Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Hero Fiennes Tiffin on Acid Rain, Directors With Guns, and Brown Teeth

The world was a very different place when Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Hero Fiennes Tiffin flew up to Canada to shoot The Silencing last year. Coster-Waldau was just concluding his seven-season run as Jaime “Kingslayer” Lannister on HBO’s Game of Thrones, while Fiennes Tiffin was following up his breakout role as a mercurial heartthrob in After, the hugely successful young-adult adaptation.

Then, of course, came the pandemic, throwing off basically everything about the world—including the usual process of promoting a tense, stylish thriller like The Silencing. Out of necessity, as The Silencing arrives for its video-on-demand release, I’m chatting about it with Coster-Waldau and Fiennes Tiffin from our respective self-quarantines: Coster-Waldau in Denmark, Fiennes Tiffin in England, and me in California.

Fortunately, The Silencing is exactly the kind of movie that should provide a welcome distraction for anyone who needs a break from the real world right now. Coster-Waldau plays Rayburn, a taciturn hunter who spends his days guarding a nature preserve and hunting for the long-missing teenage daughter everyone else assumes is dead. Fiennes Tiffin plays Brooks, a troubled young drifter with a slew of secrets. And when the corpse of another teenage girl is discovered, both characters end up as central players in an increasingly twisty mystery.

Here, Coster-Waldau and Tiffin talk The Silencing, painting your teeth brown, and what it’s like when a director starts goofing around with a gun on set:

It’s been nearly a decade since screenwriter Micah Rahnum wrote the script—and won a fellowship—for The Silencing, but you only joined this project within the past couple of years. How did this script end up coming across your desks?

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: I read it years ago, and I thought it was a great script. A very simple story, but a little twist on a familiar story. We started looking for a director… and it just took a while, with schedules lining up. And then I saw Robin Pront’s movie The Ardennes, which was so good and interesting and had some of the qualities that we thought would be great for this.

So that was it. Suddenly, it just happened in a whirlwind. It was very, very low-budget. We shot up north of the border, in Sudbury, Canada. A great location. When I looked up Sudbury, one of the first things that comes up is that it used to be a place where people came to understand the effects of acid rain. Because it was this huge mining town, and they had the worst acid rain in the world. Literally, there was no vegetation left, back in the '70s. But now it’s beautiful.

Hero Fiennes-Tiffin: I had just finished promoting the first After movie. I was supposed to go home, but I was kindly invited to the Met Gala. I had a period in between where I was going to go home for a nice, three-week chill before coming back to New York. And suddenly, this came up, and just fit so nicely into the schedule—as well as being a role that I was super interested in.

Rayburn is a real survivalist, with a well-earned reputation for hunting and trapping. Do you have any of those skills yourself?

NCW: I have hunted, myself. I’ve always liked the outdoors. But Rayburn has a very specific way of surviving. He used a bottle of Jack Daniels to get through the day. I’ve never done that. Obviously, this is a story about a guy who was already pretty messed up—but losing his daughter five years before the movie starts has completely derailed him. That’s a good starting point for an actor, if you can start somewhere extreme.

It’s hard to imagine how things could get much worse for him, but they do.

NCW: At least he has a dog. There’s always dogs!

And Hero, I hope you won’t take this as an insult, but you don’t seem like you’d be the first name on the list to play a mumbly, drug-addicted Minnesota teenager.

HFT: It was so nice to do a role that was so different from the role in After. Even being a supporting role, with such a great cast…After is, you know, just me and [Josephine Langford], and it’s both of our first movies. So to go and act with Nikolaj and Annabelle [Wallis]—in a completely different role that fit perfectly into the schedule—was just a dream come true. It was quite short notice, actually, but it came together perfectly.

I’m not going to spoil anything, but it’s safe to say Brooks has some demons. How did you work your way into the headspace of a guy with so much trauma?

