Captains of America
HIS BRITISH education didn’t teach him much about the founding fathers of America, but Ben Barnes reckons they’re a bit like superhero group the Avengers.
The Narnia star is so chuffed with the reference that when he tries to carry on talking about his new project, he interrupts himself to add: ‘‘God, I’m really pleased with that, I just thought that up on the spot. As you can tell by my own commentary,’’ he laughs.
It’s obvious he’s excited about Sons of Liberty – a new mini-series which is an action-packed dramatisation of the American revolution.
It’s a far cry from his adventures in Narnia, but Barnes seems to have found a happy medium between fantasy and reality.
‘‘I went on my IMDB page and it says, ‘Trivia: mostly known for doing fantasy and period films.’ And I’m thinking, that’s not true. But it is,’’ says Barnes. ‘‘I don’t know why other people want to put me in very long coats and billowy sleeves and trousers made out of ungodly materials, but it’s a genre that I’ve fallen into.’’
So he took on roles in the indie romance Jackie and Ryan, and Boston gangster movie By the Gun to distance himself.
‘‘It was that sort of petulant thing where it was like, ‘well, if everyone says I am then I’m definitely not’. But I’m always trying to do something I haven’t just done. It’s like in life, really. If you’ve just been to the gym you want to sit down and watch telly. I make myself sound like a hillclimbing weirdo,’’ he laughs.
‘‘But if I try to be too pragmatic it starts to be a long while before I find something I’m excited about, so I try not to be prejudiced.’’
And thus, he landed on the set of Sons of Liberty where, despite still being stuck in a ponytail and a trenchcoat, there’s a realism and history to his character he’s never experienced before.
‘‘I could actually do bona fide research on these characters and the situations they found themselves in and it’s very exciting to get to film in a scene which you’ve read about in a biography – this is a first for me,’’ he says.
‘‘For me, not knowing that many specifics about the history – which I presume will be the same for the people of New Zealand – you know of these people and maybe know a few things about them, but I didn’t really understand that they’d all been in the same room at the same time, conspiring toward the same goals.’’
It was a visit to the statue of Samuel Adams in Boston which convinced him. The inscription said ‘Samuel Adams, a statesman. Incorruptible and fearless.’ ‘‘And I thought ‘what an inspiring set of adjectives’,’’ Barnes says.
Sons of Liberty