--- title: Watch Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston Sing a Duet description: Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston interview each other in TIME's studios about playing music icons in "Born to Be Blue" and "I Saw the Light." canonical: https://time.com/4273859/ethan-hawke-tom-hiddleston-music-biopics/ author: Eliza Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-31T11:00:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:49:55.589Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Watch Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston Share in an Impromptu Duet og:description: Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston interview each other in TIME's studios about playing music icons in "Born to Be Blue" and "I Saw the Light." og:url: https://time.com/4273859/ethan-hawke-tom-hiddleston-music-biopics/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3928d8d261aa2b24/69888cc50b72e36d246e8b5a/tom-ethan-chat-final-clean-00_04_14_19-still005.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1920 og:image:height: 1080 og:image:alt: Tom Hiddleston and Ethan Hawke video still og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Watch Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston Share in an Impromptu Duet twitter:description: Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston interview each other in TIME's studios about playing music icons in "Born to Be Blue" and "I Saw the Light." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3928d8d261aa2b24/69888cc50b72e36d246e8b5a/tom-ethan-chat-final-clean-00_04_14_19-still005.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Watch Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston Nail an Impromptu Duet > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston Bond Over Playing Music Legends [Watch (HLS stream): Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston Bond Over Playing Music Legends](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ibXKP971.m3u8) (5:02)  _Published 2016-03-29. Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston get to know each other as they discuss their roles playing music legends in Born to Be Blue and I Saw the Light._ by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/) and [Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) Mar 31, 2016 11:00 AM UTC Ethan Hawke and Tom Hiddleston get to know each other as they discuss their roles playing music legends in Born to Be Blue and I Saw the Light. by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/) and [Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) Mar 31, 2016 11:00 AM UTC In _Born to Be Blue_, Ethan Hawke plays singer and trumpet player Chet Baker, known to many as the “James Dean of Jazz.” In [_I Saw the Light_](http://time.com/4030917/tom-hiddleston-hank-williams-saw-the-light/), another musically-oriented [biographical drama](http://time.com/4263607/review-born-to-be-blue-i-saw-the-light-miles-ahead/) out now, Tom Hiddleston plays country music icon Hank Williams. But Hawke thinks perhaps the actors should have swapped places. Whereas he plays the guitar and grew up with a father who collected the sheet music of Hank Williams songs, Hiddleston plays the trumpet and grew up with a mother who cooked to the sounds of Chet Baker. “I really should have been cast in your part,” Hawke told Hiddleston, “and you should have been cast in mine.” Put the two men in a room and you’re all but guaranteed to get a duet. Within moments of meeting in TIME’s studios, the pair launched into a spiritual rendition of the song from which Hiddleston’s film takes its name, then seamlessly segued into a huskily Baker-esque performance of “My Funny Valentine.” But it was in their discussion of the preparation behind those tunes that the actors found the most similar notes. Though their movies diverge in form—the unconventional _Blue_ takes liberties with the facts of Baker’s life whereas _Light_ hews closer to the traditional biopic formula—they faced similar challenges in learning to sing and play like the legends they portray. “When you’re playing a cop, you don’t really have to arrest somebody, you don’t really have to shoot somebody,” says Hawke. “But when you play a musician, you have to play.” And it’s not sufficient to simply open your mouth and sing, says Hiddleston. “You have to transmit the power of the song of an icon.” It’s a tall order, and the pressure is not dissimilar, says Hawke, to that which accompanies the performance of a Shakespearean soliloquy. “People come see _Macbeth_, they have an expectation that they’re going to be blown away. So if you’re anything short of that then you stink. And if I’m going to go see Hank Williams play, you better blow me away,” he joked—though he repeatedly emphasized that Hiddleston did just that. The actors both felt that another year (or ten) would have helped them in their parallel quests to scratch the surface of the musical abilities of the musicians they play. But verisimilitude only goes so far. “What you don’t want to do is imitate,” says Hawke. “You want to find, how the hell do I relate to this person? If you get into imitation then you’re not really listening.” Hiddleston agrees. “It becomes an act of interpretation. You’re always