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Брюссельская капуста, туалетное чтение и Рокки роад туда, блин))
JOE meets Aidan Turner, the Irish star of The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies
By @Eoghan Doherty
YOU SHALL NOT PASS... without reading this interview.
You know it’s truly Christmas time when satsuma sales surge in the shops, your mam pre-orders 38 bottles of white wine for Aunty Moira at the family party, and Peter Jackson releases another Middle-Earth movie.
The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies is in Irish cinemas now and, following on from the end of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug , the latest film sees Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and his company of courageous dwarves, including Irish actor Aidan Turner as Kili, defend their newly-reclaimed homeland of Erebor from the scaly grasp of the charmingly villainous dragon, Smaug (
They are accompanied by our plucky titular hobbit, Bilbo ‘the Burglar’ Baggins (an impeccably cast Martin Freeman), who is in possession of the One Ring and who, along with the rest of the company, is forced to engage in a war against an array of evil Middle-Earth combatants.
Just imagine the big news team fight at the end of Anchorman and you'll start to get the idea… except that this one includes way more deadly dwarves, loads of nasty orcses, and a whole lot less Tim Robbins.
To celebrate the film's release, we sent Fellowship fan Eoghan Doherty along to meet Aidan Turner to chat about the final installment in Peter Jackson's epic trilogy, weird and wonderful dwarf grooming habits, and about getting pissed with some guy called Ed Sheeran.
Enjoy the interview, we certainly did...
JOE: Hi Aidan, thanks for chatting to us today and congratulations on the film. We're big fans of the Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit films in JOE and really enjoyed The Battle Of The Five Armies. Have you had a chance to see the film yourself yet?
Aidan: I did, yes. I saw it in Leicester Square a few days before the Dublin premiere and that was my first time seeing it. And of course it’s been so long since we shot it, so you kind of think "what’s left in the movie? What’s Peter cut out with your own character, with other story lines, with other sub plots?" and stuff like that.
Seeing it kind of felt like it was very much for the first time, even though we do ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) and we see it in the studio and we do different stages, but I was thrilled. It’s a great way to finish. It’s super exciting, it’s epic. There’s a great pace to the film and I’m delighted. It just really, really works.
My character kind of shines in it too and I think the relationship with the Tauriel (played by Evangeline Lilly) character really works. It was something I was a little bit worried about when the sсript pages were coming in. I was thinking "Oh God, because this isn’t in the book. How are the fans going to react to something like this? Are they going to go on all-out attack and, if they do, this has got to be good and it’s got to work, it’s got to fly."
It does, so I’m really proud and it’s a nice way to see off the final film, the final trilogy.
JOE: It certainly is a great way to round off the trilogy. You mentioned the character of Tauriel, your love interest. You obviously got to spend a lot of intimate time with Evangeline Lilly on set. How tough was that for you?
A: Oh, impossibly hard. I mean, I just couldn’t make the love thing work. She just wasn’t physically attractive enough for me so obviously you can imagine that was quite difficult.
No, she was amazing. She was lovely, she’s brilliant. It was so much fun and just nice to not be around the dwarves and beardy men. It was nice to have a beautiful woman on set and a storyline that we really believed in and really thought that we could execute well. It was fun. Nice not to have all that testosterone.
JOE: Did you get a chance to ask her just what the hell happened at the end of Lost?
A: I’ve never seen Lost so I wouldn’t know. I never watched it.
JOE: Had she watched your own TV show, Being Human? Was it reciprocal?
A: I don’t know if she had actually, I never asked her.
JOE: You should swap DVDs for Christmas, put those wrongs to right...
A: Yeah, we should have done that on the first day actually. Why, what did happen in Lost? Was there an earthquake or something? Was that the thing?
JOE: It was mental. We can’t even get into it now, we'd another few interviews just to try and explain the whole thing...
When actors sign up for any project, you obviously want to be proud of it when you've completed it, but it must be especially amazing to take part in something as MASSIVE as a film trilogy by Peter Jackson and to come out the other end saying how much you loved it.
Plus, it can't to hurt to have it on the ol' CV too, right?
A: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing and there was a sense of relief too that you’re not just buried in the film and that you are actually proud of the work you did. You don’t cringe every time you get up on screen, which is something a lot of actors do quite a lot anyway.
Looking at it now I’m proud. To have that, no matter what I do for the rest of my career, it will be successful.
JOE: Sorry to break this to you Aidan, but it’s all downhill from here...
A: (Laughs) It’s going to be a box set that I will be proud of for a long time. It’ll be around for a long time, certainly.
JOE: Did you always know that Kili was going to get such a prominent role in this particular film?
There's a huge company of dwarves and there are so many additional characters involved, but did Peter sit you down and say “Listen Aidan, in the final installment, your character is going to be pushed right to the forefront?”
