Supernova: A trip down memory lane with Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth

In their latest film, Supernova, Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth play a couple bracing for an uncertain future.

Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci in a scene from their much-heralded new film, Supernova.

Stanley Tucci did something he shouldn’t have done when he first read the script for Supernova.

The screenplay, written by 36-year-old filmmaker Harry Macqueen, had found its way into his hands via the casting director Shaheen Baig, and Tucci sat down to read it.

He was deeply moved by the story of Tusker and Sam, a long-married gay couple who find themselves facing a terrifying young onset dementia diagnosis.

Together, they take a road trip through the Lake District to stargaze and contemplate the future, and what it might look like.

The film is quietly reflective and shimmering with heartfelt ­intimacy; Tucci was immediately drawn to the script. He arranged a meeting with Macqueen — but before the pair first met, Tucci broke the rules, just a tiny little bit.

He passed the script onto a good friend of his, a person he thought would be the perfect actor to star alongside him in the film as the Sam to his Tusker — British actor Colin Firth.

It was only after Tucci and Macqueen finally connected, and Tucci expressed his love of the project and his interest to come on board, that the Oscar-nominated star revealed what he had done.

Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth star in new film Supernova. Picture: Supplied

Macqueen didn’t mind at all. “Had he slipped it to his mate Jim down the pub it might have been a slightly different conversation,” the director says, laughing.

Instead, Macqueen found himself preparing to make only his second film — his debut Hinterland, the UK’s first carbon neutral film, was released in 2014 — with two of the best screen actors working today.

“The more I think about it, it’s remarkable that actors of Stanley and Colin’s calibre, at this stage of their careers, got involved in a film like this with an unknown filmmaker,” he reflects. “That’s brave of them to do that.”

Macqueen believes that it is the film’s subject matter, and the fact that it confronts such crucial, albeit difficult, topics — early dementia, end-of-life planning, how to say goodbye to someone you aren’t ready to say goodbye to, and perhaps never will be — that had them both so interested in being involved. Macqueen’s script was inspired by a former colleague of his, who had been diagnosed with young onset dementia — he describes it as an “unravelling” that he says was “profoundly moving to watch first-hand”.

For two years, Macqueen volunteered at charities that supported people living with dementia, and it was his observations during that period that inspired the film’s plot. “One of the things about young onset dementia is how many people have it, without knowing that they have it, and how much we still don’t know about it medically,” he explains.

“We’re still learning about it all the time.”

Director Harry Macqueen behind the scenes on Supernova. Picture: Madman

Tucci and Firth were committed to helping Macqueen bring this story to the big screen.

Supernova is now one of a few films being released this year that explore the disorientation and distress of a dementia diagnosis. The Oscar-nominated The Father, starring Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins, is another, as is Australian film June Again, led by Noni Hazelhurst and Claudia Karvan. All three are anchored by a central relationship, but where The Father and June Again explore the bond between a parent and a child, Supernova’s focus is on a romantic partnership.

Tucci and Firth’s existing friendship helped make their onscreen relationship feel “organic”, Macqueen reflects.

“When you’re putting a film together, the relationships involved in that process and that collaboration are essential for everyone on the team, but particularly when you’re making a film that is intimate,” he explains.

“That relationship is completely essential to get right, and it felt like two people who loved each other right from the start, because it is two people who love each other. That really helped.”

Firth and Tucci in Supernova. Picture: Madman

There are two sides to that particular coin. Having been very close friends for more than two decades, Firth and Tucci were able to instantly convey the closeness of their respective characters, a married couple of several years.

“They’re so natural around each other in the film, which is very, very difficult to engineer,” Macqueen says. “What they bring out of each other in the film is beautiful and complex and surprising, in all the best ways.”

But the flip side of that, Macqueen adds, is the difficulty in translating a long-term relationship that is one thing behind the scenes into something completely different onscreen.

In real life, Tucci and Firth are very close friends. In Supernova, they had to play a passionate and very intimate couple; one of the first things you see in the film is Firth, completely naked, in bed.

“To have this fully formed relationship that is one thing, and actually put it to one side and only use the parts of it that are relevant to the characters in the film, it’s quite a difficult thing to do,” Macqueen says. “And I think they did it incredibly well.”

Production took place over six weeks in late 2019, largely on location in the rolling hills of the UK’s Lake District. “It was freezing cold!” Macqueen laments.

“It’s very English and boring to complain about the weather, but it rained pretty much every day and it was a miracle that we got the film to look as it looks.

“The two good days that we had, we made sure we were outside doing all the stuff that we needed to do for the appropriate scenes.”

Everyone involved in making Supernova, from Tucci and Firth down the line to the rest of the crew, stayed in the same accommodation “in the middle of nowhere, really,” Macqueen says, which meant everyone bunking down in chalets in an off-season holiday park.

Quite frankly, it sounds like heaven. Tucci cooked dinner for Firth every night, and sometimes there would be a place at the table set for Macqueen.

Though sadly it was only “very occasionally” Macqueen adds that he had the chance to sample Tucci’s culinary skills. “The thing about being a director on a film set is that after you finish filming, you’ve still got about 15 hours of work to do,” he says.

More frequently enjoyed by Macqueen, though, were the cocktails, which Tucci mixed zealously and often — anyone who ­follows the actor on ­Instagram will have caught his viral videos, making lethal martinis and addictive old-fashioneds for his wife Felicity Blunt, who is sister to his The Devil Wears Prada co-star Emily.

“They are fun to be around, Colin and Stanley, out of work and in work,” the filmmaker says. “They take the mickey out of each other, and they like a laugh and a good time. That part of their relationship is very much in the film.”

A scene from Supernova. Picture: Madman

Macqueen has spent the past year of multiple lockdowns in the UK putting the finishing touches to Supernova — and catching up on Chernobyl. “Probably not ideal to be watching (that),” he recalls, laughing.

Now, as England prepares to relax their restrictions, he’s working on new projects, both in film and television.

Supernova is screening in cinemas in Australia, and likewise will in the UK, where it is slated to be released in the summer, when theatres will have reopened and the country’s vaccination numbers will be high. Macqueen’s local cinema in London is the Rio in Dalston, an art deco gem in the middle of one of the city’s busiest streets. “It’s still here, it’s just closed,” he says.

Macqueen can’t wait until he can share Supernova in a packed theatre with a rapt audience — “Hopefully,” he adds, laughing, “you don’t want to presume!”

Macqueen behind the scenes on Supernova. Picture: Madman

Cinemas are very close to his heart. For years he worked at a theatre in Soho. “That’s my home, really,” he says. “I think sometimes you don’t fully realise how much you love something until you miss it. One of the many things the past year has done is make people aware of what’s important to them and what they value in their lives — loved ones, family, and also the stuff that we like to do in our spare time.

“And, hopefully, there’s going to be a massive ­renaissance and resurgence in all art and culture and entertainment, and just fun in general, when things loosen up a little bit.

“People are absolutely desperate to do those things, and experience those things with other people again.

“I’m really hopeful, and I think it’s going to be an incredibly exciting time. I think a lot of amazing art is going to be made because of the past year.”

Supernova is in cinemas from Thursday.