"Andrew Garfield"

SmartLess

In this episode of SmartLess, actor Andrew Garfield joins the hosts for a candid and humorous conversation that touches on his early life, c

Key takeaways

• Garfield reflects on how intense early training shaped his view of childhood, recalling a traumatic moment with his Russian gymnastics coach.

Main topics

• Andrew Garfield's early life and career beginnings

Notable quotes

"This is not a childhood." – Garfield on his experience with his Russian gymnastics coach.

Conclusion

The episode ends on a warm, appreciative note with all parties expressing

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) How long do they actually fucking talk for? Speaker 1 (0:07) Hey, everybody. This is Andrew Garfield, and I am this week's guest on a podcast that we can all debate whether it needs to exist, but I'm waiting here as most guests have to do, and I didn't realize how long you have to fucking wait. But... At some point in the near future, I will be talking to the guys who do SmartList. Welcome to SmartList. Speaker 2 (0:54) Jay, how was the boat ride? Yeah. Did you have to paddle? The world wants Speaker 4 (0:59) to know. Respond publicly. How was the boat ride? There were so many. And then I guess I was saying, I think Schumer posted like a bunch of photos. Amy Schumer, not Chuck. Although Chuck Schumer's threatening to post some photos of you two. I don't know what that's Speaker 2 (1:17) regarding. Yeah, Speaker 4 (1:19) there were Speaker 3 (1:20) many, many, many, many pictures. being taken um it was it was nice what do you mean i mean it was like incredibly you know it was nice you're in the middle of directing you got a little time off and it was nice to get a time time yeah but it was i let's these are all high class problems you know i i just you can't really relax because i'm not i'm not done i gotta leave in freaking 48 hours to go back to iceland for a week of shooting and another 11-hour flight and another nine-hour time change or more. It's just my body's like, dude, what are you doing? Right. Chill. Right. Speaker 4 (1:58) Listen, again, I hate to go back to it, but according to the shots of the back of the boat, your body looks like it can handle just about anything. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 3 (2:07) Speaking of which, Willie, I saw some nice shots of you. You had your own little European... boating vacation, eating grapes with a hard body of yours. Christ. Everything. Shawnee, I saw you. You posted a picture of you and Scotty. On the beach? Just keeping it real up the north coast of California. Yeah, in the Speaker 2 (2:32) Malibu. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, Will calls, will FaceTime me working out with no shirt on. Just regular conversation. Hey, what's going on? Doing dumbbells. I'm like, what can you? Do you want to wait or do you want to talk now? No, I got to get it in. I got to get it in. Speaker 3 (2:48) And then you went, no, no, no, the phone call. Do you want to wait on that? Speaker 4 (2:52) No, because I thought about it. As soon as I lifted a dumbbell, I was like, oh, Sean. Speaker 3 (2:57) I Speaker 4 (2:57) got to call Sean. Good plane joke. Yeah. I was going to say it's victimless, but it's not entirely victimless. But, you know, I got this. So, by the way. I went a couple of weeks ago, because it's been a minute since we've all been together. I went and did this thing with our pal, Dave Letterman, who we all adore, up in Montreal. Oh, yeah, I Speaker 3 (3:18) saw the pictures of that. That looked rad. Yeah, and it was super fun. It Speaker 4 (3:21) was super fun, and we all adore him and revere him. The Speaker 2 (3:24) best. Speaker 4 (3:24) Yeah, the best. And Sean, he started, we spent, I told you this, but we spent... Speaker 2 (3:30) maybe 12 Speaker 4 (3:31) minutes talking about Sean. Jay, you got like 30 seconds, like a passing glance. Speaker 2 (3:35) What? Yeah. Speaker 4 (3:37) But Speaker 2 (3:37) Sean got, and Speaker 4 (3:38) he's Speaker 2 (3:38) like, That's when you lost the audience. Speaker 4 (3:39) He's like, what about the thing that you, Sean takes a lot of hits on the podcast. Yeah. Which we've discussed before. And I'm like, I said, Dave, Sean and I have had this conversation. If I didn't make fun of Sean, he'd think that I was mad at him. Totally. Speaker 2 (3:55) We had this conversation a million times here. Speaker 4 (3:57) And then I told him the story, JB, of when we went