Passion and power

Michael Douglas and Noah Jupe on bringing Benjamin Franklin’s story to TV

Michael Douglas might be a veteran in the industry, but that doesn’t mean he is not intimidated by new roles. Oscar-winning actor Douglas, 79, has portrayed real-life people before – memorably pianist Liberace in 2013’s Behind The Candelabra – but he says he was daunted by the prospect of playing Founding Father Benjamin Franklin.

“I was very intimidated by it,” he admits.

“Especially the more reading I did about what he accomplished in his life.”

Franklin was a noted polymath – a scientist and inventor as well as a statesman and Founding Father.

The Founding Fathers were seven men, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who helped found the United States as an independent sovereign state, no longer under British rule.

But that wasn’t the only concern Douglas had about starring in Apple TV+’S new historical drama, Franklin.

Douglas takes on the role of the 70-year-old inventor, who is known for his electrical experiments, and is sent to Paris in 1776 to secure French backing against the British in the American Revolution.

The eight-part series spans eight years and catches Franklin just after he signed the Declaration of Independence alongside the other Founding Fathers.

Douglas speaks French, but says filming plenty of scenes in the language was quite revealing: “I didn’t know my French was this bad,” he jokes.

British actor Noah Jupe plays Douglas’ grandson, Temple Franklin, and he admits having a harder time

with the language, but it was up to him to make his French “sound believable”. He realised that “in two months, I have to sound like I’ve been in France for eight years, which was like, I have no idea how I’m going to do this”, Jupe, 19, says.

“That was one of the motivations, and the other was, I was going to be spending a year in Paris – and I wanted to make friends, I wanted to go out and have fun. I also had to learn French to have a social life.”

Jupe, who has appeared in TV’S the Night Manager and horror film A Quiet Place, says he managed to get through “by the skin of my teeth”.

He says: “When in France, it took me four months to ask for a croissant without them answering back to me in English. I was like, guys, just let me practise, please.

“But I pride myself in the fact that by the end of the job, I could have a conversation with someone, and for the first part of it, they didn’t know that I wasn’t French.”

For Jupe, one of the best things about filming the show was the sheer scale of the production.

“We only had two sets that were made for the show,” he says.

“We were on location for most of the shoot, which was, as an actor, a dream, because you were actually

stood in all of these places. There was no green screen, there was no imagining something in the sky – you were actually in these rooms.

“There were 400 or 500 extras every day on set, all dressed in these incredible gowns and wigs – you truly felt like you were part of the 1700s. It was very lucky, because it wasn’t that hard to act, because you felt very present.”

Douglas agrees, adding: “The costumes were spectacular, I’ve never spent more time looking at extras.” Franklin premieres with three episodes on Apple TV+ on Friday, April 12, followed by a new episode every Friday until May 12

As well as starring in Franklin alongside Noah Jupe, inset, Michael Douglas was also one of the executive producers on the show