"With All Due Respect," Christian Bale Says 'The Bride!' Sets the Record Straight Where Mary Shelley Got It Wrong

3 hours ago 8

Published Mar 4, 2026, 10:00 AM EST

Summary

Collider's Perri Nemiroff speaks with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jessie Buckley on The Bride!'s unique tonal "tightrope" and tapping into The Bride.
Christian Bale breaks down the character creation for his approach to the iconic Frankenstein character.
Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz discuss reuniting for the third time on a film, and share the secret to an excellent scene partner.

One of this year's most exciting blockbuster releases is the explosive reimagining, The Bride!, from the mind of Academy Award-nominated writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal. The movie is Gyllenhaal's take on a tale that has captivated minds since the 1800s, when author Mary Shelley is said to have originated the sci-fi genre with an electrifying story of monsters and men, and whether there's any distinction at all.

In The Bride!, Oscar winner Christian Bale and Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley headline a new story for the ages as "Frankie" and his eponymous partner in crime. Taking place on the streets of 1930s Chicago, a lonely Frankie has made a journey to meet with the innovative Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), a scientist said to be able to create a companion for him. Together, they bring back a murdered young woman, igniting a combustible alliance between the two as they set off on a rampage of passion. The film also stars Peter Sarsgaard and Oscar-winning Penélope Cruz, Academy Award nominee Jake Gyllenhaal, John Magaro, and Julianne Hough.

Before The Bride!'s debut, Collider's Perri Nemiroff had the opportunity to sit down with Gyllenhaal and the cast of the film to discuss the creation of this story's brand-new life. While talking with the writer-director and Buckley, Gyllenhaal discusses how she approached this tonal "tightrope," calling it a post-genre movie, joining the ranks of Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar-nominated One Battle After Another. Nemiroff also speaks with Bale on the recreation of one of pop culture's most iconic figures, and Sarsgaard and Cruz on making their third film together. Check out the full conversations in the videos, with transcripts, below.

Maggie Gyllenhaal Calls 'The Bride!' a "Post-Genre" Movie

"It's a new way of thinking."

While talking with Nemiroff, Gyllenhaal takes us behind the scenes, where she explains how she seized her vision for The Bride! and adapted the tone throughout the production with the help of "so many interesting hearts and minds." She discusses the tightrope the movie walks, defying genre, while Buckley shares her personal process for discovering and getting into a character, and the "thrilling" first she tackled for The Bride!.

PERRI NEMIROFF: Your movie is basically one big, bold swing after the next, and I know it's not easy to make something like that happen, so it was making me wonder, is there anything we see in the finished film that maybe along the way someone told you, “That's too much, rein in it,” but you knew it was important to hold tight to your vision, and now it's in the finished film and the film is better off for it?

MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL: Yeah, there are. Look, the thing is, to me, there are so many incredible minds coming together to make this movie — designers, DP's, incredible actors, just so many interesting hearts and minds. From the very beginning, I had a really clear sense of the tone of the movie, and it was a tightrope walk. The whole process of writing it, shooting it, and cutting it was staying on the tightrope. There were moments where things that I loved were pulling us off, and those were things that did have to go, and they were cool, and I loved them, and it was hard to say goodbye to them, but if it was pulling me off the tightrope, it had to go. I am grateful for the people who were like, “This is pulling you off,” because in the end, I really do feel the movie is like a laser beam.

Maggie Gyllenhaal directing Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale on the set of The Bride!

It's interesting you say it's new. The movies I've been loving lately, I don't know, I've been calling it “post-genre.” Like, what genre is One Battle After Another? It's not. It's a combination of things in order for an idea to be expressed, and I think that's true with this, too. It's a new way of thinking and talking about something, and has to be in its own genre.

I'll take a genre-bending film any day of the week. Jessie, can you tell me something about your prep process that stays consistent from film to film, but then something about preparing for this role in The Bride! that called for something one-of-a-kind?