to see Sean opening night of Hello Oscar at the Tabasco Theater. And he said, Speaker 2 (4:05) talk about a show. Speaker 4 (4:07) Hello Oscar. And how, you know, we joke around and blah, blah, blah. And then Sean gives this performance and Jason turns around. I'm sitting right behind Jason. He's got tears in his eyes and he says, he's ruined the podcast. Speaker 3 (4:21) Because he's so talented. Speaker 4 (4:23) Because we disrespect Speaker 3 (4:23) him too much now we can't make fun of him anymore. We can't make Speaker 4 (4:25) fun of him. He's too good. And I told that story to sort of whatever, a couple thousand people in this theater with Dave. And I said, so just so you know, we all are in awe of Speaker 2 (4:37) what Sean does. That's very nice. Don't Speaker 4 (4:39) blow it Speaker 2 (4:39) off, Sean. Take it. We've talked about this ad nauseum, but I appreciate it. But we talked about with Speaker 4 (4:44) Dave, and Dave Speaker 2 (4:45) has your back. Dave loves you. I love Dave too. He walked in, he saw Good Night Oscar in London. He walked in, I go, do you want a sandwich? And he goes, I have diabetes. So I was like, oh shit, I had no idea. And I'm making fun of his weight. Wait, truly he does or no? Yeah, yeah. Oh, no way. Yeah, and then Scotty and him were like, look, I got the pod on my shoulder. He's like, me too. And they were like, you know. Speaking of Speaker 3 (5:11) Scotty, what about that article I sent you yesterday? The crisis going on in the gay community now with people who love bears. Like the problem with GLP-1s now is that the bears are shrinking. Skinny bears Speaker 4 (5:24) now. They're going extinct. Speaker 2 (5:26) We've got to protect the bears. The skinny bears are called otters. You know, now they're called otters. Oh, my God. Speaker 2 (5:36) Yeah, now they're turning into otters. If you see Speaker 4 (5:38) a bear, don't shoot, you know? Speaker 2 (5:39) I mean, we gotta keep... Unless it's going well. We gotta keep... Unless he asks for it. Speaker 2 (5:48) All right, anyway. Well, so much other stuff to talk about, but we should probably get to it. Is this yours today, Shawnee? This is mine. You guys are going to be so excited. Jay, what if we were like, no, Speaker 4 (5:58) it's yours? Speaker 2 (5:59) No, that's happened before, I think. I know it has. You fumble through your notes. Guys, my guest today was born in Los Angeles and raised outside of London. Oh, I've got it. Who? No. He was a competitive gymnast. How about that? No. And a swimmer as a kid, but quit gymnastics after his 200-pound Russian coach sat on his back during the splits, and he thought, quote, this is not a childhood. He worked at Starbucks until they fired him for sitting down too much. His mom made him a Spider-Man costume for Halloween when he was three. Years later, he got paid to wear one in three movies. It's the uber-talented and very charming Andrew Garfield. Speaker 4 (6:38) Wow. Andrew Garfield. Speaker 4 (6:42) Garfield, I was just talking about you the other day. We've never met. Nice to meet you. Were you saying nice things about him? I was. I was showing off. There's a photo of you that came up on Instagram or something, and you were wearing, because I find myself defending some of the stuff that I wear, and you were wearing a phenomenal zip-up from Alessi, which I own a different one, and I get a lot of shit for it. And I was like... Look at Andrew Garfield. This dude is cool. He looks so good. And he's wearing a Lassie zip-up, so shut it. Speaker 3 (7:15) Was it like a vintage one? Speaker 4 (7:16) Yeah, it looks so good. You know the one I'm talking about. It's so good. Speaker 1 (7:19) Yes, I do. Were you wearing the Speaker 4 (7:21) high Speaker 1 (7:21) shorts too? No, I wasn't wearing the high shorts. I can't pull off shorts generally, but particularly not high shorts. You got to be careful. It's really nice to be with you guys. I really love you guys. I love this show so much. And yeah, Will, we haven't met. I know Jason a bit. Sean, I don't think we've met ever either, but I feel like we should have because we're of the theater. Speaker 2 (7:41) Yeah, yeah, yeah. We will. We will. We'll do something. Speaker 1 (7:44) Thanks for having me. That's ominous. I feel like my intro is a bit ominous. I feel like you guys got so sad at the Russian guy sitting on my back. And the list of things. Oh, painful. The list of losses of my life. I mean, when I read that, that Speaker 2 (8:00) made