JEFFREY WRIGHT

is james gordon

How do you put your own stamp on an iconic character?

What differentiates what I do, I think, is the same as what any other actor who played Gordon before did. I worked with an ensemble, and I worked under the vision of a director – in this case, Matt Reeves. And working alongside Rob Pattinson, these were the primary drivers that informed the choices that I made, the tone that we tried to set together.

It’s specific to this Gotham that we’ve built together. And of course, based on Matt’s script, which was a very specific, narrative-driven, mystery-driven, noir-based story. The bells and whistles were all handmade. When I read the description of the Batmobile, it really informed my understanding of what he was trying to achieve: something that was palpable, that was accessible, that was known, that reflected the world that exists outside a window in contemporary New York City.

It was the specifics of the collaborators that I was working with and the environment that we were trying to create together. The lighting and the use of shadow that [director of photography] Greig Fraser brought to the table, and James Chinlund’s production design, all of these things worked to inform the choices that we made.

Can you describe this take on Gotham?

Matt’s Gotham is one in which the tendrils of class are evident in a way that maybe we haven’t seen before. We see the interstitial tissue of class and we see the tensions there. There are assumptions like that [which other films have made], that he didn’t make. Perhaps there are other previous versions about dynamics like that, that Matt didn’t make, that he kind of exposes and allows us to live within the storytelling. I thought that was really exciting, because we don’t take it for granted. Also because it informs the relationship between Gordon and everyone else – particularly Gordon and Bruce Wayne – in a way that was fun to play with.

Aesthetically, this Gotham is a really interesting one. That skyscraper scene overlooking the city – we played on that set quite a bit, and I would just marvel at it because of what it is. It’s a view of the East River from Manhattan, looking east toward Brooklyn, toward my neighbourhood. But what was done was there were rooftops and facades that were borrowed from gothic architecture.

A piece from, I think, Budapest is placed in the frame, there’s another piece from Chicago that’s slotted in, and so the skyline is recreated in a way that I haven’t seen before in one of these films. It really gave a lot of energy to the specificity of where we were. It just speaks to the ways that our collaborators, both in front of and behind the camera, really informed the choices that we made as actors, and for our characters, and for storytelling, in a way that I found really gratifying.

There’s a seriously high level of talent that came together around this piece, obviously with fairly sizeable substantial resources behind them to pull it off. The evidence of all of that is there in the frame. It was a good place to work.

What backstory did you take for your character?

There’s a lot of backstory for my character in the Year One and Year Two comics. So that was helpful, and then you kind of flesh that out from there.

Tell us a little bit about your history with Batman.

I was a Zorro freak, then I really liked Batman when the show came on. I think I was nine and I remember all those first characters from that, and then the reinvention of it later on in the ’80s. I was aware of Frank Miller, and Year One, Year Two, all that. I like Batman because he kind of has this split personality, but he doesn’t have superpowers.

Film noir is being discussed a lot – is that how the film was pitched to you?

I really agree with that, I think that was Matt’s interest and certainly it was the way the film looked. It was within that world, but he is really interested in behaviour, and human psychology, and contradiction. How everyone has a story or a mythology that they’ve invented for themselves to present to the world. That was really fun to do in a film of this scale.

What stood out that makes this version of Batman different?

You see a person growing… he’s in transition, he’s not fully formed. I don’t think that’s exactly been done. I think they were clever to do that. Then we also had someone of Robert’s age and the kind of actor that he is, so that was interesting.

The Batman is a dark movie. What was it like on set?

Because it’s dark doesn’t mean it’s not fun! You can be in a movie that’s supposed to be lighthearted and whatever, and it can be not fun at all. It doesn’t really make it matter, it matters how you’re treated, and how you’re welcomed into the conversation. So the darkest thing can be a lot of fun to do.

What muscles does playing a villain allow you to stretch as an actor?

Basically I just thought of it as the guy behind the scenes, who is pulling different strings. There’s a lot of people in politics who do that, there’s a lot of dark money in politics. So I thought, well, that would be something maybe interesting.

I was a little on the fence about doing it. But Matt sort of said, “We’ll flesh it out more”, and he was true to his word. It was interesting, the dynamics between Robert, Bruce Wayne and my character, and the same thing with Zoë’s character, too. I thought that was interesting… there was a lot of parental/child kind of stuff going on between them.

What was your first day on set like? Did it take getting used to?

People don’t realise how cold the person is [when filming]! It happens a lot. We had to go to Liverpool, and that’s when they were shutting down the city because of Covid. So it was all outside and it was raining. It was a lot of extras with masks, so it was a little daunting. The first days are always strange, I think.

What do you think people will take from this version?

Matt as a filmmaker is someone who concentrates on the emotional heart of a story. In this case, that is what beats very, very, very loud underneath that dystopian Gotham, and the web of lies and untruths that Gotham is. I think this film has hope, actually. As a story, there is light and a way of bringing down corruption, and a kind of isolation that we face. It’s a very relatable film. It’s a film that does speak to the now and has real heart at the centre of it, but also hope.

Is there something different that you’ve brought to the character?

When Matt and I first talked about it, one of the things that we wanted to examine was this notion of a relationship that Alfred carries with him. The burden that he carries, and the flaw in his nature, is that he will never, ever be able to be the father that he ought to be, and the father that he thinks he could be to Bruce.

That is the failing of him, his own dawning realisation that that will never be the case. No matter how close he stays to him or gets to him, he will never be able to fully have brought Bruce up in a way that a parent could, and he’s painfully aware that that is a source of tension between them.

When we meet them in this story, Bruce is two years into becoming the mysterious vigilante, and we see Alfred really struggling to hold on to him. It’s a very emotional relationship between them that’s fracturing and breaking up. We see him desperately trying to mentor him more than be the old butler/retainer character; he’s more active in the sense that he’s trying to restrain him from going off the tracks completely.

What role does Alfred play in Bruce Wayne’s life as his conscience?

At this point it’s like the sand is falling through his fingers. He knows he has a limited amount of time to reconnect with him before he loses his ward, the person that he is supposed to take care of. The one thing that they do connect over, and can actually talk about, are skills. It gives them a point of contact.

So the deciphering of codes, for instance, it’s something that they can both look each other in the eye and talk about without going deeper. Alfred is forever trying to uncover and get underneath the skin of Bruce. But he’s just completely being foisted off.

In our version, Alfred is very much a soldier, EX-SAS, who’s then going into perhaps working with private military companies, who’s then going to be a close protection kind of officer. I based him on some individuals that have worked for the royal family in this country, just to get that sense of loyalty and duty to a dynasty, which of course he’s rejecting.

Alfred is a logic-driven, rational human being, who underneath all that is carrying a great deal of pain. Actually he’s carrying injury – not only psychological injury, but he’s scarred and also he walks with a limp. He has a cane, and that’s really a manifestation of his failure.