Luke Thompson had to remind Keira Knightley that they were in a film together after the actor forgot about it.
The pair were on the ITV show This Morning to talk about their new West End play, The Lives of Others, when Knightley insisted they had never worked together before.
“Well, do you not remember Misbehaviour?” Thompson turned to ask.
The Pride and Prejudice star took a second to think. “Oh no, you were in Misbehaviour, we have worked together!” she replied.
As they burst out laughing, Knightley tried to explain that it wasn’t entirely her fault for forgetting the Bridgerton star. “But that wasn’t fair, we didn’t really,” she said. “And I was early days pregnant so I don’t remember anything about that film. And he’s suddenly like, ‘You know we’ve worked together before?’ I was like, ‘Really?’”
Thompson offered a little context to help Knightley’s case. “We were in the same film. Different days.”
“And again, I was like, under three months pregnant, so basically just vomiting everywhere, I don’t remember anyone on that film at all,” Knightley explained.
Misbehaviour, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, is a comedy-drama based on the 1970 Miss World competition in London, when the newly formed Women’s Liberation Movement disrupted the live broadcast to protest against beauty pageants.
The film follows feminist activists Sally Alexander (Knightley) and Jo Robinson (Jessie Buckley) as they plan their protest, and tells the story of Miss Grenada Jennifer Hosten (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) becoming the first black woman to win the title. Thompson plays Peter Hain, the British politician who supports the protest.
Thompson has since become more recognisable as Benedict Bridgerton, the artistic second son of the Bridgerton family. The most recent season of the Netflix period drama follows his romance with Yerin Ha’s Sophie Baek.
He told This Morning that work on the fifth season had just been completed and “gone well”. “Now it will be about Francesca and Michaela but, obviously, Benedict is still around,” he said, referring to the sixth Bridgerton sibling’s romance with her late husband’s cousin Michaela Stirling.
Knightley is returning to Netflix with the second season of Black Doves, the spy thriller in which she plays Helen Webb, an undercover operative leading a double life as the wife of a politician. “It’s nice,” she said during the interview. “You’re a mum at home and then you get to go to work and be like, ‘Right. I get to beat everyone up, this is great!’”
The Lives of Others is an adaptation of the Oscar-winning 2007 German film directed and adapted by Olivier Award-winner Robert Icke. The production also stars Stephen Dillane, best known for playing Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones.
Set in East Germany in 1984, the play follows playwright Georg Dreyman (Thompson) and his partner, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Knightley), who are under surveillance by the Stasi, the country’s secret police. Dillane plays Gerd Wiesler, the officer assigned to monitor the couple whose observations begin to change his own perspective.
Asked whether the pair would try to trip each other up during performances, Thompson suggested they were already doing a fairly good job of that without any deliberate mischief.
“I think we already are. We’re trying to not trip ourselves up at the moment,” he said.
Knightley described the backstage scramble to make it on stage at the right moment, with the right costume and the right props. “There is lots of running around backstage trying to come in the right entrances and exits,” she said.
The Lives of Others is running at London’s Adelphi Theatre until 9 January 2027.