By Gill Pringle
Can you tell us a little bit about your relationship to King Kong before making this movie? “Well, I’ve always loved Kong. I find the myth of some kind of lonely God, or an alpha predator, alone, at the top of the food chain…”
Kind of like Loki right? “(Laughs) I don’t know that he would describe himself in those terms. He’s certainly not as powerful.”
Can you talk about what genre films represent to you, as both a fan and an actor? “I think it’s in a way, how myth manifests in our culture. I’ve always loved big stories. And I think so much of storytelling is about myth, and if you go back to the Greek gods, or you think about characters in opera, or, I think modern day superhero movies are…in some senses are modern myths, and there’s a great need for that kind of storytelling because it takes place on an epic canvas against which we can all project our own lives, and our own feelings. But it’s far enough removed, that it doesn’t feel too close to home. And I think it’s escapism. I think it’s something to do with our natural curiosity about what we don’t know. Many of us live lives that are quite domestic, and we want them to be. But we’re also fascinated by what’s out there, and I think sci-fi or fantasy or horror, or an action movie like Kong is an exploration of our imagination, and mystery. We just need to understand! We like the idea that we don’t understand the world. That we don’t understand the universe. It always blows my mind to think that some people say, it’s perceived we know less about the ocean than we do about space, or the immediate space outside our stratosphere. And I think that curiosity, that there are still unexplained mysteries, is a really good thing for society.”
Are you an ocean lover? Did you do any diving in Australia? “I didn’t actually. But I had dived, and I love it down there. And I kept trying to think of that when I was shooting this, because so much of my performance, and Brie, and Sam, and John Goodman and John C. Reilly, all of us, quite often we are imagining the monster, or the creature that we’re looking at, and, you have to put yourself in a place of awe, and terror, and sometimes the only experiences you have, are when you come face to face with a creature. I went swimming with sharks, and I’ll never forget it! Just seeing this extraordinary ocean machine, swimming, and I was in its habitat.”
Were you in a cage? “No, I wasn’t. I haven’t swum with Great Whites or anything! (Laughs) Just reef sharks. (Laughs) I was once in India, and I was on a boat, and I saw a huge tiger on the shoreline, and it was completely in the wild, and it was just the most awesome thing! And I knew in that moment…not to get close to it… because it’s a tiger and it will kill you, but at the same time you can appreciate its beauty, and power. So that’s sort of what you draw on.
“I’ve always said, it’s just the muscle of imagination. You have to commit to the belief, between action and cut, that you are looking at this extraordinary thing, and in the edit, if you haven’t sufficiently committed, it’s visible. And so, you need the actor’s commitment, to believing, for that short period of time, that they are in this situation.”
Actors don’t think in terms of good guys and bad guys, but still, is it tremendously satisfying to go from playing the antagonist in a blockbuster to playing the action hero in a blockbuster? “I’ve never made a distinction. Really what distinguishes them is good and bad choices. Villains make bad choices, or at least, choices which are unhelpful to them. Choices which are unhelpful to your happiness. And heroes make good choices, and I always saw Loki that way. He’s just somebody who makes bad decisions. But it was really nice to pour myself into Conrad in a different way. It was like, ‘he has to be the action hero!’ He’s a British soldier. I do a huge amount of action in the film, and I loved doing that because I don’t know how long I’ll be able to get to do it, and be fit enough. David Attenborough was an inspiration, in terms of someone who has so much respect for the natural world. Someone who wants to just allow it to exist, and really…human beings live alongside it, and the planet is in harmony when we are respectful of it and we don’t resist it.”
Kong: Skull Island is in cinemas from March 9, 2017.
Read our Kong: Skull Island review
Read our interview with Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Read our interview with Samuel L. Jackson about Kong: Skull Island
Read our interview with Brie Larson about Kong: Skull Island
