Andrew Garfield on The Uprising, AI, grief and school dinners in Radio Times and Digital Spy

Centre · 1Andrew Garfield, 43, plays a fictitious farmer in The Uprising, a film set during the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, in which thousands of English serfs marched on London demanding their freedom. 1 Centre · 2The film opens in UK cinemas on 9 October, and Garfield gave interviews to Radio Times and Digital Spy ahead of its release. 2 1 Centre · 1Garfield told Radio Times that the film humanised the suffering of people asking for basic human rights and dignity, and that he had learned about the revolt at school only from the perspective of the winners. 1

Centre · 1He called the film a mirror of the present, about a small group of oligarchs influencing the king and hoarding wealth, and said he has hope in good people getting together to create a new world even though resistance to that is strong and more covert than ever. 1 Centre · 1Digital Spy quoted him saying that, though the film is set in 1381, it feels like a "long-distance mirror to our near tomorrow", that people are "hoarding power", and that he feels "very passionate" about the story. 2 Centre · 1Asked about the film's US marketing as the "rise of Robin Hood", Garfield said that was a question for a marketing person, while saying he loved the outlaw archetype that emerged in the period as a direct response to injustice. 1

Centre · 1Garfield will also soon play OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman in Artificial, a film about the dangers of AI; he said he felt "healthily afraid" of AI, that it is a civic duty to interrogate who is shaping the technology, and that he felt nervous playing someone still living. 1 Centre · 1On Spider-Man, which he played in 2012, 2014 and 2021, he said he is proud of the association, and that his later work has trended towards smaller films because he wanted to disappear into the work as much as possible. 1 Centre · 1Radio Times also asked about the death of his mother, Lynn, in 2019: Garfield said he felt compelled to talk publicly about his grief because people heal by sharing it, and that everything in his life has shifted since, with the message he receives from her being to be exactly who you are. 1

Centre · 1Separately, on the podcast Dish from Waitrose, hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett, Garfield described his primary school dinners as "brutal", saying he vomited on a teacher who force-fed him and still cannot eat corn off the cob. 2 Centre · 1On the same podcast he said he has a "weird dream" of opening a burger restaurant, because he wants more contact with life and with people. 2