me laugh so hard. When you, as a child, you go, this is not a childhood. I have to leave. I Speaker 1 (8:05) was 13 with a very large Russian guy. Yeah, on me. And Will, I'm such a huge fan of yours as well. I'm just a fan of all of you, and I'm sorry, I'm a little overwhelmed to be honest. Well, right back at you. Where are Speaker 3 (8:19) you? You're in a hotel room somewhere. What are you doing? Speaker 1 (8:22) You assume this is a hotel room, but I designed my house to feel like as familiar as a hotel room would. Oops. That was a little bit of a faux pas early on there, Jason. But I know this is the Crosby Street Hotel, room 601, if anyone's interested. Wow. This Speaker 2 (8:39) is Speaker 1 (8:40) live. Wow, doors unlocked. Ass up. Doors open. By the way, I really, like, I hope you guys keep in all of the very platonic homoerotic intro that you guys, it was like the most homoerotic you guys have gone in a while, I feel like. It's been a minute. Speaker 3 (8:56) It's been a minute. It's coming, there's more coming. Yeah. Speaker 1 (9:00) It's a service you guys are providing, I think, for men around the world. Sean, you just Speaker 4 (9:07) reminded me of my buddy, speaking of homoeroticism, my buddy who was on one of these dates. dating sites, not a Grindr, but a different one that's even more just immediate hookup thing. Yeah, yeah. And he got on and the guy sent him a picture of himself with his butt in the air, winking, winking, and he just wrote, howdy. Speaker 4 (9:27) And my buddy's like, no. Swipe. Speaker 1 (9:33) Swipe. Speaker 3 (9:34) All right, so if you're in New York, you are promoting something. What are you promoting? Speaker 1 (9:40) Right now, I'm promoting a family film called The Magic Faraway Tree, which is an Enid Blyton book that was made into a film by Simon Farnaby, who wrote the Paddington movies. Oh, God. I'm also, something very different I'm promoting is a Paul Greengrass movie called The Uprising, which is about the peasants' revolt in the 1300s and has a slightly different tone to Speaker 3 (10:03) it. Speaker 1 (10:03) Holy shit. Speaker 3 (10:04) Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:05) I read Speaker 4 (10:06) a few Enid Blyton books as a kid. I don't remember any peasant uprisings. Yeah. Wait, Speaker 3 (10:13) that sounds like a very uncomfortable shoot. A Speaker 2 (10:17) peasant Speaker 3 (10:18) war film. I'm not imagining a lot of luxury on that one. Walk us through the pain. Jason, just Speaker 4 (10:25) thinking at the end when you rap, are you going to shower in the trailer? You don't want to use the water in the trailer. So now you've got to do the ride back to the hotel with the guy. Heavy fabrics. Speaker 3 (10:36) Fuck. Speaker 1 (10:37) Yeah, stinky, stinky fabrics. Chuck Schumer is definitely not waiting for me on a yacht in any kind of court at the end of a shoot day. Where did you shoot that? We were in Munich. We were in Munich. We were shooting, because there's a lot of medieval architecture still in Germany, weirdly. So we were shooting around. We were mostly in one field in Munich that was being doubled for a lot of different Speaker 3 (11:01) peasants' Speaker 1 (11:02) fields in Munich. It was miserable, but in that way of the best possible misery. Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:09) And Speaker 1 (11:09) you guys love Paul's movies. Yeah, of course. Captain Phillips and the Bourne movies and News of the World. He's just like an incredible filmmaker. Yeah. And he's one of those team captains that kind of makes you want to suffer for him. You know what I mean? Where it's like, oh, no, I want to suffer as much as possible for this man because he's going to. Because Speaker 3 (11:30) he's driving, yeah? Speaker 1 (11:31) Yeah. Speaker 4 (11:33) I was going to say, Jason, would you say that Woody and Sam are saying that they're suffering for you right now? Is that a fair assessment of what they're going Speaker 3 (11:39) through? Yeah, they're just trying to keep me awake. No, no. Speaker 4 (11:45) But he's, yeah, Paul Greengrass does seem like one of those guys who it's an all-in venture. Yeah, Speaker 1 (11:51) yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 4 (11:52) It Speaker 1 (11:53) was an amazing, it is a really good group of actors as well. It's Tom Hollander, who's incredible, and Jamie Bell, and Cosmo Jarvis, Catherine Waterston, Stephen Delane, like a kind of murderer's row of great British actors, and it's like a proper ensemble. And it's like this historical drama, but he's shooting it like he shoots, which is all handheld. You're in the action. You're kind of viscerally with the characters. And it's powerful. And it's like, it goes like a freight train. It's like a very fast-paced historical drama. Speaker 4 (12:26) Can I just say another sort of aside? Can I just, you mentioned Stephen Delaney. And I've said this before. This is one of the most underrated actors of our time, Stephen Delaney. 