A: No, not at all. Nothing was ever mentioned.
We would shoot a lot of stuff that wouldn’t even make the extras or the extended cut of the DVD. You don’t know what’s going to be left in and what’s going to be pulled out, who he’s going to favour in particular scenes, because you just shoot the hell out of everything, from every different angle. Everybody gets close-ups so you don’t know which way it’s going to go. That’s all at a later stage when they try to figure stuff out.
So it was quite a welcome surprise. God, I’m actually in this more than I thought I would be. It’s fun. You’re there with your family and your friends and it’s a nervy time as well because you can sit down with the film and you’ve spent two or three years in this countries shooting these films and then to not be in it could be slightly embarrassing, so I’m glad I managed to skirt past all that and just be proud.
So no, I didn’t know that Pete was going to make a thing, or have that love story. That was all new to me when I got over there and it was good. I came out of it OK.
JOE: As soon as you saw it you should have got straight on the phone to your agent and said "we should have charged way more! We get so much screen time in the last one! Goddamnit!"
It's actually been a few years since you finished all of the filming, so how easy is it to get back into the Hobbit frame of mind?
A: It takes a little bit of time actually.
With every interview you’re reminded of other anecdotes or other bits of the story, or what season it was when you were shooting it in New Zealand, whether something was on location or what location it actually was. You’re informed as you go along but it does take a little while.
I remember the first year we did press was a lot easier, for obvious reasons. It was a lot closer to the time you had wrapped, but we had all done our homework a bit more and we had just finished shooting. We were still a family and now, it’s still amazing to see everybody at the premieres and hang out, but a lot of distance has passed and we’ve all gone on and done other things.
We’re a little bit rusty when it comes to Middle-Earth, but it’s fun to revisit, to reminisce and to remember the fun times on the shoot. It was epic and incredible and those memories are going to be with me for a long time… if I don’t forget them.
JOE: Speaking of anecdotes, was there anybody in the cast who you found particularly funny or entertaining?
A: Billy Connolly was hilarious but that’s natural enough, that’s understandable. Martin Freeman is a riot all of the time because it’s self-preservation as well, you just have to survive on set sometimes.
That sounds very dramatic but when you’re day-in day-out doing it – you have 4am pick-up in the morning, you get to set at 1pm and you work until 7pm or 8pm. It’s a long day and you’re on set with these guys all the time and sometimes people are quite focused, sometimes they’re out to lunch in their head all day.
You have to keep spirits and moral high and it is just chatting, just joking around and messing around.
Stephen Hunter who played Bombur was ridiculous all the time because he just looked so funny. To the very last day I was saying to Nesbitt (Irish actor James Nesbitt, who plays Bofur), and he said the same thing, he was hilarious even just to look at. He’s so big and he’s grotesque, but he’s cute and he’s funny.
I wish he was in it more. I wish some of the characters were in it more. You can wish all you like but there just isn’t time sometimes. But yeah, there was a lot of fun, a lot of jokes.
JOE: We were hoping that Martin Freeman might have done a few of his lines from The Office like “you’re a c*ck, you’re a c*ck, you’re a c*ck.” Just drop things like that into parts of the conversation.
A: (Laughs) He didn't say that but I think he’s very proud of his work on The Office and, when you’re walking around town with him, you will get a lot of “Alright Tim!” You hear that a lot and he’s like “Yeah, OK, fine.”
JOE: Going back to when you got involved with The Hobbit originally, was it Peter Jackson who phoned you or did you just think it was a friend putting on a dodgy Kiwi accent to prank you?
A: (Laughs, pretends to be on the phone) "Right, it's Peter Jackson, sure."
No, not really. It was actually just a boring actor thing where you go in and meet a Casting Director in London - John and Ros Hubbard, Irish guys. They put me on tape, Peter responded to the tape and called me back a month later. I met him in the same place in London and we just had an hour where we were just reading through some scenes and talking.
When I walked into the room he said “I like your show, your vampire show. It’s pretty good.” And I said "Oh God, thanks" and thought "right, so he’s aware of me, he’s seen me do things."
I thought "I've f*ckin’ nailed it. It’s there. It’s in the bag." Then he said “So have you read the book?” And I went, "ah shit, I haven’t read it."
Now what do I say to the guy? You could read this book in a few hours. But I was honest, so I said "no, I haven’t" and he said “OK, well I better tell you what it’s all about then.”
So he just proceeded to tell me over the next hour what the whole thing was about, read bits out and ran some scenes. So I kind of knew but I didn’t get the official offer until about six weeks later, but I knew walking out. I was like, "I think I have this. I’ve come pretty close anyway, as close as I’m ever going to get to anything."
