In Reunited, Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Emmy contenders who have collaborated on a previous project.
When Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne filmed Tom Hooper’s musical epic Les Misérables in 2012, they were both rising stars. Seyfried had already starred in Mean Girls, the musical hit Mamma Mia!, and the hit HBO series Big Love. Redmayne had won an Olivier and Tony award for starring in Red, and appeared opposite Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn.
challenged to sing live, often performing the songs repeatedly for take after take. Still, as a pair of self-proclaimed musical-theater geeks, making Les Misérables was a dream come true. “We were all making the thing because we also knew that this was the one,” says Seyfried. “They’re not going to make it for another 50 years.”
When they hop on a Zoom call to reminisce about the musical—which earned more than $442 million worldwide and was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three—they lament that they haven’t seen each other in a while. They’re both juggling even busier careers, as well as families (they each have two children). “I do think that it kind of makes the work better and richer,” says Seyfried of being a mother as well as an actor. “I feel like it’s more interesting to talk about projects that you’ve chosen after you have kids, because life gets shorter and shorter. The time away from the kids has to be specific and worthy.”
Most recently, Seyfried chose to spend that time away making Long Bright River, a Peacock crime-drama miniseries in which she plays a Philadelphia cop investigating murders that may be connected to her own dark family history. She returned to the miniseries format after winning the lead-actress Emmy in 2022 for The Dropout, in which she played Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Redmayne also transformed for his series, The Day of the Jackal, a spy thriller in which he plays a highly trained British assassin being chased by an intelligence officer.
In these projects, both actors take on the sort of roles they hadn’t really been offered earlier in their careers—and they were each keenly aware of that. Together, Seyfried and Redmayne discuss why they loved these dark characters, their favorite moments from the challenging Les Misérables shoot, and how being parents has changed their choices.
Vanity Fair: What do you remember about working together on Les Misérables?
Eddie Redmayne: Of all the actors I’ve ever worked with, Amanda, your facility for joy and humor and vibrancy on set, followed by the switch into some of the rawest, most profound depths of emotion like that—it has to be witnessed to be believed. I will never forget one moment when we were doing one of the last scenes of the film. We were in Winchester Cathedral, and you were laughing. We had these little ear pieces in our ear. And then suddenly [there was] this random bit of music, and you came running to Hugh [Jackmans]‘s knees as he was dying. I ran in, and I slipped and I wiped out. I thought we were just going to cut, so I was in hysterics—and I look over to my left, and you are in floods of tears. You were giving this extraordinary performance. I’m so jealous of your ability to be able to switch like that. Is it an active thing? Is it something that you use to distract yourself to stop yourself from being nervous? How do you flip it like that?
Amanda Seyfried: I don’t know! I’m sorry if it was ever distracting! I’ve met a lot of actors who are the same as me. I hate when they call action when I’m in a really good conversation, which happened a lot. Sydney Sweeney is the same way. I just worked with her [on The Housemaid], and it happens a lot with us—we’re having a really intense conversation about our lives and then they’re like, “okay, we’re rolling” and then so as soon as we cut I’m like, “wait, sorry, keep going.”
Honestly, I do a lot of preparation, and sometimes I do need some space beforehand. There are certain things where you have to go far, far into despair or fear and you need a little bit of a runway. And then sometimes you are just talking to someone else, and it’s like the fifth take, and you’ve got your mind on whether or not you’re going to click “buy” on this swimsuit. It all depends. I can’t be fully in it ever, and I think that’s survival.
Redmayne: But to be clear, you are fully committed. When we were working all those years ago, I’d barely done film. I definitely felt like I was still learning. I just remember it being so freeing that you pulled me out of my head. I always am so grateful for that because I’ve tried to learn from it.
Seyfried: When we started shooting, it was fucking terrifying. I have my issues with myself and my voice, but I do think that the memory of that movie started with the comradery, the real companionship that we had out of the gate.
Did you audition together?
Redmayne: We did, in a really slightly scuzzy room above Shaftsbury Avenue. And they made you sing that top fucking E in the audition. That’s the most brutal thing I’ve ever heard. And it was like American Idol, with all the producers and the composers [in the room]. You and I were sort of crawling in a corner trying to go as far away from the camera as possible.
Seyfried: And also by the way, it’s Les Mis. It’s miserable. And it was so fun. I had so much fun.
