“What’s a movie you’re an apologist for?” “What’s a movie you love more than anyone else you know?” “What’s your favorite underrated movie?” Whenever these sorts of questions come up—and they do, with some frequency, on social media, in icebreaker games, or over drinks—I’ve got an answer ready to go: One Day, a 2011 romance starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, based on the novel of the same name by David Nicholls. We meet the main characters, Emma and Dexter, on July 15, 1988, when they’re graduating from college and, over the less-than-two-hour span of the film, check in on them on that date for the next 20-odd years, watching as they grow up, fall in and out of love, find professional successes and failures, and cycle through two decades of fashion. Hathaway and Sturgess are adorable in their roles, and the movie is from a female director, Lone Scherfig, who has genuine style—what’s not to love? Critics and audiences at the time had some quibbles, but between the movie’s charming slow-burn romance and stunning visuals—seriously, this movie invented Instagram—I’ve always wondered why it doesn’t get more appreciation.
So when I saw that Netflix was making a new 14-episode TV adaptation of the novel, I thought it was the perfect time to revisit the original film with Scherfig. Justice for One Day (the movie)! Scherfig, who is based in Denmark, hadn’t yet watched the series—which has since found a place in Netflix’s Top 10 most-watched shows—when we spoke. In this conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed her memories from shooting, whether she thinks backlash to Anne Hathaway affected the film’s reception, and why she has no regrets about the movie’s controversial ending. And if you don’t want to know what happens in the show or the movie, stop here: This article contains spoilers.
Slate: I’m curious how much you know about the Netflix version of One Day.
Lone Scherfig: I haven’t seen or read anything. I don’t even know who is in the cast. I’ll just have a look at IMDb and see what I can find, if you don’t mind. [Reading.] So it’s a British production? It’s nice to see all the fictional names again.
Can you give me a sense of where you were in your life before you made your One Day?
I think it was after we had released An Education. I met with Nina Jacobson, who was a producer. She was slowly building up a company called Color Force. I remember meeting her in Los Angeles, where she asked, “How can I produce you? How can I be the best possible producer for you?” That was the first time I’d been asked that question. I thought it was a very good start of a collaboration. And then she got up from her chair and she had a limp, and I was like, “I will do anything for this woman.” It turned out she had just had her foot fixed; I don’t know what the operation was.
I read the book, like everyone else did that summer. It was in every bookshop, and it was the beach book of the year. I liked the humor, the scale of it. It was much bigger than An Education in terms of the budget and expectations. It did really well. I often still meet someone who comes up to me and says, “Oh, it’s the best film I’ve ever seen.” It’s typically young women, because it’s so romantic and Anne Hathaway is so wonderful.
Do you remember what you initially thought of the script?
I loved the humor and the combination of humor and darkness, which is in every film I’ve done. Aesthetically, it was a challenge. It was period, and you get the specificity of each year with the music and the outfits and where Emma lives in London. It’s very hard to get that real flavor. I think Anne Hathaway had 11 different wigs just in order to help time pass.
I liked the tone of it a lot. That’s what I fell for. I liked the characters a lot. I remember a lot of people asked me, “Can a man and a woman be friends?” I thought, I have a daughter, and this is important, to do a film that she will enjoy watching and that proves that men and women can be friends. That doesn’t feel super relevant anymore; the youth now are so different. But also, to show a girl that you can be insecure and then find your feet—I thought that had a lot of hope.
You check in on them on July 15. I still have a bottle of Champagne that Moët gave us with that date on the label. That overall concept, checking in on someone on a random date every year, is fun when you read it, and it was David Nicholls’ engine while writing the book, but I think it could work a lot better as episodic television. It works in the film, but it wasn’t what attracted me; it was much more the wit and the lovely characters than the dramatic idea.
I liked Dexter a lot. I think there was something about the balance that we never got quite right. I’m kind of hoping the TV series can. It’s written by David Nicholls, of course, and there are a lot of autobiographical elements in it. The story, in the book, is kind of seen from him. But on film, they are more equal. I wasn’t quite able to see the forest for the trees. In retrospect, it should have been his story because he is a super interesting character who develops a lot more than she does. She makes him a better person. I learned a lot more about it later when I shot The Riot Club, which is a film about the British class system. I could understand how the class issue between Em and Dexter influences their relationship. This is why I think, if it’s a British production company and British cast, there might be things that land a little better.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along, but I just saw it for the first time. It checks in on characters at different points in their lives, and its main gimmick is that it goes backwards. It had me thinking of One Day because you return to the beginning at the end, which I love. There’s something about using time this way that’s so appealing.
It also asks you to look at whether you spend every day of your life right if you are a person who has a choice of how to spend your day. I remember, when we first shot it, people would say, “Oh, it’s the same idea as Same Time, Next Year,” which is a different play. Two people who are married [to other people] meet in a hotel room once a year. That’s the balance: Is it a gimmick or does it really say something about time and life, and is it cinematic at its core?
I was also moving away from making love stories. With the next film I did, The Riot Club, I wanted to do something that was more political and used a stronger, more masculine cinematic language. I felt that I was not where they were anymore. There was a repetition in my work that I wanted to shake off. I always try to do something I haven’t done before.
It’ll be interesting to see if David has made some of the choices he made then. The last scene is a flashback—that construction was in the script. It’s not a decision that happened in the editing room. I think that really is beautiful. Dexter has become a different person, and he should have seen her the first time they met, and then his life would have taken a completely different direction.
I went back this summer to Dinard [the French seaside resort where the characters vacation in the film]. It was fantastic to come back after so many years and remember how it was to shoot it and how different times were then. I wonder how they’ve solved it now, but this story cannot happen if they had cellphones. It’s a very analog love story, and there is an innocence to these characters that I think people at that age today have completely lost.
