If you’re starring in a murder-mystery movie, set at a murder-mystery party, what do you do in your down-time? If you’re in the cast of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, you, well, play more murder-mystery games. Rian Johnson’s second Benoit Blanc whodunnit pitches Daniel Craig’s super-sleuth into an all-new ensemble of cracked-up characters – read more about them all here – to get to the heart of a shocking crime. And since the cast – including Edward Norton, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, and Jessica Henwick – had to quarantine together during the shoot, they spent their free time cutting loose with each other and getting in the mystery-solving spirit.
“We had a roof bar where we made our escape, and there were some pretty epic Saturday-night games of Mafia,” Edward Norton tells Empire. “Janelle would come fully-dressed in character. It was a bunch of fine actors and so, with the posturing and feints, there were some great reveals.” And after finger-pointing role-playing games, the nights would evolve from there. According to Kate Hudson, “it would turn into a dance party. Rian’s moves changed the energy of the party. When Rian gets going, everybody starts partying harder.”
If the dance parties took place away from set, there’s a sense of musicality to Glass Onion itself. “The script is so tight, you hear the music of it so well,” says Kathryn Hahn. “Everybody had a note in that orchestra and it was fun to find those rhythms together as a group to make it sing.” Don’t expect that singing to be literal, though. For all the rumours that a Knives Out movie set in Greece could perhaps cross over into the Mamma Mia! Cinematic Universe, its writer-director says otherwise. “I’ve probably committed the greatest crime to cinema by having both Janelle Monáe and Leslie Odom Jr in the movie and I haven’t made it a musical,” Johnson chuckles. “I apologise!” No ABBA, then (that we know of). Still, let the biggest murder-mystery party of the year commence.
Read Empire’s full world-exclusive Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery cover feature in the October 2022 issue, packed with never-before-seen images and speaking to Rian Johnson, Daniel Craig, and the ensemble cast to get the inside scoop on Benoit Blanc’s latest case. Find it on newsstands from Thursday 1 September, or pre-order a copy online here. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery streams on Netflix from 23 December.