The Big Picture

Argylle is a thrilling action comedy with plenty of bloodshed, head-stomping, knife-slinging, and fist-throwing. The film features a stacked cast including Henry Cavill, Samuel L. Jackson, Sam Rockwell, and Bryce Dallas Howard. Director Matthew Vaughn’s unique and “naughty and romantic” style sets Argylle apart and brings a sense of humor to the stylized violence in the film.

Matthew Vaughn’s latest, Argylle, is an absolute meal for everyone involved. This thrilling action comedy gives the entire cast something to play with, and something that plays to their strengths. Given the mystery and fun marketing surrounding the film prior to release, Collider was thrilled to partner with Universal Pictures for an early IMAX screening in NYC, where our very own Steve Weintraub moderated an exclusive post-screening Q&A with Vaughn and the cast.

For fans of the filmmaker, there’s no shortage of bloodshed in Argylle, according to Collider’s Maggie Lovitt, who promises “plenty of head-stomping, knife-slinging, and fist-throwing.” The movie’s trailer, which centers around best-selling author, Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) and the real-life spies who come after her when her latest book teeters unusually close to real-world events, is only the tip of this espionage iceberg. This isn’t a spoiler interview (you’ll have to wait for that one), so do yourself a favor and go check it out. The cast is stacked — with Henry Cavill, Samuel L. Jackson, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, and Chip the cat — and the plot is full of twists.

After our NYC showing, Vaughn, O’Hara, Rockwell, Howard, and Cavill took the stage to discuss their time working together on the film. During the Q&A, which you can watch in the video above or read below, they credit Argylle’s uniqueness to Vaughn’s “naughty and romantic” style. Cavill shares how working with the director on his “enormous and innovative set pieces” compares to his time with Tom Cruise on Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Howard talks about observing Vaughn on set in her directing pursuits, and how collaborative he is while directing and producing. We find out how Chip the cat got his starring role, how Taylor Swift actually played a part in Argylle, how Vaughn got the last-ever Beatles song in the film, and tons more.

Argylle An introverted spy novelist is drawn into the activities of a sinister underground syndicate. Release Date February 2, 2024 Director Matthew Vaughn Runtime 135 minutes Writers Jason Fuchs

COLLIDER: All of you have done really, really cool stuff in your career. If someone has never seen anything you’ve done before, what is the first thing you’d like them watching and why? And you cannot say Argylle.

HENRY CAVILL: I’m gonna try and keep it somewhat in the family. It’s an old colleague of Matthew’s — The Man from U.N.C.L.E. would be good.

BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD: Mine would be Black Mirror.

Image via Netflix

SAM ROCKWELL: Alright, yeah! There’s a film coming out called Stunt Man that’s a pretty exciting film, I think.

HOWARD: It’s gonna be amazing.

MATTHEW VAUGHN: It’s amazing.

CATHERINE O’HARA: You’re going to the future.

I meant from the past.

O’HARA: Don’t rest on your laurels.

ROCKWELL: Yeah, exactly. [Laughs]

O’HARA: Rest on your future laurels.

BRYCE: And what from the past, Sam?

ROCKWELL: Snow Angels. I just pulled that out of my butt.

CAVILL: It’s not the first time he’s said that.

O’HARA: I got nothing.

ROCKWELL: I got you.

HOWARD: We all have you. We know.

ROCKWELL: Waiting for Guffman, Beetlejuice…

O’HARA: Okay, Waiting for Guffman. Thank you, Sam.

VAUGHN: I would probably have to say Kingsman. That was the first time I felt like I could actually direct a film, so that was the first time I’d felt like I had become a director.

Last curveball before we get to Argylle. What is the most nervous you’ve been before the first night of filming and why?

