*Warning: This contains spoilers for The Gentlemen
Guy Ritchie’s latest Netflix movie The Gentlemen contains fast-talking criminals, plenty of antics, and exciting action moments.
Depending on your mood, the gradual and excruciating psychological collapse of a fully grown man forced to embody a chicken in front of a tiny audience of thieves and nobles may surprise or scare you.
However, this painful sequence, in which Daniel Ings’ foolish toff Freddy dresses as a rooster, clucks, flaps ostentatiously, and tries to fly by jumping from chairs to pay off a loan owing to a crime lord, sets off the chaotic chain of events in The Gentlemen.
While the chicken improv incorporates (literally) blood, sweat, and tears, the scene is also darkly humorous, at least to the audience. However, the cast had a very different experience. Susie Glass, the drug boss, appears.
Kaya Scodelario, 31, who portrays drug boss Susie Glass, was there for Freddy’s chicken-induced breakdown. She described the encounter as tense ahead of the show’s debut at a high-end London hotel.
‘I think it was more intense than that,’ she replied when asked if any of the cast accidentally burst into laughter during Daniel’s performance. ‘I actually felt really anxious during it. Daniel was giving it so much.’
Poor Daniel. Not only was his acting put to the test, but so was his endurance, as Kaya said that the sequence took 18 hours to film.
She explained: ‘Because this scene is at the end of episode one and you also see it at the beginning of episode two, it took twice as long to film because we’re doing it from so many different camera angles.
‘It was about 18 hours straight of just Daniel being a chicken. It was intense.’
Daniel, 38, must have been similarly ecstatic when Kaya made a little suggestion that would become, perhaps, the sequence’s most humiliating scene.
She revealed: ‘I actually suggested the bit where he jumped off the couch and tries to fly. So I’m quite proud of that because I think that’s one of the funny bits.’
Did Daniel hate you for that? Laughing, Kaya replied: ‘Yeah.’
It’s one of several daftly fantastic tales in the eight-part series, which tackles the ramifications from Freddy’s brother Eddie, portrayed by The White Lotus’ Theo James, inheriting their father’s vast county estate. His portfolio includes, shockingly, a cannabis empire.
Kaya’s Susie, the daughter of drug lord Bobby (Ray Winstone), is in charge of the company’s day-to-day operations, but everything goes wrong when money goes missing and deaths pile up.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star confessed that she, too, experienced a little disaster on filming, but of a much smaller scale, when a clapperboard was unintentionally thrown on her head.
Giggling, she explained: ‘I was doing the scene and one of the crew members [accidentally] dropped a clapperboard on my face and I have the footage of it. It’s very funny.
‘It knocked me right on my cheek and he ran away and didn’t even say sorry.’
Did you see him the next day? Laughing still, Kaya replied: ‘I was worried about him. I was like, “It’s okay. Don’t worry, it happens.” But that was the only injury [ on set].
Known for his tough man roles in films from the likes of Martin Scorcese, Ray Winstone, 67, admitted he was ‘nervous’ before approaching the rats of the sky.
Reflecting on his first day as a pigeon wrangler, Ray said: ‘I got a bit nervous at first, but you learn how to talk to a pigeon. You just be gentle with them and they’re fine.’
How do you talk to a pigeon? ‘Just nice and soft. It’s like any animal, you’ve just got to be nice and soft,’ Ray gamely offered.
Ray Winstone chatted to a pigeon. We’ll leave you with that delicious image.
The Gentlemen is available to stream on Netflix.
Source My Celebrity Life.