Timothy Spall breaks down his emotional karaoke scene in Goodbye June – and why it was so important

Timothy Spall has accomplished all sorts of incredible feats in his acting career, but in his latest film Goodbye June he faced a new challenge: performing an emotional karaoke scene.

The tear-jerking moment comes relatively late in the family drama, with Spall's character Bernie – who had previously seemed in denial about the impending death of his wife June (Helen Mirren) – taking to the stage and devoting a song to her, unaware that his son Connor (Johnny Flynn) is watching.

"Well I mean, they can go wrong," Spall told RadioTimes.com when asked about doing the scene. "But it's a way of this character getting in touch with everything that he's managed to avoid."

He added: "And he's doing it not for anybody, particularly. For her [June], but not knowing anybody's watching. His son so happens to watch it. And this is a moment of a huge connection, where his son realises that he's felt it all the time."

His co-star Toni Collette added that the moment represented a "final kind of acceptance" for Bernie and Connor, with Spall saying of the latter: "He understands his Dad's been in massive pain."

The film is the directorial debut of Kate Winslet and mostly takes place inside the hospital where June is spending her final days in the run-up to Christmas, surrounded by her sometimes warring family who she is desperate to bring back together before she passes.

Winslet – who also has a key role in the film herself – has assembled an impressive cast, and each of the stars seemed very impressed by the A-list actor's transition behind the camera.

Andrea Riseborough described her as a "natural, knowledgeable" director, and continued: "She's had 30 plus years as a very brilliant person absorbing everything that happens in the industry.

"Often we work with people who've made one or two films as directors. Kate's been in so many films, she knows exactly the way every last cog works in the machine that we have as an industry."

Colette added: "You realise [most] directors actually don't get to work with other directors. As an actor, you have such a vast experience of diverse, different directors, so you can really kind of pick and choose what you might use in the future."

She further explained how Winslet had been an "incredible listener" on set and that she had been "enamoured" by watching her talk to the other actors, while Spall noted that she was a "great director" who has "paid attention to everything around her" during her career.

All three stars also said they hoped there was a lot more to come from Winslet behind the camera, with Riseborough joking that she'd be knocking at her door asking if there was a role for her in any future directorial projects.

For her part, it sounds like Winslet greatly enjoyed her first experience of directing, and she explained that the different relationships she developed which each of her actors was one of the highlights of the process.

"Everyone needed something really, very different from me, just depending on how they work," she said. "And that's one of the things actually about directing this film and doing it for the first time that I loved the most of all. Just like, literally, I had to change the shape of my voice with one actor compared to how I could lift my volume with another.

"I mean, honestly, it was quite amazing to learn that. And of course it was going to be like that, but I don't know... I just really took my breath away!"

Goodbye June is now streaming on Netflix.

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