VAUGHN: For me, it was Layer Cake because I really had never even looked through a camera. That was my first time trying to direct a film, so that was pretty nerve-wracking. And Lock, Stock [and Two Smoking Barrels], as well. That was the first time I tried to produce a film, and then I realized that none of us on the crew, director or me, had ever made a movie before. It was the most fun I’ve ever had learning to make a film while making a film.

O’HARA: I’m gonna say Waiting for Guffman again, because it was the first of four improvised movies that I did with Chris Guest and Eugene Levy. The night before Waiting for Guffman, I knew all the dialogue was gonna be improvised, I just didn’t know how it was gonna work. And Chris said, “I’m just telling people, don’t try to be funny.” But then you just show up on set and everybody’s got their characters and then you feed off of each other and lift each other up. But yeah, that was scary. Good scary. It’s good to be scared, isn’t it?

ROCKWELL: Yeah, it’s good to be scared. Definitely. I’d say Box Of Moonlight is a movie I did with John Turturro years ago. I was pretty scared on that. But fear is an interesting thing, isn’t it? It comes out of nowhere on a film, anxiety and what have you. It’s so random. Sometimes you might have prepared and done your work — or not — and then it just comes out of nowhere sometimes. It can be random.

HOWARD: So for me, it was very, very specific. It was shooting the last Jurassic [World Dominion]. We were the first movie to come back during the pandemic and I was shot foreman, so I was the contact with SAG and responsible for the actors. So, coming back and shooting knowing that this was very new terrain for everyone and it was very important that it worked, that was certainly the most nervous that I’ve ever been. And it also happened to be a scene that was the scene where I got the most injured. It’s when I was falling out of a parachute. This happens in movies, for some reason, that I’m in. Ripped off a Band-Aid with that one.

Related 10 Best Bryce Dallas Howard Performances To Watch After ‘Jurassic World Dominion’ Bryce Dallas Howard, everybody!

CAVILL: To everyone else’s point, I think you can get nervous and scared before most scenes, really. It’s good to have that feeling. It means the scene is alive inside you. But before I knew that, it was The Count of Monte Cristo, which was my first-ever professional job. I was fresh out of school, and I was terrified. It was a big movie and I just didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do it. That was a pretty terrifying experience.

VAUGHN: Well, it must have been pretty terrifying putting on the cape. No?

CAVILL: Yes, Matthew. That too. Steve?

[Laughs] This is for the cast: you guys have read a lot of scripts, and I’m curious, what is it actually like reading a script like this because it’s so unique with the way it does its twists and turns? It’s so different than most narrative scripts.

O’HARA: Almost as good as watching the movie. Really. I hate to overuse the word, but it was a page-turner. I really was like, “Oh my god. No! What?”

HOWARD: Jason Fuchs is an incredible, incredible writer and producer on this film. He wrote Wonder Woman, he knows what he’s doing. It was one of those, like Catherine was saying, one of those unbelievable, magical reads where you’re just like, “What? This is so good already, and this is just meant to be a template for the film.” Then it was really wonderful to get to see Matthew’s partnership with Jason. Jason has said to me that it’s the most inclusive experience that he’s had as a writer, and I think that the end result is what it is in large part because of that partnership.

CAVILL: It was one of those scripts which, as you guys know, has lots of twists and turns, and you can almost see it in your mind’s eye until you realize Matthew’s in charge. Then you realize it’s gonna be at least 12 times bigger than that. So, it was exciting. It’s one of those things where you think, “This is a special moment. This is a special occasion. This is something original, some original IP.” And, as you guys all know, I don’t necessarily do original IP that often, and it was an exciting prospect, especially when Matthew’s in charge and you know you can trust him.

I’m a huge fan of Matthew Vaughn’s action set pieces. What was it like on set filming with Matthew with action? For example, the train fight or the smoke dance or oil, because they’re all so different from what you’ve seen in other movies.

