The stars of Netflix's “The Gentlemen” improvised a lot more of Guy Ritchie's series than you may think

Theo James and Daniel Ings say the director works with just the bones of a script and says "F--- it. Don't worry about it. Yeah, we'll sort it out."

Theo James and Daniel Ings had very little to go off of when they said yes to starring in Guy Ritchie's Netflix series adaptation of the director's 2020 film The Gentlemen.

"We had two scripts," James said during a recent Emmys FYC panel series moderated by Entertainment Weekly. "The conceit was very good, but the meat was not fully there. And I remember speaking to Guy and he's like, 'Yeah, f--- it. Don't worry about it. Yeah, we'll sort it out. We'll sort it out.' And we're like, 'oh God.'"

But sort it out they did, with James signing on as Eddie Horniman, who unexpectedly inherits his father's title, land, and secret ties to an illegal weed-growing empire; and Ings as Eddie's "massive piece of s---" older brother, Freddy, who had expected to inherit the Duke title.

Related: Theo James recalls bottle of urine thrown at his face on stage during band days: 'A strange, sweaty, horrible gig'

James continued: "Guy famously likes [to work with just] the bones of a script. You have the beginning of a scene and the end of a scene, and everything in the middle is up for grabs. And that was an experience that we had to really understand, because in the first day we were like, 'What the f--- are we doing?' But in a way, for comedy, that really works because it keeps everyone on their toes. It keeps a kinetic energy. It means you can be a little fluid with the direction of each scene. I think it's harder if it's Succession or something like that, where everything is very acute. But in this world it works really well. And it's certainly Guy's ... That's how he does everything."

Ings and James knew each other prior to being cast, which made Ings more comfortable stepping into a vulnerable shooting situation.

"I kind of knew that he was a good guy, but also knew that he would be fun," Ings said. "And I think that because my character's such a f---ing idiot, it was crucial that I was going to be able to, selfishly, going to be able to kind of go there and do weird stuff, and that I wasn't going to be working with someone who's going to go like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.' And I think we quickly got to know each other much better and formed a kind of trust. And it is, like Theo was saying, it's scary when you turn up to work and they're like, 'You don't have it. There's no script for today. You guys are going to make it up.' So you need that kind of trust. And as the show went on, we just were able to then keep going back and forth about it and figuring out where we were missing things or repeating beats. And Theo's very good at going, 'I think we've had this argument before. I think we need to turn it on head.'"

See our full conversation with James and Ings, including a very drunk round of 2 Truths and a Lie. The full season of The Gentlemen is streaming on Netflix.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.