We Live in Time is a beautiful romance about the unlikely relationship between a Weetabix data analyst (Andrew Garfield) and a spirited Bavarian-fusion chef (Florence Pugh). The narrative is told in a non-linear format that chronicles their accidental meeting, steamy love affair, and heartbreaking resolve. Acclaimed British film and theater director John Crowley, who previously worked with Garfield in 2007’s Boy A, explains his friendship with screenwriter Nick Payne and how the project came together after a decade of trying to reconnect.

The Road to We Live in Time
A witty chef and a recent divorcee have a chance encounter that changes their lives. As their love story unfolds, they build a life together, but a hidden truth threatens to unravel their relationship, bringing humor, drama, and emotional depth to their journey.Release Date October 11, 2024 Runtime 107 Minutes Writers Nick Payne

“I directed a play by [Nick Payne] at the Donmar Warehouse about 10 years ago now. We have been friends and tried working on different things since,” says Crowley. “So we kept in touch through all that time. We tried to make one other film together at one point, and develop a TV series. For one reason or another, they never made it all the way through.” He adds:

“The first I heard of
We Live in Time
was when Nick texted me and said, ‘I’ve written another script. It’s going to come your way.’ It was written for SunnyMarch [Benedict Cumberbatch’s production company]. That was the first draft that I read of it. It was very early days in their process with it. The rest isn’t quite history, but I knew very quickly I was in.”

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Crowley elaborates on how the fascinating time jumps were part of the script from the very beginning, saying, “It was conceived that way. I think it’s fair to say that the first draft I read had a lot more material in it. It had several endings. Part of the job that I did with Nick over the next year was distilling it down to its essence while holding on to the core of it. We shot it in that order.” But things changed, as Crowley explains:

Then we got into the edit and found that the shuffled order didn’t play as it was intended. So then the job became about breaking it entirely apart and re-finding a similar original concept in a completely new structure, which was the three time frames running against each other, but just not in the order that they had been scripted in.

The Romantic Chemistry Between Florence Pugh & Andrew Garfield

Garfield and Pugh have a searing and magnetic chemistry. We Live in Time has intimate scenes where there’s little left to the imagination. Crowley discusses casting his superb actors, developing the characters with them, and watching their fiery spark grow on set:

“There was a rehearsal time. We had two weeks’ rehearsal before we shot. The rehearsal time was critical. Because Andrew, I knew very well as an actor, likes a lot of pre-production conversation. So in the months that he was attached to the film, and I had sent it to him first, we talked quite a bit back and forth, and he would often share his sort of imaginative dreamings on the character. That was just a deep dive that he does as part of his own process.”

“Florence, I had never met her when I sent her the script. I’d seen her work, obviously, and loved her work. I could tell she was creatively ambitious. So I just had an instinct that they might play off each other,” continues Crowley. “It was a careful bringing together of two very different kinds of actors as well. The rehearsal room was really key to that.”

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“It was a very unpressured environment where the word ‘chemistry’ was never discussed, where it was just simply sitting around reading the script in a very laid back way and never allowing the emotions that are in the scene to become too dialed up. It’s like studying a map as opposed to climbing a mountain,” explains Crowley, adding:

They liked each other very quickly in a genuine way. They were funny together. And after about three days of rehearsal, I could see that there were flashes in the scenes. There were moments where they were just like these star athletes wanting to sort of get out on the road and run a sprint. You could feel the energy burning in them. They began to find a degree of trust and comfort.

“You Could Feel at That Moment the Depth Between Them”

Crowley remembers a pivotal scene early in the shoot that was integral to the film’s success. A sort of kismet moment where Garfield and Pugh’s preparation opened the door for a phenomenal collective performance. “The first big scene, the underground car park scene, they were both very nervous about,” the director tells us. “It was the heaviest lifting they were going to do. It was day four of the shoot. They’ve done lighter stuff so far.”

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“Florence called Andrew and myself, [saying] ‘I’m confused.’ She was kind of wary of it,” continues Crowley. “She almost didn’t understand what had been happening and was amazed to find the quality of presence that Andrew was giving her. All the seed work we had done in rehearsals was allowing her to meet the scene in a really spontaneous way that was very liberating to her. She was thrilled by that.” He adds:

You could feel at that moment the depth between them. It kept growing like that on set. They’re both also utterly free of vanity in the performances. There’s a lot of bodily comedy, exposure, intimacy, playfulness, and absurdity. They were willing to just go there with all of it.

Are Andrew Garfield & Florence Pugh Like Their Characters?

Our conversation then turned to whether Garfield and Pugh shared any personal traits with their characters. Pugh is well known for her social media cooking videos, but Garfield is distinctly private away from the screen. Crowley believes there are some connections to the written material, but his leads are just damn good actors able to pull off the roles realistically:

“Andrew is very intuitive. I wouldn’t say he’s much of a data analyzer that I know of. He could be. He could be a great number cruncher, for all I know (laughs). He was able to light up parts of Tobias in a way that other people may have lent into the quirkiness and the Mr. Weetabix side of him. He just made it feel funny and truthful and not too overplayed.”

Crowley moves on to Pugh. “She has a sort of [similar] love and passion for cooking [as her character Almut]. That does intersect very directly with Florence. She not only loves to cook, she also loves to eat. She has a wonderful bit of appetite and joy in food. She’s a feeder. If you’re on set, she was feeding people bits of the props on set. So yeah, there’s a remarkable similarity and dissimilarity between them and their characters, which is why they’re good actors.”

Crowley has already been lauded numerous times for his films and plays. But what does he think about getting awards? Is getting an Oscar nomination important, something he desires, or just a part of publicizing We Live in Time? “I care about how the film does,” admits Crowley. “I care about how it’s perceived. I absolutely think both of those actors should be in the conversation for all of that. Of course, I do. But it’s absolutely not why any of us do the work. If it means it gets wider exposure, that’s great.”

“Honestly, the thing that’s really touching is when individuals are moved by the film. You can feel that after a screening. People will seek out one of the actors, because they need to let you know there’s something in the film which hits them in the solar plexus. That’s more precious than the other stuff for me.”

We Live in Time is currently in limited theatrical release from A24. Please check out the link below for local showtimes.