ROCKWELL: Matthew wants something really unique, and that’s why he hires the best people around him. We mentioned the great Brad Allan who passed away; Damien Walters was his protégé, and he shot a lot of second unit and directed second unit. Brad was a protégé of Jackie Chan, so that’s the lineage of that stylized violence in the film. And Matthew wants a sense of humor. I think that that’s what’s so unique about the stylized violence in his films is that it’s got humor, and that’s what makes it interesting.

Matthew Vaughn Uses New Techniques for His Challenging Action Sequences

Can you guys talk a little bit about what it’s actually like to film some of these sequences?

ROCKWELL: Challenging.

CAVILL: It’s challenging because it’s new techniques. I’ve done a fair few fight scenes throughout my career and walking into this, we knew it was going to be something different. Matthew said, “Look, everything we’re doing is going to be brand new and it may or may not work so you’re just gonna have to work really hard in the rehearsals and see what happens. Then we’ll try and shoot that on small cameras in rehearsal, and then come the day of shooting, everything may change. It may or may not work.” And we pushed and pushed and pushed, and all that rehearsal time and all the work that Matthew puts into pre-production pays off because Sam and I, on that train scene, for example, it seemed to go fairly seamlessly, and it was only because of the hard work put in. So, that makes a big difference. You go into a scene like that, you do your bit, you do your hard work, you do your prep, and everyone else has done it, as well, and it turns out to be a really fantastic scene.

VAUGHN: We filmed that in the first two weeks, which I think helped. We weren’t physically exhausted. I like to start movies with a strong, hard sequence because it gets the crew up to speed very quickly. Like the first thing we shot in Kingsman was the church sequence. As he liked improvising, there’s a lot of popping the cherry, and we got through it.

Matthew, I’m so curious what you’re like, because not only are you the director but you’re also the producer. What is it like directing on set? When something isn’t working, does the producer hat ever come on? What’s that balance for you?

VAUGHN: I mean, it really is Jekyll and Hyde. It’s pretty intriguing, from Layer Cake and Stardust, the producer of me was a lot stronger than the director. Then I think I read a Billy Wilder quote that he said to an executive back in the day, “The audience aren’t interested if you came in on budget or on schedule.” It doesn’t really affect you guys. So, I’ve come a little bit looser in that sense and so the creative side is now 70% and the producer is 30%. I think I wanted to tell as big a story as possible and the producer in me is who whimpers in the background.

HOWARD: No, but you make the impossible possible. Because you have a vision for something, typically a director will, and then the producer will say, “Well, sorry, that’s cost prohibitive, so let’s dream a little smaller.” You can problem solve your way through those obstacles because you have that experience as a producer, and also because it’s largely an independent film for quite a while. I think it’s really unique what you’re able to do, and you strike a really powerful balance.

What I would say in terms of just witnessing Matthew just as a leader on set, and what he’s doing in terms of, in particular, the style of filmmaking that is incredibly innovative, he is demanding and he does not settle. It takes a lot of courage to be that way, because normally we’re all like, “Oh, are we gonna get in trouble if we go over? If we don’t do it exactly how it was written?” And so there’s a constant discovery that worked really well, especially, I think, with you. I mean, it was really exciting to see how playful it could be, and how things could be discovered on such a giant movie. And it wasn’t just like, “Every day we have a plan. We’re sticking to it because this is way too expensive to begin with.” So, it was very cool.

How Taylor Swift Really Played a Part in ‘Argylle’
Image via Netflix

Matthew, I don’t think the audience is gonna think this question is coming, but the Taylor Swift documentary actually played a part in this movie.

VAUGHN: Um, yeah. [Laughs] Well, she didn’t write the book. I will say that now.

Isn’t that what a spy would say?

VAUGHN: Yeah, but I’m not a spy. In theory. Yeah, my daughters watched Miss Americana and I was sort of glancing at it, and then I saw the cat in a cat pack, and I was like, “What the hell is that?” What happens in my life is I see things and if it grabs my attention it goes into the “We’ll put that in a movie,” and I’m not sure when or where. So I’m always just looking at life, and if you just see something that’s inspiring or funny or powerful, that will be in a scene sometime in the near future.

