Summary

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff chats with Mike Flanagan and Tom Hiddleston for The Life of Chuck.

Flanagan and Hiddleston discuss crafting the Stephen King adaptation for the screen, casting, why Hiddleston resonates with the role of Chuck, and billboard Easter eggs to keep an eye out for.

The Life of Chuck opens in theaters June 6, 2025.

The Life of Chuck debuts on the big screen today, bringing a new Stephen King adaptation to life with Mike Flanagan in the director’s chair. While The Life of Chuck moves Flanagan away from the horror genre, in which he’s earned immense acclaim in recent years, it allows him to continue exploring the themes present in all his work but in different ways — human emotion and drama. The adaptation explores the life of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death and working backwards to his mysterious childhood. At the heart of The Life of Chuck is Tom Hiddleston, who anchors the narrative with nuance as Chuck. Joining Hiddleston in the cast to portray key individuals in Chuck’s life are Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Matthew Lillard, Kate Siegel, Mia Sara, Carl Lumbly, Mark Hamill, David Dastmalchian, Rahul Kohli, and more, with Benjamin Pajak portraying Chuck in his early days. In an interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Flanagan and Hiddleston discuss bringing The Life of Chuck to screen. The director revisits casting the film and reveals which role took the most legwork to find the perfect fit for, while Hiddleston addresses a concept that the film carries at its heart. It’s one he has longed believed in, making him the perfect choice for Chuck. The pair also reflect on the first day of filming, and dig into how the Charles Krantz billboard itself had to do its fair share of storytelling.
Mike Flanagan Reveals Which Version of Chuck Took the Longest to Find

“It took us too long to realize we should look for a dancer who can act.”

PERRI NEMIROFF: Mike, this movie features a rather large ensemble, and it’s the type of ensemble where every single role matters. Of all the characters in this movie, which was the easiest to cast, where it was like the right person just magically appeared, but then also, which one took the most legwork to find the perfect fit for? MIKE FLANAGAN: Oh, wow! I’m utterly unprepared for that question. TOM HIDDLESTON: You can speak freely. [Laughs] FLANAGAN: Clearly, it was Tom! I just won’t say which. No, on this one, the right actors fell in very quickly. We had one wonderful conversation, and Tom was the first person to sign on, so everyone kind of fell in behind him. I was writing with some people in mind. I knew Kate [Siegel] was going to be in the film, and I kind of knew where I wanted her. The one who took the longest to find was Benjamin [Pajak]. That was the part we had the hardest time finding. We looked for actors who could dance, and spent a lot of time doing that. It took us too long to realize we should look for a dancer who can act. Benjamin was the last piece of the puzzle. You struck gold with him. He’s so good.
‘The Life of Chuck’ Is a Story About Something Tom Hiddleston Has “Long Believed”

“You only have one life, so express all of that interior complexity.”

Tom, the character you’re playing is unlike any character I’ve seen in a movie before, so it was making me wonder how that impacted your prep work. What is something about how you prepare for a role that stays the same from project to project, but then also, what is something about preparing to play Chuck that called for something one-of-a-kind? HIDDLESTON: To try and break it down is actually really interesting because my connection to it was so instinctive and immediate. I haven’t had this many times in my working life where I read something and I remember exactly where I was and exactly the time of day that I read it for the first time, and how it made me feel, and then our first conversation. There’s a feeling of intense excitement because I thought, “I know who he is.” It’s a really quiet whisper that’s just, “I know what to do.” The film and the character actually speaks to something I have long believed, and is kind of why I’m an actor, truthfully, which is I do think that every human being contains extraordinary range and breadth on the inside. I’ve always tried to resist the external reduction in my life and my friends and the people I love, like, don’t let anyone tell you who you are. You know who you are, and you contain multitudes. No one is one thing. You’re free. You only have one life, so express all of that interior complexity. So, I suppose that was the thing that excited me, was that in the external world, Chuck seems easy to read. He seems predictable. He seems like someone we know. He’s almost part of the furniture. Someone in a gray suit with a briefcase. Mr. Businessman on his way to the business conference and staying in the business hotel, but on the inside is a universe of people, of memories, of experience, of love, of loss, of joy, and of dancing, and I just loved him. Then, really, the preparation was about the dancing. I wanted the dancing to be as free and also precise. Stephen King writes, “Was there ever a moment in his life that he had danced with such elan and such freedom, even as a teenager, when he had no headaches and no muscle pain?” This is a moment, an explosion of joy, that is completely unrepeatable. So, my work preparing to play it became about really trying to infuse the dance with as much clarity and as much joy and as much shape and magic as I could.
The Charles Krantz Billboard Plays a Bigger Role in the Movie Than You May Have Realized

Flanagan and Hiddleston reveal Easter eggs to look out for.

