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A ROUNDTABLE INTERVIEW WITH THE CAST AND CREW OF THE LORD OF THE
RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
On Wednesday, Dec. 5th, Jeffrey Overstreet
joined several other privileged film critics, including Steven D.
Greydanus (Decent Films), Andrew Coffin (World), Steve Beard
(Thunderstruck), Jeremy Landes (Christian Spotlight), and Michael Elliott
(Movie Parables) to talk with members of the
cast and crew for the year's most ambitious, exhausting, and gloriously
realized film. Over the course of this week, Looking Closer will be
adding excerpts of those interviews here. Keep checking back!
Andy Serkis -
Gollum
WARNING:
THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. DO NOT READ IT IF YOU WANT TO
GUARD YOUR IGNORANCE ABOUT PLOT POINTS IN THE FILM.
Press:
It was great to finally see your face in one of the Lord of the Rings
films. What was that like for you?
Serkis:
[For me...]
to see when Smeagol becomes Gollum, for me
that was the real reward.
Very cleverly Peter
Jackson decided to keep that back, because it was really intended to be
included in The Two Towers. But he decided to let Gollum live as
a character in the public consciousness for a year and then
... keep this as a sort of psychological
thriller. Because at the end of The Two Towers we think we know
who Gollum/Smeagol is. We know that Gollum is the vengeful, dark part of
his personality and Smeagol is the innocent one that’s re-emerged.
But then we’re taken
on this other sort of journey in The Return of the King where
Smeagol becomes slightly more manipulative and that child becomes, as
children can be, equally manipulative.
For me, it was
really nice to complete the journey, and for the audience to experience
that transformation. I think it gives power to what the Ring actually
means, in how it finds him. We play that opening sequence—I don’t know
if people picked up on this—in the sense that Smeagol and Deagol get the
Ring and fight, it’s not a clear cut case of Smeagol strangling his
cousin. There’s a fight involved. It’s like two children on a playground
who find a ticket to the World Cup and they fight, they’re so engrossed
in this powerful thing. It just becomes the center of this fight, and in
the end it gets out of control and they can’t police their desire for
this thing. And Smeagol ends up killing another child.
Press:
You said [in a previous interview regarding Gollum] that “There but for
the grace of God go I.” Can you expand on that?
Serkis:
Gandalf [talks with] Frodo in the Mines of Moria. Frodo says, “Bilbo
should have killed Gollum when he had the chance.” And Gandalf says, “Be
careful how you deal out judgment. Many that live deserve death and some
that die deserve life. Be careful how you deal out judgment—Gollum has a
part to play in this journey.”
For me, it’s very
easy to judge a character like Gollum. It would have been very easy to
play him as a cut-and-dried villain. But I think the power of the Ring
is what is essential to the drama of the character in the films and in
the book. And it’s very much about how the individual deals with that
responsibility and that drug—I played him as an addict, really.
I think the reason
that there’s been a lot of connection to Gollum over the past year is
because people have connected to him and they’ve not judged him
immediately. They have said, “There but for the grace of God go I. I
wonder how I would have dealt with the responsibility if I had had this
powerful drug thrust upon me or given to me. Would I have the moral
stature to deal with it? I don’t think most people would have had the
stature to deal with it. I think most people would have been consumed by
it. It’s a very potent, powerful thing.
All of us have
different addictions. Not even addictions, but burdens. Some
people have to deal with terminal illness. Some people have to deal with
jobs they hate getting up for every day. Some people can potentially be
serial killers, but they can police themselves and not go through with
it. Some people can be fantastic with their kids one minute and then
want to beat the hell out of them the next.
Steven D. Greydanus:
You talk about Gollum in terms of addiction… A lot of addiction
recovery programs stress the need to acknowledge a higher power. And we
certainly see that Frodo succumbs, and yet he is spared from the fate of
Isildur and Gollum only by fate or Providence or whatever you want to
call it. Do you have any additional thoughts on that?
Serkis:
[Frodo] is also saved by the fact that Gollum takes it out of his hand.
I think that’s so important. The antihero, the guy we should hate, the
guy we should judge, he has played an important part—finally, as all the
characters have—he’s played a fundamental part in the destruction of the
Ring. Had he not been there, Frodo would have been walking down that
[promontory] and we don’t know what he would have done. He does succumb
to it finally. It is key that Gollum does play that final moment.
Press:
In cartoon versions, Gollum has been portrayed as a monster. We were
raised to hate monsters, so we have no sympathy at all. You portrayed
him as a very piteous character. When Frodo said, “I have to hope that
he can come back,” I wanted him to come back!
Serkis:
I think the audience should feel that.
And hopefully they do. Because Frodo is also talking about himself. He’s
looking at a version of himself. He’s carrying the burden of the Ring,
and he’s looking at someone who is well down the line of suffering from
the burden of having carried the Ring. He knows he’s going that way. He
does, for himself, have to believe that to.
I think for the
audience, the tension is so much greater and so much more tragic—you see
this person who can’t help himself. We all know people who we really
don’t like. They might be friends of ours who do things we don’t like,
or they might be somebody who just makes your day bad and they moan and
they give you a hard time. But you somehow feel sorry for them because
you know they can’t help themselves. Times one hundred, that’s Gollum,
really.
