Focus Features
While Martin McDonagh’s feature film debut In Bruges went largely unseen upon its release, the film has since grown to achieve cult classic status and has now become one of the defining performances of Academy Award nominee Brendan Gleeson’s acclaimed career. One scene, in particular, sticks in the minds of fans almost 20 years later.
Speaking to BroBible’s Post Credit Podcast ahead of the release of his new series Spider-Noir — in which he stars as the villainous Silvermane opposite Nicolas Cage’s “The Spider” (a 1930’s New York City-set Spider-Man) — Brendan Gleeson recalled filming one of the movie’s most iconic scenes — the one in which he calls fellow Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes the C-word a hilarious amount of times in quick succession.
According to Gleeson, he and Fiennes barely had to work on nailing the dynamics of the scene because McDonagh’s writing — which has since helped him earn a Best Picture nomination for his 2017 film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri — was so precise.
Brendan Gleeson says he and Ralph Fiennes barely had to work on the infamous ‘You’re a c—‘ scene in In Bruges because the writing was so good
Eric Italiano, BroBible: The scene with Ralph Fiennes. The context and content of the scene is deathly serious, and Ralph is wound up to about eleven — but there’s also an undeniable humor in what you’re saying to each other. What do you remember most about shooting that scene, and how did you two work out the tone together?
GLEESON: It was a no-brainer, honestly. What I remember most was that it was absolutely freezing. I was finding it hard to articulate. If you look closely, Ralph has little tears in his eyes — but that’s the wind. It was Baltic. You sometimes get so cold you can’t really speak properly. We had overcoats on but they seemed wafer thin in that wind. A really, really chilling scene — literally. But the dialogue is so good you don’t have to work at it.
Spider-Noir, which also stars Lamorne Morris, Li Jun Li, Karen Rodriguez, Abraham Popoola, and Jack Huston alongside of Cage and Gleeson, will premiere on Prime Video on May 27. You can check out our full interview with Gleeson below.