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The Good Liar, which is airing on HBO tonight at 8 p.m. ET, is Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen‘s first film together. I repeat: The Good Liar—aka the 2019 crime thriller from director Bill Condon that got mediocre reviews from critics—is Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen’s first movie together. Does that sound right to you? Because it sounds positively incorrect to me.
Surely this must be some kind of a mistake. Both knighted as Dame and Sir respectively, Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen are two of England’s most beloved, most respected actors. They’re contemporaries—a mere 7 years apart in age—with a love for, forgive me, stuffy prestige British dramas. They’re both members of the Royal Shakespeare Company. They’ve both indulged in their fair share of blockbuster paydays, including the Lord of the Rings and X-Men franchise for McKellen, and the Fast and the Furious franchise for Mirren. Yet, somehow, it took until the big year of 2019 to get these two legends on screen together? What gives?!
Are we sure that Mirren wasn’t in 1995’s Richard III? Or that McKellen wasn’t in 1979’s Caligula? Surely one or both of them showed up in a Harry Potter film? Or had a one-scene cameo in a Richard Curtis film? Did they not play long-suffering lovers in a period piece about the royal family circa 1800 together? Or voice the snooty British characters in a cash-grab animated film for kids? I swear to god they sang a duet in Cats! This just doesn’t seem right at all!
But, dear reader, it’s true. Despite the fact that the actors have appeared together at many award shows and TV specials over the years, The Good Liar is Mirren and McKellen’s first film together. Directed by Bill Condon (Beauty and the Beast, The Fifth Estate, Dreamgirls) McKellen stars as an expert con artist, while Mirren plays the wealthy widow whose fortune he plans to steal. While critics praised Mirren and McKellen for their performances (duh!) the film holds only a 63 percent on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with many critics pointing to an unsatisfying ending.
Too bad. After their long careers of a combined 100+ titles, you’d hope the first on-screen collab between these two British powerhouses would make a bigger splash. I guess they’ll just have to keep working together, to make up for lost time. (Are we sure they weren’t both in The Tempest?)
