Russell Tovey

I feel like it was such a big topic that by looking at that one example, did you kind of understand its power in that way yet?

But I actually felt when I first met you at that time, I mean, and I saw the film, I remember saying to you like how I couldn't believe how many years it had taken to make.

But then when I watched it for a second time, I suddenly realized how actually that time had obviously been so valuable because you could have probably made that much quicker.

I don't know if you'd had a big budget, you could have like paid to hire all of those images and all the footage and everything.

But it wouldn't have been what it is because the reason it's so good is it's like a tapestry, like almost like this epic collage.

And I feel like the time you had meant the research into it was so detailed and so passionate and heartfelt.

And I really felt like everything you included was there deliberately.

How important was that to like have that kind of intense research in terms of like finding all of the visuals you ended up, you know, layering into it?

I think for me, the film Nothing Compares is such a great distillation of why being an artist matters and why we need artists in a society and how we have to nurture them and take care of them and obviously allow them to rebel because they obviously need to rebel in order to exist, I guess.

But there's something so perfect about this portrait of an artist.

And that's why I really wanted to have this conversation on Talk Art because I feel like for anyone that hasn't seen Nothing Compares,

You have to see it because it's not a music documentary.

It's about an artist.

And I really, really believe that.

Was that something that mattered to you, like in the making of it?

I was also really sort of in love of how she would reference Irish culture.

I met her once years and years ago when she was making a record with Dave Stewart from Eurythmics.

I loved that record.

She did a song called Jealous, which is still to this day one of my favourite records of all time.

Yeah.