Talking with Eddie the Eagle’s Hugh Jackman, Taron Egerton and Ania Sowinski

I’m a sucker for feel good films that make me want to get up and do something.  Some movies have made me feel as though as I could do anything, like Billy Elliot and Shirley Valentine, for example. These movies have a major theme in common – determination and fulfilling life long dreams. I’ve seen both again and again and have been waiting for another film to come along in the same vein.

And along comes Eddie the Eagle – another British film, ironically, like the two mentioned above, and like both films, it’s about people from a lower-class background with dreams. However, Michael “Eddie” Edward’s dream is not so ordinary. Played by Taron Egerton, he’s an unlikely but courageous British ski-jumper who never stopped believing in himself.  With the help of a retired coach, played by Hugh Jackman, and supportive parents who foot the bill for just one year while he trained to become a professional Olympian, Eddie takes on the establishment quite literally as the British Olympic contingency has no interest in recruiting a guys who had only trained for one year of his life and wins the hearts of sports fans around the world by making a historic showing at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, with the help of a supportive publicist, played by Ania Sowinski and a famous author/ex-ski jumper played by the legendary Christopher Walken. His journey is surreal as he never gives up, and his determination and victory to get to the top left me reeling in my seat. If you go into this movie feeling down, I can assure you that you will come out soaring.  

The film was written by Kingsman writer Matthew Vaughn and directed by Dexter Fletcher, best known for his character actor roles in many of Matthew Vaughn’s films, including Guy Ritchie’s debut Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (which was also brought to Sundance).

An Interview with Hugh Jackman, Taron Egerton and Ania Sowinski

I was fortunate enough to join a small group of bloggers early this week in a discussion with Hugh Jackman, Taron Egerton and Ania Sowinski. All had vivid recollections of Eddie growing up. Sowinski, who grew up in the UK, remembers her brother doing impressions of Eddie. “He was a big deal at those Olympics. And it was very much like Princess Di and Charles’ wedding. You know, everyone was around their television sort of rooting for this guy from the middle of nowhere in England. So, I have very big memories of it. Obviously I was a child. I was eight years old, but it was huge.”

The movie is as inspiring to the actors as it is to the people seeing it. Jackman saw the movie and said, “When I first saw the movie, I saw it with a bunch of friends. And one of their mum’s came out, actually, and just said, ‘Every parent should take their kids to see this, because it, it just goes to show you don’t have to win to be a winner.’ It’s like there’s so much pressure on kids these days to be LeBron James or to be at the top, you know? And it can kind of create this pressure sometimes that is not necessary for kids. And so anyway. That’s what I loved about it. I took my kids to see it. They really love it. But you’re right. You end up pulling for him so much, because he’s such an every man, you know?”

As a dad, Jackman has thought a lot about his children’s long-terms goals, and when asked what he would do if they wanted to do something as bold and singular as Eddie the Eagle, if he would stop them, he said, “He (Eddie the Eagle) wanted to be in the Olympics from when he was five and nothing was going to stop him. So, look what came of it, you know? I kind of get that. But I understand. It’s a horrible thing about being a parent, right? I’ve got a 15-year-old so probably in a year or two he pretty much is there to pick up the pieces, right? In all, basically they’re going to make their own mistakes. It’s the hardest thing.”

Egerton, who also starred in Kingsman, had a huge job playing Eddie the Eagle. He got to know the real Michael Edwards during the shoot but says that the real Eddie was not particularly interested in the filmmaking process: “He finally said, ‘Don’t be mean, you know? Do a good job and I’ll see you on the other side.’ And that’s kind of what happened. He came out and saw us and all of that stuff, and then we watched the movie for the first time together, which, as you could imagine, was a fairly intimidating afternoon for me. But thankfully, he loved it.”

Ski-jumping is almost like another character in the film. The actors were intrigued by the filmmaking process, depending largely on a team of real ski jumpers, not stunt men. Jackman said, “Those great shots in the air, one of the best shots is created by two ski jumpers, and one has like three cameras attached to him. So he goes like a half a second behind the first guy….. when they took off, first guy took off, the second guy went over him and touched him on the shoulder and went past him in midair and landed in front of him. And when they got down, we were all just in shock.”

The three actors spoke a bit about their acting careers, all visibly considering the roads taken to get to this point in time and on their own sense of determination and relating to Eddie in that way. About acting, Sowinski said, “I think you have to have a backbone of steel, actually, to just keep driving through, you know? And there’s all these great stories. Meryl Streep has the classic story of being told she wasn’t pretty enough, or Julie Walters has some fantastic stories about being turned down for roles, but she never stopped.”

Jackman remembered being offered a role on Britain’s Neighbours the same weekend he got into a prestigious acting school 20-odd years ago. He had a weekend to make a decision about what to do – take a two-year show on a big show or go study acting. His dad told him to make his own decision, and so Jackman agonized but then asked himself, “After two years on Neighbours, would I feel like I deserved an audition at the Royal Shakespeare Company? And the answer was no.”  It was his dad’s way of helping him to learn to make his own decisions.

The three actors clearly loved working on the film and all had great stories to tell about the process, but Sowinski wins for telling a great story about “kissing Wolverine” during an unscripted scene in which she and Jackman flirted at the airport, take after take after take. About the scene, she said, “I’ve never laughed so much in a set in my life. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.”

Egerton and Jackman clearly had a great chemistry on and off set. Sowinski relished every moment working with them. But they all had particularly great things to say about Christopher Walken. About him, Egerton said, “He’s a total one-off. He’s a unique performer and very, very lucky to have witnessed a bit of him performing.” Jackman added, “He’s got that thing of everyone watching him. Literally the monitors. People, like, Taron and I weren’t working when he was first working, but we stayed to watch. Everyone was watching.”

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