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| Andy Serkis as Caesar in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes |
Andy Serkis has been the world’s leading proponent of performance capture, all the while digitally subsuming himself in roles as diverse as monstrous gorilla Kong in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the irrepressible Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, dipsomaniac seaman Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures Of Tintin and the super-intelligent chimp revolutionary Caesar in the hugely successful Planet of the Apes franchise rejuvenator, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)… plus now its sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, that releases this Friday. A chat.
How does it feel to be back on the Planet of the Apes playing Caesar?
It’s very exciting, and it’s great working with Matt [Reeves, director]. He’s very clear about the story he wants to tell and it’s huge. Rise was such a domestic movie and this is so epic, it’s vast.
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How would you outline the story for this film?
It takes place 10 years after the apes have broken free, and Caesar has gone through this whole journey of trying to engage with the ape inside him and to find an existence and to have an accord between all the different species [of apes], and this community that we now have has about 2,000 apes. For the last two years, it’s almost like the human beings have vanished. For the first eight years, there were sightings of them over the city, the apes were looking down from Muir Woods into San Francisco and you could see lights and fires, but over the last couple of years it’s gone very, very quiet. And so they’ve almost gone out of the public consciousness of the ape community, until one day when a small band of humans comes up into our territory.
Were you heartened by the reaction to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and particularly to Caesar?
Absolutely. When I read Rise, it was an amazing script. I literally thought it was a fantastic piece of writing and any actor would have wanted to play that role. Regardless of the fact that it was an ape, as a role, just the arc of it, was brilliant. To play him from infancy through to revolutionary… it was a great, great role. And Dawn has actually been more complex to pull off.
From an acting perspective?
Yes. From an acting point of view the challenges on this were immeasurably more difficult because of the complexity of his journey, and because of the amount of articulacy… not just emotional articulacy but also in terms of language. The way the film was scripted, Caesar is the most philosophical of them all and what we discovered when we were rehearsing was that it’s very, very hard to pull off the scenes which are philosophical or reflective or intellectualising a situation without sounding like you're over-articulating a thought. So we had to find ways of skimming back on them or simplifying the thought, but also allowing Caesar to be the most articulate of the apes. It was a real conundrum… which I think we’ve achieved.
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How is Caesar’s journey more complex in this instalment of the franchise?
He’s now completely torn apart because he doesn’t entirely hate humans and he can’t admit that to the other apes because he was actually brought up with a lot of love — and that is a very difficult thing to communicate to the rest of his tribe. And he isolates the only people [Jason Clarke and Keri Russell’s characters] that he can cut through all the prejudice to, to connect with. And obviously that’s reflected from the human side. What I love about this film is that it is incredibly balanced, it’s an ensemble piece, and the human story is equally as potent and powerful and meaningful. We’re talking about people on the edge of survival and equally on the edge of destruction. And at this point in time, yes, the apes are surviving because they don’t need power, they don’t need the same resources that humans do, but it shows how fickle survival is in both camps. The film is very centred around family. Both sides of the story have familiar arcs.
Caesar is now a father, isn’t he?
He is a father, yes. There’s a new generation of apes. Rocket (Terry Notary) has a son, too, and just as our kids are better with iPads and technology than we are, they are a little more evolved. That was what Matt wanted. He didn’t want it to be 20, 30 years ahead where they’re all chatting away: ‘Shall we go out and hunt today?’ ‘Oh no, I don’t think we will darling!’ (Laughs)
How exactly do the apes communicate with each other in this story if they’re not all talking?
We had to figure out how the language works. So it is apes’ vocalisations — various different apes, chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas, with their own forms of vocalisation — plus gestures, sort of slightly more human gestures. And there’s the sign language, which obviously Caesar was taught, which he’s transmitted and what he and Maurice [Karin Konoval] were able to communicate, so he thinks that’s a way of galvanising the apes. And there’s the ability to use human words, and the logic behind that. Matt was very specific about not wanting to land too far down the line in terms of their evolution.
You have often been described as the world’s leading ‘motion-capture actor’. Is that specifically how you would define yourself?
No, of course not! (Laughs)
So you see no division between ‘performance capture’ and straight performance?
No, no I never have. (As Caesar) I am just playing a character in a movie that has a different set of cameras filming me in order to achieve the aesthetic. That’s the difference. That’s all it is. In terms of playing a role, the embodiment of the character, the psychological investigation, everything to do with building a character is all exactly the same. If I had to play Caesar, or Gollum, or any of those characters now for you, I could act them out for you without any costume. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight, but hopefully the drama of the scenes would be there. Of course, the selects that the director makes to put into the final cut of the movie is where the authorship lies, as it does with a live-action movie. Even in a live-action movie, when you’re wearing a costume, that’s as much input as you can have into the thing. The enhancement, whether it’s music or sound or lights or choice of angles or whatever… it’s not an actor’s medium. It’s a director’s medium. And so all our performances are enhanced in some way, shape or form. The only difference is putting a costume on beforehand or putting costume and make-up on afterwards via the visual effects.
When you look at Caesar’s face, do you see your own? Do your kids see you in Caesar?
Yeah, they do. In all the roles I’ve played… because they know my facial expressions. And [VFX company] Weta know all my facial expressions — my face has been scanned so many times that they must know every single millimetre of every pore of my face. So I can see it and read my thoughts, my acting choices, my timing — all of those things come across. It’s quite bizarre. It is like wearing a mask that moves to every single muscle movement that you’re making.
Will you be returning for the sequel?
There’s probably a chance. Never say never!
