Interview: Andy Serkis
Interview by Clint Morris
Interview with Andy Serkis
Star of the film Flushed Away.
He’s
played an Ape that gives the Empire State a man-hug, an emaciated New
Zealand creature that’s obsessed with his ‘ring’, and a Michael
Jackson-dancing magazine editor to Jennifer Garner’s penner, yet
despite how dissimilar Andy Serkis may be to the characters he’s
played, he’s still been able to say he shares at least some things in
common with them – A minute link with Kong,
one assumes - at least until now. Serkis’s latest role is as a rat
whose “mum does his ironing for him”, and that’s the one the actor can
safely say he hasn’t got much in common with. “Because we don’t even do
our ironing”, he laughs. “We aren’t big on that”. Serkis, best known for giving life to the mischevious ‘Gollum’ in the Lord of the Rings
trilogy, is again lending anything but his face – which he doesn’t get
to use too often in movies of late – to the role of in Dreamworks’ new
family hit, Flushed Away. The
film tells of Roddy, a decidedly upper-crust “society mouse” who lives
the life of a beloved pet in a posh Kensington flat. When a sewer rat
named Sid comes spewing out of the sink and decides he’s hit the
jackpot, Roddy schemes to rid himself of the pest by luring him into
the “whirlpool.” Sid may be an ignorant slob, but he’s no fool, so it
is Roddy who winds up being flushed away into the bustling sewer world
of Ratropoulis. There Roddy meets Rita, an enterprising scavenger who
works the sewers in her faithful boat, the Jammy Dodger. Roddy
immediately wants out, or rather, up; Rita wants to be paid for her
trouble; and, speaking of trouble, the villainous Toad–who royally
despises all rodents equally, making no distinction between mice and
rats–wants them iced … literally. “Bill Murray and I play these
two toads, Spike and Whitey, who are sent by the Toad to go after our
heroes”, says Serkis. “Spike is a guy who thinks he’s this hardened
criminal, but of course his mum still does his washing for him, and
things like that, so he’s clearly not”. After his bravura voice/CGI-movement role in the Lord of the Rings
series, Serkis was inundated with offers from studios wanting him to be
their next ‘man in the shadows’ – or in this case, voice without a
face. “It’s interesting”, explains Serkis, who also appeared in King Kong and 13 Going on 30. “This is actually my first voice over role in an animated film; the way people talk you’d think I’d done a lot of them.” Granted, that’s probably only because American audiences know Serkis better for his role in Rings and Kong
– two films that we didn’t actually see his face in, well, we did, but
only briefly – and aren’t familiar with seeing him in the flesh. In
his native England, where he lives with his wife and two children,
Serkis has been a stappe of British cinema since the early 90s, when he
made his film debut in 1994’s Royal Deceit. Since then, he’s appeared in such films as Stella Does Tricks (1996), Topsy-Turvy (1999), Shiner (2000), The Escapist (2001) and 24-Hour Party People (2002). Now, thanks to Peter Jackson’s money-spinning Rings and Kong
films – in which he was the model for lead characters - Serkis has
found himself the taste of Hollywood. His first big Hollywood foray was
starring opposite Jennifer Garner in the bubbly romantic comedy 13 going on 30. “That was a lot of fun”, says Serkis of the 2004 comedy. “I’d just done Kong, which was pretty heavy going, so it was nice to go out there and just do something fun”. There
may be more offers on the table these days, but Serkis says he still
hasn’t changed how he makes his decision in whether or not to do a film
or not. “It’s all script dependent”, he says. “It really depends what
it is. Flushed Away, for instance, was all the script. It was just a generally surprisingly pleasant film. It just seemed like a wonderful thing. “The
only problem with doing a film like this is that you don’t have time to
build up a character – because you’ve got nothing to go by. There’s no
reference – you can’t see how it looks. And also, you’d record your
scenes, go away and do something else, and then come back and do some
more later – all over like a two and a half year period”, explains
Serkis, noting that he shares many of his scenes with Kate Winslet,
Bill Murray and “some Aussie guy” (that’s, of course, a joke referring
to Hugh Jackman – who voices the lead role). And having just seen
the finished product a day before this interview, Serkis is still in
awe of the result. “It looks amazing”, he gushes. “Even the
environment, all the detail and so on, looks amazing. I’m totally in
awe”. As for whether or not a certain Lord of the Rings prequel is in his future – The Hobbit,
has been entangled in legal woes for years – Serkis says it’s anyone’s
guess, noting that “There’s rumours all the time, and I think Peter
Jackson would love to do it, and I’m sure he will one day – but there’s
some rights issues at the moment”.
FLUSHED AWAY hits cinemas December 26th. |
