Daniel Craig has revealed the one demand he made for his infamous “doughnut hole” speech in Knives Out. Craig’s master detective Benoit Blanc in Rian Johnson’s mystery franchise has already become an iconic character in the whodunit mystery genre community. Craig’s performance elevates the cookie, Agatha Christie-esque sleuth, making him the incredibly compelling anchor of Johnson’s blossoming movie series. Now, the James Bond actor has revealed some interesting behind-the-scenes information about his big final speech in the 2019 film.
In an interview with BBC Radio 1 ahead of the release of the original’s sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Craig revealed that he had one major requirement for Benoit Blanc’s famous “doughnut within a doughnut” speech to de Armas and Stanfield’s characters at the end of Knives Out. He wanted it all to look and feel natural, so they filmed one long take of Craig delivering the colorful soliloquy. The star actor said that the speech was upwards of eight pages long, but that didn’t deter him or the filmmakers.
“I had a thing with Rian [Johnson], which is sort of the dénouement, which is the big explanation… It’s a big long speech. I don’t know, seven or eight pages, maybe. I can’t remember, but it was big. It was a lot. I just said, listen, what you want to do is you want to cut in and out of it, and you’re going to get a flashback, and you’re going to be explaining. I have this hate when I’m watching a movie if I can hear [ADR], going from one bit to another.
So, I just said, I’m going to learn the whole lot, shoot it as if I’m there, and I’ll do it as a piece as opposed to cutting into it. I want there to be a flow to it, and I want to feel like when you come back to me, you’re coming back to that point as opposed to coming back to a bit we’ve added later. We did it. We stuck to it. We may have done two or three lines that were added dialogue in it, but the rest of it was all production, which for me is the joy.”
Why Knives Out Was Such A Big Hit
The writing on Knives Out makes it stand above similar ventures into the mystery genre over the last few years. Despite being a classic whodunit mystery on its surface, Rian Johnson’s story manages to up the ante, throwing unexpected twists into the story, like showing the full death scene that kicks off the plot in the early moments of the film. Unlike The Usual Suspects, Knives Out showed the supposed killer’s face in the sequence. As the movie progresses and more information gets fed to the audience, though, it becomes clear that there is more to the story than there originally appeared to be.
Blanc’s detective work had flair, adding to the fun, comedic tone of many sequences in the film and Craig brought a mixture of class, humor, and competence to the role. His portrayal fit perfectly in the world that Johnson created, one full of intrigue, action, suspense, and wit. All the twists made sense and very little was hidden from the audience for the sake of cheap surprises. Those decisions made the film digestible for broader film audiences without alienating fans of more complex mysteries. Those factors, combined with the film’s standout cinematography and set design, gave the film a unique mood and tone more closely resembling BBC’s Sherlock than a dark noir.
Knives Out‘s success was a sign of things to come for Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig. Glass Onion had a brief theatrical release for awards and word-of-mouth reasons, but the new Benoit Blanc mystery tale is now on available to stream on Netflix. Despite Craig being the lone returning character from the original, Glass Onion has received similarly high praise to the 2019 original. Much more from the franchise is on the way. The third Knives Out film is already in development, and Johnson has said that he will continue making new installments for Netflix as long as he and Craig are still having fun.
Source: BBC Radio 1