JOE: You're not a small man yourself but, in terms of getting into character originally, did you have any particular techniques? Did you start wearing kids' clothes and eating smaller portions?
A: Yeah, I would hold really small mugs...
JOE: I thought so, and did you start going to the toilet in the bath, just to get the size of things relative?
A: (Laughs) Yeah, in order to get the scale just right.
A lot of the training, getting into character and finding the character was all done through bootcamp. We were so lucky to have six weeks of intense training and bonding as a group where we would read the sсript, train together and do 'dwarf movement' classes.
JOE: 'Dwarf movement' classes? Are they like antenatal pregnancy classes? I didn't know you could get 'dwarf movement' classes.
A: Yeah, kind of like antenatal classes, but with a lower sense of gravity. We were all walking like pregnant women for a while but we actually ditched it in the end. I don’t think Peter liked it. After the six weeks he said “this isn’t working at all.”
JOE: Everybody was just awkwardly waddling around on set...
A: Yeah, it was a bit of a waddle. We didn’t look powerful at all. So it was horse riding, hand-to-hand combat, sword fighting, archery, all those kind of things. That was how a lot of us found the centre of the character and it just gave us a heads up on what we would be doing for the next two years. We needed all that training, we needed to keep fit.
It was a pretty relentless kind of job with regards to the physical aspect to the whole thing. It was full on. Fairly early on in those six weeks, Peter shows you initial drafts - because you don’t know what your character is going to look like - so he shows you the drawings and sketches of what your character will look like. These are very exciting moments.
You find out what type of weapons you’re going to have, you speak to the guys at Weta Workshop and it’s a real collaboration. It certainly feels like a real collaboration. I’m sure if you said "no, I don’t like that at all" then they would probably change it, but you’re just like "Oh my God, that’s amazing, I love it. What do you think of this leather over this bit or this kind of sword?"
It’s just amazing. There’s so much to take in. That was all in the early six weeks and if we didn’t have that time I think it would have been quite difficult to hit the ground running over there, but we had all that time to bond. It was important.
JOE: So, what you’re saying is that you didn’t go to the toilet in the bath then?
A: Not in character anyway. At the weekend I’m sure it would have happened several times.
JOE: You mentioned Weta Workshop who have designed all of the incredible props for the Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit films, did you get to keep anything yourself from the set?
A: Yeah! Weta actually sent over my bow and arrow which is pretty special. I must get it framed or do something with it. There’s little bits that we got too... I nicked some gold from the set.
JOE: Well that was the next question, did you nick anything?
A: Yeah! I put the gold down my boot! I put a handful down there. I came home with fifteen pieces of gold.
I have one piece left in the house and then we did the Berlin premiere last year and they gave us a piece of gold with the Berlin Hobbit premiere stamp, which is quite special, but having a piece from the set was quite important. I thought Kili was the kind of guy who would just stuff loads of things down his boot.
JOE: He would, he’s a chancer...
A: Definitely! I thought that if I got caught I would just tell Peter I’m in character or something stupid and I’d get away with it, but yeah, I did do that.
JOE: "I was in character" - the perfect excuse.
You mentioned that you were shown the concept art and the look of the characters early on and, whenever you’re watching the film you are struck by the incredibly ornate design of both the facial hair on the dwarves and the hair on their heads. To be fair Aidan, your hairstyle is quite tame compared to a lot of them, like a mini-Aragorn.
Were you a little bit disappointed that you didn’t get to show off a big fancy handlebar moustache?
A: (Laughs) No, I dodged the bullet there!
Can you imagine that nonsense at lunch time, trying to navigate your spoon around these horrible beards? I got out of it very easily. I only had a tiny prosthetic nose.
Almost every other actor, with the exception of Fili, had prosthetics all over - nose, foreheard, some of them even more so than that. And the beards were horrible. The guys couldn’t talk half the time. When they would, the beards would get caught. It just never seemed to work really.
It looked amazing on these guys, it worked for the show, it needed to be there and the departments did an amazing job, but it just never seemed right that Kili had them. We did try the prosthetics in the early days and actually, if you look at the first movie in Bag End, you can see certain scenes with quick clips of Kili with prosthetics on and it does look quite odd. It just never seemed to look right, it just aged him and it just made him look a bit odd. My face just didn’t work for the prosthetics at all so then we just went back to a little nose.
So short answer, no I felt quite relieved that I didn’t have to do the big make-up thing.
JOE: This isn’t a prosthetic beard that you’re wearing right now, is it?
A: No, I grew this myself. That’s the real deal.
JOE: Fair play. In terms of the other dwarves, and we tested Richard Armitage (who plays the Dwarf King Thorin) on this as well, can you name the entire company?
A: Oh, it’s been a while, a year... we’ll see how it goes. Ori, Nori, Dori, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dwalin, Thorin, Fili, Kili, Balin.
