Eksklusivt Interview med Andy Serkis

Andy-Serkis

An eksklusiv interview with Andy Serkis.

Q:What was it like working with Matt Reeves as a director?

A: I’m just so thrilled for Matt. He is such a brilliant director. He really is up there, one of the best for me. He is so focussed on what is important in the film. It would be so easy to become distracted by thinking you are making a big summer blockbuster and that you have got to have lots of spectacle, whereas he is so much about the drama and the emotional truth and what is going to resonate with an audience. I found it impressive because you really are under pressure with these big productions, every day, especially in the locations that we were in. But he always stopped to rehearse no matter what. It was like shooting an independent movie.

Q: Do you feel that you are finally getting the recognition you deserve as an actor?

A: I think there is an understanding of performance capture that has reached a level that we haven’t reached before and especially because there are other actors involved. Prior to this, because it just has been predominantly high profile roles that I have played, people have pointed to me as a go-to guy for performance capture but now it’s starting to be seen as just a tool for all actors to use. There are great performances in this film. Toby Kebbell’s performance is remarkable and Karin Konoval, who plays Maurice the orangutan, her performance is incredible. There are some really good ape characterizations in this, particularly Toby’s journey. It is such a brilliant journey for Koba. He is such a great character.

Q: How instrumental were you in directing the performance of the other actors?

A: We have a guy who works with us called Terry Notary, who also plays the character of Rocket, and he is a performance coach. He taught the other actors to move as a chimp or a gorilla or as an orangutan. I was able to offer advice to some of the younger actors who believe that performance capture is more about demonstrating a character because you are ultimately not going to be on screen. Therefore, they think you have to demonstrate the character — which is actually the opposite of what it should be. You have to be the character. You can’t mime the character or demonstrate the character. It is about a total immersion, psychologically and emotionally, and not being afraid of being still and not being afraid of letting the reality of the situation happen for you rather than always feeling you have to be doing something or acting something.

Q: Has the misunderstanding around performance capture proved frustrating for you?

A: It has. Going back as far as Gollum people are still saying to me, ‘You did the voice of Gollum, right?’ And it is like, ‘No. I didn’t do the voice of Gollum. I played Gollum.’ Or people think I did the voice of Captain Haddock or I did the voice of Caesar. It is still very hard for certain people even within the film industry; there is still a lack of understanding. On certain projects there is an old-fashioned concept of performance capture somehow being reference for something that is going to happen later on! But you are not providing reference and you are not shooting reference. You are shooting performance and that is what you get on the day. If you don’t get that performance you don’t have a performance. Whatever the animators do afterwards — and what they do is extraordinary — they are not responsible for the authorship of the role and that is the key difference.

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Q: Is playing Caesar very different from, say, King Kong?

A: Caesar is a very interesting character. I have had such an amazing time working on him in both films because it differs from when I played King Kong. Peter Jackson and I agreed that King Kong was an old silverback gorilla, so I went and studied them for months in zoos and then I went to Rwanda and studied them in the wild. This was very different. Yes, Caesar is a chimpanzee so I had to do a certain amount of studying of a chimpanzee, but he is also a chimpanzee who has been on the receiving end of a drug that has accelerated his evolution and so it is a very different thing. I always approach Caesar as a human within an ape’s skin.

Q: He believes himself to be akin to a human?

A: Yes. He is brought up by a human father and apes do reflect human behaviour if they are around humans. It is social conditioning so the whole rhythm of being with Caesar is more human but also he’s evolving at a rapid rate, his intelligence, his body, he’s racing through this evolution, this Darwinian growth spurt, if you like. Again, one of the things that people say to me all of the time is, ‘Do you have to learn monkey movements?’ but it is not like that. Going to study apes is like saying I am going to study humans. There are lots of different types of humans. You meet them on a good day and they are nice people. You meet them on a bad day and they are not nice. It is the same with apes. They are personalities and they have good and bad days and moods and sometimes they are aggressive and sometimes they are capable of great love.

Q: Was the dialogue the most challenging aspect of the role?

A: The most challenging thing really, from the word go, was that I knew that Caesar later on in the story was going to be talking and using human dialogue in a reflective and philosophical way. To get to that point realistically and have the audience believe — that was the biggest challenge, because in the early part of the story it is communication through looks, gestures, through signing and through prototype language. Language is evolving but later on as his human side is awoken and as he connects more with the Malcolm character, and as that linguistic side of him is opened up, he begins to talk more and my big worry was whether it is plausible that he can talk that much. We have another film to go. I don’t know how they will be speaking in the next one!

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Q: Is shooting Planet of the Apes a slightly schizophrenic experience, in that you’re an ape on the set and then a human being when talking with the director?

A: We did spend a lot of time in character, all of the apes. Before the camera rolled every single day there was a sense of the apes congregating around on the ape community set and before shooting we would make ape noises and we would go into it for a while. We did stay in character for long periods of time. By the end of the day you were happy to get out of it. I don’t think I went home as Caesar too many times, though!

Q: Were there many funny moments that threw you off track?

A: There were funny moments. The funniest was where we were all getting ready to do this really intense scene with the apes and everyone was building up to it and Matt called, ‘Action,’ and then someone had a mobile phone that fell out of their motion capture suit. Right in the middle of a scene an iPhone rolled off onto the floor and then suddenly when you step back for a second and look at each other it is ‘Oh my God, what are we doing here?’

Q: Did you shoot many scenes that were removed from the movie but which might appear on the DVD or Blu-ray extras?

A: Yes, that happens. You live with it as an actor because it is what happens in film. You do a great scene and you hope it is going to be in the movie and then sometimes it is not. Ultimately, you just have to let it go because it is not an actor’s medium. It is the director’s medium and they are shaping the story so one accepts that.

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Q: You seem to be a gentle man but when someone comes up to you and says that you are the voice of Gollum and the voice of Caesar, do you want to punch them?

A: Hah! No. I want to spend a long time explaining the performance capture process! There are even actors who refuse to engage with it or understand it or believe in it because they have never done it. But once you have done it everything changes. I have known actors who have done it and they have gone, ‘Oh, my God, it is incredible. I have never felt so freed up as an actor,’ and I can’t understand why there is such resistance to it. The younger generation of actors have grown up with it over the last 15 years. For the new generation of actors, that’s just what you do; it is part of the actor’s toolkit. But people in the street, on the whole, have watched more behind-the-scenes and DVD extras and seen more of the process than people in the industry. They understand it better in many ways.

Q: Given the nature of performance capture, can you walk down the street without being recognised?

A: I am recognized more in America than in the UK because Gollum was absorbed into the public consciousness in a big way in the States and there was so much press and all the junkets, so bizarrely I am better known in the States. People here know me for other things that I have done, like my live-action roles, and there are the Tolkeinista who follow you around!

Q: You are going to direct a version of The Jungle Book, right?

A: Yes. I am working on it now. It is not a huge jump for me because I have spent the last few years being involved in this technology and the building of my studio [The Imaginarium]. It was all with a regard to directing. I have directed theatre and I have directed video game cinematics and before I became an actor I studied visual arts so I was a painter and designer. I have always had a visual sensibility, I suppose. And then Peter Jackson asked me to direct the second unit on The Hobbit so that was about 200 days of shooting at the top end, on the biggest film production ever. And so I feel absolutely ready for it.