mebeforeyou
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Me Before You: the heartbreaking, controversial tale of love found in a hopeless place. For the uninitiated, Sam Claflin plays Will Traynor, a young, wealthy banker who is struck by a motorcycle and then confined to a wheelchair for life. Caustic and irate in the beginning, his carer – the eccentrically dressed Lou (Emilia Clarke) – breaks his cold exterior and the pair fall in love. For the contentious spoiler, click here.

Surprisingly, Claflin’s most challenging scenes to film were not those that involved him only expressing himself through facial expressions. The hardest were with Clarke. “In the beginning, Will is not in a great place and when Lou is in a very optimistic and enthusiastic world, he’s in the polar opposite,” Claflin told GRAZIA. “I think Emilia and I clicked immediately. We instantly found ourselves having a lot of fun and keeping it very light. What the story required was for us to be in a very, very different frame of mind and I think Thea, the director, continuously reminded us that we’re not meant to be friends and to remind ourselves not to be Sam and Emilia but to be Lou and Will.

“What I found most challenging was not being friends with Emilia.”

For those who have seen the film, you will know there is a montage where Lou turns up to Will’s place each day in different eclectic outfit choices. “I had to give her dirty looks.” Claflin says. “I can safely say that was one of the hardest things to do because they didn’t let me see the costumes before she would walk in the door and I’d kind of try not to laugh. They were ridiculously outlandish but in a great way. In an absolute ‘Lou’ way and Emilia carried them off amazingly.”

Something tells us Claflin would have got along with Lou just as well as he did Emilia.

“Despite the fact the plotline is dealing with very, very heavy subject matter, it is a love story and it is a happy one in my eyes,” he continues. “Emilia and I really hit it off. We’ve known each other for a few years but we really got to know each other. It was easy to get on. There was no work needed.”

See the rest of the Sam Claflin’s very honest interview here.

 

Me Before You is out on DVD and Blu-Ray September 21.