Noah Jupe on Working With Michael Douglas in ‘Franklin’ and Reuniting With ‘Honey Boy’ Director for New Series

Leigh Nordstrom
·3 min read
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Name: Noah Jupe

Age: 19

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Résumé: The young Brit has been seen in “Honey Boy,” “A Quiet Place,” “A Quiet Place Part II,” “Ford v Ferrari,” “The Night Manager” and “Suburbicon.”

Now: Jupe, who has just moved into his first apartment in London, stars in the Apple TV+ series “Franklin,” which features Michael Douglas in the role of Benjamin Franklin. Jupe plays the American icon’s grandson, William Temple Franklin.

“Franklin” had one of the more unique filming schedules: during the week they shot in Paris, but on Mondays when Versailles was closed to the public, they had it to themselves to film.

“It was absolutely mental,” Jupe says of the experience. “Basically everything you see in the show, only two of the locations are not actually the real thing. It just looked incredible. They were talking about ‘oh, we could shoot in Vancouver, we could shoot here.’ And then they were like, ‘I think we might shoot in Paris.’ And I was like, ‘oh my God, thank God.’”

Jupe needed little more than to hear he’d be working alongside Douglas to interest him in the project.

“My character’s got a great relationship with him, but there’s a lot of unspoken tension there, and they have a great journey together of trying to find out what it means to be family. So I think that relationship was a big sort of factor for me,” he says.

Jupe says he and the legendary actor developed chemistry quickly on set, and that his main takeaway from working with him was his professionalism.

“He is so consistently good and brings so much energy and passion to the project and really throws his heart and soul into the project, and yet is still very, very professional and will crack a joke at the end of the take and will remember people’s names and will always have a smile on his face in the morning. And it’s like, you just don’t need to do that,” Jupe says. “Especially being of his stature. I had massive respect for that. He’s such a true legend of the industry.”

Up next: Later this year, Jupe will be seen alongside Natalie Portman in the series “Lady in the Lake,” also on Apple, which reunites him with “Honey Boy” director Alma Har’el.

“She’s like family to me,” Jupe says of the director, adding that “Honey Boy” is “probably my favorite job that I’ve ever done.”

The series, which is an adaptation of the Laura Lippman novel, is set in Baltimore in the 1960s and because both projects are Apple, he was able to work on them at the same time. During a two-week break from “Franklin,” while the crew had a summer holiday, Jupe shed the 1700s French attire and flew to Baltimore.

“It was two different characters and I was trying to work out how to make sure I don’t just play the same character twice because they’re very different scripts and very different time periods, which was difficult — but it was a lot of fun too,”  he says.

Launch Gallery: Getting Ready with Noah Jupe for the 'Franklin' Premiere

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