What sorts of memories came back to you from when you were in France?
It was our last shooting day. I remember I went out to eat with Anne Hathaway, who turned out to be fluent in French. She’s a really smart person. I had a swim with Jim Sturgess after shooting. There was so much relief, there always is. You are so happy no one got killed, and you didn’t waste people’s money, and that things that could have gone very wrong did not go very wrong. It was fun to be with Patricia Clarkson because she is such a warm actress, so interesting, so vivid, and very diligent. She’s from New Orleans. In this film she plays a British upper-class woman, but still, her American Southern warmth shines through her acting. And to shoot in Paris—I had also shot in Paris for An Education. I had studied film in Paris when I was very young in the ’70s, and to come back as a director, that was a joy.
I’d love to hear more about the casting and how Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess and the rest ended up in the movie.
Anne Hathaway had heard that this film was going to happen. At that point, you knew that if she would like to do it, that will greenlight the film immediately because she’s such a respected actress and she has a big audience already. I met her and I liked her a lot. She’s very hardworking. Technically, she’s really strong. It was a stretch for her to play Emma, and she knew that. She was really keen on getting it right. She had done Becoming Jane, where she had a British accent, and she’s extremely musical. She started dialect coach lessons immediately.
And we were then looking for a Dexter. We had to find someone where you would believe that they could be young students in the beginning of the story and mature adults with children later. Jim and Anne met and had a so-called chemistry test, which is a phenomenon I’m not that keen about asking anyone to do, but they worked very well. They liked each other a lot and they immediately discussed music. There is a band, Elbow, and by coincidence, they both loved it—that is how they clicked.
I love the side characters too. The relationship that Dexter is in before he finally gets together with Emma, I liked that it felt like he was actually in love with the woman. She wasn’t just a throwaway. And the person Emma is with is kind of terrible, but it’s a very relatable situation.
Yes. I think that relatable is the word. It was not difficult to identify with Emma, because a lot of women are so insecure. She’s like Bridget Jones’ sister.
Something else I love in the movie is the game they play, Are You There, Moriarty? I only realized yesterday that it’s a real game.
I had to learn how to play! As much as I love Great Britain—and I can’t wait to go back and shoot there another time—sometimes you are shocked at how tough it can be. This game, I think, is basically about hitting each other? I cannot imagine anyone in Scandinavia playing that game.
The twist in the movie with Emma’s death is one of the most controversial aspects. Do you remember how you felt about it when you first got there, either in the book or in the script?
It was one of the reasons why it was meaningful to make the film. I thought, This is what gives the story depth. It’s where the story becomes about: How do we live our lives, and what values do we live by? Of course, dramatically, the audience will not like it that you kill off the main character, and people got really shocked, even though it’s a super discreet scene, where she bicycles away from the camera, and she’s very small when she’s hit by that car. I didn’t want to shoot it like a movie accident. But still, I remember sitting with the test audience going [gasps softly]. We tried to mix the sound of the car crash down to make it milder. Also, we put it in the very opening of the film, so we had seeded something about that bicycle on that day.
But I don’t know what film it would have been if she hadn’t died. She could also have decided to just leave him and say, “Sorry, it’s too late. I have a better life without you than with you”—that was not an option. Also, we knew that people loved the book, so we had to be faithful to the book—and it was David’s decision.
I’m wondering how the TV show is going to handle that. I imagine people will still be upset about it.
This is why, in retrospect, if we had angled it more so that she died for a reason—which is to make Dexter a better person, a better husband, a better father and son, even—that would have felt more meaningful if you, as an audience, invest an hour and a half in loving her and then it’s taken away from you. It’s interesting to see if the series has a different solution to it. I’m not sure if it’s a problem or if that is why the story is so loved.
How did you feel about how the movie was received overall by critics and in general?
I can’t remember. I’m just glad it made lots of money. But I may not even have read the reviews. I always knew that this was primarily a commercial film. I think it was not even submitted to any festivals because it was a summer movie. How was it received?
I mean, the death is pretty controversial. I think some critics felt like the movie was schmaltzy in some way. But then there’s a whole other life that it goes on to have with the audience.
That’s how I see it in retrospect. I think the actors experienced the same thing. When people come up to me and say, “It’s my favorite film,” for me, it’s very far away and I feel that I have done work later on that I feel more closely related to. The film was always meant to be broad, and that was the job that I was going to do.
Another thing that was going on around 2011 is that there was sort of a weird backlash to Anne Hathaway brewing. This happened when she hosted the Oscars and then she won her Oscar for Les Misérables. It even had a name: “Hatha-hate.” I don’t know if you were aware of this at all, but I feel like the movie came out as people were, for sort of no reason, deciding that we don’t like Anne Hathaway anymore.
Yeah, I don’t really have an opinion on it. She is, as I say, a very smart woman, a really good actress. She can sing, she can dance, she can speak I don’t know how many languages. I like her a lot, and I always did.
I’m from a different culture. Here, if anyone has success, it’s everybody’s success because the film community is so small. No one’s ever gonna hate Mads Mikkelsen, for instance, or Viggo Mortensen, who are our major Danish international film stars.
Maybe it’s also that she was going to play a woman who is not that beautiful [in the book], and Anne Hathaway is as beautiful as you can get. But that’s cinema. It’s always like that. I’m interested to see how [the series] is cast. She’s probably beautiful too. I’m getting to an age where I think anyone under 30 is beautiful just because they’re young.
I guess you’ll see soon. So you think the streaming format might be a good way to do this story?
I very much think so, because of the fact that you check in on July 15 every year. It has a built-in TV series structure. I would not be surprised if that works really well. I can’t wait. I hope my daughter and her friends will watch it too.