Image via Neon

Mike, one burning question I had for you was finding the right design for the Charles Krantz billboard. Is what we see in the finished film always exactly what you had in mind from day one, or did that go through any evolutions to find the right look? FLANAGAN: Oh, it certainly evolved. Absolutely. It ended up being ultimately designed by Daniel Danger, who does a lot of the graphics for the King cast. As someone who’s so connected to King’s world, he just really zeroed in on it. The basic layout of it, though, existed as it was from the very start. I remember when we did that shoot for it at the very beginning. HIDDLESTON: That was amazing. FLANAGAN: It was wonderful. Finally seeing Tom step behind the desk holding the mug was the first time that it ever really came to life for me. But that image I adore. It’s on my wall at home and in my office now. I can’t get away from it, and I prefer it that way. HIDDLESTON: Perri, I’m sure you have because you’re very insightful about the detail, but did you notice the emotional expression of the billboard changes through the film?

28:51

Related

Here’s What Mike Flanagan Does and Doesn’t Change About Stephen King’s ‘The Life of Chuck’

Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Karen Gillan join the writer-director to discuss why this Stephen King adaption may be his best yet.

I swear, that is the next bullet point that I have! The part when Marty is watching the TV and the smile fades just the slightest bit, it feels like it cuts through every time I watch the movie. FLANAGAN: There’s an image right before, it leads into this scene with Chiwetel [Ejiofor] and Carl Lumbly. It comes off of this vertical banner and kind of booms down over the traffic, and if you look at Tom’s eyes, there are tears in his eyes there. It’s coming to the end, and the smile is holding, but there’s so much more behind it. It’s lost that kind of casual pleasantry that you felt in the beginning, and there’s so much love and ache and regret and inevitability in it. That’s the image that I have at home. That’s the one I kept. HIDDLESTON: It’s an extraordinary thing to do. It was the first thing we did together on set when I got out there to Fairhope, Alabama, was we did the billboard shoot. If I remember, we were doing stills, but we were also doing the motions, as well. We were doing the windows in one sequence, and I was sat behind the desk, and that was my first experience as Chuck in the costume with the suit and all his things. In the space of, I don’t know, 30 minutes, I felt like I had lived an entire life because we went through a range of so many different emotions and feelings of feeling happy and relieved and loved and generous and compassionate and interested and curious. I can remember the experience so well, like the curiosity fading and an awareness creeping in of ending and finality and solitude and people receding and suddenly feeling alone and lost and full of grief and sadness, and then coming back out into acceptance of that, which has another kind of serenity. It was an unrepeatable experience. I remember it so vividly. FLANAGAN: It was day zero on the schedule. It was labeled as day zero. What a way to dive in together. It was like, “Let’s just do every emotion we can think of. Let’s live a life behind a desk for the shoot.” It was incredible to watch him do it. It was moving us. We hadn’t even started shooting yet, and I was already starting to cry. It was great.

Image via Neon

HIDDLESTON: I wanted Mike to have all the choices. I knew from, again, my first reading of the script. Mike had sent a letter saying, “I’d love you to play Chuck,” and of course, I was reading it, and just like Marty and Felicia and everybody else in the first act, Chiwetel and Karen [Gillan] and Matthew [Lillard] and all those people, I was like, “Who is Chuck? Who is this guy?” So, I knew that the billboard had to do a certain amount of storytelling. It had to be enigmatic and also ordinary, but also extraordinary and then ubiquitous, and there was a sort of threat almost to that ubiquity and almost a threat to his indifference. The world was coming to an end, and he was smiling, seemingly benignly, from behind the desk. That had to be real, but also hyperreal or surreal. FLANAGAN: It had to say everything and nothing at that point of the movie. I remember there were dozens of images just of Tom’s expression that we would sift through in the office after the shoot, trying to figure out, “Is this a good billboard image for the beginning? Is this more for the end of the act? How would it fit?” trying to narrow it all down. It was pretty amazing. The Life of Chuck opens in theaters on June 6.

The Life of Chuck

Release Date

May 30, 2025

Runtime

110 minutes

Producers

D. Scott Lumpkin, Elan Gale, Trevor Macy, Molly C. Quinn, Melinda Nishioka

Get Tickets