Modern movies love a twist on the end credits – and while Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho doesn’t include any secret post-credits scenes, the roll call of everyone involved in the film does still manage to play with the format a little.
You see, the credits are interspersed with almost silent shots of Soho, curiously devoid of people in contrast to the thriving versions shown in both the 1960s and present-day timelines of the film. Is it a comment on the commercialisation of the iconic district, the loss of glamour in the decades since its heyday? Or just a moment of breathing room after the main action of the movie?
Well, it’s neither – because Wright has now revealed that the shots were filmed during the last lockdown of the coronavirus pandemic, and were included after the director was struck by the eerie, empty streets.
“Those shots, right at the very end of the movie, interspersed with the credits, were shot during the pandemic,” Wright told RadioTimes.com.
“I live just north of Soho. It’s funny; people always kind of think I’ve left and gone to Hollywood. But I’ve edited every movie that I’ve ever done in Soho, including Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim. So I’ve spent a lot of time here writing, as far back as Spaced, through Shaun of the Dead.
“But more recently, in the last five years, I’ve started living close to here. And then during the pandemic, when London was really on lockdown, a couple of times I walked into Soho at night and was sort of astonished to find it completely deserted, and a place that is normally the only area of London that is truly 24/7 – to see it empty, without a single car or pedestrian on the street, was such a kind of ethereal experience, that I called my producers and said, ‘We have to shoot empty Soho.’
Accordingly, Wright and his team did just that, despite having finished the main bulk of the film some time before (shooting wrapped in August 2019).
!["Edgar]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2021/10/edgar-wright-8f1510a.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413" "\"Last")
“We went out one night. I think it was July 2020, just before the restaurants opened again, and shot for a night in deserted Soho,” Wright said.
“And that’s a very strange experience, to stand in Piccadilly Circus, an area so busy that people say, ‘It’s like Piccadilly Circus here’ – without a single person or car on the street. It was very humbling.”
Of course, soon after Wright and company added these extra shots Soho began to open up again, and today it’s almost as bustling as it ever was. But Wright still wanted to include the footage, considering it an “epilogue” to the main action of the film.
“In a weird way, it becomes a kind of strange epilogue for the movie. ‘And here it is now,’” Wright said.
“I mean, luckily, it has come back to, you know, close to what it was. But there was a point where a completely deserted Soho was quite a sad sight.”
He added: “I guess when I was making the movie, and I intended for it to recreate a ‘60s time capsule with the period scenes, I didn’t realise I was also creating a 2019 time capsule at the same time.”
Hopefully, unlike the horrors of Last Night in Soho’s Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), that lockdown memory will remain firmly in the past.
Last Night in Soho is in UK cinemas now. For more, check out our Movies page or our full TV Guide.