We Live in Time finally arrives in UK cinemas on New Year’s Day, but you’ve probably already heard of a stand-out scene in the movie.
The scene in question sees Almut (Florence Pugh) choose to shave her head before undergoing chemotherapy, with her husband Tobias (Andrew Garfield) taking on the responsibility.
There was no camera trickery involved – it really was Garfield shaving Pugh’s hair off. But if you think that was the scene he was most worried about, you’d be mistaken.
“I felt very, very privileged that I got to do it and take care of Florence’s head for a while when it was in my responsibility. I was definitely nervous, and I definitely wanted to make sure I didn’t injure anybody and that I gave a good even cut,” he told Digital Spy.
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“I’m trying to think if there was a scene where I was really, really scared. Ice skating probably, genuinely because I’m so shit on the ice. It’s just never been something I was good at. Florence loved seeing me like a Bambi on the ice.”
Pugh added: “I mean, I’m also not that great, but I could do it. I went to a few 10-year-old birthday parties when I was 10.”
As with her co-star, Pugh found the head-shaving scene to be a “huge privilege” and wasn’t “intimidated” by it.
Instead, it was We Live in Time‘s childbirth scene that was something she knew she “wanted to get right”. “I’ve heard far too many birth stories that I was like, ‘Oh I need to, this needs to be correct’,” she continued.
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“It was incredible, but it was exhausting. We were doing the scenes for about, I’d say, 15 minutes, and the scene was obviously a bit longer when we shot it, but it was amazing.
“We were panting and sweating after every single take, and it was just a really, really beautiful thing to get to shoot and to have created. It was very, very special.”
Director John Crowley was also conscious of the challenges of making the childbirth sequence work on screen. However, it was also the scene in the script that made him want to do the movie.
“The mixture of tones and elements that’s in that scene, from the absurdity of the situation and the jeopardy of it right through to the profound last moments of that scene, were the ambition for the film to marry those two things together,” he recalled.
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“Actually shooting it across two days was intense and challenging and, in many ways, the actors went through exactly what Tobias and Almut go through. We would do the entire scene through each time minus the actual baby at the very end.
“So Florence gave birth eight times I think one day and so their exhaustion in the scene is not acted, it’s real.”
We Live in Time is released in UK cinemas on January 1, 2025.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
