Andy Serkis: "Playing a role is a political act"

We talked about monkeys, Star Wars, Jungle Book, Capture performance and theater with the most trendy actor in the world: Andy Serkis.

If we thought that Andy Serkis was a kind of punk shaman who tears a tooth without anesthesia every time he plays an injured guy, we were for our costs.In real life, Andy is charming, modest and generous.And he fully assumes his best role: that of the Prophet of the Capture performance which merges the actor play and the most sharp technology in an incredible dimension from a certain trilogy of fantasy initiated in 2001.In 2017, he became a real cinema body, perhaps one of the only real cinema corps since this body initiates and calls for transformation: without him, without his Gollum, there would certainly not have been anyBold films like Avatar, the adventures of Tintin, or obviously the rebirth of the franchise La Planet des Apes.While the quest for the Caesar monkey - which echoes that of Serkis to push the limits of technology - touching its end in the third supremacy film, we therefore encountered in the flesh (well we hope) apioneer.

In 1996, you played in the clip of Neneh Cherry, "Woman".We saw you seducing and hitting an invisible woman.It's a little prophetic, right? Jamie Thraves, the director, had seen me play theater in a play called Mojo.He wanted someone who could bring up something born from pure imagination.

And more than twenty years later, you are.Is your current status in the continuity of your theatrical training? In 1993, I played in a room called Hush.I played Dogboy, a young homeless with psychological problems.In the room he plays with an imaginary dog and he kills it.Then he is possessed by the dog's mind.After I was naked - I did the whole naked room on stage - and Dogboy entered a bourgeois house.The play studied residents' reactions to Dogboy.Some were afraid, others called the police, others were trying to tame it...What was interesting was the moments when Dogboy had to act like a dog but without moving.I had to become an animal permanently, not only by barking or moving.With hindsight, this role was pivotal to help me play Gollum, later.This notion of becoming other.

Do you see the roles as masks it is enough to wear to transform?Do you bring something out of your interior or is it something outside? This is a good question.I had the chance to work with theater directors who questioned very early on what I thought that playing meant.They asked me why I wanted to be an actor.Playing a role is not an selfish act that means nothing, it is not the expression of our narcissism.Playing a role is wanting to change society.It's a political act.You are paid to do a service: work your role, present the result of your research on stage, embody them.Give them to the public.It is to accomplish something as the shamans did around campfires thousands of years ago.It's storytelling.Theater, cinema, television, in fact any artistic expression changes society.Enuse, okay, but agitate.Make people think.This is what motivates me.All my game process comes from there.My game process has changed as I meet with the directors -with their methodology.Mike Leigh, Peter Jackson...For me, a role is to submit under a microscope to make people think and to make the public move.

You put the director at the center of your work on a film? It depends.Some like to collaborate, others are in the confrontation.Others are real egocentric...It is not a process without ego, obviously.When I was a young actor, I disembarked by saying "that's what I think, that's how I'm going to play", period.It is a mistake because we learn much more with collaboration."This is what I think, now let's talk about how we really will do it, let's create it together".I realized it even more now that I am a director.

You always wanted to realize? Yes.Before being an actor, I studied the visual arts.I wanted to paint.

You wanted to make movies posters, that's it? Yes!Exactly.I made theater posters, then sets of plays, and then I embarked on comedy...I put all my artistic impulses in actor playing, so to speak.As the Lord of the Rings arrived in my life, I had already shot short films and wrote scenarios.Later Peter asked me to lead the second Hobbit team.Then we founded the imaginarium, then there was the jungle book...

If we could first go back to the posters...I made posters in the 80s, under thatcher, and the pieces were very politically oriented.My style was drawing hyper realistic characters on surreal landscapes.

Do you miss the theater? Yes.The last time was in 2002, I was doing Iago in Othello.During a performance I injured myself on the back, on stage, I passed out in front of 750 people...I had to lie down several months later.But it has not become a trauma that prevents me from going on stage.After 2002 and the Lord, I had proposals everywhere and I focused on cinema.Accident is a coincidence.Now I really want to come back to the theater.

You have founded your own studio, the imaginarium.What is it? It is not a sad studio of performance capture.It is a creative space where actors and directors can meet to exchange.There is a space with computers and cameras to create imaginary characters, for cinema, video games and virtual reality.At the moment we are experimenting with new equipment to be able to project on a screen a performance entered in real time.We push the performance captures in its entrenchments, and beyond that we try to see the changes it brings to the art of storytelling in the next 20-30 years.

Andy Serkis :

You have the feeling of being in unknown territory? Oh yes.With virtual reality and augmented reality, imagination begins to be the only limit.We can show virtual characters in this room that interact with us, just a pair of connected glasses.It's awesome.