JESSIE BUCKLEY: I find it very helpful to gather images. I don't know who these people are until, really, I live inside them. So, I follow my nose instinctively towards what is being reflected back at me, which feels like it's a kind of nod into that world. I will make collages, and some pictures will stay, some will be thrown away. Especially for creating these three characters in Mary Shelley, Ida, and The Bride. When I got into my trailer in the morning, it was like there was Mary Shelley, and I'd be like, “Okay, I think I'm in this picture. Maybe there's an essence of this picture in her today.” And similar with Ida and The Bride. I've always found that very useful, too.

Then what was your second question?

What's something that was one-of-a-kind for this one?

BUCKLEY: Learning how to tap dance. [Laughs] We kind of did a hybrid of dancing, which was Gaga dancing and tap dancing, and to be in contact with your body like that and to exercise your body like that and really find the character’s language in the dance was just so thrilling.

That dance scene is something else!

Jessie Buckley screams at something off-screen in The Bride!

"With all due respect, Mary Shelley had gotten things wrong."

Starring opposite Buckley in The Bride! is Award-winning Christian Bale, who's tasked with embodying a whole new spin on Frankenstein's Monster. In 1930s Chicago, this iconic character goes by Frankie and adopts a thick accent and gangster swagger, so Nemiroff was curious about how Bale tapped into his personal adaptation, not just physically, but mentally. How does this interpretation differ so dramatically from one more similar to, say, Guillermo del Toro and Jacob Elordi's Frankenstein (2025)?

PERRI NEMIROFF: I always love asking actors for their “aha” moments, but in particular when you're playing a character who is a literary and cinematic icon. Do you remember the very first thing that happened, either in prep or on set, that made you stop and say to yourself, “I get who my version of Frankenstein is and how to play him?”

CHRISTIAN BALE: No, no, no, it did happen before. It was in recognizing that what I wanted it to be was that Frank existed long before Mary Shelley wrote her book, and that there was the interest in science and Galvani, the Italian scientist of reanimation through electricity of muscle and tissue, etcetera, and that she had heard about this person that was out there. So, she wrote this book, and she got a lot of it right, but she got a lot of it wrong, as well. And Frank read that book by now. By the time we come to our story, he's learned how to read, he's learned how to write. But at that point, he was this giant man-child who committed these horrendous crimes and was abandoned by his father, and just didn't understand at all.

Then, with the absolute iconic Boris Karloff, whose image you just can't overcome, you've gotta nod to that. For that, witnesses had come back and said, “Actually, that guy's got a scar that seems to have been stitched up a bit here, and he's got a flat head.” And he's right about the scars, but he doesn't have a flat head. That was his hair, you know? “And he's eight feet tall!” Nah, he's not eight feet tall, because that's just people being terrified and exaggerating. He was six and a half, six-foot-five, something like that.

So, gradually forming it, cherry-picking what I liked, and then creating that he was a real character, where, with all due respect, Mary Shelley had gotten things wrong, where James Whale and Boris Karloff had gotten things wrong. Frank had to see his life story told in movies and in books, etc., and this is the real one, turning up in 1930s New York.

Frankie and The Bride walk side by side down an alley.

I love it. It paves the way to making this version of the character uniquely your own, and I think the same thing about Jessie [Buckley]. As an actor in general, I find you to be a very singular force on screen, and the same is true of her, so what is something you were able to accomplish playing Frank only because it was her specifically as your primary scene partner playing The Bride?

BALE: She's so electric and lit up, both herself and as The Bride, that it can't help but be infectious towards Frank, because all he's looking for is just somebody that there could be nothing going on, and he'd be happy. Like he says to Euphronius at the beginning, that he’ll love them no matter what. He's so lonely, he doesn't care. They could just sit still, never speak, on a log together the rest of their lives, and he'd be ecstatic. But what he gets is actually an authentic, sharp, brilliant woman who's on a mission from God to protest what she sees as the absurdity of life in these new awakened eyes, someone who's had too much experience.

