Andy Serkis’ brilliant, bittersweet year
Three major roles came with some heartbreak
You don’t have bigger years than Andy Serkis, now starring as villain Ulysses Klaue in Marvel’s Black Panther, has enjoyed.
Serkis held down major roles in two other mega-franchise installments: as Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and as the ape hero Caesar in War for the Planet of the Apes.
Spoiler alert: STOP READING right now if you haven’t seen all of these films!
But there’s a downside to his movie success: Every one of Serkis’ celebrated characters died onscreen.
“I’m so happy, yet it’s been a year of incredible loss, in a way,” says Serkis, 53. “You live with these characters, you create them, you become very attached to them. To have three depart from your life in a very short space of time is hard. I felt these personally.”
Here’s how his exits went down:
Klaue was fierce in ‘Black Panther’ — for half the movie
Serkis hoped he’d have a long Marvel run with Klaue, the South African arms dealer who initially appeared in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. Klaue is a recurring Black Panther adversary in the comic books.
But midway through Black Panther, Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) betrays Klaue with a gunshot before showing off the dead body to gain entry to Black Panther’s African country of Wakanda. “I can safely say that was my first body bag experience,” says Serkis, who hoped director Ryan Coogler wouldn’t feature the body shot so he could leave the door open for Klaue’s return in future films.
“I really didn’t think he’d go ahead with (that scene). It was a bit of an upset,” Serkis says. Klaue “was so much fun to play, that sort of unhinged (character). I felt a bit robbed that I couldn’t go on longer.”
He’s still hoping Klaue will somehow return through a Marvel movie miracle: “Maybe that’s just wishful thinking. But who knows?”
Kylo Ren had a Snoke surprise in ‘ The Last Jedi’
Serkis’ fearsome Lord Snoke was the horrifying, disfigured head of the evil First Order in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. But Snoke came to a surprise end in The Last Jedi after ordering his sinister subordinate Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) to kill Rey (Daisy Ridley). Instead, Ren cleaved Snoke in two with his lightsaber.
Serkis was “shocked” when he read the script. “It was so unexpected. Of course, that’s what the audience feels.”
Shooting the death scene was difficult.
“Imagining the moment where you pass, especially in that painful way, severed by a lightsaber. Part of you suffers that,” he says. “But it was was a very taut, high-stakes death.”
‘Apes’: Et tu, Caesar?
Using motion-capture technology, Serkis played the intelligent chimpanzee Caesar from a baby in 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes to a revolutionary in 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to the leader’s final moments in War for the Planet of the Apes.
After guiding his followers to a promised land in the final installment, Caesar slumps and dies peacefully from his battle wounds.
“I’ve lived with this character from birth to death,” Serkis says. “There was at least a gradual sense of closure and completion of the journey. Caesar’s done his job.”