Redmayne: I had so much fun too. Remember the day when we had to sing “A Heart Full of Love”? Tom [Hooper] decided to cover this area with a net, so that butterflies could be there. It was one of our first things, and we were still in that nervous stage. We were just consistently being upstaged by the butterflies.
Seyfried: Incredibly frustrating. But also, when are we going to get to work with butterflies again? It’s a weird place to be. And we were always singing. We even did karaoke.
Redmayne: They did love karaoke, but I’m not so into karaoke. Especially alongside a load of musical theater people who were brilliant.
Seyfried: Annie [Hathaway] and Sam[antha Barks] and I were doing all the press, and we went to do karaoke between it. They were just back and forth singing beautiful ballads and iconic pop songs. And I was singing Eminem. I was like, “you know what? I can’t compete, and I’m not going to.”
Redmayne: I haven’t told my daughter I’m speaking to you now, because she is a fan. She is a massive Mamma Mia fan. So the fact that you are my pal, and when we went to see Sam play Elsa in Frozen onstage—as far as I’m concerned, I’ve won the dad points.
Seyfried: Isn’t it funny? I’m choosing things to work on that have so little to do with what moves me, and more just what I think might move my kids. Have you noticed that?
Redmayne: Well, when I did Fantastic Beasts, they were all too young to watch them. And now I’m just playing sociopaths.
Seyfried: [Laughs.] I was on a prison set two weeks ago. And I FaceTimed them and they’re like, “what are you doing?” And I was like, “I’m a nurse.” She’s like, “oh, can I see where you’re working?” And I was like, “I’m at a prison.” She’s like, “why is there a nurse at a prison?” We were all wearing blue scrubs. And I was like, “because I’m just taking care of some prisoners.” I’m lying—but we have to do that.
Redmayne: Do you ever think back on some of the films that you’ve done and think maybe your kids will watch them?
Seyfried: Yeah. Do you have any explicit stuff?
Redmayne: I did this one film with Julianne Moore, Savage Grace, and the mother slept with her son. It’s all quite intense. Maybe that’s not one that anyone needs to see.
Seyfried: But you will always have the wizards.
Speaking of these less kid friendly projects, the roles you have in The Day of the Jackal and Long Bright River seem quite different than what you’ve played in your careers up to this point.
Redmayne: I love the idea for both of us. You got to play a cop; you always wanted to play a cop. You’d never been offered that. I’d always wanted to do one of those spy genre things, which definitely wasn’t coming my way. And when it did, I was like, this is the most fun! Did you do all the gun training and stuff?
Seyfried: No!
Redmayne: I find it so impressive when you are walking around with the light and the gun. I spent hours with our military person going around corners, I literally looked like a sort of extra from a sort of Bond pastiche.
Seyfried: That’s how you felt. That’s not how you look.
Redmayne: It’s so funny that all I cared about with this character was that he was refined and elegant and cold and steady. I am the least steady person. I wish you could have seen that scene of him putting together the gun, which I wanted it to be like a dance. If you could see the outtakes, it was like two days of me going, “fuck!”
Seyfried: Where are those bloopers? It’s interesting – you’re a pretty highly anxious person. I’m a pretty highly anxious person. We vibrate faster than a lot of people. And so it’s kind of therapeutic to play these people who know exactly what they’re doing.
Redmayne: I find it so satisfying.
If you could have been in any of each other’s other projects, which would you pick?
Seyfried: I think The Danish Girl. I wanted to work with Tom again.
Redmayne: I wanted to be Cosette. I wanted the hat.
Seyfried: I wanted your songs.
Redmayne: I did have good songs. But do you know something that I’m a bit pissed off about? Do you remember when we got to singing at the Oscars? I said, “could we just bring it all down a tone?” I’d seen the movie by this point, and I spent the entire movie trying desperately to reach the notes, and everyone was like, “Yeah, that would be great. That’d be helpful.” And I was like, why didn’t we do that for the movie?
Seyfried: That would’ve been really, really helpful to a lot of people. Even Hugh. He didn’t feel like he was at his best in that movie either, vocally.
Redmayne: It was just so intense. I have lots of friends on the West End and on Broadway, and even when you’re doing those shows—don’t get me wrong, it’s incredibly intense—you are doing two shows a day, max. We were having to sing those songs 20 times, and at five in the morning. And so for me, I definitely found out it was a high challenge. Even though I definitely feel that when I look at my singing, there’s all sorts of stuff I would’ve loved to have worked on, I do think that is part of the rawness of that version of Les Mis. I hope that there is some sort of merit in that.
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