He's coming from, despite his terrible crimes, actually being quite an innocent, and the two uniting, and him just recognizing that he wants what she has, he can't keep up quite. He's not as quick as her, he’s not as sharp, he's not as authentic either, because he can't quite rid himself of needing these lies to believe that she would be interested in him. So, all of these regrets and his self-consciousness and low self-esteem and all that mean that he keeps these lies up. But he just adores her life force and her authenticity and her extreme take on living life to the fullest. Once he gets a taste of that, he can't give it up.

The two of you are something else in this. I've never seen anything quite like it. That's my favorite reaction.

BALE: That's great. That's great. That's what we're all trying to do, always.

Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) creates his Creature (Jacob Elordi) in 'Frankenstein' (2025).

Penélope Cruz compares Sarsgaard to this Academy Award-winning actor.

In the wake of Frank and The Bride's crime spree are Sarsgaard's and Cruz's Detective Jake Wiles and Myrna Mallow. This isn't the first time these two have shared scenes, after previously working together on Elegy and Loving Pablo, and in their interview with Nemiroff, the duo discusses what makes a strong scene partner and why they're so essential, whether on-screen or not.

PERRI NEMIROFF: This is your third collaboration together, so you obviously know how talented the other is, but can each of you tell me something you saw the other do on The Bride! set that made you stop and go, “I knew you were good, but how are you still exceeding my expectations?”

PETER SARSGAARD: I was just talking about this moment. I had this scene that I was looking forward to as an actor, where I have a mea culpa, where I say all the stuff that I've done wrong in the film. You read a scene like that, and I do most of the talking in that scene, and you think, “Oh, I have all the work to do. It's my responsibility, this scene, on some level.” But if you're acting with someone like Penélope, and they don't shut off just because they don't have the majority of the lines, I started to realize just how much this scene was really about her that day, and about handing off the responsibility to her.

This film obviously has a very female angle, but it's also about men coming clean and then being forgiven. It's something that's quite beautiful in the film. And there's this moment where you see her, and I tell her what I've done. To me, it really seems like she already knew on some level, and she forgives me. It's just that little moment. It means so much in the film.

Jake Wiles talking with Myrna Mallow over breakfast at a diner.

You feel that intention while you're watching it.

PENÉLOPE CRUZ: For me, I've always been a fan of his work. We worked together many years ago in a film where we didn't share a lot of scenes, but we were in the same film together. Then we did Loving Pablo, and I had a lot of great long scenes with him, and I enjoyed every second of it. He's really been one of my best experiences working with an actor. My husband and I talk about it all the time because he felt the same way with Peter. Because it's just a few actors out there that everything they do, everything they do, has truth to it. Because he never forces, he never pushes anything. He’s just there reacting to whatever is happening, what the other person is bringing. It’s not like a plan that nobody can touch or move. That's very selfish, working that way, and he's the opposite of that.

I think, also, Ben Kingsley was somebody who impressed me a lot in that way, that I consider him a great master for me in so many ways.

SARSGAARD: For sure.

CRUZ: Because he doesn't force anything, and I think you have something in common that has to do with that, with never pushing.

SARSGAARD: Did you just compare me to Sir Ben Kingsley?

CRUZ: Of course!

SARSGAARD: Okay. [Laughs]

CRUZ: You are there. There is something in common, like how hard it is. You can never catch him pushing or being fake. Never.

Myrna Mallow and Jake Wiles standing outside together.

She speaks the truth.

SARSGAARD: Well, I gotta say, when you feel respected by your fellow actor, you are able to be a much better actor, you know? And when you're acting with people who aren't self-consumed, it makes it possible to be interested in them. If you're acting with someone who is really only interested in themselves, why are you also going to be interested? [Laughs] “You've taken care of that. I guess I'll go daydream about something else.”

Team effort. That's the best part of the craft, and that's the only way you can make things as electric as The Bride!. It’s something else. I’ve never seen anything like it.

CRUZ: That's a line that a lot of people say! When I saw the movie for the first time, I understood that's why all the people who saw it told me, “I've never seen anything like it.” It's true.

The Bride! is in theaters now.