Conversations with Jonathan Pryce

my name is Scott fine Burnham with The Hollywood Reporter I do their awards column and their podcast called awards chatter and I am very happy to be here only primarily because I love to popes I do love sag-aftra and the SAG Foundation as well but love the two popes and love the actor who we're lucky enough to be joined by this evening he is one of his generations most respected of both stage and screen known best some for his work in films like Brazil two others for his stage work in shows including comedians and Miss Saigon both of which he won Tony's for and of course for all kinds of other things up to and including 2019 s outstanding the two popes for which he has at long last long overdue received an Oscar nomination in the category of Best Actor so without any further ado please join me in giving a big warm welcome to Jonathan pres thank you you didn't get the dress code we were misinformed thank you for doing this and I want to begin with just some basics where were you born and raised and what a jerk folks do for a living I was born and raised in a small village town in North Wales in the county of Flint yeah and my parents my father left school whatever schooling he had run about 13 14 and went down the coal mines and was down the mines until he met my mother and she rescued him and between them they they opened a grocer's shop corner shop kind of thing in the village and now growing up this was not always the path that you were on I I know that for a time you were at art school you were even a teacher training school so where did things go wrong and you wound up here yeah well I never intended to be an actor at all partly but the fact that I never was exposed to theatre I've sold a lot of television and sometimes we had live broadcasts of theatres from London onto the television they were farces Bryan Rick's used to perform the they were called the Whitehall fascist and I'd watched those my childhood was one we were it was a village you were free to play and go out and do whatever you want all day you didn't have to report back and nobody was worried about you but I I played a lot of imagination games or imaginary games and with other kids in the village we put on little plays and things but it never seemed a very important time and I knew I enjoyed it I had my first role was in the infant school when I'd have been about six I think five or six and it was a the play was called the the pot of gold and I was an elf I my mother made my costume and it was like a shot silk with jagged edges cut and I had one line and I had to say come brother's for it is cold and I thought I did this really well but the teacher took the line away from me and gave it to somebody else and I think that was the inspiration for you know one day no one is ever gonna prove her wrong your line away from so I also remember thinking the boy who was playing the King Melvin yes Melvin Evans his name was completely inappropriate casting I should be playing the King so but that school my interest was art I wasn't a very good pupil I was always being sent out of the class when I went to the grammar school anyway from 11 upwards I was always being throw it's elves yeah I was always being thrown out of the class for Larkin about playing silly tricks on the teacher little things like be right it was chalkboards then he was writing on the board and if the Sun was shining and I'd have a mirror and I'd be following my following his hand and he'd stop and the mirror and then it would be priced get out get out and outside the door so has a delinquent though let me let you go about our large school is important that they live it was all part of all part of this process of becoming an actor but I art was the thing that I gravitated to it was see I really enjoyed it I also had a teacher who I wish to emulate Ivor Jones who I just liked everything about him and he liked the way dressed and it was at school that teaches all wore cloaks their bachelor cloaks and he used to wear high stiff white collars and he had beautiful handwriting and I learnt how to write like him and my I still pride my you know I get I didn't win any prizes right but people when I get to write at all people comment on it and it was also a time when I was thrown out of the you B's classes the headmaster Sydney Davis he used to do the rounds of the school and he would see me and he'd say price stand outside my room and I'd have to go and stand outside the Headmaster's room oh this is all so raw 60 years ago but I would have to go and stand outside his room the rest of the school would parade by and I'd be you know ridiculed and made a fool of and and then he would get me into his room and he would verbally abused me and tell me that I was a disgrace to my mother my that I was and he'd say horrible things to me and there was one day he ran out of bad things to say to me ended up say you you bottle of skinless pork sausages elves and so he eventually he wouldn't let me go back to 16 he wouldn't let me go back to six form so the only place I could go to where I wanted to go to was the art school and I studied out for two years and then I went to a teacher training college to learn how to teach art of something to fall back on and and you had to do a subsidiary course and I was told by friends that the easiest course to do require the least amount of work was the drama course so that suited me just fine and but I'm one of my tutors at college was a man called Jerry