interpreting other people’s truth.” ## Transcript [00:01] Hey. Well, here we go. [00:05] Here we are. [ MUSIC ] [00:09] [ LAUGH ] You know [00:15] who's super. [ MUSIC ] [ SINGING ] We're [00:23] using all our best bits. [ LAUGH ] Yeah, yeah. We'll [00:25] never be this good. In fact, they're idiots not to be [00:28] rolling when we walk in. Yeah, yeah. [ MUSIC ] Maybe [00:28] we haven't been introduced. My name's Chet Baker. [00:28] I'm one of the greatest. [00:39] Trumpet players in my [00:44] generation. I first heard about Chet Baker and was [00:47] approached to play him by Richard Linklater and I was [00:49] gonna do the young Chet back when I was 28, 29, I [00:51] was gonna play the 25- year- old Chet in the birth of [00:54] the bebop area. But he was pretty popular in London. [00:56] Yeah, absolutely. I remember when I was a kid, my [00:56] mom had a Had a Jet Baker CD she [01:00] always used to put it on while she was cooking. I know [01:04] why you and Audrey don't get along. One of you [01:11] is afraid the other's gonna beat her to my packet when [01:13] I get drunk. That's a [01:17] hurtful thing to say, son. When you listen to the Hank [01:19] Williams, really a lot of those songs for the first time [01:22] getting ready for the-- Yeah, really Hey Good Looking. [01:24] A new Lovesick Blues. The big discovery for me, when I [01:27] saw the listing to it, was realizing how he essentially [01:30] invented rock and roll. Mm- hm. And so the melody of [01:33] Move It On Over is exactly the same melody of Rock [01:37] Around the Clock. You guys fit Rock Around the Clock [01:39] inside Move [01:46] It On Over. [ MUSIC ] Did [01:52] you learn the guitar for the movie or did you already [01:54] play? I was one of those students who had a I had a [01:56] guitar, and, [ UNKNOWN ] [ CROSSTALK ] But you [01:58] kicked it up a notch. Yeah. You played really well. You [02:01] did, too. Do you play the trumpet? No, I really should [02:04] have been cast in your part. [ LAUGH ] And you should [02:05] have been cast in mine, because you play the trumpet. [02:08] After my third or fourth trumpet lesson, I called the [02:10] director up, and I said, can we push a year? Like, [02:15] please, I promise I'm not dropping out. I know that [02:17] fear. But if I had a year, and my trumpet teacher said [02:20] It would need to be eight years I [02:24] think and you still wouldn't be able to play like Chet [02:27] Baker. Yeah, Yeah, I did made exactly the same call. I [02:30] started learning and I was like, okay I need more time. [02:32] [ LAUGH ] I haven't got enough time to get there. I was [02:35] just absolute panic. As I learn My Funny Valentine and I [02:39] could start to play it didn't sound good still, but then I [02:42] kind of discovered well if I crank the playback up really [02:44] high Right. I could play along with it and actually start [02:47] to have fun. Yeah. It's so. Yeah, challenging. And it's a [02:51] weird obstacle to put on top of giving a performance. [02:54] Yeah, you can't just sing you have to transmit the [02:57] power of the song of an icon you know. [ MUSIC ] [03:03] We know there is The couple [03:07] hardest things I've ever had to do in my life as an [03:09] actor. One is to sing My Funny Valentine, to have some [03:11] cameras rolling and say, now Ethan is going to sing My [03:13] Funny Valentine like Chet Baker. Go. I thought the [03:16] same thing. We did Lovesick Blues. Lovesick Blues! [03:18] Yeah. That's a hard song to play and you killed that. [03:20] Well it's like, there's a moment when you wake up that [03:23] morning and you put yourself together and brushing [03:25] your teeth. You're going, my day job is to go out And [03:28] sing Lovesick Blues by Hank Williams, it's not a small [03:29] day. [ MUSIC ] When you are sad and lonely, and have [03:29] no place to go. Come to see me, baby [ MUSIC ] [03:43] You know what you did that I really liked, is that you [03:47] don't try very hard. A lot of times, when people- [03:49] Believe me, I did. By that I mean a lot of Americans, [03:53] I think, might have been burdened by a [03:57] sense of the South That they probably would have [04:01] overdone it. Right. You didn't try to do everything, and [04:06] I really enjoyed that about it. Thank you, man, [04:09] appreciate it. It was easy. It's funny when it's foreign [04:12] territory. When I went down to Nashville, I was [04:15] charmed by certain things that were very exotic to me, [04:18] cuz it wasn't second nature. Like? The way people [04:20] talked, the way Hank used to say This one's bought us [04:24] quite a few beans and biscuits. The way that they [04:27] would do that radio patter, good morning ladies and [04:31] gentlemen. You know. This is Hank Williams and the [04:33] different cowboys, we're awful sorry we're getting a [04:35] delayed jump. [ LAUGH ] If the good Lord's willing and [04:38] the creek don't rise, I'll be there soon. Lola, put the [04:40] coffee pot on. Put the biscuits in the oven. I'll be there [04:44] quickly if not quicker. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] I love all [04:48] that stuff. Yeah. The musicality of it. You got it just [04:50] right. That was cool man. Yeah, fun. Really fun. Really [04:52] fun. Yeah. 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