JOE: That's almost everybody...
A: I thought that was all of them! Fili, Kili, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Ori, Nori, Dori, Balin, Dwalin, Thorin, Fili, Kili. Is that them all?
JOE: There are two more. Gl...
A: Gloin and Oin! Damn it. How could I forget? Shit. (Laughs) I’m a bit disappointed. I thought I could do them all.
JOE: You did better than me anyway. Now, Aidan, you can probably tell that I wrote a lot of these questions while sitting on the toilet. What do you like to read whenever you’re sitting on the toilet?
A: What am I reading right now on the toilet? Tom Rob Smith is what I’m reading. No, I’m finished that actually. What am I reading?
JOE: The Hobbit?
A: (Laughs) No, Christopher Hitchens' 'Hitch-22.' I’m re-reading it, it’s his biography. I’m quite a big fan of Christopher Hitchens so because I’ve read it already it’s now moved into the bathroom.
JOE: So it’s been elevated to bathroom status now...
The company of dwarves certainly are fond of singing a few tunes now and then but what would be your own karaoke song of choice?
A: I'm not one for singing really, but maybe something by the Dubliners. If I can’t sing I tend to go into verse and then into rhythm so 'Rocky Road To Dublin' is always a good one. It’s all about the rhythm and tempo, not getting out of breath and all of those horrible things.
JOE: Yeah, hitting the notes properly is overrated... You were singing with Ed Sheeran though recently, right?
A: Yeah, I saw him play and then we met during the course of all of The Hobbit stuff last year...
JOE: Of course, because he recorded one of the songs for The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, 'I See Fire.'
A: He did and we hung out quite a bit. We got on and we got friendly and then he invited me to see him in Belfast a few weeks ago. I went up to see him and he was great. We hung out, had a great old time and then the other night we got really pissed and went back to his house and I got drunk and made him sing songs and serenade me with music.
JOE: That sounds like great craic. And then did you make him listen to your rendition of 'Rocky Road To Dublin?'
A: (Laughs) He said he had to go to bed before I could. And I said "why, what are you doing tomorrow?" He told me, "I’m playing this Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show thing" and I was like, "Oh. The you'd better get some sleep."
JOE: Well, he certainly looked delighted at that event. He had a big smile on his face.
A: Yeah, he was quite hungover I think!
JOE: One final dilemma that we ask all of our interviewees, would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses?
A: Oh, it would definitely be the duck-sized horses. Horses are a flighty animal, they’re going to run away. I wouldn’t fancy meeting a massive big duck though. He could be aggressive and weird.
JOE: An aggressive, weird, big duck would be terrifying. Sure a normal sized-duck is aggressive at the best of times...
A: Yeah, and swans – I wouldn’t go near them either.
JOE: So definitely the horses then? You’re right, they certainly are a flighty creature...
A: Yeah, I think that if you stamped your foot loud enough they’d all just all scatter straight away and run off. Easy. You couldn't do that with the duck.
JOE: That's true. You're back in Ireland for Christmas, that’s got to be nice feeling, coming home after all of your travels for the filming and press?
A: Yeah, it’s great. It’s amazing. It seems like it’s been a while since I’ve been properly home so it’s lovely. I’m doing a film with Jim Sheridan in January (The Secret Scripture) so that will keep me here for a bit longer, which will be nice. I’ll get to hang out with my friends and family so yeah, it’s cool. I feel chilled now for the first time in a long time. It’s nice.
JOE: There’s a nice Christmassy feel about the place as well but, in terms of Christmas dinner... Brussels sprouts or no Brussels sprouts?
A: Oh I love Brussels sprouts. I'm a big fan of those.
JOE: Right, because my next question was going to be how do you successfully hide your Brussels sprouts on Christmas Day?
A: Oh I don't need to hide them. I eat everything. There is no food I don’t like.
JOE: Well on that food note, we'll leave you to get your dinner. Thanks again for chatting to us Aidan, congratulations on the film and the very best of luck with everything in the future.
A: No problem, thanks!
Вот, кстати, на том же сайте интервью с Ричардом, тоже новое, после выхода 3 части.
Ещё одно с Эйданом, уже притаскивала, но пусть вместе будут, тоже в Дублине после премьеры, довольно длинное и содержательное
Aidan Turner for THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES с
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We sit down with the Irish star of THE HOBBIT...
It's been an eventful few yeas for Irish actor Aidan Turner, not only did he star in THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES, but he has spent a lot of time in New Zealand, running after a small but determined Hobbit. Movies.ie sat down with Aidan Turner to welcome him home, discover how he feels not that THE HOBBIT has come to an end, and whether he ever lied to Peter Jackson...