The director of photography of the Planet of the Apes - Supremacy is Michael Seresin.It is also that of your jungle book.How do you work with him? It's interesting because Michael is a classic.We call him "the prince of darkness" because his photo is very dark, he uses natural light a lot...(Editor's note: Seresin took the photo of Angel Heart and Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban) that's what I wanted for my jungle book.Make a film that has the appearance of reality as much as possible.This is also what feeds Matt Reeves.Matt, Michael and I, we have the same vision of cinema, we made it from the Planet of the Apes - the confrontation.

How was supremacy?Several cameras with a lot of freedom in the game?Or is it very restrictive? The capture performance does not limit you technically.This is all the interest of the thing.It all depends on the look you want to give to your movie.If you want to have a photorealist appearance, you can do it.Like supremacy, the jungle book was shot with very short focal lengths for it to look like a film, a real, and not a film in all-drug where everything is very detailed whatwhatever the scale of the characters...We also wanted the performance to be affected by the choices of lights used directly on the set.Real light.By definition, there are always a lot of cameras: the capture motion cameras, which are dispersed on the whole tray to capture the relative positions of the actors in space, the cameras mounted on our faces to film the least of our facial expressions, at least six "witnesses" cameras which only film the actors in performance captures.We can also consider that the capture performance combinations are cameras, also.They record something after all.Oh, and then we must not forget the normal camera that films us.(laughs) All this is then merged into assembly.

What I find incredible in Caesar is that it is deeply you.Finally, I'm not sure how to say...No, I see what you mean.You should know that when Matt Reeves sets up, the special effects are not finished at all.He goes up with the acting game of all monkeys.Then weta does her job on the effects.The art of performance captures post-production is to respect the play of actors.Without that it falls flat.If not what good to shoot with actors on the set, we do everything in digital and that's it.Human physiognomy must be transferred to the simial physiognomy.

Caesar always has this way of twisting his mouth...Yes, it's very subtle but the camera captures the smallest nuance of play, the most tiny muscle change on your face, it even captures the degree of humidity of our eyes.

Precisely: the monkeys have an incredible look...I also believe that it is the key to the characters, that's what makes them true.If in a scene I had red eyes, it is reproduced on the screen in all its truth.It is the genius of weta people.They are able to make an identical digital copy of your eye!The eyes of our monkeys are human: it is a very simple idea of design that makes it possible to humanize the monkeys.To give them a soul.The performance captures records entirely and allows it to be reproduced and modified it.It's a new way to do cinema.The animators do not like that we are talking about digital makeup.The actors remain at the center of the operation.For the recent Disney jungle book, it was audio dubbing: the actors recorded their aftershocks in a studio and the animators created the characters.The voice was the inspiration.

What do you think of what they did with Rogue One? You mean Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher?I think it's very valid, artistically.This is similar to Tron: the inheritance, with a young Jeff Bridges, or the Strange story of Benjamin Button where they have rejuvenated and aged Brad Pitt...Resuscitate dead actors leads us into a moral debate, I suppose.But in my opinion it is not so different to sample music, to add a new beat to a piece of jazz.If the rights owners are ok, everything is fine.But first it must serve the story, that it is not a gadget.In Rogue One it served the story.If the family of actors agrees, no problem.Imagine the possibilities: we can resuscitate Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaulle...

How do you do this? We create three -dimensional copies from photos and scanned films, which we apply to an actor playing -and this digital "mask" will respect the actor's game.This is what Gary Oldman will do in the dark hours.He plays Churchill without any "real" makeup.

There is this science fiction novel (Editor's note: remake of Connie Willis), in which we make films by drawing actors in all the past history of cinema.Humphrey Bogart with Clint Eastwood, no problem...I think we get there, yes.Who wouldn't pay to see that at the School?Everything will be possible.I would love to see Bogart and Eastwood together.But again, this must be justified in terms of storytelling.

In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I find that Snoke was a little weird: the film is very vintage with "real" effects, and then arrives this giant in performance capture.Basically the effects of 1977 meet those of the 21st century...Remember that Snoke appears in the form of a hologram.With its immense size, there is an effect of distance that works well, I think, which adds to its strangeness.

And in the last Jedi, will Snoke appear in the flesh? This, I can't tell you.I can at least tell you that we filmed in Pinewood in "real" with Domhnall Gleeson and Adam Driver, but that the big of the job was done at the imaginarium then.We have returned a lot because the snoke look has changed a lot over time.

To return to your jungle book, the film was shot in March 2015 and will be released in October 2018.Why was such a long time? It was a long trip...Already, we did not want to compete with the Disney.It was necessary to space between the two films.And then there is a technological challenge.It is already very difficult to transform the face of an actor into that of a monkey.Here we transform the face of Christian Bale into that of a panther.