Also, what people don’t realize is the cat in this film originally was being played by a professional until one day when Matthew…

VAUGHN: Basically, after the first day of filming we had a professional “acting cat,” and you know, cats and acting aren’t exactly…It’s not true. They don’t. Although, it’s an anagram of acting — cat. I just realized. So I went to my daughter’s bedroom and said, “Can I borrow your cat, please?” And I took the cat to work for three months. It was actually, at first, a bit weird driving to work with the cat, looking after the cat, changing the cat’s litter, being the cat handler as well as the director, but he became a very calming influence on me, and I think he’s great in the movie. So, I’m very proud of him. He is a nepo kitty, but he’s a good cat. He’s called Chip, and he can’t be here. I wish he was here, actually.

Related Why Matthew Vaughn Fired the Cat Actor in ‘Argylle’ For His “Nepo Cat” Having fired the professional cat performer, Vaughn borrowed his daughter’s pet instead.

Henry Cavill on Action With Tom Cruise vs. Matthew Vaughn: “How Can Things Get Better and Bigger?”
Image via Paramount

Henry, I have an individual question for you. You have done a lot of incredible action set pieces in your career. What do you still think of as the hardest thing you’ve done, and what was it like working on this film in comparison to the other action set pieces you’ve done?

CAVILL: The hardest action set piece or sequence I’ve done is easily the helicopter scene in Mission: Impossible [Fallout]. That was crazy. I mean, Tom [Cruise] was doing all the real work — he was flying the helicopter. I was just hanging out the back of the other one…

HOWARD: [Laughs] I don’t know, that sounds like work, Henry.

CAVILL: I mean, it was just cold. That was the problem. On the bravery piece, to begin with you have a little half harness on with a length of cable about that long, and initially you are terrified of sitting on the edge of an open helicopter in the mountains, but by take two, you are leaning all the way out, full trust. I mean, it’s probably not a good idea, but I’m here now, so I think it’s okay. But it’s amazing how you stop being scared as soon as you end up trusting that harness.

In comparison to working with Matthew in these action set pieces, as you said, they are absolutely enormous and innovative set pieces every time, and that keeps it interesting for me. Once you’ve worked with Tom Cruise, you think, “How can things get better and bigger than here?” And Matthew does. He makes things different and new. Working with Sam in rehearsals and trying to fall into sync with each other, and then working out where cameras are gonna be, and you can’t cheat in those scenes. You can’t be moving the camera around to hide a punch. The cameraman can’t save you. So you have to be particularly precise and moving like someone else while keeping your character individual. And so, working with Matthew with this has been a new experience for me.

Bryce, I have a question for you. You are slowly emerging as someone… Let me just say it like this: I can’t wait to watch your first feature film.

VAUGHN: He means as a director, just to be clear. She has done feature films.

Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t say director.

VAUGHN: She’s done this before a few times.

My bad. So what I’m curious about is, was half the reason you took this role so you could watch Matthew on set and maybe borrow a few things?

HOWARD: 100%.

VAUGHN: For what not to do.

HOWARD: No, honestly. My dad is a filmmaker, and something that he really, really…

VAUGHN: A great filmmaker.

Yeah, a fantastic filmmaker.

HOWARD: He’s awesome! But something that he really sort of laments is that he loved, as he was a young person and acting full time, how he would get the chance to learn from directors, learn from other actors, and see just different ways in which stories are told cinematically. And so for me, from the very beginning, I’ve always felt like a spy on a set. I pick things based on the director, and I wanna infiltrate and I wanna observe and absorb as much as possible. Working with Matthew, I wanted to work with him just full stop period as an actor, but as someone who craves to learn as much as possible as a filmmaker — how he does action, his partnership with Brad Allan, the team around him, the way in which he is just absolutely dogged at creating something that is fresh and original and fun, entertaining — it’s very, very, very exciting to get to be a part of that and to get to see how the sausage is made, essentially. Matthew was, in the same way that he was incredibly inclusive with Jason Fuchs as a writer, you were very, very, very open with me, and just exposing me to the process, whether or not it was a scene kind of having to do with my character, and I’m just so grateful for that. It was really awesome, Matthew, getting to learn from you.

