Liev Schreiber Calls Across the River and Into the Trees a Cautionary War Tale and Love Story

my game live forever why not well first and foremost congratulations on this film and it finally being released here in the states I absolutely loved it my background is in history and anthropology and literature so this is like the perfect kind of intersection of my interests oh awesome thank you so I know that there has been a bit of a distance between when you filmed this and the release now and I'm curious you know I felt like a very like heavy emotional impact from watching it and I'm curious like is there anything about playing the colonel that has maybe lingered with you the way that it may linger with audiences well you know I I I very much thought this was a love story but it was also very much about mortality um and it was something that when we shot this back in 2020 uh my father was very ill uh uh and and I'm no spring chicken either and and like the this was something that I thought would be compelling material for me there's a wonderful uh novel by uh an Italian writer named mandre de robon called utumn in Venice which tells the story of Hemingway and his relationship with uh um an Italian Aristocrat uh was Adriana I Ivan ivanic a lot of people uh say that that's at least to across the river was written for and then certainly the story is is about her um and so I thought that that was that was rich material for me given everything that I was going through and um yeah I love that yeah that was another part of my my follow-up question which is I love that this is a romance and I'm very thankful that this adaptation didn't kind of take any of that away because the book has a lot of that that built into it and maybe modern audiences wouldn't be as okay with relationship because of their age difference but it's such a very pure um connection and I'm curious like what were the conversations like about how to play out that dynamic between Richard and Rada you know the book is about so many things you know it's a cautionary tale about war an aging officer who's going back to find the place where his son might be buried but I do think primarily it is a love story and it's a love story between older man and a younger woman which is not unusual given our industry but what I like about Hemingway's take on it is is his kind of self-consciousness that verges on self-loathing about it which is that he knows how inappropriate it is I think he tries to walk that line because of course they had a years long relationship and she traveled to Cuba with him and you know uh knew his wife and they all lived together and it was awful and crazy but also somehow wonderful and idolic in his mind but um uh I think that our version may be the version of the story that he would like to leave her or leave us how he maybe would have liked to have handled it as opposed to how he did I love that that's such a great answer um another question I have for you is I really love the physicality of how you play Richard I think there's a a real richness to the like subtle movements and those little choices that are made and I'm curious like what was your preparation like for this role and kind of building in the little ways that he might move his hand or the way his gate is because of like the injuries he sustained in the war yeah no I I I thought that ironically our bodies were very similar that you know he had been a soldier and he'd spent a lot of time training young men to fight and fighting himself and uh and now in the Twilight of his life was suffering the results of that which are uh you know a knee injury a back injury uh obviously his hand um and uh but I think he's someone who like Hemingway has a very forceful physicality and and Paula the director wanted very much for Hemingway's ghost to be present in the film so we were we were kind of crossing over there and looking developing the character and thinking about it anyway as well but um so I I kind of saw it as this sort of race or this battle this guy was having with his own body this to keep moving to keep going for forward he knows that he's got a heart condition that's going to stop him at some point but he wants to achieve what he wants to achieve and I think another idea that that that strikes me as very Hemingway is that life is short and life is Rich and to not spend one's currency while one can is a terrible mistake so for him he doesn't want to die in a hospital he want he'd rather die in his favorite place in the world which is Venice I love that um and I definitely feel like you can feel hyways ghost throughout this because it made me think about Hemingway a lot and the fact that there isn't really that many adaptations of his work so much of them are really in the 20th century uh and I'm curious are there any other Hemingway books that you may have got more exposed to while researching for this and prepping for this that you would like to see adapted for a modern audience well I think the big ones that I read in high school did get adapted um I don't know I can't think of any that I haven't read that are that that should be adapted I I I um uh um the the ones I've read are fwell arms old man in the sea and um For Whom the belt HS and been adapted I'm not I before this I was by no means a hyway expert I I I sort of I I kind of went back in another 300 years Shakespeare was my was my sweet spot I love that um I wanted to ask you about project that got announced last year and I haven't really seen any updates for it yet so I was curious about um the the the status of Guns of Christmas Past because I love Charles Dickens and the log that film like has stuck with me for a year I love it too uh you know the last time we talked was last year I don't know what's happened with it where it is in production it's a terrific script in in the tradition of of of wacky action films like die hard and uh I really loved it so hopefully um someone Whoever has it at this point will recessive St it and and we can make it before Christmas I love that maybe they'll read this interview and be like oh yeah we need to start moving on that let's get that going um and then as we close out I I wanted to ask and you've probably been asked this like all day for the interviews or recently about you know how last year there was like a lot of rumors around the Deadpool and Wolverine stuff that saber-tooth was coming back and a lot of people were hoping it would be you and so I kind of wanted to flip the script on that question a little bit and ask like what does it mean to you as an actor to see that 15 years after you played character there are still people like actively campaigning to see you come back as that role somehow it's amazing it's amazing I can't begin to tell you what that feels like that people are thinking about something that you did and so appreciative of it that they want you to do it again you know when we finished work on Ray Donovan and I and we didn't even it wasn't a question of us finishing work Showtime pulled the plug on the series and I was just so overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from fans who watch because you know when you're making a television show or you're making a film I don't not it there with the audience I don't know that anybody sees it and of course you if you follow that sort of thing you can see the numbers that you know millions of people but I generally don't follow so I was so surprised that we had that many fans and I was so surprised that people uh were campaigning for me to be in the uh the new Deadpool movie um to be honest it was a lot it's a lot of work getting your body up to that point I know I watched Hugh get himself ready again and I thought I'm okay to sit by the sidel I love that well thank you so much this was great thank you really appreciate this and I hope to see you on stage again soon thank you [Music]