Sebastian Stan Wanted Every Moment In Monday To Feel Like It Was 'Earned'
In Greek filmmaker Argyris Papadimitropoulos' romantic drama film "Monday," Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough ("Andor") play two thirty-something ex-pats who enter a whirlwind relationship over a weekend. When the excitement of the fling settles down, the pair try to extend their chemistry into a real relationship back at home. "Monday" is a look at how messy love can be — it's about living in the moment no matter the consequences, and shows how deeply love and life are interconnected.
In depicting an intense, passionate relationship that blossoms from a drunken fling, the actors engaged in a fair bit of nudity. To Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough, every scene in the film needed to be meaningful and earned. Gough was excited to work with Papadimitropoulos because she felt she was in "really safe hands" (via The Wrap). For Stan, it was about the collaborative experience and ensuring every scene in "Monday" earned its rightful place.
'We were just in for the ride'
"Monday" explores the highs and lows of a relationship and the disastrous emotional consequences a passionate love affair may sometimes lead to. Gough and Stan were required to build a real relationship on-screen and portray the emotional intimacy between their characters truthfully. In an interview with Collider, Stan detailed how "Monday" wasn't a "choreographed" or a scripted movie per se; the many parties attended by the characters were all real.
Per Stan, director Papadimitropoulos was "inviting half of Athens" to the parties and filming them as they were. The filmmaker wanted to paint an honest portrait of a relationship between people in its rawest form, and Stan suggested the resulting experience was quite a revelation for them.
"It [Monday] was like this weird invitation to go, 'Hey, do you want to go [to a party] with, like, three people?' You know, you're on these sets with hundreds of people all the time, and then, what about going and working with three people? Like, creating this very intimate movie on this journey and seeing what happens. And, you know, a lot of truth came out of it for us."
'It was earned in some way'
Stan further explained how different it was to film "Monday" because of how much of a collaborative experience it was. The actors and Papadimitropoulos spent time together, talked about their experiences, and ensured that every moment in the film had a fitting place — and it didn't just exist to fill screen time. At the end of the film, Stan goes fully nude and rides a moped in the streets of Athens — and that too was a scene the actor believed was "earned in some way."
"It was all very much Denise [Gough] and Argyris [Papadimitropoulos] and I spending time together and talking about things, and things that have happened to each of us, and coming together and making sure that even that [moped] scene at the end feels earned in a way, and it's not like, 'Well let's just do it to be like, whatever.' That it was earned in some way. But I did say, I was like, 'I guess if I'm gonna be naked, maybe in Athens on a moped will have to be it.'"
The movie is about living in the moment
Stan talked about how "Monday" was a lot about "living in the moment." The actor is Romanian-American, and filming the movie made him feel close to his Eastern European roots. He appreciated the idea of seizing each day, something he believed was missing in the United States, where he currently resides.
"I'm Easter European at heart. Like, going to Greece, and the people, and being in Europe and the mentality over there – which was very much a part of making this movie – of being in the moment and really living in the moment is something that we do not know as much here in the States."
Although "Monday" received mixed reviews from critics, Stan has since found staggering success in Hulu's miniseries "Pam and Tommy," as well as the horror-thriller film "Fresh," in which he stars alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones. He will be next seen in Benjamin Caron's "Sharper" and Marvel Studios' "Thunderbolts."