portraying a character during the end of the world.
Karen Gillan and Chiwetel Ejiofor Share Their Character Backstories

Who were they before the end of the world?

PERRI NEMIROFF: We do learn a little bit about Marty and Felicia’s past in the movie, but I’m always greedy for more. Were there any backstory details that the two of you came up with on your own that maybe we don’t see or hear directly in the movie, but we can still feel informing your performances? CHIWETEL EJIOFOR: The reasons for their falling apart were some of the things that we talked about or considered a little bit. For me, it was really connected to his overreliance, which is touched on a little bit in the story, on booze, on alcohol, and how that became a bit of a wedge in their dynamic. But he’s been doing work to improve himself over time, and I think she’s recognized that. He’s very far from perfect, but there was always still this connection between them. KAREN GILLAN: For me, I did a lot of work on my own in terms of her backstory as to why she assumes this caretaker role within her life, what happened in her childhood to make her do that the very first time, and why is she attracted to people who might need that? That kind of informed a lot of choices that were made later on. It’s an interesting thing. I was examining how people can get together with people that they have to change or fix, and then get so mad at them that they have to do that, but they were attracted to it in the first place. I think that that’s so true of so many of us, and it’s always interesting.

Chiwetel, you get to work with almost every single actor in Part 3, which is really cool. I’m also obsessed with the variety of acting techniques there are out there, so of all the scene partners you had, can you pinpoint the two that have the most polar opposite approach to the work, where when you’re their primary scene partner, you know you’ll have an entirely different acting experience? EJIOFOR: That’s a great question. Thank you. It is true that everybody was approaching things in a slightly different way, and they were all brilliant. I think the cast of this film is fantastic. It’s really an amazing cast, and so I was very lucky to get to play the scene with Karen. That’s how I started in the film. We did that very long telephone conversation, and immediately I was aware of everything that Karen was bringing to that and bringing to the relationship. But I would say that the two who are the most different, and kind of brilliant and sort of opposite in some ways, are Matthew Lillard and Carl Lumbly. Matthew approached with this great energy that was almost an unhinged kind of energy as we’re all dealing with this kind of apocalypse. Just the way that he relayed information in this kind of brilliant moment, I thought it was just such a great piece of performance. Then Carl, in a completely different way, is creating this really beautiful, grounded, there’s a sort of calculation and a sedateness to it, but it’s very piercing and soulful in what he’s bringing. So, it’s very different energies to play with, but both really engaging and fantastic to do. Thanks for that question.
How Do You Capture the End of the World?

Gillan tapped into something that surprised even her.

Image via Neon

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“I Felt Like I Had Lived an Entire Life”: Tom Hiddleston and Mike Flanagan Explain How They Filmed This Crucial Easter Egg for ‘The Life of Chuck’

The duo also discuss the casting process and how Hiddleston relates to the Stephen King character.

I’ll lean into the apocalypse of it all now with a question for both of you. What was it like figuring out their final expressions and how they would feel towards the end? GILLAN: It’s a wild thing to ask yourself, like, “How may I feel at the end of everything, and how might this character feel?” But really, I was trying to bring some of myself to that moment to just make it as authentic as possible. I felt the usual things of terror and dread, but there was also a strange sense of calm, like a resignation, and also a tinge of humor, which I didn’t expect to come up, but makes a lot of sense because when I’ve had people that I’ve been close to pass away in Scotland, there’s jokes flying around in those moments. They’ve been cracking jokes on their deathbed, and I think there’s definitely something to that, that you can find that in just the worst moments of your life. EJIOFOR: I think Marty was very scared. He was frightened by it all, but he was so comforted by having Felicia there, and I think grateful for that, as well. Just grateful for being able to share the human connection of somebody, obviously the only woman that he married, and this emotional connection to somebody that’s very deep, and just feeling a sense of gratitude that that was possible, that that connection was possible, and part of that moment. That was my feeling about that.

Image via Neon

I’ll end with a personal question inspired by the movie. Obviously, I love the idea that the universe is large and contains multitudes, but it’s this back half of the quote that’s really stuck with me: “But it also contains me, and in this moment I am wonderful and I have the right to be wonderful.” For each of you, can you tell me the last time you stopped and said to yourself, “You know what, I am wonderful?” GILLAN: I’m feeling that right now, actually! My last answer. [Laughs] EJIOFOR: It’s easier to ask Karen when she hasn’t felt that. GILLAN: [Laughs] I can’t recall a time I haven’t. No. I think the last time I felt wonderful was probably after giving birth to a child, and going, “That’s wild.” And women are doing that all the time, and I can’t believe it. That makes us, like, beyond wonderful. That’s what I think. EJIOFOR: I can’t top that, unsurprisingly, so I won’t try it. [Laughs] You know what? I respect that! Thank you for your time, and huge congrats on the movie. The Life of Chuck is in theaters now.

The Life of Chuck

Release Date

May 30, 2025

Runtime

110 minutes

Producers

D. Scott Lumpkin, Elan Gale, Trevor Macy, Molly C. Quinn, Melinda Nishioka

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