Dawson and he worked with a theatre company in Liverpool which was near my college called unity theater and it was an offshoot of the unity theatre there was in London formed in the 30s and they were it was a communist theatre group when communism was respectable but they used to do classic theatre and they'd used to do Brecht and various other plays not normally in the amateur theatre Cannon and I worked with them and I got to like acting I I knew it was the first thing but as as much as I liked painting I was never really very satisfied with my paintings and I I got some praise for them but never bright prayers and I would look at my fellow students work and I think that's so much better than mine and why can't I think like that and then when I started acting I people were saying that for the first time it was my life they liked what I was doing and and eventually I met somebody who saw me do a play at college and he said have you ever thought of being an actor and they said no of course not and he said I think you should and I think you should go to Rada which is where he'd been as an actor before he became a teacher and so he sent off for the application papers and he coached me through to audition speeches and I I got a scholarship to Terada and it began my education in in theatre so while you were that I mean that must have been a confidence booster to be at as great a place as any for the study of acting but who was David Perry well all my life that it seems I'm not complaining too much there's always been someone who's tried to put me down yeah and I think you know I must have got stronger through it but David Perry was my tutor at Rada who was supposed to be take you know having the pastoral care of me and making sure I was doing okay and he never liked what I was doing I remember doing a session with him on a fellow and I was playing Othello and Henry Goodman was playing Iago and we devised it that during this scene together he would be on my back and wrestling with me while he was with whispering terrible things in my ear which we thought was quite you know avant-garde and a pretty good thing to be doing David Perry hated it and said asked us to stop doing it otherwise he was going to be physically sick he then told me that all I would ever be good for was playing villains in a particular TV show called Zed cars and and then the day after he told me that I went to the principal and I said you've got to change my tutor he's he's doing me no good he's horrible and they did they change the tutor and but I always for years I would take great delight in mentioning mentioning his name but it was you know all the time in did the school when Sydney Davis wouldn't let me back years later I was at Stratford playing Octavius Caesar in Peter Brooks production of Antony and Cleopatra and we did a matinee and I finished and the call came from the stage doors Jonathan as a as a man here come mr. Davis would you come down and see him and I knew I sent who it was and I said no I said send him to my room and then this this old man came in and smiling and all benevolent and said how proud he was of me and he always knew why but I didn't say anything like yeah well lesson learned so can you please connect the dots between how you there were there were not that many years between when you graduated from Rada and when you were on Broadway on route to winning a Tony for comedians I think we're looking at like five years something like that so in that period I know there was I I don't know if this is the proper description for it but sort of experimental theatre period for you leading to comedians it wasn't it wasn't experimental it was political theatre and I was very fortunate it set me off on the path that several influenced my whole career my first job and that was at the theatre in Liverpool called the everyman theatre and it was run by a man called Allen dosa and it was they performed plays that were written for the company that had to do with some social issues in Liverpool and a mixture of those plays and classical theatre and I got the job because I could sink I was doing a production or was in a production of Oklahoma at RADA and I was playing one of the pallbearers in the quartet of poor Giada's dead and I had a very high tenor voice and the md's next job was he'd written the music for Caucasian Chalk Circle and he written the role of the music for the narrator for a very high tenor he told Allen dosser about me Allen came to see my final show in London he couldn't miss me it was one man and about four women anyway he left at the interval because he had to get back to Liverpool Brittany left a note saying there's a job at the every month theater if you want it it's yours you know so I went there and it was the best thing that could ever have happened to me I won't play this singer in chalk circle my first role was the comic role of elbow in measure for measure and then you you your players cast in it was a different player Bri sometimes for weeks most leave different probably six weeks and you'd be rehearsing a play during the day were performing at night they and it was there was a reason it was called the every month here because it will it felt like every man for yourself because it was quite anarchic on stage we were playing for a fairly unsophisticated audience that was the audience we wanted because there was a traditional theatre in Liverpool the Playhouse but we tried to get people in from the housing estates and we had