Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield on living through 'We Live in Time'

TORONTO (AP) — In “We Live in Time,” Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield act an entire life of a relationship — a gamut of dating, falling in love, having a child and reckoning with cancer. So when Garfield recently went on a six-day retreat in the woods without his phone, one of his first texts was to his co-star.

“I came out and I sent Florence a message. I just felt compelled,” Garfield says. “When you reconnect with yourself, you reconnect with a bunch of stuff that matters to you. And I was just like, man, I haven’t let Florence know for a few months how much this film and this time with her meant to me.”

“We Live in Time,” directed by John Crowley ( “Brooklyn,” “The Goldfinch”) and penned by playwright Nick Payne, is the kind of movie that provokes an emotional response, including for its two stars. In playing their characters, Almut and Tobias, across a decade of time, “We Live in Time” poignantly condenses, and remixes into a non-linear narrative, a wide spectrum of life. Right alongside each other are sex and heartbreak, stolen moments and life-changing ones, birth and death.

It was enough to go through together as actors that Pugh and Garfield, when they spoke the morning of the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, were still mourning it.

“I’ve never had this happen before in this way. We’ve literally spent the last two days trying to unpack it and everybody wants us to unpack it. And we don’t know,” says Pugh. “When we finished the movie, every scene that got closer and closer to the end, it became harder and harder to process that we weren’t going to be able to do it anymore.”

As two of the most in-demand actors of their generation, Pugh, 28, and Garfield, 41, have transformed themselves into all kinds of roles. They have donned Marvel costumes and joined period ensembles. Pugh was memorably outfitted in an elaborate flower dress for “Midsommar.” But “We Live in Time,” which A24 opens in theaters Friday, is a particularly unadorned view of two of the best actors working. It’s the first film in which Garfield has used his real voice.

“They’re two very beautiful creatures to look at, and have looked fantastically beautiful on screen — and do look very beautiful in this, by the way, just not in a glammed-up, aspirational fashion,” says Crowley. “They’re also both British actors who have made significant inroads in American cinema, and to some eyes, people might only know them from that. To have them speak in their own accents allowed those roles to fall back much closer to them.”

Chemistry can be a tricky thing to pin down. Crowley, whose 2007 film “Boy A” was Garfield’s feature film debut, cast Garfield first. After that came Pugh. Crowley prefers to keep dress rehearsals subdued in order to save the energy for shooting. But there were, he says, “flickers of something very special" between them.

“Much like two championship tennis players warming up, they couldn’t not once in a while hit the ball in an extraordinary way and have the other person hit it back," says Crowley.

In an interview together, the connection between Garfield and Pugh was abundantly clear. Their reaction to the meme that sprung from the movie's first image (in which a carousel horse appeared to be their uninvited co-star), was, itself, a viral video that hinted at their natural comic patter. But whatever chemistry is, Garfield is more inclined to attribute it to staying present as actors.

“You can’t predict it. I knew Florence was a magnificent actor. But that’s all I knew. I didn’t know whether we’d work together well. Neither of us did,” Garfield says. “But for me, honestly, it exceeded my expectations. It’s an incomparable thing. There’s no way of comparing my experience with Florence with any other experience I’ve had.

“I said this to Florence last night, I was like, ‘It’s weirdly, in a way, one performance. It’s like we’re stitched together.’”

For Pugh, chemistry is about showing up with the right intentions.

“We were willing and wanting to do that for each other,” says Pugh. “There’s plenty of times when you’re willing to do it and someone isn’t. And that’s also fine because you can also create your own chemistry with yourself, I suppose.

“But it’s so much more hard work and much less fun,” adds Garfield, smiling. “Just like self-pleasure.”

In some ways, Garfield and Pugh were living alongside “We Live in Time” and experiencing some of its chapters of life with their characters, albeit from different perspectives. When Almut is diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer, she is forced to make difficult decisions that weigh having children with her ambition as a chef.

“If you want to be successful, if you want to actually give your career a good crack at it, you’re going to be running through the time that is most optimum for having children,” says Pugh. “It’s stuff that I’m now having to figure out since we made the movie, since the movie’s coming out. It’s for all ages of women that are trying to navigate this unbelievably tricky dilemma.”

Some of the challenges faced by Almut and Tobias were deeply familiar to the actors. Garfield’s mother died of cancer in 2019. Others took more imagination. Neither Garfield or Pugh have children, but a lengthy birth scene, in a gas station bathroom, is the movie’s most show-stopping moment. To experience Almut’s cancer treatment, Pugh was convinced she needed to cut her hair. Crowley filmed Garfield cutting Pugh's hair for the scene.