How does it feel to be home in Dublin?
Aidan Turner: It's nice to be home for Christmas; I spent the last few years away. I always came home for Christmas, but it's nice to be here. I am going to be doing a movie with Jim Sheridan in January, so that means I am going to be here for the next month at least, so that's cool.
How do you feel now that THE HOBBIT has come to an end?
AT: I guess it feels pretty good! To look back at the trilogy... I'm very proud of them; I'm a fan of all the films. I think everyone's done an amazing job on them. Of course you will have people who critique them or think they don't match up; this bit they don't like, or that bit's not in the book... You're going to get that anyway, but generally, the broader strokes are that they are all a big success; that's a big relief. I'm glad that worked out; I'm glad it wasn't a disaster. It's a box set I am going to be very proud of in years to come, so that's fun. It was such a long job; I was there for a couple of years, so to move on and do other things was quite important for me, so there is a sense [that] it's nice to let it go now, in the best possible way.
I read that when you were first cast in THE HOBBIT, you hadn't read the book. Have you read it since?
AT: I read it when I got over there. It was terrible, I felt so embarrassed saying it to Peter... When I walked into the room he said ‘I'm a really big fan of BEING HUMAN', and I thought ‘I have it in the bag now, it's mine to blow at this stage!'. That was quickly followed by ‘Have you read the book?', and I had that moment of, ‘Do I lie or not? Is he going to find out I haven't? Can I blag it? Will he appreciate me telling the truth?' and I said ‘No, I haven't read it' - this book you'd easily read in a weekend, so I had no excuses. It worked out though, he spent the next hour explaining everything in the book to me; going through it page by page, almost, and reading bits out! It would have been strange if I hadn't got the job, so I walked out of there kind of knowing.
Martin Freeman said Ian McKellen walked around the set with the book, pointing things out as you were filming. Did you do the same?
AT: [laughs] There's a certain gravitas that Ian McKellen can get away with! [laughs] He can hold Tolkien's THE HOBBIT and walk around going [impersonates Ian McKellen] ‘Peter, it's not even here. It's not in the book!'. I wouldn't really get away with that! There were several different sound stages that you would go to, there were different units on different given days, so we didn't have a lot of time for walking around with books in our hands. We had trouble walking at the best of times with all the armour. McKellen could get away with that, and I think he did as well; there was always a debate whether he should be saying this, or whether this should be happening or not. He's a stickler for that; he wants to stick to the book all the time, but there was a stage where we just let it go. McKellen's funny. He's my favourite; love him!
There's already talk of THE SILMARILLION, would you come back?
AT: I don't know whether he will have the rights to do it. The grandson, Roy Tolkien, he's so lovely, so supportive. He's on set a lot with us, and he's such a legend; I love that guy... But I don't know. I think Peter would like to do more Tolkien, and he's the right man for the job, but whether they will ever sell the rights, I don't know. It's a big investment, it's a couple of years out of your life... It's just taking two years out to go to the other side of the planet.
You'd consider it though...
AT: [laughs] Am I at the stage where I can consider something like this!? What a ham! [laughs] Of course I'd do it, what am I talking about?
This time out Kili gets to be the romantic hero...
AT: I wasn't so sure whether it would be kept in or not! It's tough to know with Peter's movies, especially when it's coming in at 2 hours and 10 minutes; you think ‘Jesus, he's cut a lot out of this', but it wasn't, it was left in. I'm very happy, very proud, it's a nice story and Evangeline [Lilly] is very strong in it.
You're used to playing the brooding romantic hero from BEING HUMAN, and although Kili seems much more happy about his romance, was this something you enjoyed?
AT: Martin Freeman always used to say ‘Aidan, what look are you doing today? Blue Steel? Sad face or happy face?' [laughs] He's hilarious. It was nice to have that storyline, but the fighting stuff and everything was fun. There wasn't a bit of it I didn't really enjoy. It was long, and I was ready for it to end when it came to an end, but I don't regret a single day of it. it was amazing. You learn a lot when you're doing a big job like this, when you're over there and in it all the time, you pick up a lot of the techniques of how the camera works, what every department does and how they all work together, and how they keep this well-oiled machine ticking over all the time.
Did you get to do many of the fight scenes and stunts?
AT: We did most of it ourselves, really. The stunt guys were brought in, but they would usually be on different units doing other stuff. Especially for the younger guys, we would do our own fighting, and I wanted to as well, I wanted to make a point of doing it. There's a personal sense of pride you have over your characters, and you want to know you're doing it yourself. On the BBC show POLDARK, which is coming out in March 2015, they wouldn't let me gallop the horse, and I was livid ‘cos I love horse riding and I'm quite all right at it, but it was just insurance. It's horrible, because in the opening credits, Ross Poldark is galloping a horse and [angrily] it's not me! I can't lie, because then I'm a liar! Nobody will ever know but me, but I just can't say it!