a company that would go out to the housing estates or the projects that you would call them and they would perform plays in pubs and clubs and tried to get the audience to come to the theatre so that was it was quite a oh there was quite rough and ready but it was a wonderful training ground it was also important for personal reasons well it was the time I met my wife yeah every man yeah we weren't in the same I went to see her in a in the the play house in a play with a mutual friend who had been at drama school with him and I saw her I said which one's your friend she said the tall dark one I met her she went back to London at the end of that week I'd only said hello to her and goodbye to her a couple of times and anyway two weeks later after I've been to London to see her she left her husband and I left my wife and that was 48 years ago so just and we got married five years ago yes oh really yeah it's ugly I weren't sure yeah so I mentioned comedians and I think it's important to talk about because basically and I know it's it's harder to talk about theatre maybe because people either saw it or they didn't as opposed to some of these films people had time to catch up on but in this case it's basically like a Lenny Bruce kind of guy who you were cast as right and you blew people away we should say directed but you did it first in London well first that nodding him play out during a play host at 75 then in then later in at the Old Vic directed by Roger air and then directed by Mike Nichols on Broadway in 1976 in 277 and aside from being a great part that you knocked out of the park which I would love to hear anything you want to say about you know it's a role that you won your first Tony for that's a big deal it was also significant I think for personal reasons because of who was in the audience from your family right well it that was it was it was a play I was at Nottingham Playhouse I'd gone from the everyman to Nottingham partly cuz Richard Eyre had directed at Liverpool and he wants who he was forming a new company and partly because liveable everyman theatre paid 21 pounds a week and the Notting of Hay House paid 42 pounds a week no-brainer yeah yeah no great and it's not really just job but yeah it was well that what you're alluding to is is to do with my father by the influence my father had on me that during the time of comedians but later Hamlet because I had not had a great relationship with my father I didn't say much remember he was we lived at home but I didn't see much of him we didn't have a very close relationship I was the youngest of three children I was very late child I think my mother was 45 when she had me which in 1947 was you know by all 2019 2020 yeah but anyway he was I was at Liverpool and he was attacked in his shop and hit over the head by a young boy who was wanted to steal cigarettes and he survived that he had a stroke that night but it wasn't too bad and then he I went to Nottingham to do comedians and the comedians is about a young comedian I was 27 I think 26 27 when I started it who had a relationship with the teacher of this school for comedians night school and my father came to see that play that production in Nottingham and he said to my mother I wish I could have talked to John like the teacher is taught like that man is talking to him and my mother told me less now though it's great this is like a new beginning for the two of us and then he had another stroke and he never spoke again so and then I went to New York to do it and I'd have these one-sided conversations with him where he could just make noises and I would tell him what everything I thought he wanted to hear but that had quite is he he died when just just before opening night in of comedians and I couldn't go home for the funeral it's reeling the play but then years later not many years later 1980s so that was 76 1980 Richard Eyre asked me to do Hamlet and it was the second time of his asking me and the first time I thought I was I wasn't ready for it and I didn't have anything to say really with it and then when my father died and he said let's do Hamlet and I found a reason for doing it and I found that when after he died I thought I had seen him I thought he'd appeared to me in the garden of a house we had and and I began thinking about Hamlet and Hamlet's the fat ghost of Hamlet's father and how possibly Hamlet had conjured up the image of his father because he so wanted to see him and there were certain parallels between my father's death he died the result of violence Hamlet's father violence I hadn't wanted revenge on the young lad my sister's dead I've dealt with it in a very strange way but I didn't I didn't want to think about the boy and then we were trying to find a way that we would portray the ghost that was relevant to a modern audience and I was talking to Richard about my experience with my father and how they I'd wanted to see my father I'd conjured him up and maybe Hamlet conjured up his father and he had these suspicions about how Hamlet had father being killed and anyway so long story short is that he in the production he sees in his mind in his mind he sees his father he conjures him up and because he so wanted to see him but the lines that the ghosts normally says I brought from within me as if I was possessed by my father and I said the things like I would say to my dad when he couldn't speak I would said the things all the things I've thought my father would want me to say about his death and it was