With their charming genre-bender, Tuner, warming hearts and unlocking imaginations, Leo Woodall and Havana Rose Liu talk finding their chemistry and keeping it casual.

Sometimes, watching two actors share a screen can be painful. Like a fingernail scratching metal, or listening to Coldplay’s A Head Full Of Dreams. Other times, it can be a symphony of synergy. A mellifluous merging of a dulcet duo. In the case of Tuner, the fictional feature-length debut from Oscar-winning documentarian Daniel Roher, a twain of instruments fuse for a glorious duet of love, humour and yearning. Leo Woodall, the deftly dominant yet intricate melody, and Havana Rose Liu, the incandescent, tender counter, are music to the ears. 

It’s Easter Saturday in London’s Corinthia Hotel. 28-year-old American actor and model Havana Rose Liu (Bottoms, Lurker) and 29-year-old Brit Leo Woodall (One Day, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy) are full of seasonal cheer. Both are far friendlier than a journalist grows accustomed to from many stars sat opposite you at these thrilling, if superficial and slightly dog-eats-dog style, junkets. The pair tease each other playfully throughout our short time together, hinting at a bond that feels like siblinghood or that of close friendship. So it’s wonderfully surprising to see how easily they can slip into passionate romance when a camera is stuck in front of them.

The pair stars – alongside one of Hollywood’s most revered names of the last 50 years, Dustin Hoffman – in Tuner. It’s hard to quite put your finger on the debut fictional movie from Daniel Roher, the Canadian visionary who won Best Documentary Feature at 2023’s Oscars for Navalny, a breathtaking portrayal of the now deceased politician and activist Alexei Navalny. If the film were a musical genre, it’d be jazz – loose, free-wheeling, at its best in its moments of imperfection. 

Part heartwarming romantic comedy, part heartbreaking musical drama, part rip-roaring buddy road trip flick, part edgy heist thriller, Roher’s feature is a marvellous vehicle for expression and enjoyment, that boxes cerebral questions of morality into lock picking and piano mastery. It was the surprise film at 2025’s London Film Festival, one few had heard about before, but one that has continued to burgeon in reputation since, up until the crescendo of its theatrical release last Friday, 29th May. “They kept saying that the queues were really long and that that’s really cool. Then right before we went out, the producers and Daniel were like, ‘Oh no, I think they all think that they’re here to see Marty Supreme,’” Woodall recalls, laughing.

The screening was a success, and the film has been met with an overwhelmingly warm reception. It follows Niki White (Woodall), a talented piano tuner – previously a piano player – who suffers from hyperacusis. After his mentor Harry Horowitz (Hoffman) falls ill and money is low, he, in serendipitous circumstances, finds himself pulled into a world of criminal activity, thanks to his unique ability to pick locks given his hearing condition. 

Deeply human and brimming with unexpected turns, Tuner feels sure to be a sleeper hit that’ll only grow in stature as word spreads of its quiet excellence. Roher’s zippy script is constantly moving forward, the sound design from Johnnie Burn – who has worked on several Yorgos Lanthimos films as well as Zone of Interest – is astonishing, and Greg O’Byrant’s editing is sharp and unpredictable. At the film’s centre sits Woodall’s troubled but endearing Niki and the witty perfectionist piano player Ruthie (Liu), who, after meeting when the former is tuning instruments at the latter’s school, strike up a beautiful harmony. 

It’s arguably Woodall’s best role to date – full of heart, emotional toll, physical empathy – while Liu is a revelation, stealing every sliver of screen-time she’s given. Amid an array of chocolate eggs and zealous banter, Woodall and Liu discuss why working with Roher was so refreshing, finding a looseness in the process, striking up an effortless chemistry, and why Tuner is one of the coolest films of the decade.

Watch the trailer…

Read the interview…

How did the both first get involved with the film? 

Woodall: I was sent the script, immediately loved it, which doesn’t always happen, you know, when you have a sort of visceral reaction to it. But I was just so pumped. I wanted to immediately start filming. Then I had a chat with Daniel and we were both clearly very much on the same page about what kind of film we wanted it to be in. After that, a few weeks until we started filming, we then met on Zoom.  

Liu: No, we met originally at a party in New York once, very, very briefly. And actually I was just complimenting [Woodall’s partner Meghann Fahy] Meg and then you were there. I read the script, loved it, and then met with Daniel. I thought he was zany and insane and amazing. He asked for my opinion on a lot of things and how I could be involved in helping [Ruthie] evolve, and that was very exciting, getting into the process with him was very interesting. And I think Leo was a pretty decent actor. He’s okay, I guess. So I felt like there was a lot of meat there. 

