Serkis steps behind the camera
He’s the modern day equivalent of the man of 1000 faces, but now, as James Croot discovers, Andy Serkis is taking on a different challenge, directing.
If a mid-century, mid-budget period drama isn’t something you’d expect Andy Serkis to be associated with, don’t worry, neither did he.
The man most famous for bringing characters like The Lord of the Rings’ Gollum, Tintin’s Captain Haddock, King Kong, Planet of the Apes’ Caesar and Star Wars’ Supreme Leader Snoke to life, makes his directorial debut with Breathe.
Starring Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Tom Hollander and Hugh Bonneville, it’s the story of Robin and Diana Cavendish, whose lives were turned upside down when Robin developed polio in 1958.
While the project had been in development for a while, Serkis had already shot what he expected to be his debut – an adaptation of The Jungle Book. However, speaking from his home in London last week, in the midst of a whirlwind of publicity for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Serkis says events suddenly conspired to put him behind the camera for Breathe.
‘‘The post-production on Jungle Book [now called Mowgli and due out in October 2018] had been long, because of the performancecapture aspects, and we wanted to create some distance between ours and the Disney version [which came out in April 2016], even though they are very different.
‘‘Then our first choices to play Robin and Diane – Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy – became available together – so we took a hiatus on Jungle Book and raised the money in just seven weeks and then shot the film in seven weeks.’’
The story is very much a personal one for both Serkis and especially his Imaginarium Studios business partner Jonathan Cavendish. As his name suggests, he’s Robin and Diane’s son.
‘‘He’d been nurturing it and I thought the script itself was incredibly powerful,’’ recounts Serkis. ‘‘As soon as I read it, I knew I wanted to direct it, even though it wasn’t exactly in my wheelhouse, because I found it very moving.
‘‘I had been brought up around children who were sick. My mum taught disabled children, so I grew up around kids who had polio, spina bifida, thalidomide and various different diseases. Also, my father was a doctor who set up a hospital in Baghdad and then, in later years, my sister was an MS [multiple sclerosis] sufferer. So it was a world that I felt very connected to.
‘‘However, first and foremost, what spoke to me was that it was not only an incredible love story, but they were mavericks and pioneers. That aspect of living outside the hospital system with that amount of disability was such a brave and incredibly adventurous thing to do. It’s just an extraordinary take on how to live life to the full.’’
When asked what cinematic inspirations he used in bringing the story to life, Serkis has an amusing and unexpected answer.
‘‘I wanted to make The Diving Bell and the Butterfly-meets-Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – if that makes sense. I wanted it to feel like a 1960s romantic movie. So we looked at things like Brief Encounter, although that was obviously made much earlier, and everything from the title font to the style of the opening act was meant to reflect their whirlwind romance – they fell in love and got together within six weeks. I wanted to lure the audience into feeling that they were going to be watching this upbeat romance – until obviously the polio strikes.’’
As for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the connection was both thematic and geographical, says Serkis.
‘‘Literally, some of the locations we shot in were where Chitty was filmed. I wanted that old reference, that sense of nostalgia and British ingenuity. The inventor Teddy Hall [played by Hugh Bonneville in Breathe], to my mind was a Caractacus Potts’ character in building these ‘‘Cavendish chairs’’, literally making it up as he was going along, which is also what Robin and Diana did with their lives.’’
Serkis also reveals that another inspiration for the film’s look was Jane Campion’s The Piano.
‘‘Bob Richardson, the director of photography, and I talked a lot about that movie, especially in terms of choreographing camera shots.’’
That leads me to asking about his long-standing relationship with another Kiwi director Sir Peter Jackson.
Not only did Jackson introduce the now 53-year-old father-of-three to the world of performance capture, but he also gave him his first chance behind the camera, assigning him second-unit helmer duties on The Hobbit trilogy. ‘‘Yes, Peter has been a huge inspiration on my life full-stop since we started working together in 1999. Actually, I can’t believe that it’s that long ago now. He’s just been a massive influence. I’ve always loved his style of film-making, even going back to his earlier films – particularly Heavenly Creatures. When I first saw that, I remember being so blown away by how he supported the drama with the camera. They seemed to be in perfect sync and dance around the performances. The way he structured his shots was so influential to me.
