Henry Golding also has thoughts about the big twist in Last Christmas (spoilers)
Emily Ross I wrote an entirely different opening to this post. But then I opened these shots from the UK premiere of Last Christmas and saw Henry Golding in a black, velvet double-breasted blazer, cashmere turtleneck and plaid slacks and everything changed. I think I might have blacked out for a moment. As the headline suggests, from here on out, there will be spoilers discussed for the film, which also stars Emilia Clark (pictured below). So SPOILER – Henry Golding is beautiful. The next spoiler is less obvious, but, as Kaiser reported, really only slightly less. The majority of rom-com consumers who saw the film’s trailer guessed the plot twist well before the movie was released. (Last spoiler warning) social media launched several theories but most suggested that the Tom (Henry) character was either an angel or he was an organ donor from whom Kate (Emilia) benefitted. All one had to do was listen to the George Michael song that inspired the title to guess which was correct. We heard Emilia’s thoughts on folks speculating about the ending (she’s not a fan) so now it’s time to hear from Henry about the secret-everyone-knew ending. But he can’t really weigh in because – it was spoiled for him before he read it.
On discovering that his character was a ghost: Initially, Paul approached me and said, “I’ve got this wonderful script I want you to read and I can’t see anyone else playing it but you. We have Emilia Clarke attached, Emma Thompson co-wrote it with her husband.” I pretty much told him yes from there, but I was like, “Pass it over to my team and I’ll read through it.” Before I could read it, one of my agents was like, “Oh my God, there’s this brilliant thing and then there’s a reveal which is amazing.” Then he tells me the reveal! But then I read the script myself, and there’s just so much more. The initial script was fairly different to what actually we filmed because initially she finds his phone and he sort of appears in a text message and he’s not physically there. I was talking to Emma and Paul, and I was like, “I really believe Tom needs to say his final goodbye face to face. There has to be a moment where he holds her or holds his hand over her chest to say goodbye.”
On if he kept his ghostiness a secret while filming: In some respects, yes. Because we had to make sure that I never really interacted with anyone else. We had to make sure the extras weren’t looking in my direction. We had to keep it semi-secret. Emilia had to do these shots of us interacting and then me leaving and her continuing as if I’m not even there to show that I physically wasn’t around. I do remember the scene in the ice skating rink. The whole day myself and her were on the rink, and we were having this amazing time together. Then it came to a point where she had to do it all on her own, and we all had tears in our eyes because we just saw how lonely and how sad it was. They just had this beautiful moment, but it was all within her.
I have a couple of theories, please bear with me. I wonder if maybe making the twist obvious was intentional. I have a story I love to tell about my husband. I learned through retellings that if I give the ‘twist’ up front, it makes the rest of the story much funnier. Maybe filmmakers understood that revealing the twist allowed audiences to appreciate it more. The bad reviews indicate this strategy didn’t work, but that’s still my theory. I also have a theory that Emilia didn’t guess the ending and is ticked off everyone else did, which is totally how I’d react. And how much do you want to bet Henry guessed the outcome from the title but said it was “spoiled” for him to make Emilia feel better?
The rest of interview is mostly as softball as the excerpt above, with the one exception being when the interviewer suggests “spectral dysfunction” is the reason his ghost-Tom only kisses Kate and can’t ghost-bang her *snerk*. But even then, the ever-urbane Henry answers as charmingly as the walking Disney prince he is.
Speaking of urbane – as mentioned, the reviews for Last Christmas are not good. Filmmakers can, understandably, take harsh reviews personally. However, director Paul Feig kept it classy in for his response to Rolling Stone when they trashed his film:
As a lifelong @RollingStone reader, I sincerely thank you for your opinion. We can’t win everybody over but we will continue to try! I swear all of our hearts were in the right place. Can our one star at least be a really really big star? 🌟😃❤️
— Paul Feig (@paulfeig) November 10, 2019
Yeah. I’d decided against seeing this film but Henry, Feig’s response and the general need to inject Christmas in my veins pronto tells me I might as well get my ticket now.
Photo credit: Getty Images and Twitter
