It’s clear Jude Law and Jurnee Smollett are each other’s biggest fans.
“I geeked out with you on set.” The duo are ensconced in director’s chairs, interviewing each other for Us Weekly’s first In Conversation feature — and the person making that confession might surprise you. The two costar in The Order, which hits theaters on Friday, December 6, and it turns out that Law is a massive fan of Smollett, thanks to her Emmy-nominated role in HBO’s Lovecraft Country. Her delighted response to his praise? “That was so sweet!”
Smollett is no stranger to Law’s filmography either, and she can’t help but gush over his role as Dickie Greenleaf in 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. “It’s classic. That contribution to the cinematic cannon is huge,” she says, calling the Oscar-winning film the epitome of “old Hollywood.”
In The Order, Law and Smollett play Terry Husk and Joanne Carney, a pair of FBI special agents who eye a white supremacist (Nicholas Hoult) in a domestic terrorist plot.
Watch the video above for Law and Smollett’s full conversation, which ranges from Law sharing how he took The Talented Mr. Ripley for granted to Smollett’s recollection of being “called out” on set by Denzel Washington. Or keep scrolling to read the interview in full:
Jurnee Smollett: I’m going first!
Jude Law: Go for it.
JS: Who is [your character], Terry? What is he looking to accomplish in our film, The Order?
JL: Terry Husk is a special agent that I play in the film. He’s had a very successful career but it’s taken its toll. He’s carrying war wounds emotionally, physically. He’s left behind a marriage, possibly in [kids]. He’s had heart surgery and he’s drinking too much, not looking after himself. He’s a wreck. And he’s actually initially sort of looking to take it easy and to rebuild his life. And instead he lands the biggest job of his life in his back garden.
JS: He’s looking to take it easy and slow it down, you say? [laughs]
JL: Take his foot off the pedal [laughs] and then once the case develops, he becomes obsessive and all in and passionate to resolve this case and to bring this single figure, this fugitive Bob Matthews, to justice.
JS: Well done. Can I ask you a follow up question to that?
JL: Yeah, sure.
JS: Your process. Walk us through your process, like, when you’re building your character, where do you begin?
JL: It’s always different. It’s kind of always fun to look at the empty canvas and think, like, “OK, where, where do I begin?” And what pops up initially is always a surprise to me. This particular project was really interesting because it actually came to me and my production company [Riff Raff Entertainment]. So I was looking at it as a producer, and I just thought I saw this potential, what an amazing story to be told. The relevance to now, spoke so clearly. And then there was this whole genre, this propulsion to it. And I didn’t really have my eye on Terry Husk.
JS: Don’t bulls—!
JL: No, I’m being serious!
JS: Really?
JL: Yeah. Yeah. It was my partner, Ben [Jackson].
JS: So you would’ve let another actor step into that role there?
JL: There was a time when I nearly did. They had to go ahead with it, and then something happened and it came back. Never told anyone that.
JS: Wow. I’m getting the [exclusive].
JL: So with this it was different because [writer] Zach [Baylin] made the choice to create Terry. He was an amalgam, but he was more than that.And he was really open, like he was with you, to our input. And so it was early doors for me that I could really influence the character. And it was super important that he was, like, busted and broken. So the process was really just working out this background. And that’s somewhere I usually start. I’m like, “Where were they born?”
JS: Do you work with coaches?
JL: Yeah, I work with a coach, and then I do a lot of work on my own. And to me it’s all about, like, where were they born? Who was their mom? Who was their dad, and what happened to them up to this date? And then you kind of go off on tangents. And the physical aspect becomes a kind of later. A later addition.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
JL: OK. My turn.
JS: I wanna ask more questions!
JL: Well, it’s my turn! What’s [your character] Joanne looking to accomplish? Carney. I don’t think I ever call you, Joanne [in the movie].
JS: You never do. It didn’t feel right when you said that. I was like, ‘Who the f— are you?’
JL: Carney. [laughs] Who’s Carney and what’s she looking to accomplish?
JS: I play Special Agent Carney, who was a mentee of yours.
JL: That’s right.
JS: Which was part of what we built out in her backstory. Which is so awesome, because when we meet up, there’s that real history between us. In which I’ve now risen in the ranks. And you’re coming to me for information. And help. And I love it. [laughs] The dynamics have shifted. When I first got the script, they had recently changed it to a woman. It was originally written as a man as you know.