HFT: Some roles are relatable emotions you’re portraying, and that one is less so, for me. So I did some research on childhood trauma, and how that affects your behavior. Opioid prescriptions and drug issues—that was something I definitely had to educate myself on beforehand.

But that’s the fun of the job, isn’t it? That’s the heart of acting, when you’re trying to do something further from you. When it calls for more. When they put you in makeup, and paint your teeth brown…

The brown teeth were a very nice touch.

HFT: People were kind of hesitant, coming off After, to give me a black eye and browned teeth. And I was like, "Go for it, guys! Let’s do it!" It was [director] Robin Pront’s suggestion, and I really like the look we came up with.

Between Brooks, Hardin Scott, and the young Voldemort, you seem like you’re developing a knack for characters with a bit of a dark side. Is that the kind of role that appeals to you? Or is that just a coincidence?

HFT: I’m so early on that I don’t really know what my preference is yet. I like to do a bit of both. I guess you see what you’re better at, or what you’re more suited for. So far, it’s been less of the angelic characters. I definitely want to keep trying out both. I really don’t have a dream role. I’d love to smash something like Indiana Jones or James Bond, but there’s so many genres and movies I love. I don’t want to put myself in a position where I have something to go for, because I just know there’s so much value in all of the different roles I’d like to play.

Nikolaj, you mentioned that there was a small budget and a short window to film the movie. What was the most difficult thing about the shoot?

NCW: You just want to make sure that you get what you need. And that you enable your director to do what he wants to do. I very much believe that you have to support the director before you make any movie. But obviously, in big studio movies, there are a lot of other interests. One of the reasons I really like to do low-budget independent is that you can allow a director to do his thing.

So what is Robin Pront’s thing?

NCW: He was vaping a lot. Without his little vaping machine, he would’ve crumpled, but that kept him afloat. I shouldn’t say that. He’s…looking. Constantly. He’s searching all the time. And when he finds it, he kicks into gear. So he likes to have a bit of chaos. Throw all the balls up in the air. And then, suddenly, he has the moment of clarity. That happened, more or less, every day.

Are you gonna talk to him, by any chance? There’s a question you have to ask him.

I’m not. But I’d love to hear the question.

NCW: No, no, no. I’m gonna have to save it for someone else.

Fair enough. But I’ll always wonder now.

NCW: I know! I know. Oh, I’ll tell you. It’s just…he’s European. He’s more relaxed about certain things. And of course, in North America, there are very strict rules when it comes to safety. And we had some weapons on set. Of course, they’re not loaded. But there’s this scene—early on in the script—where Rayburn surprises these two hunters and takes their rifles. And Robin just thought those rifles were really cool. So he went up and started pointing them around.

I shouldn’t tell you this. Someone’s gonna have a heart attack. He was just goofing around! But the reaction…in Europe, you’re not armed. You don’t have any guns anywhere. And obviously in North America it’s a different story. And I think the reaction he received from pointing a rifle in the general direction of people was…quite a lot stronger than he expected, let me put it that way. He wasn’t laughing. But I’m sure he’s laughing about it now.

With The Silencing coming out this week, what’s next on your schedule, Nikolaj? In a different world, you’d just be wrapping up your run as Macbeth at the Geffen Playhouse right now.

NCW: I know. It’s pushed back a year. God knows, I more or less memorized the damn play. I hope to get back. It’d be great to do it next year. But I think, if we learn anything from this weird time in our lives, it is: Who knows? We keep wanting this vaccine that’s going to magically solve all our problems. But who knows?

It was the one-year anniversary of the Game of Thrones finale a few months back, and there was a lot of chatter about it on the internet. Did you do anything to commemorate, Nikolaj?

NCW: No, I didn’t. Actually, I was shooting The Silencing when the series finale happened. I watched it in Sudbury. But I didn’t do anything this year. You do something 10 years later, right? You don’t do something one year later.

I think Game of Thrones is one of those things people are going to keep talking about every year.

NCW: Oh no! I missed out on a party. I’ll be there next year.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Originally Appeared on GQ