Steve Buscemi on Shooting ‘The Death of Stalin’ During Brexit and the 2016 Election: ‘People Were Crying on My Shoulder’

You might not expect a movie about the immediate aftermath of Joseph Stalin’s death to feel especially timely in 2018, but, well, it’s 2018. Steve Buscemi discussed Armando Iannucci’s political satire with IndieWire’s Eric Kohn last night, revealing that one incident that occurred during filming — the Brexit vote — made him realize that our own election might not go as expected.

“We were shooting in London the day of the Brexit vote,” Buscemi said after a screening of “The Death of Stalin.” “I remember waking up that morning — I wasn’t working that day — and the newspaper said, you know, they had the percentage of what the vote was gonna be, and it looked like Remain was gonna be the outcome. I went to breakfast, and when I got back to the hotel, the doorman was kind of ashen. He was the one who told me. And that night I was out to dinner, and literally people were crying on my shoulder. These Londoners could not believe what had happened. That was the first inkling I got that I went, ‘Oh, could something this surprising happen with our election?'”

Spoiler alert: It did.

“I still didn’t want to believe it. I still didn’t believe it, but look what happened.” So say we all, Steve Buscemi. So say we all.