Daniel seems like a really interesting guy. Going from being an Oscar-winning documentarian to making this offbeat, idiosyncratic genre mishmash of a film. How was working with him in comparison to other directors you’ve worked with? 

Woodall: No other directors have doodled me. I loved the experience of working with Daniel. He decided that he was a novice in the filmmaking world even though he’s already got an Oscar. He’s just a very, very curious person; he’ll ask you a thousand questions in 10 seconds. He had no fear about his lack of experience in making a fictional movie. He just wanted to make the best movie possible and allowed for people, with even just a couple more movies of experience, to help to shape it. It was incredibly collaborative. 

To be a documentarian, you have to have a looseness in your process, shaping the film as you go. Was there an element of that for Tuner?

Liu: On some level, yes. Scenes would evolve, the improv would be added, we’d rewrite things. There was definitely a sort of shuck and drive feeling happening. Does that work there?  

Woodall: Did you make that up? Shuck and dry? 

Liu: Shuck and dry? A sort of loose… Shuck and dry? I can’t think of another way of describing it. But just basically… Damn it. Maybe it’s not even a phrase. I thought everyone knew that one. Anyway… he was always moving and we would move with him. But also there was a structure to things. He had a way he saw things to be and was open to collaborating within that. But there was a looseness, in general. My favorite story about it is that we showed up on the first day of set and they called a blocking rehearsal, and [Roher] looks up and he says, ‘What’s blocking?’ I remember Leo and I looked at each other and we were like… ‘Okay! Here we go!’ It very much had that energy about it where I think a lot of people can’t start things because they’re afraid of being a beginner, afraid of not knowing things, but he’s so comfortable with that. 

On the other end of the experience spectrum, talk to me about working with Dustin Hoffman?

Woodall: It is one of the great privileges of my short career so far. He’s magic. He was 86 – you’ve gotta let that sink in. You look at him and he smiles and it’s so infectious and so warm. I was definitely nervous going into it with him because the idea of walking away from this project having not had a good experience of it but also not being good at what I do in front of him, was so terrifying. You’re not just relying on the script because he’s gonna blow that out the water, and you’re gonna do these 25-minute takes where it’s sort of like tennis. But it was the most fun I’ve ever had acting, those scenes where it was just me and him in the van. 

Where did you find the chemistry between you two as actors? Is it easier sometimes than others?

Liu: It’s impossible to be friends with Leo. He’s the worst. He’s just super annoying. Super cocky [laughs]. No, I don’t know. I think we just had a lot of shared values going into it and a lot of care for the other’s performance and their capability in making sure the other was okay. And that built a real sense of trust to be able to go wherever we needed to go. 

Woodall: Chemistry is… you can’t really fake it. Sometimes chemistry is also sort of subjective. If you go into it thinking, ‘Well we have to have this sparkly thing called chemistry otherwise this isn’t going to work,’ then you’re just going to kill it and get in your head about it. Really a lot of the time, the work gets done for you by the audience or by the story. Not saying that we didn’t have chemistry, we definitely did and that makes it so much easier to perform. It felt much more like play. 

What I find in Niki is someone who seems worn down by life. Every time he’s trying to do something for good, but it doesn’t always end up that way. Where did you find him within yourself, Leo? How did you relate to him?

Woodall: I think my window into Nicky was the pain of feeling that if your purpose in life, your passion and what you are good at and feel like you’re supposed to do, and the thing that brings you the most joy, is taken away from you. And asking yourself, who the fuck am I? I think that was the reason.

You’ve both done a lot of projects in the last year or two. What was it that this film offered you that the bigger, more mainstream films didn’t? What was the thing that you really took away from this?

Liu: I don’t think a bigger, more mainstream film would have taken the risk of casting me in this role. It was one of the deepest, most complex, and challenging roles I have been given. And I think it took a quote-unquote first-time filmmaker like Daniel to be able to have the blind stupidity to think that I could take that on, having never done anything like it before. So I think having us take the risk on each other in that capacity actually opens up the space to be able to do things that you’ve never had the capacity to do before.

On another level, I had a very emotional connection to Ruthie through having really recently lost my own grandmother. So there was a cathartic element to her and the synchronicity between her and me, trying to figure out how to open myself up again after that much heartbreak. What to do with grief and art and love and the triad between those things made me feel like, ‘Why wouldn’t I play Ruthie?’ She felt really beckoning to me. 

Woodall: It’s also just a fucking cool movie. It’s one of those movies that’s not trying to be anything other than just like…

Liu: Two hours of fucking fun. 

Woodall: It asks some profound questions, and it does go deep in a lot of different ways. But it’s also, at the root, fun. 

Liu: It lets you enjoy it. Which is rare these days. 

Tuner is in UK cinemas now.

Words – Ben Tibbits