JL: Mm-Hmm.
JS: And this is the second time this has happened to me recently. The Burial, the film with Jamie Foxx —
JL: Oh yeah. The lawyer.
JS: Yeah. Originally written as a man too. And when I got the script, I immediately googled Black women in the FBI. Just to kind of understand how many were there in the 1980s. And found a very sobering fact that it wasn’t until the mid-1970s that a Black woman was approved to serve in the bureau as a special agent. And so that opened my world up into the loneliness and the otherness of Carney and how she approaches life in general, but also her work. Her work is everything to her. Like, Terry, we don’t really have much of a life.
JL: Yeah.
JS: That lone wolf mentality, she’s on the hunt. And in interviewing some of the former special agents who were women of all kinds, one of the things they said was they were battling that feeling of loneliness. Sometimes you’re the only one in the bureau. Or in your workplace, you know? And so what does that feel like? Well, you gotta be the best. You gotta be the best at your job. You can’t slip up. There’s no, there’s no room for error. So some of those scenes when Terry veers off, when [he goes], “I’m gonna follow my instinct and make a left turn,” … I’m not just like, ‘Oh, you screwed up the mission,’ or, “You put yourself in danger,” but secretly there’s an envy that [Terry] can do things and get away with things that I never could. So yea, I love research. Do you love research? I feel like you do. ’cause we were exchanging a lot.
JL: We shared a lot.
JS: Yeah. We shared a lot.
JL: But what, what I loved also about that there are so many interesting dualities in this piece. People that are weirdly mirroring each other and shared different ways of doing it, but with a shared passion. And what’s interesting is Carney has that. Once she hones in, she’s in. And I think that is something I picked up from a lot of the agents I spoke to, this absolute commitment to the cause.
JS: To the mission.
JL: I mean, they’ll do anything.
JS: Give their lives, blood sweat and tears.
JL: Yea! Yeah.
JS: You’re right.
JL: Let me ask you one other thing then. What’s one thing playing [Carney] that you took away?
JS: It was such an education process for me. I knew about the Turner Diaries, but I didn’t know, really, about Bob Matthews.
JL: Me neither.
JS: Yeah,. I mean, I knew about the Aryan Nation, and KKK, you know, these hate groups, these domestic terrorists. But I didn’t know the connection between Bob Matthews and Timothy McVeigh.
JL: Right. That breadcrumb trail.
JS: Yeah. And unfortunately the ideology wasn’t invented by Bob Matthews. This level of bigotry and hatred also didn’t die off with him.
JL: No.
JS: And it’s only flourished since then. And that was one thing we talked a lot about. A lot of the special agents dealing with him, the conversation was, “Well, we don’t want to make him a martyr.” We don’t want this ideology to flourish and stuff. And yet here we are, you know? What one thing did you take away [from playing Terry]?
JL: I think there was a sense of uncovering in Terry, this need to keep finding fuel, to keep going and fight the fight. And in finding his kind of weariness, it reminded me a little bit, perhaps of a state of mind I’ve been in. You know, as I’ve reached middle age 15 years ago, 10 years ago, I kind of thought we were all living this great life. And I thought the world’s in a pretty good place, you know? And I took my eye off the path. And suddenly now [I’m at] an age where I feel like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be retiring,’ but it’s like, ‘No, no, no, no. The moral battle is in front of all of us who have the opportunity.’ But it invigorated me too. I thought, “Well, if Terry can find that, I can find that. Now’s the time to make the right choices. Now’s the time to have those conversations and call people out. And, you know, just be bold.”
JS: I love that. I love that Jude.
JL: So is it my go again. [What’s a] project that’s one of your favorites from the past that has a special place in your heart and in your memory.
JS: Oh, that’s a good question. Lovecraft Country.
JL: I was hoping you’d say that. [laughs] I geeked out on Lovecraft with you on set, which was so sweet. Tell me what it was like being a part of Lovecraft; why was it a happy time?
JS: Just a good team, a good workplace, great people. Creatively challenging and creatively stimulating. You know, the best combination. Great writing. It all starts with the words, we know that.
JL: Mm-Hmm.