“I wanted this to be gone now so I knew how she feels in these scenes that I’ve read in the script and thought about, but that I can’t imagine how she felt yet,” Pugh says, pointing at her hair. “I loved that day. It was a very powerful day.”

The experience has left both actors trying to hold onto something from “We Live in Time.” Garfield began the interview by opening up a book, offering a poem and then reading aloud Kabir’s “To Be a Slave of Intensity.”

“Just to remind myself that I’m a person, I guess,” he explains. “And because this film is about being as vitality alive as humanly possible. I think it’s really hard to remember how to do that sometimes — a lot of the time. In fact, it’s all set up against us doing it. So we need practices to keep us in touch with that.”

If “We Live in Time” is ultimately about making peace with the fleeting nature of all that’s precious, and trying to appreciate those moments when they’re happening, Garfield is doing his best to carry on that mentality and be grateful for the time he and Pugh had together.

“Every relationship is sacred. Every deep intimacy is sacred," Garfield says. "And I think it’s such an amazing thing and a brave thing to do to actually address it and go: This is over now. We’re ending this now — much like Tobias and Alma have to do. So I think it all becomes life, art, imitation, whichever way around.”

This image released by A24 shows Florence Pugh in a scene from "We Live In Time." (Peter Mountain/A24 via AP)

Florence Pugh, left, and Andrew Garfield pose for a portrait to promote the film "We Live in Time" on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)

This image released by A24 shows Andrew Garfield, center, and Florence Pugh, right, in a scene from "We Live In Time." (Peter Mountain/A24 via AP)

Andrew Garfield, left, and Florence Pugh pose for a portrait to promote the film "We Live in Time" on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)

This image released by A24 shows Andrew Garfield, left, and Florence Pugh in a scene from "We Live In Time." (Peter Mountain/A24 via AP)

Florence Pugh, left, and Andrew Garfield pose for a portrait to promote the film "We Live in Time" on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. flu infections showed signs of a slight decline last week, but health officials say it is not clear that this severe flu season has peaked.

New government data posted Friday — for flu activity through last week — showed declines in medical office visits due to flu-like illness and in the number of states reporting high flu activity.

However, some measures show this season is already surpassing the flu epidemic of last winter, one of the harshest in recent history. And experts believe there is more suffering ahead.

“This is going to be a long, hard flu season,” New York State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said, in a statement Friday.

One type of flu virus, called A H3N2, historically has caused the most hospitalizations and deaths in older people. So far this season, that is the type most frequently reported. Even more concerning, more than 91% of the H3N2 infections analyzed were a new version — known as the subclade K variant — that differs from the strain in this year’s flu shots.

The last flu season saw the highest overall flu hospitalization rate since the H1N1 flu pandemic 15 years ago. And child flu deaths reached 289, the worst recorded for any U.S. flu season this century — including that H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic of 2009-2010.

So far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses and 180,000 hospitalizations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. It also estimates there have been 7,400 deaths, including the deaths of at least 17 children.

Last week, 44 states reported high flu activity, down slightly from the week before. However, flu deaths and hospitalizations rose.

Determining exactly how flu season is going can be particularly tricky around the holidays. Schools are closed, and many people are traveling. Some people may be less likely to see a doctor, deciding to just suffer at home. Others may be more likely to go.

Also, some seasons see a surge in cases, then a decline, and then a second surge.

For years, federal health officials joined doctors' groups in recommending that everyone 6 months and older get an annual influenza vaccine. The shots may not prevent all symptoms but can prevent many infections from becoming severe, experts say.

But federal health officials on Monday announced they will no longer recommend flu vaccinations for U.S. children, saying it is a decision parents and patients should make in consultation with their doctors.

“I can’t begin to express how concerned we are about the future health of the children in this country, who already have been unnecessarily dying from the flu — a vaccine preventable disease,” said Michele Slafkosky, executive director of an advocacy organization called Families Fighting Flu.

“Now, with added confusion for parents and health care providers about childhood vaccines, I fear that flu seasons to come could be even more deadly for our youngest and most vulnerable," she said in a statement.

Flu is just one of a group of viruses that tend to strike more often in the winter. Hospitalizations from COVID-19 and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, also have been rising in recent weeks — though were not diagnosed nearly as often as flu infections, according to other federal data.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

FILE - Pharmacy manager Aylen Amestoy administers a patient with a seasonal flu vaccine at a CVS Pharmacy in Miami, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)