Well if you can't lie to Peter Jackson...
AT: [Laughs] Yeah what's it worth now!?
You sing in THE HOBBIT, can we see a musician biopic in your future?
AT: I have done that, yes, but I think I'm way down in the mix! I don't have a great voice... Actually, it's probably not that bad, it's just not good enough that I could go ‘hey check out this song that I wrote', or something. Although that's what every actor thinks before they play the role. Apparently Joaquin Phoenix didn't think he could sing, and then he played Johnny Cash... Sam Riley played Ian Curtis... There's so many performers like that, where it comes out of nowhere and they do it. I don't know if you'll see a biopic with Aidan Turner playing someone... I'd love to play Michael Hutchence, but I wouldn't be able to do his voice justice and I'd be afraid to mess it up, because then you're screwing with somebody's legacy.
Have you found that working on THE HOBBIT has changed your career?
AT: Yes and no... I guess doors do open, but relatively it's all kind of the same. Sometimes you're in a bigger pool, bigger jobs, but you are up against bigger actors, and actors who have done a lot more than you. It does open up doors, but you read stuff and think it's a great sсript, it's a great part... Who got it in the end? Oh, Ewan McGregor! Whether it's better or worse, I don't know, but it's certainly different. Everything's kind of going all right actually, it's pretty good.
You seem to be drawn to roles in fantasy productions with THE HOBBIT, BEING HUMAN and THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES. Is that something that you're drawn to or are these just the roles that have come up?
AT: Mitchell [BEING HUMAN] is a vampire, then it was THE HOBBIT, then I played a werewolf in THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS... Maybe it's just the Holy Trinity of supernatural characters that I just wanted to cap off. It just sounded interesting; I didn't necessarily want to get myself another franchise with THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, but it just seemed fun. I liked the sсript, I liked the idea of going to Toronto and shooting this movie. It wasn't a huge role, but he was a very grounded person, I liked the idea of finding someone who has a human sense to him. Mitchell had that too, he was struggling to not have this affliction, he saw the supernatural attributes as a disease. Similarly with Luke in THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, he was such a real, honest guy. He was the audience in many ways... Then with Kili... I guess playing supernatural can be fun, you have a licence to muck around a bit more; nothing is off the schedule, you can kind of do anything. You can be very theatrical with some scenes, or you can pull stuff right down... You can get away with it because they are not quite human so you can do different things, and that always intrigued me. There came a point though, after THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, when I thought ‘I need to play a real person now', and then Ross Poldark came along and I thought ‘Oh thank god!' [laughs]
POLDARK is a BBC TV series; was it a conscious choice to go back to TV, and specifically the BBC?
AT: Yes... Well I didn't run away from it; it was an offer that came out of nowhere, I had never heard of POLDARK, didn't know anything about it, and suddenly it just came in as an offer. Before I even read it the idea of it was something that I immediately warmed to; I'd be in the UK shooting, it was a real person [laughs], it was period and it was something that I wanted to get back into as well... It just ticked all the boxes and the character appealed to me; he's a real hero. To anchor a show, I felt it was time; I felt I could do it now, I didn't have that fear, it was just exciting and I wanted to get into it. I knew then it was the right time to do something. It all just worked, it all just happened. I didn't go out and search for it, it came to me and it just seemed like absolutely the right project to do.
You're working with Jim Sheridan next year, and obviously POLDARK is coming out in March, are you looking any further into the future in terms of projects?
AT: Not really. It used to be a case of have a load of stuff going on, but you realise very quickly that when you start doing that you put yourself our of action for other stuff. It sounds obvious, but immediately the scripts stop coming in, you stop reading stuff, you stop meeting directors or writers because you have your gigs and it closes off the next 12 months. You want to keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on and what's happening, it might mean sitting around for a couple of months, but being available is something I never thought of before, and it has been quite beneficial this time around. Not having a lot of stuff on has made me look around and meet people and see what's about, and there is some great stuff happening.
It's good to take time off too...
AT: Yeah, just to feel like yourself again. Being back in Dublin and hanging out, it's lovely... Especially at Christmastime. [laughs]
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES is released in Irish cinemas on December 12th, 2014
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Aidan Turner is hitting the big time с
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Irish actor Aidan Turner tells Ed Power how his role as Kili the dwarf became part of a major storyline in The Hobbit trilogy.
SITTING down with actor Aidan Turner is a slightly uncanny experience. I’ve come to our interview from a screening of the final instalment of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, The Battle of the Five Armies, in which the 31-year-old Dubliner plays orc-slaying dwarf Kili.