Jeremy Landes:
After playing Gollum, do you have a sense of how to help people who are
prisoners to addiction?
Serkis:
I think I have a greater understanding. I have friends who have been
addicts. I know people who are recovering from alcoholism. I know people
who have been through tough times. One, I have enormous respect for the
fight they face every day. They really are heroes in their own right for
doing what they’re doing.
Jeremy:
Do you think just “pity” is the answer?
Serkis:
Not pity, really. Being non-judgmental. Always believing that there is a
redeeming quality in every single human being.
Jeffrey
Overstreet:
But Gandalf and Aragorn, when they see orcs coming, they don’t hesitate
to pick up the sword. Isn’t that a contradiction within the story…?
Serkis:
I think that’s the duality. [Tolkien] was around a great war. That’s
why there are so many resonances to what’s been going on in the last few
years.
Jeffrey:
Do you think this gives us any guidance as to when you stop tolerating
or accepting or being non-judgmental? When do you start saying that even
though this person may be redeemable or this orc may be redeemable, I
have to pick up the sword now?
Serkis:
I don’t think Tolkien’s really gives you all the answers. I think he
asks the questions. It’s like Apocalypse Now. It’s a great
anti-war film, but it shows people murdering each other. Yes, we show
violence. Yes, there’s violence involved. Tolkien’s not saying whether
it’s good or bad. He’s like a documentary maker in the middle of a war.
People have to make their own minds up.
Press:
When I saw you portraying Gollum, I thought of Iago. He’s close to
power, corrupted by the closeness, jealous of the power. And then I read
that you recently played Iago… Did any of that experience inform this
experience?
Serkis:
Oh for sure. I very purposefully chose to play that role
this year. It was a conscious decision. It happened to fit into the
theatre program with a director I really wanted to work with. I was
keeping ‘in the zone’ with Gollum; it’s like putting similar areas of
what you’re drawing from under the microscope at the same time.
For me, Iago is a
soldier, but everybody likes him, he’s good fun, he’s a practical joker,
he’s a trustworthy soldier, he has a great relationship with his
general, and they get on very well. And then an event happens, much like
the Ring landing in his lap, where a woman comes and steals this man’s
heart. He just cannot cope with it.
Every day we have
jealousy. A friend of yours gets a job and you say ‘That’s great!’ And
99% of you is saying ‘That’s great!” but there’s a part of you that
says, “I wish I’d got that.”
This begins to eat
into him. He can’t quite believe that he’s feeling these things toward
this friend of his. He begins to rather enjoy the pain he’s put this guy
through. Before you know it, you’ve become this monster. That can happen
to anyone very quickly.
If you play Iago as
[this guy who says,] ‘I’ve plotted and planned to get this guy for a
long time.’ You can do it that way, but it’s not that interesting.
Seeing someone’s mind working in the moment—for an audience, witnessing
that is very very interesting. It was a decision to play him as a guy
who goes through a transformation, a transition to trying to plug into
the dark side. He chooses to channel all of his energy into something
very dark and destructive.
Steven:
Do you have any thoughts specifically on the role of “the grace of God”
or the role of a Higher Power in regarding to dealing with inner demons.
Especially playing this part in a story from an author for whom Catholic
faith was such a significant element?
Serkis:
I was brought up a Catholic, but I got to a point in my life where I
began to feel that religions, conventional religions, different
religions, all mean the same thing. They’re just a different way of
saying the same thing.
I eventually moved
away from a specific religion and I guess I’m much more a believer in
energy, and reciprocal energy, and handing out good energy or bad
energy. What we leave behind as human beings can be good or bad. The
energy continues. It’s a physics thing. It just carries on. Every
interaction is an interaction, and sometimes they’re not great, but
hopefully you can try to make positive interactions with people and
things and the world around you. I suppose that’s my view.
Press:
Did it just beat you to death playing this character?
Serkis:
It was a very demanding role. It was very physically exhausting and
vocally very tiring. Beyond that, psychologically it was taxing. And on
an technical level… the other actors, whenever they finished the scene
at the end of the day, they knew that their definitive performance was
in the can. It was on 35 millimeter, and that was it. But for me, it was
like, I played the part and played the scene. When you shoot a scene,
it’s like you’ve put a peg in the chart of the character, and you can
build from that. For me, it would be like two years before the
definitive scene would be completed because there are so many processes
involved between. There would be motion capture and then revisiting it
and then working with the animators and doing more vocal tracks. There
was never a moment when I went, “Bang! I’ve got the scene.”
Jeffrey:
What do you feel you still have to learn as an actor? Are there other
actors or role models whose careers you admire and hope to emulate?
Serkis:
I don’t really have mentors, in that respect. As an actor, I just
want to keep investigating. I’m really interested in observing people,
what makes them tick, their body language, where they carry elements of
pain in their bodies.
I’m also interested
in developing further the whole motion capture aspect of acting. People
say to me, “It must be good to get back to normal acting, or proper
acting” as they call it, as if this hasn’t been proper acting, which
it has been … although I haven’t had to wear a costume and makeup. It
has really opened up a new arena of acting. Basically you can play any
character now … it’s been proven. It’s a really exciting time for
actors. It’s unprecedented.
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