100%. He's an incredible actor. Where would I know him from? I mean, a million things. I'd know Speaker 3 (12:44) his face if I saw him. Speaker 4 (12:46) 100%. 100%. He's breathtakingly incredible, right? Andrew, am I right about that? Yeah. Speaker 1 (12:51) No, he is one of the greats. And it's one of those careers where you're like, oh, man, that's kind of the dream where Jason Bateman doesn't exactly know who I am. Speaker 4 (13:01) Yeah. Speaker 1 (13:02) Do you know? Where it's like, he knows that I'm great, but he doesn't know anything about me or my personal life. Yes. But he would definitely cast me in... How Speaker 3 (13:13) are we spelling that? Speaker 1 (13:14) D Speaker 3 (13:15) -E Speaker 1 (13:16) -L-L Speaker 2 (13:16) -A Speaker 1 (13:16) -N-E. Speaker 2 (13:17) D-E-L-L-A-N-E. Speaker 4 (13:20) Jay, you know, your wife loves him, late breaking. And he was in the English version of when they did The Bridge, that Swedish-Danish show, and they made it called The Tunnel. It was a UK-French GoPro. I like saying GoPro. It makes me sound like I know what I'm talking Speaker 2 (13:40) about. For sure. Speaker 4 (13:42) I remember talking about him with Amanda and just both of us just going like, this guy is incredible. I mean, he's Speaker 1 (13:47) amazing. Speaker 4 (13:48) Did Speaker 1 (13:48) you Speaker 4 (13:48) find him, Jay? The Speaker 3 (13:49) Tunnel, the TV series? Yeah, because your spelling on Delane was terrible. How much more time do we have? No, it's like dill pickle. Guys, welcome Stephen Speaker 4 (13:57) Delane. Speaker 3 (14:01) Here he is. Andrew, how good is your Stephen Delane impression? Speaker 3 (14:07) There he is. Oh, no. I'm not much of a fan of this guy. No. Could you imagine after all that? See, guys, I had to make it worth it. No, he's a rock star. This is so Speaker 4 (14:24) good. Speaker 3 (14:24) I see what you're saying. Yes. Yes. This is a guy. You see him in any project, you're like, oh, Speaker 2 (14:30) we're in good hands here. Yeah. He's amazing. Well, but, you know, I was going to wait to the end to talk about. this, Andrew, but since we're talking about projects... Speaker 1 (14:37) We are at the end now after all Speaker 2 (14:39) of that Speaker 1 (14:40) Stephen DeLay and Google search. Exactly. No, Speaker 2 (14:43) but Speaker 1 (14:43) two Speaker 2 (14:43) projects I thought Speaker 1 (14:44) are really, really cool. One is by a friend of mine called Wild Things where you play Roy Speaker 2 (14:50) of Siegfried Speaker 1 (14:50) and Roy. John Hoffman. Are you friends with John? Yeah, John Hoffman, Speaker 2 (14:53) yep. Love John Speaker 1 (14:54) Hoffman. He's the best. Oh, wow, Speaker 3 (14:56) yeah. You just finished working with Jude. Yeah, Jude. Yeah, we just Speaker 1 (14:58) did... You play Siegfried and Roy, which is awesome. Yeah, it's... I'm excited about it. It's, as you imagine, and more. It's like more is more is more is more with those two. You know, the gay German magicians in the desert and with the tigers and the lions. That old story. That old classic tale. That old myth that's Speaker 4 (15:22) been told time and again. Speaker 1 (15:24) But fucking hell, these guys were truly nuts. Well, the guy I play was truly insane. Roy Horn. He was the tiger. magician, but literally believed and was convinced and maybe truly did have some spiritual connection to his tigers, to animals generally. Did you use real animals? No, no, no. We're not legally allowed to do that. I did feed a tiger with my hand. Speaker 2 (15:50) Yeah. I don't know. Speaker 1 (15:52) That's pretty good. Speaker 4 (15:54) Was one of them... Mold? Forgive me. Yeah, of course. Yeah, no, you're forgiven. Speaker 1 (16:01) You're forgiven. We don't say mold. We don't say mold, though, Will. We say there was an incident. There was a thing that happened. There was an event. Was it your Speaker 3 (16:10) character that had the event? Yeah, Speaker 1 (16:11) Roy. Roy, yeah. The guy Speaker