In the film, he has long hair and a prosthetic nose and wields an exceedingly pointy sword. So it’s a shock to encounter him in a dapper black suit, a guitar perched on his lap (the hotel where we meet is so agonisingly trendy the rooms are furnished with musical instruments). The look is more Urban Outfitters than Mines of Moria.
“Making those movies seems like quite a long time ago,” he proclaims, setting the guitar to one side. “We started four years ago and wrapped a year and a half ago. Returning to the stories and anecdotes, it feels incredibly distant. You move on to other things; revisiting the past can be strange.”
Amid a cast of literally hundreds, Turner is arguably the breakout star of The Hobbit. Going into the project an unknown he was handed the juiciest character arc, that of a dwarf who falls in love with an elf. In fusty Middle Earth the slow-burn flirtation between Kili and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) verges on scandalous — as conceived by director Jackson, the pair are heroic fantasy’s very own Romeo and Juliet, their relationship doomed from the outset.
The Kili-Tauriel romance does not exist in Tolkien’s chaste original novel. Jackson created the storyline to add humanity to a trilogy that otherwise risked boiling down to endless fights and chase sequences (certain critics have argued the movies remain exactly that). Because Jackson shoots far more footage than he could ever use, Turner had no reason to suspect Kili would become so prominent: for all he knew, his scenes with Lilly could have ended on the cutting room floor. It was a pleasant surprise to discover this was not the case.
“Peter shoots hours and hours — seven or so per film, then cuts it down to two and a half. When I saw the last Hobbit movie [2013’s The Desolation of Smaug] and how big my storyline was I thought, ‘Bloody hell, that’s really nice’. I thought they were going to cut me — they didn’t.”
Turner has no idea whether Jackson wrote the Kili storyline with him in mind and demurs when it is pointed out he is by far the most charismatic of the dwarves accompanying hobbit Bilbo Baggins to the Lonely Mountain and the treasure of the dragon Smaug.
“I hope this doesn’t make me sound like an a-hole but everyone gets their moment. I had no idea my part would be as big as it was and am really proud and super happy. It wraps the films up for me in a really cool way. Did Peter plan it from the start? I have no idea: he was constantly working on the screenplay. You’d get back to your room after a long day and one of Peter’s assistants would knock on the door with a new sсript for the next morning. If someone had stolen the original sсript at the start of the shoot it would not have made any difference — there were so many changes along the way.”
There’s a feeling that The Hobbit, shot over 18 months across New Zealand’s ruggedly handsome South Island, could make an A-lister of Turner. He was already a household face in the UK by dint of his part in supernatural drama Being Human (he played a dashing vampire).
However, The Hobbit has catapulted him to an entirely different level: outside of key protagonists such as Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Kili is one of the few characters Jackson took the trouble to properly flesh out.
“It was a very strange experience,” says Turner. “You’d walk onto these huge sets — you might have a scene where you had to run in and say ‘The orcs are coming’. Everyone was looking at you: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman: all these heavy-hitting actors waiting.
“And maybe there’s a bunch of extra running down a hill and 20 horses galloping in another direction. So you might dash in and you mess your lines up — just fluff them entirely. You’re going ‘Oh s**t, all these people are watching’. The extras would have to go back into position; the crew would have to walk the horses back — all so you could do it again. It’s quite a lot of pressure.”
Some of the tasks he was required to undertake pushed the definition of ‘acting’ to its limits. Laughing, he recalls the occasion he and actor James Nesbitt (Bofur the dwarf) were airlifted to the top of a desolate mountain and told to run as fast as they could as a helicopter filmed from overhead.
“Andy Serkis [Gollum in the earlier Tolkien movies] did a lot of the second unit directing. He’d take the actors to some peak nobody had set foot on for centuries: you were given a sword and told to run. Me and Nesbitt would be standing there chatting and then you’d hear the rotor blades and you’d think: ‘Here we go’.
“You had to get it on as the helicopter came over the top of the mountain — you’d hear Andy before you could see him. You wondered ‘What am I doing at the top of a mountain in New Zealand, holding a carbon graphite sword, wearing a prosthetic nose and running as fast as I can?’ It was quite surreal.”
The shoot was gruelling, with the younger actors expected to know their way around a battle-axe. Stunt-men were on hand for the really tricky stuff — nevertheless, the cast received lots of bumps and bruises, and dispensed a few of their own too.
“I remember fighting an orc — he was this really nice New Zealander, wearing a green bodysuit [so the CGI details could be added later]. I swung and accidentally struck with the butt of my sword. I thought nothing of it and was delivering a line of dialogue. Then, I noticed red coming from under his mask. I’d broken his nose. Things like that happened all the time: on another occasion, the dwarves were up a tree, flinging pine-cones at the goblins. We had all these stunt guys hanging on wires. We noticed they’d all nodded off. The wires had wrapped around their legs and cut off the main artery that is responsible for circulation.”
