Eddie Redmayne has spoken about the experience of working with Sacha Baron Cohen on the new film The Trial Of The Chicago 7.

The new Netflix drama, out today (October 16), concerns the real-life trial against a group of anti-Vietnam War protesters who incited violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

• Read more: The Trial Of The Chicago 7 review: a thrilling piece of angry social history

Speaking to NME in a new interview, which you can watch in full above, Redmayne spoke of his previous experience of working with Cohen on Les Miserables, and how that impacted their work together on the new Netflix film.

“I adore him,” Redmayne told NME. “He has this extraordinary spirit and rigorous intelligence, but so much of his work is based on improvising, that he has this imagination, and endless, endless ideas.

“What was different for him on this film was [director] Aaron [Sorkin] is very specific about his words, and so I think he is used to being given room to improvise. There was a certain amount of that on this film, which was kind of ingenious, but also there were so many elements of Abbie Hoffman’s character that were aligned with who Sacha is.”

He added: “I always describe it slightly pretentiously as that Shakespearean ‘fool’ element, where you have the fool who is very comedic and wonderful, but is actually busy letting all the protagonists fall on their own swords. And society has those people: Sacha is one of the greats, and I feel like Abbie was one of the greats in some ways. It was wonderful to get to watch that play out.

Reviewing The Trial Of The Chicago 7, NME wrote: “Unfolding at a surprisingly breakneck pace for a film seated almost entirely in a courtroom, The Trial Of The Chicago 7 is all of Sorkin’s strengths and weaknesses in one well-polished punch.

“Full of grown-up grandstanding and exhilarating back-and-forth dialogue, no one is better at un-muddying the swamp of American politics or at making densely packed drama sound quite as effortless and exciting.”

Yesterday (October 15), NME shared ‘Blood On The Streets’, an exclusive track from The Trial Of The Chicago 7, written by Daniel Pemberton.