August focuses on the dot.com industry in 2001, right before the events of September 11th. With start-up companies folding left and right, two brothers (played by Josh Hartnett and Adam Scott) try to keep their company, Landshark, afloat during those volatile dot.com times. Hartnett plays the slick salesman type of guy, full of big promises and ready to take on the world. Scott's more subdued, the brains of the operation who's much more grounded.

Naomie Harris co-stars as Hartnett's former girlfriend Sarrah, a beautiful, intelligent woman who's willing to give him one more chance at making a go at their relationship.
Although August is an interesting take on the bursting of the dot.com bubble, the relationships between Hartnett and Scott and between Hartnett and Harris are at the heart of the story. And Harris (28 Days Later, Pirates of the Caribbean) credits August screenwriter Howard A Rodman and director Austin Chick with coming up with a new way of presenting a couple with relationship problems. "Normally a romance story is about two people, you know, meeting for the first time and coming together and will it work? I really like the angle, the new angle on a relationship this movie has, which is it's about two people who have been there, done that, actually know each other inside out, love each other, know each other's faults, and are still trying to make it work," explained Harris. "I think that's an interesting take on it, an interesting way of presenting a relationship on screen."

Interview with Naomie Harris

We don't really get to learn that much about Sarrah except for what we know of her through her relationship with Josh Hartnett's character. How much of a backstory did you create for her?
"I feel like you have to create a huge amount, otherwise you're just kind of just working in a vacuum and it's very difficult. You've got to know the character really inside out, so I spend a lot of time just sitting alone in a room just creating and imagining stories and finding out for myself who the character is. So yes, it's very important."

When you're creating backstories for your characters, do you usually ask for input from the director? Do you ask the writer or writers what their intentions were?
"Yes, totally, totally. Definitely. But sometimes the director can come up with, or the writers as well, can come up with details in the character that you think, 'Hmm, that doesn't quite fit with my picture,' and you have to kind of let it go because it doesn't really matter, it's what works for you that's most important."

I read that Josh Hartnett actually came up with the idea of casting you in the role or Sarrah.
"Yeah, that's right. Very sweet of him. Yeah, they asked him who he wanted and he said me, so yeah, it was great."

Do you two have a history of working together?
"No, not at all, actually. And the weird thing was that I didn't even realize that we were represented by the same agent. Neither of us knew that. So he said to his agent you know, 'Can you find the details for Naomie Harris?' And then she was like, 'I represent her.'"

That's just a little surreal.
"I know, it was."

You and Josh had to establish a 'we've got a past together' vibe that the audience would believe. Did spend time together, prior to shooting, working on capturing that feeling?
"Yeah, we did. I mean we did that with Austin [Chick], not just the two of us together. It was a threesome and Austin helped us, kind of guided us through the whole process. Yeah, we spent a lot of time doing that."

Is that difficult when you have to sell that to an audience in a short period of time?
"I think it's difficult if your fellow actor isn't willing to go on that journey with you. But because Josh is one of the most amazing actors that I've worked with in terms of being so generous and so giving, it was a really easy process actually. He was just willing to do whatever it took in order to make me feel comfortable and also to make our story believable."

Was there a long rehearsal process?
"I'm trying to remember now, it was such a long time ago. I think it was about a week. I think I would be right in saying it was a week. For some films, it's quite long actually and it was just the two of us. We didn't do it with anyone else so that's quite a long period of time."

I think it's very interesting that Sarrah knows Josh's character's a commitmentphobe and that he has real relationship problems, yet she lets him back into her life. How did you justify that?
"That's so many women! That's all of us, isn't it? The thing is so much time has passed between the time that they see each other again that she thinks that maybe this guy has changed. She wants to give everybody...we all want to give everybody a chance and think that change is possible, especially if you're in love with them as well. You want to believe that anything is possible, that they can change. So that's why she opts to go back into it. But it's better to go into that and explore the avenue and discover and get burned and hurt and go, 'Okay, this isn't for me,' than always spending the rest of your life wondering what if."

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