How does that? The main idea of the design of the film is that we can physically recognize the actors from their faces.So, we used a good old Morphing technique: Christian's face was gradually changed into that of a panther, and we chose the best intermediate "state" between Christian and the Panther.And it takes time.Our jungle book is very different from Disney, it is centered on Mowgli, played by Rohan Chand.It is a very dark drama, it is Dickens in the jungle, we respect a lot the Anglo-Indian sensitivity of the text of Kipling.

So, your animals speak realistically?As much as we can conceive of a speaking which speaks, but a panther...Yes, this is the problem and I think we have resolved this convincingly.It's not just saving a voice in a studio.The actors were on the set, again.But it takes a lot of time...

So much so that you have already had time to shoot your second film as a director.Yes, Breathe with Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy.

What is Andy Serkis in it? It is a very conventional drama, in fact (laughs).A love story that tells the triumph of the human spirit on adversity.The "Serkisian" side is my producer Jonathan Cavendish with whom I mounted the imaginarium, who brought me the Breathe project because it is the true story of his parents.A man in the 1950s, very athletic, who has the world at his feet, who marries a pretty woman and goes to Africa to work in the tea trade.She gets pregnant, and then boom, he suffered from polio and finds himself paralyzed from the neck.He falls into depression, he wants to die.His wife persuades him to stay alive to see their son grow up, he says just if you get me out of this hospital.So.They will find a way to survive in the face of the disease.It's a very inspiring story.

Have you used performance capture in it? (His face lights up) not at all!Apart from Tom Hollander who plays a double role of twins, Breathe is practically devoid of any digital effect, and that's what makes me this important film so important.To have to make a film very different from everything I shot in performance capture.This is the film I dreamed of making the theater time.

At first we love the adventures of Tintin.Me too !

So when will we see the rest?...I hope Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson will get there for good.I know that Peter wrote the scenario intensely, in recent years.The meeting between the talents of Steven and Peter really walked thunder...

And your talent, too.I believe that without you, we would never have seen such a film.It's nice but I still believe that Peter is the real visionary behind all this, and that Steven learned very quickly the possibilities of the virtual camera.Speaking of that, you have raion, why don't we do another one?It's super faithful to Hergé, to his palette...

Of course, but it is not a servile copy of the comics boxes.It's real cinema.Okay, but Hergé inspired me a lot by turning Breathe.Still this story of palette, color, compositions: there is a real richness of the position of the characters in the context to communicate an emotion or information.

Seeing Spielberg and Jackson work, it also had to inspire you...For the jungle book, it's Peter my teacher.He when gave me the position of director second team of the Hobbit.Two hundred days of shooting with a huge team, shooting in native 3D with several cameras...I felt like I was shooting five films at the same time.We shot Breath in digital with a lexis 65 in 2 format.65.I wanted a purely cinematographic format.Breathe is the opposite of the Jungle Book: we took six weeks to finance it, seven weeks of filming, ten weeks of assembly, right now.

Lon Chaney said "once in a role, I don't go out anymore".When I saw you disappear in the king's return, I said to myself "we will never see this guy again".The other monster actors, such as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi or Chaney, were devoured by their performance.How did you avoid it? We come back to Dogboy: this is the most intense role I have ever done, I no longer existed by playing.Before having a family, I let myself be completely dominated by the characters, I only thought.Become a director, a storyteller, also allowed me to take distance from roles and research work.I had to learn to do several things at the same time, to carry out several projects in parallel.To be multitasking.

Bela Lugosi was buried in Dracula costume.It is not likely to happen to you, then? In fact, with Gollum, it failed.I was very alone.The community was very united, the four hobbits always turned together.Gollum was alone.To find my character, his movements, I had to go to the lost corners of New Zealand to isolate himself.The role asked for.

This is the opposite of Caesar.He is a chief, a father, a leader.He is multitasking.So it's the opposite of Gollum.Yes quite.

If you come back to the theater, what do you want to play? Playing Beckett, Harold Pincter, Jez Butterworth, Brecht...Especially Brecht.I work on an adaptation of Brecht to the cinema according to the Quat'Sous Opera and all of his work, located in our time.We still come back to the idea of a political theater.I played Mackie-le-Surineur in the Quat'Sous opera when I was young, and I fell in love with her words, his music.And with the imaginarium, we prepare a new version of the farm of the animals of George Orwell (Editor's note: a satire of European history with animals).In performance capture, obviously.

Do you already have your Napoleon? No...We have changed the context: it will be located in the United States nowadays.So we think about change on the characters.

I read that you were passionate about climbing.And that you dreamed of climbing the Himalayas.Absolutely.I especially did the Alps, on the Swiss and French side.I did solo the Matterhorn -with an easy path, but a good song anyway.It is not a question of performance.Climbing is a very transcendental exercise for me.Being in the wild, confront the elements.I feel very lively when I climb.It feeds my imagination.

Trailer of the Planet of the Apes - Supremacy, in theaters on August 2:

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