I am a huge fan of all four of your works. I love talking to actors about the way that you get ready for a scene, so say, hypothetically, you have a really big scene on a Monday morning. It’s really emotional, really dramatic, and you need to deliver that morning. How early on are you actually preparing for a scene like that? Is it when you first get the script you’re thinking about it? Is it the week before? Could you maybe talk a little bit about your process when you have a scene that you’re really nervous about?

CAVILL: If it includes Matthew Vaughan, it’s probably 20 minutes before, given to learn the monologue.

ROCKWELL: [Laughs] Yeah, how ‘bout that monologue?

CAVILL: Matthew, for the train scene, originally it was just Sam doing all that dialogue, and then he went, “Yeah, you know what? Why don’t you do the dialogue, as well?” And so there I was thinking, “Oh, great. It’s my first day on set and I need to learn a monologue in 20 minutes and perform it in front of actors I haven’t worked with, either.”

HOWARD: You had to match the cadence, as well. It was a very high wire act.

CAVILL: Yeah, so with Matthew, it’s 20 minutes.

ROCKWELL: Bravo.

CAVILL: From here on out, I would now refuse to prepare until 20 minutes before.

HOWARD: Sam, what’s your process like?

ROCKWELL: I think it’s early on. I get nervous thinking about things.

HOWARD: You watch a lot of movies.

ROCKWELL: I watch a lot of movies and I work out with an acting coach and stuff like that.

VAUGHN: What does an acting coach teach you now that you know it all?

ROCKWELL: Well, there are schools for acting, you know, Matthew.

HOWARD: Yeah, it is a craft. It’s ever-evolving.

ROCKWELL: You do train. It’s a vocation. It’s not a whim.

O’HARA: Why are you so skeptical?

VAUGHN: No, I’m not skeptical. Does anyone teach Muhammad Ali to box after he’s won?

ROCKWELL: Angelo Dundee taught Muhammad Ali?

VAUGHN: After he won?

ROCKWELL: Oh, after he won. Well, he would continued to train with Angelo Dundee. Anyway, that’s a fair point.

O’HARA: Mick Jagger still takes singing lessons.

VAUGHN: He needs to.

O’HARA: But that’s cool! He could just not.

ROCKWELL: Anyway, the listener doesn’t need to hear this conversation.

O’HARA: I wanna hear it.

CAVILL: This is like being back on set just watching them argue.

HOWARD: [Laughs] It really is.

This went off in such a direction I did not expect. Not even a little.

‘Argylle’ Features a Never-Before-Heard Beatles Song
Image by Jefferson Chacon

We’ll switch to something else. Matthew, you got to put the last Beatles song ever in your movie. Talk a little bit about how you managed to swing that.

VAUGHN: Well, I was trying to find a song, their love song, let’s call it, and I needed something with sadness but hope. Giles Martin, who produced the song, I was with him and he said, “Would you like to hear an old new Beatles song?” I just couldn’t get my head around it. I thought he was winding me up, and then he played it. We just slapped it on every scene and it just fit. And the lyrics, you know, “now and then,” and then we orchestrated it at the end. You hear the orchestra. I thought it was a beautiful piece of music at that time. Then I had the pleasure of meeting Sir Paul [McCartney] and The Beatles, and The Beatles’ kids, and it was just an honor. I couldn’t believe I was getting to work on the last-ever Beatles track, and I had to keep it a secret for a year-and-a-half. I had it on my iPhone, and I wanted to play it to everyone and I couldn’t. So yeah, I’m very lucky. Very lucky.