JS: Misha Green created and wrote that project. I love the poetry of the metaphor of the monster, who’s the bigger monster? Racism, or this shoggoth standing in front of you? And the irony of flipping the genre on its head, Lovecraft himself being who he was for horror, but also being so horrific when it comes to being a bigot and racist.
JL: I mean, I geeked out with you on set.
JS: That was so sweet.
JL: I loved that.
JS: That was very sweet.
JL: I loved that series so much for all the reasons you said. I mean, there’s just nothing better than that kind of brilliantly intelligent, but entertaining storytelling. And we can get lazy. So we think, “Yeah, this thing’s all right.” When something’s really good, it’s gotta be celebrated. And that was, it was just dynamic and complicated. Just so well executed. I loved It.
JS: Was one of your favorite projects you’ve done that holds a special meaning to you?
JL: Honestly, the last couple of years I feel very blessed. I feel like I’m in a really good place with how I approach my work and what I get out of it, and the relationship I have with the directors. So [The Order] was a very happy experience for me and felt really fulfilling and complete. A film I made a couple years ago called Firebrand. … But if I look back I would have to mention, because it’s been 25 years, The Talented Mr. Ripley. I kind of took it for granted. I was, like, a 25-year-old kid thinking, ‘Oh, this is just what films are like.” And of course, I’ve never had the same experience again, sitting on a yacht drinking wine in the sun.
JS: It’s a classic. Like, that contribution to the cinematic cannon is huge. There have been so many films after that that you could directly say, “Oh, they’re, they’re copying it.”
JL: Several recently. Yeah. [laughs]
JS: I remember seeing it. … I didn’t see it in the theaters. I was too young to see it in the theaters, but I just remember that, it felt like old Hollywood. It felt like I was watching a Hitchcock film.
JL: But you know what, it’s been funny looking back all these years later, genuinely remembering the youthful energy and optimism and sparkle of all these actors. … Amazing, amazing actors and just so funny, it makes me laugh thinking of memories I have of us rehearsing. We were all, like, 25, 26.
JS: Well, what were the rehearsals like?
JL: We really went for it with rehearsals. [Director Anthony Minghella] loved full on rehearsals, and we were rehearsing in the famous cinemas where [Federico] Fellini used to work these movies.
JS: Wow. Come on. So you had the energy in the walls.
JL: We were there acting it out. Like it was a play, really. Blocking everything and learning to ride scooters. So yeah, it was fun times.
JS: Do you find that rehearsal frees you up? Or does it stifle you?
JL: I love rehearsals, but I trained in theater, so for me, rehearsals are vital. But the difference with rehearsing for film is you’ve gotta know when to go, “That’s enough.” Because you’ve gotta stop a little. You can’t get there.
JS: Yeah, get over rehearsed! I’ve had that experience where I’ve over rehearsed.
JL: You get yourself out of it. So have I, by the way.
JS: I was doing a film [where I got] to set and you go, “I got lost and I got nothing.” And I was called out, I was called out for it. It was Great Debaters, Denzel Washington was our director.
JL: And Denzel called you out for it? What’s that like?
JS: He absolutely freaking did. It was amazing. It was like a masterclass. I was, like, 19. And it was a big debate scene. It was the first debate we had shot. The film’s all about debate. We’d gone to debate camp. He had us in rehearsals, debating each other.
JL: Wow.
JS: And so in my head I’m like, “I’m gonna crush this man. I’m gonna kill this scene.” I get there and I was stale. I was over rehearsed, and he knew it. He came to me and he said, ‘You over rehearsed.’ And I was like, ‘I know. I got nothing. What do I do?’ And he said, “It’s OK, we’re gonna shoot everyone else and we’ll shoot you last and by then you’ll loosen up.” And by then, I wasn’t loose, man. I wasn’t. I was freaking out. … They do like this special shot around me and everything [and] I still know I’m not in the pocket. And he comes to me — and this is why actors who are directors sometimes are the best — and he simply says, “If you’re gonna ask a question, get an answer,” and walked away. It opened my head up. My character was debating whether or not people of color should be able to attend certain universities. [My character] wanted to be a lawyer, so I would have to be able to have access to certain universities. It was personal. … [I was] fighting for your life. That’s how high the stakes are, is what I realized in him saying, get an answer.
JL: And it just clicks.
JS: And it clicked. And the take that’s in the film now, I get emotional, [because it’s] the freaking take after he whispered that in my ear.
