Cats Returns! James Corden and Rebel Wilson Take Us Behind the Scenes of the New Cats Movie

Author:
Mara Reinstein
Dec 13, 2019

The Jellicle cats have gathered in a junkyard. Over the course of one night, they will individually make the case—via song—as to why they’re each worthy enough to enter the Heaviside Layer, the feline version of heaven, and be reborn as a younger cat. It’s up to Old Deuteronomy to decide which lucky cats will make the journey. For those who’ve forgotten or never experienced Cats before, yes, that really is the plot of the musical that ran nearly 18 years on Broadway.

“Oh, the entire concept of Cats has always been bizarre!” says late-night talk show host and lifelong musical theater aficionado James Corden. “Can you imagine what it must have been like rehearsing the show for the first time? You’re sitting around thinking, What are we making here? It’s absurd.”

But Cats—with music from the award-winning composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics based on a 1939 book of poems by T.S. Eliot titled Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats—has proven itself to be more than just a musical with nine lives. Ever since Grizabella the Glamour Cat first broke into the show-stopping song “Memory” on London’s West End back in 1981, the show has been a phenomenon. It’s been presented in more than 30 countries (in 15 languages), won the Best Musical Tony award in 1983 and continues to play across North America.

Now a big-screen, live-action movie version is finally ready to strut its stuff. Cats boasts an all-star cast of Corden (as Bustopher Jones), Judi Dench (Old Deuteronomy), Ian McKellen (Gus the Theatre Cat), Taylor Swift (Bombalurina), Idris Elba (Macavity), Rebel Wilson (Jennyanydots), Jennifer Hudson (Grizabella) and newcomer Francesca Hayward (Victoria). Thanks to state-of-the-art motion-capture technology (as seen in the film’s much-talked-about trailer), the actors all appear cat-size with feline features. But just as in director Tom Hooper’s previous musical-to-movie, Les Misérables, the wall-to-wall singing is recorded live, not synced to a prerecorded vocal track. And Lloyd Webber himself contributed new material for the movie—and collaborated with Taylor Swift on a new song, “Beautiful Ghosts.”

“It’s going to be a real spectacle,” says Wilson, 39, who previously sang in all three Pitch Perfect comedies. “We sing and it’s our own movements, so the performances are all live. And the dancing, from ballet to hip-hop to tap, is just world-class.”

Memories

Ask the Cats cast members why they wanted to be a part of the movie, and the answers all circle back to, well, memories—of the original musical.

Corden, 41, a Tony and Emmy winner perhaps best known for belting out music with celebrities on the hugely popular “Carpool Karaoke” segments on his Late Late Show on CBS, recalls seeing the production with his parents as a 13-year-old in London in the early 1990s. “I remember thinking, Man, this is a spectacle,” he says. “I knew the movie would be great fun.” Wilson, who attended theater school in her native Australia, was visiting London in the early 2000s and caught a performance from the cheap seats. “I had to watch it with little binoculars,” she recalls, “and I was still blown away.”

For Dench, 85, the film served as a Cats homecoming. Back in 1981, she was slated to be part of the original production but had to pull out because of an injury. “We were concentrating every minute of every day on behaving like cats and trying to translate that into a way of moving,” she says. “But I snapped my Achilles tendon during one of the rehearsals, and as anyone knows, that can take a while to heal.” She was “very pleased” to be invited to join the movie production.

Is Dench a cat person? “I’m very much a cat person. This is the only time in my life where I haven’t had a cat. During the war [World War II], people weren’t able to feed their cats, so we ended up having 17 cats living with us in York!”

For the film, Wilson shares that—in addition to vocal training and learning choreography, stunts and blocking for the musical numbers—she and the cast had to attend “cat school” in London to channel their inner felines. She also watched cat videos online to find comic inspiration.

When the ensemble finally came together to film in Leavesden, England, during the summer of 2018, the experience was surreal—and not just because Lloyd Webber often visited the set. “It was just mind-boggling,” Corden says. “There you are with this unbelievable cast like Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench, and we’re all playing old cats!” Seconds Wilson, “It was amazing to work with such a talented bunch.”

Corden insists that you don’t have to be a Cats person to embrace the extravaganza. After all, can 73 million fans around the world be wrong? “The greatest strength of Cats is that it’s a show where everybody is welcome,” he says. “Grandparents and grandchildren and everybody in between can enjoy it on various levels. That’s what Cats has always been, and why it will be around for the rest of our lives.”

Behind the Scenes With James Corden

Tell us about Bustopher Jones.

Bustopher Jones is a big fat cat. He's very posh and well-to-do. And he believes that he should be granted an extra life because he eats at the finest restaurants, he knows all about the finer things in life and knows how to live life.