There is a question for everyone. Obviously, the shoot must have been a blast, challenging, every word you could add to that sentence, but when you think back on the shoot, what’s the day or two that you will always remember, whether it be because things went terribly wrong or because it was an amazing day?

ROCKWELL: I don’t know, I remember running around in the kitchen with Bryce trying to get out of breath. But I just wanna say, I think — maybe I’m stating the obvious here — what’s so original about Matthew’s films is that he’s a mischievous bad boy and yet he’s also a hopeless romantic. Am I stating the obvious there? That that’s what makes his films kind of special.

VAUGHN: Wow, thank you.

HOWARD: It’s true. He’s so naughty and he’s so romantic.

ROCKWELL: It shows in all his films.

VAUGHN: Yeah, those two things, naughty and romantic, are a very, very, very good sort of Valentine’s Day moment.

O’HARA: And a sense of humor.

VAUGHN: Actually, one of my memories was poor Catherine, when your back went. She was lying on the deck of the ship and we were doing stamping and all this stuff, and I was like, “Catherine, do you want to leave?” And she’s like, “No, I’m good.” You were down there for hours.

Image via Universal Pictures

O’HARA: I stayed on the floor, chilly and nice.

VAUGHN: She just stayed lying down, and I was like, “Oh, okay.” But didn’t complain once.

O’HARA: Everybody was kind of sad for me. “Are you still okay?”

VAUGHN: Covering you in a blanket.

O’HARA: That was good because I got to watch all the stunt work up close. The movie is beautifully edited, the fights are beautifully edited, but I’m telling you, you could watch those fights in person and believe they were killing each other. Didn’t need to be edited. So many movies go, “Pow! Zam!” Nothing connects. This was like beautiful, beautiful choreography.

‘Aryglle’ Has Your Next TikTok Trend Covered
Image via Apple TV+

Do you guys want to share any memorable moments or a day or two you’ll always remember?

CAVILL: I try to forget. No, all joking aside, any day I was working with Sam and watching him work. He really is an absolute genius, and just beautiful to watch perform.

ROCKWELL: Oh man, the feeling is mutual.

O’HARA: Bryan [Cranston] is lovely to be with, too.

HOWARD: Yeah, Bryan is the best.

ROCKWELL: He’s okay.

O’HARA: [Laughs] I didn’t say he was as good as you. No, he’s great. He’s really, really funny, too.

ROCKWELL: Bryan’s amazing.

O’HARA: I think everyone thinks of him now as Your Honor or Breaking Bad, but I don’t know if you remember Malcolm in the Middle. He’s just a really funny improviser, and just crazy funny all the time off-camera.

ROCKWELL: Totally, off-camera.

HOWARD: Brilliant. My thing I hope doesn’t come off as a spoiler, but I’m just gonna be honest with you guys, the whirlybird. First of all, I just want to say, me doing the whirlybird with Sam does not look like what Dua Lipa doing the whirlybird with Henry Cavill looks like. [Laughs] It was just the most fucking absurd thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. It was really fun.

VAUGHN: But you stayed in the moment, and it is the smile. Trust me, it was something that, even when I was shooting it, I was like, “Is this gonna make the final cut? I’m not sure,” but I had to pretend, “It definitely is.” And it would wind the writer up. We even came up with, “Only the whirlybird catches the worm.” And he’s like, “No, you can’t say that.” And I said, “Yes, we can.” But I think it’s the looks between Bryce and Sam in both whirlybird moments. It was such joy and commitment in the moment that I think you two made the whirlybird emotionally real.

O’HARA: Are you gonna make a dancing hit?

VAUGHN: Yeah, I’ll get sued.

O’HARA: Are you hoping everyone’s gonna pick it up and do the whirlybird?

VAUGHN: Hopefully It’s the new TikTok sensation.

Argylle is in theaters now.

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