Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are together again. But this time, it’s Jones who’s taken on the physical transformation.

It might not be visible to the uninformed eye at first, like Redmayne’s was for their first film together, The Theory of Everything, but Jones had to take on grueling training and perform insane stunts for her role in The Aeronauts. Jones plays a 19th century hot air balloon pilot named Amelia Wren who won’t let anything hold her down—literally and figuratively.

The movie blends fact and fiction in a captivating way. Redmayne plays real-life meteorologist and astronomer James Glaisher and Jones plays the fictional, fearless and famous daredevil, a crowd-pleasing and stronger-than-she-looks hot air balloon pilot. The film revolves around the pair’s attempt to ascend higher than any humans in history. For Jones, it’s about the flight. For Glaisher, it’s about revolutionizing meteorology. It is an amalgamation of real events, with a fictional character at its helm.

“It’s a strong film based on historical facts with fiction involved,” Redmayne explained. “Felicity’s character is based on a woman named Sophie Blanchard who was basically Napoleon’s aeronaut and her husband died—like Wren’s did—and she kept ballooning and became this huge superstar, like Wren,” he said.

Aspects of their flight were very real, like seeing butterflies and hearing noises from London’s streets thousands of meters above the ground, but they were pieces from many different flights, “not from the Glaisher flight,” Redmayne explained. “All of that was true, it’s all from this book called Falling Upwards. It’s almost the greatest hits of 19th century ballooning.” Continue reading  »