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Christopher Nolan doesn’t do chairs on set, and Anne Hathaway explained why. The Interstellar star shared the inside scoop during a chat with Les Misérables buddy Hugh Jackman, and it’s pretty simple: if there’s a chair, people sit. And if they’re sitting, they’re not working. Classic Nolan move, right?
Hathaway, who worked with Nolan on The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, is all about his vibe. His films? Huge, ambitious, and always under budget and ahead of schedule. So yeah, there’s something to this no-chair rule. “I think he’s onto something with the chair thing,” she said. But it’s not just about chairs. Nolan’s whole filmmaking style is about being minimal yet massive simultaneously. It’s like the director knows exactly what he wants and doesn’t waste time. Anne Hathaway summed it perfectly: Nolan’s sets are all about focus and no distractions.
In fact, Nolan runs a set as stripped-down as his cinematic style. Similar to directors like Quentin Tarantino and Denis Villeneuve, Nolan bans cellphones from his film sets. “There’s a mass belief that if you’re texting, you’re somehow not interrupting the conversation—you’re not being rude,” Nolan told Esquire Middle East in 2017. “It’s an illusion of multitasking.” For Nolan, phones are a huge distraction, pulling focus from the creative work happening. He remembered when it would’ve been considered unprofessional to even think about pulling out a phone on set. Now, the rule is simple: no phones, just work.
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