Turner speaks highly of Jackson, describing the director as understated and humble. With so many demands on his time, the New Zealander couldn’t be one of the gang exactly — yet was at pains not to be aloof and unapproachable.
“He has to orchestrate so many different departments. You think of the director as this guy manning the camera, talking to the actors. Peter is so much more. He’d be in his tent, on this battered old armchair he’s had since the Lord Of The Rings, and there would be a line of people with stuff for him to sign off on: costumes, sets, everything. He had to juggle a great deal.
“However, when you were talking to him about a scene or your character, you felt you could have asked him anything. He’s extremely affable — a humble individual and not at all a huge personality. The atmosphere on set was extremely calm. That may be hard to believe if you’ve seen the films. But that’s how it was: calm and enjoyable.”
Ещё) The Hobbit Interview: We met everyone's favourite dwarf, Aidan Turner
The Hobbit Interview: We met everyone's favourite dwarf, Aidan Turner с
The last instalment of the Hobbit series is finally out, you know, in case you missed all the TV, radio, billboard, and bus ads, the talk show guests, or the people running down the street yelling about it.
Well never mind your dragons, the short-arses, the wizards, and mountains full of gold, because there’s an Irish lead, Aidan Turner, and we got chatting to him.
Playing Kili, the handsome dwarf (who punches above his weight) that falls in love with an elf, he became the only character in the trilogy to be given a love story, not that he minded, although it didn’t go down too smoothly with some fans.
“The love story would be a new thing, taken from another one of Tolkein’s stories. We weren’t sure what the fans would think because it’s not loyal to the book, but it’s a trilogy so high in testosterone that having a strong female lead was something that we needed. Plus, it’s nice for the younger audience, both boys and girls to see a strong female character”.
So, all you Hobbit fans, if you still have a problem with it, that’s fine, but just know that you’re all a shower of dirty sexists. And if you thought you could still jump on the fact that there didn’t need to be a third film, think again. Sure, at two hours and 10 minutes it’s by far the shortest of the six Middle-Earth epics Peter Jackson has helmed, but that comes as no surprise, seeing as it wasn’t even meant to happen.
“We thought it was going to be two, until the very end. We had a wrap party, and at the very last day of shooting we were told we’d be coming back for three months of additional shooting.
But you know that it’s not just a money making thing, because Peter(Jackson) had so much in it, to try fit it in two films would be asking a lot. But if he had his way he’d try to have every movie seven hours long. He’s just such a huge fan”.
If that sounds familiar it’s probably because you’ve heard it 500 times in the past 15 years, his actors tend to love working with him, and Turner was no different. The mention of the New Zealand born director is met by a wide grin and a gush of compliments, especially when it comes to the location of the shoot.
"Yeah it was all shot in New Zealand, which was beautiful, and the sets were so vast they really got you in that world because they were all built to scale. Laketown was the size of a real town, and Mirkwood Forest was so big I remember getting lost while and having to listen out for the crew to find my way back."
So it was a pretty relaxed set then? Seeing as you’re all off wandering around forests between takes, is there a sense of relief though now that it’s finally over.
“I was kind of misquoted recently saying I was glad for it all to be over, which comes across as ungrateful, but that’s not how I feel. I think everyone is happy that it’s over, but happy because we did it, and we did it well, and all the films work. Now we can look back and finally enjoy them".
We eventually move onto upcoming roles, which is fair considering he’s spent three years talking about The Hobbit, but television is where you can see him next, in the BBC period-drama Poldark, based on the books of the same name.
“It’s out in March, we shot that for 6 months of this year, I’ve seen bits already and it looks good, so it’s very exciting. In the last couple of years I’ve played a dwarf, a vampire(Being Human) and a werewolf(The Mortal Instruments), so I’m finally a human again, which is nice”.
Speaking of playing fictional characters, he was quick to dampen rumours of himself playing a vigilante at the Odessa Film Festival, as reports suggest he stopped a mugger from stealing a woman’s purse.
“I’ve no idea where that came from. I was out there doing press after one of the films, and some of the journalists mentioned it. I went along and added to the story every time for a bit of a laugh, but always ended with a ‘that’s all bullshit by the way’. It was quite funny, and it’s nice for the false stories to be favourable, but I’d prefer if there wasn’t any at all.
So contrary to popular belief, you can’t believe absolutely everything you read on the internet. Well, not from other sites anyway, we've got your back. That was all the time we had with one of Ireland’s newest stars, but if you liked him in The Hobbit, or anything else you’ve seen him in(yes, he was a receptionist in The Clinic) you should head on over to here, and vote for him and the rest of the nominees for this year’s Eric awards.
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