Past master
Starring in Black Mirror took Paul Giamatti back to his loft party days on the Lower East Side – but were they memories he wanted reminding of?
Netflix
- Gabriel Tate
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For Paul Giamatti, the new Black Mirror episode Eulogy was a journey into a parallel past. As his character, New Englander Philip – “a guy who’s a little stuck, pretty content but with some unresolved issues from his past” – stepped back into old photos of life squatting in Manhattan’s loft apartments in the early 1990s, Giamatti also came to reflect on his own gloriously chaotic formative years.
“I knew a lot about that world,” says the 57-year-old on set in Shepperton, far more approachable and cheerful than the curmudgeonly roles that brought him to prominence in the likes of Sideways and Billions. “The rooftops on set are re-created very accurately, exactly the kind of place I lived in on the Lower East Side, although a few years later than Philip.
“What I mostly remember about those years was scrapping around, looking for work, then having a baby in this ridiculous apartment that was in no way suited to having a baby. It was a real death trap, open sockets in the walls… There were no dividing walls, so we made them out of bookshelves. It was a good time.”
Paul Giamatti with Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man. Universal Pictures / Allstar
The work picked up eventually. Now, with two Oscar nominations (for Cinderella Man and The Holdovers) to his name, Giamatti is one of America’s most in-demand actors. He is also no stranger to working in the UK, having shot here on a range of projects, including Saving Private Ryan, Downton Abbey and, er, Thunderpants.
“I love that movie!” Giamatti beams of the 2002 film he made with Rupert Grint post-Hogwarts. “There’s a kind of sanity to the work here that we lack in America. It doesn’t feel rushed. The days are normal and there’s an eye towards people having a life outside of work, which is not the case in America a lot of the time.”
Our apartment was no place for a baby. It was a death trap!
Giamatti was delighted to return to Britain to film Eulogy, despite the unusual demands it placed on him: “I don’t often feel that I consciously bring anything of my own life into something, but there were definitely moments of thinking about my own past here. Regrettable relationships, things that were left open-ended in uncomfortable ways...”
A long-time fan of Black Mirror and dedicated reader of Philip K Dick, Isaac Asimov and Ted Chiang, Giamatti appreciates the show’s measured view of technology while being no tech trailblazer himself.
Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers. Miramax Distribution
“I am on Instagram, although only my friends know it’s me,” he says, explaining that he uses a pseudonym he declines to share with me. “My girlfriend [Billions co-star Clara Wong] is heavily into TikTok but I don’t want to engage in that. That endless scroll and loop is terrifying. The second that you’re confronted with algorithms and nudges, you feel coerced. It’s strange and troubling.”
Despite that, the actor adds, he isn’t one to retreat into the past for comfort. “I’m not a big nostalgia guy and I don’t have a ton of photos. I regret that now. I wish I had kept a lot of things – photographs, but also letters, school papers, tests, reports. I never kept anything. I was always just thinking, ‘What’s next?’”
As he is called back to set, we end our conversation, appropriately if morbidly, with the subject of funerals. “I think about death a lot as I get older,” he says. “Do I believe anything is going to happen to me after I die? I used to think not, but now I’m not so sure. I go back and forth between burial and cremation, but I have this funny thing of wanting to know that my body is still around, just in case.
“Maybe I should be cryogenically frozen. Or maybe I have been watching too much Black Mirror!”
Patsy Ferran: 'I'm a luddite!'
Paul Giamatti and Patsy Ferran in Black Mirror: Eulogy. Netflix
Your character guides Philip into photos from his past. How did you find your AI voice?
I went for an Alexa-type voice initially as it’s a client-service provider relationship, but we realised that loses dramatic tension quite quickly. The Guide has to make Philip feel relaxed and safe. It evolved into something similar to my own voice, making her seem more human vocally. It made my job a lot easier.
If there was an old photo you could step into, what would it be?
I’d be curious to see my parents when they were really young and dating. We have some amazing photos of them in 1970s garb.
How do you feel about the technology in Eulogy?
There’s always some fallout with seemingly benevolent technology, although less so with Eulogy, which is more a human story of potential regret and sadness. You could trigger something you didn’t want to remember with this. But as technology goes, it’s probably the least harmful. I might use it.
Are you an early tech adopter?
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I was up to date until about ten years ago. The fact there are no actual buttons on smartphones now drives me mad. I’m regularly shouting at my printer because it doesn’t want to connect. Actually, I think I’m a full-on Luddite. GT
Authors
Gabriel Tate
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