‘‘Obviously, we’ve collaborated on many films together and when he gave me the opportunity to direct the second-unit on The Hobbit trilogy it was like the biggest film education anyone could ever have.
‘‘He knew that I was aiming to direct and just gave me that opportunity. It definitely wasn’t what I originally thought my first experience of directing a film crew would be. I thought I was going to start on a small autere movie, but instead I found myself on the biggest film set in the world, working with a crew of 150 people, shooting for 200 days and doing everything from aerials to pick-up shots to scenes and just the whole deal. It was amazing and I’m utterly and eternally thankful to Peter for that opportunity.’’
Keen to encourage collaboration on his own set, Serkis says he worked closely with Garfield and Foy in order to help them bring their characters to life.
‘‘The Cavendishes were absolutely a joint venture. Their partnership in real life was what validated all of their friends’ lives around them. Their collective energy empowered so many people, not least the people they enabled to free themselves from hospital.
‘‘Robin and Diana’s love story was what touched Andrew and Claire and made them want to become involved. Andrew had never worked with Claire – he didn’t even know her work and The Crown hadn’t come out at that point. I’d worked with Claire on a TV adaptation of Little Dorritt many years ago – in fact it was her first job. I just thought she was the most extraordinary actress and then saw her career bloom and I just thought she is such an amazing, instinctive actor.
‘‘They felt the right people for the job – no question. One of the very challenging things was to play a part over three decades and I think to find the right actors to do that and not get caught up with ridiculous amounts of make-up was a big challenge, but they just got on immediately when they met. There was a vibe between them that was extraordinary on set and they just gave of themselves wholly as actors, just really trusted each other, and just between them carried off something remarkable. Their chemistry is extraordinary in this picture.’’
Serkis also reserves high praise for Hollander, who he cast to play Diana’s twin brothers – Bloggs and David Blacker.
‘‘He was one of the first people we cast. He loved the script and bore a resemblance to these mischievous twins who loved each other, but bickered constantly. We just thought, ‘oh my god, wouldn’t it be amazing to have two Tom’s at each other?’
‘‘It certainly was a technical challenge on a lower-budget movie, using cranes and dollies to match the shots so we could repeat the camera moves. They were complicated shots to pull off with the time that we had. Tom was such a consummate pro, but he also made such great choices in not making the twins totally different from one another, just slightly.’’
Having proven himself an expert at ‘‘self-bickering’’, while playing Gollum [aka Smeagol] in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, did Serkis offer Hollander any advice?
‘‘He didn’t need any help,’’ Serkis chuckles, ‘‘he’s just a great actor.
‘‘Technically he was incredible, because it was a real challenge. He was at the centre of a lot of the film’s humour. It was very important for us to have that tone going all the way though because Jonathan’s parents, once Robin had chosen life, they actually had a really fulfilled, adventurous and quite happy life.’’
Which is definitely how Serkis would describe his own too, even if he does long to come back to New Zealand, a place he hasn’t visited or worked in since 2011. ‘‘I’m desperate to come back I love it and I miss it so much.’’
In the meantime, he’s heading into the home straight on Mowgli and contemplating future projects. Having completed Breathe, can we now expect him to see him both behind and in front of the camera on something?
‘‘I’m more keen to separate the two to be honest. I am in Jungle Book [Mowgli] as well, I play one of the characters [Baloo the bear], but I think I prefer either completely burying myself in a character, or directing. Maybe it is easier [to act as well] when it’s just a straightforward live-action movie, I know actors who do and are very successful at it. But, for me, at the moment, I think I prefer to do one or the other.’’
❚ After advance screenings in select cinemas this weekend, Breathe (M) opens nationwide on Boxing Day.