How much singing and dancing are you doing?

Well, the thing with the show and therefore the film is that it's an ensemble piece. My character has one big number. I haven't seen it yet. I hope it’s OK. But I have to say the experience of filming was as good as anything I’ve ever had doing a film. And the entire experience of it was something I looked back on with absolute joy. I loved it. I loved every single bit of it.

I imagine this is not how you envisioned acting with Judi Dench.

Well, I was never arrogant enough to assume that I'd ever share screen time or face time with Dame Judi Dench. I never imagined it in any way. If this is how it happens, then great.

You obviously aren't sitting around on your couch every day night waiting for something to come up. Why take this role in the first place?

I'm all about the experience. Ultimately, I think will this be something I'll remember forever. And if I don't do it, might I regret it? And that's certainly how I felt with this. It’s just not easy if your job is making an hour of television every day to work around pre-taped shows, double-taped weeks in advance so you can still go to London for nine days and leave my wife and children to do something like this. But mainly I thought this experience will be nourishing in some way. And that's the thing for me. I really love acting and I missed it hugely whilst I'm doing this job. So any opportunity I get to use those muscles and be part of something like this, I would always run towards that. When I saw the imagery that they were trying to create, I thought, Oh, this would be great.

Do you think your musical background gives you a little bit of an edge when you do a daily talk show?

Ah, I don’t know if it gives me an edge. Look, what we try to do is make that big variety show every day with sketches, silliness, games and song. The more tricks you have in your bag, the more variety you can have with stuff. That’s what we've always tried to do with the show. Some people would say these shows are about playing to your strengths. I think these shows are about ignoring your weaknesses. And that’s how I try to go about it every day.

You worked on the movie for only nine days. Did you have time to prepare to play a cat?

I did some rehearsals about two months earlier in London for about three or four days. And then I came back for the shoot date and it was glorious. It’s hard because I haven’t seen it. All I know is how it felt doing it. And I just was having a blast and having a great time from start to finish.

Anyone in the cast particularly surprise you?

Everybody's impressive. I would say the most impressive group of people was the unbelievable company of dancers. I was just knocked over by their talent, just their ability to pick things up so quickly. It's an amazing thing.

Are you a cat person?

I’m probably more of a cat person than a dog person. I like the fact that a cat goes up to your house and they're like, “Right, I’m going to need a door because I'm going to need to come and go as I please. Just make sure there’s some food and I'll keep coming back every day.” Dogs are needier. They can’t even go for a walk without us. I like a cat because they have this whole life, because they're essentially a house pet but they can just head out on their own and find their own adventure.

Needless to say, the Cats trailer got an interesting reaction. What’s your pitch to people who may be on the fence about seeing it?

Cats as a show has always elicited that reaction. It just so happens that now we live in a world where people can just respond to that and let you know what they think immediately. I think that Cats is a show that excludes nobody. I see more and more people on their phones and watching something can be a very singular experience. We live in an environment where you might be on season one, episode nine of Succession, and I'm on season two, episode five, and you’re saying, “Don't tell me what happened,” and I'm going, “Ah, I already finished that.” So much of what we do now is insular, and I think that here is that film which offers a collective experience to everybody. That’s what Cats has always been. Anytime Cats is on, there is all of life watching this show. This is a show that holds the record for the longest run in the West End history. So I understand a reaction to a trailer if you know nothing about the show, because I think that's always been the reaction—even when it debuted 40 years ago.

Did director Tom Hooper make you sing live?

Everybody's singing live throughout the whole film.

Well that itself is an accomplishment.

Absolutely. We'll find out.

Judi Dench doing “Carpool Karaoke”—could it happen?

It’s up to Judi!

Behind the Scenes With Rebel Wilson

What are we going to see from you in this movie?

I play Jennyanydots in Cats. It's a really fun role and I love the new interpretation of her number that we do in the film—it's quite different to the stage show. I wanted to be a part of this because I was obviously a fan of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and saw it on my first-ever visit to London when I was a student. I was also a fan of director Tom Hooper and so jumped at the chance to work with him.

Did you ever see the stage production?

I saw it in the early 2000s on the West End as a student and it was brilliant. The storyline is kind of abstract, so it really got me thinking. But I remember just loving it. I did musical theater at acting school and am a huge lover of musicals in general. There's something so uplifting about musicals. Music always heightens emotions for me.

Are you a cat person?

I did have a cat growing up as a child who was an awesome pet; she was very mysterious and sometimes would leave for days at a time but always come back home. She'd taunt our family's dogs too and tease them, it was pretty funny...but I technically am allergic to cats and dogs now, so wouldn't own one.