an odd thing to do but because you're going to a fit of possession and and it's as if you're speaking in tongues but yours you're saying his words were the what a disembodied voice which you dragged up from somewhere and night after night doing it at the Royal Court Theatre you could hear that people would start tittering this is with weird you know fun and then it's a long speech and it goes on and on and on and you could feel the owners going oh my god this how I talk because it looks as if it's very difficult to do and ultimately it wasn't that difficult to do but it anyway it was it was a resolving for me of something to do my father yeah that was that one of the most well reviewed and and just you know people found so moving to see this performance and not even knowing this backstory probably at the time yeah how around that time I think starting maybe with a very small part in voyage of the Damned did screen acting begin to enter the picture and and also how do you adjust that when you've exclusively trained and worked in theater to suddenly have to figure out how to work for a camera well I don't see it as much different I mean I think somebody like either Gale GERD or Olivia said about theater versus green acting's it's exactly the same thing only theater you shout a bit but I am when I started all I wanted to do was theater and television this was 1972 television would occasionally pay for theater and films were what other people did people who lived in London did films and I lived in the north but I got I got voyage of the Damned after I'd done comedians in London be purely I think because my head was shaved to play this skinhead and I was asked to play the role of a man who'd been released from a concentration camp and I was I was also very thin at the time happy days but yeah and it was quite an exposure to filmmaking I'd done some television I'd done two films with Stephen Frears two television films which introduced me to film acting there were leading roles and these felt BBC films but the world of voyage of the Damned was it's a film that should never have been made in the form there it was made because it was a true story of a thousand Jews before the Second World War who were released from Germany as a propaganda mission to say look they are free to go and it was never allowed to land this ship anywhere and ended up back in Rotterdam I think it was and the people were rounded up again and my character it was a real Joseph Manasseh ended up back in the camp but where he died but it was made by a man called produced by salut ade who did the equivalent of the blockbuster films and if you can imagine this ship of a thousand Jews almost like the Murder on the Orient Express we get the walk down of the stars and it was full of stars Faye Dunaway was one of the mosque of Werner James Mason Orson Welles Malcolm McDowell a young Michael McDowell who sell his cavalcade and and I was one of the you know fairly insignificant character and but not that but I don't - I don't know if I should tell you this but if a hundred years from now if people are going to be watching these yeah yeah but there we filmed in Barcelona for two weeks of location shooting on the ship which set sail from Barcelona Harbor everyday and you would be called and you get on the ship and if you and neat you know because they couldn't suddenly decide they want to do though out at sea so they you would be called there and you'd go to your cabin and wait to see if it was going to happen and every night we go out to the bars in Barcelona and get drunk on cheap Spanish brandy funded or if we go and then you knew you could go to the ship go to your cabin sleep it off you weren't gonna work so is this one day I go to the a terrible terrible hangover and I went to my cabin I get get into bed and I think I'll sleep it off and sure enough the naught comes on the door Jonathan would jump into you're saying now what and so um I can't get up oh god I go to the deck of the ship and I'm working with an American actor who has all method and he won't sleep in the room at the Ritz Hotel he either slept in the corridor outside or walk the streets all night just to maintain this Haggard look and there's me hangover and we do the scene and the American actually goes I'm Stewart Rosenberg who directed Cool Hand Luke and everything is he came up to me and he put his hand on my chest and he said you are some my praise doesn't go any higher back to my cabin uh yeah that's great so so I've been like that all my career actually yeah you played the Pope I'm sure yeah yes so I don't recommend it as a method yeah well wasn't it there was some story about John Barrymore had a similar thing where one night he I think it may have been Hamlet or something he played the part he was just absolutely hammered went back to the wings to vomit in the middle of the performance came back and he was they got the best reviews of his career anyway so the first major role that people probably associated you know associate you with was Brazil in 1985 Thierry Gillett yeah I mean so one of the great movies but it's amazing I just did a interview with Terry for The Hollywood Reporter going through just what an ordeal it was to even just get that movie ever financed off the ground all of that and the fact that you ended up in the movies is a sort of stroke of fate itself right I mean how did you and Terry first cross paths well we met at a screening of Bertolucci's 1700 all-day screening parts 1 & 2 and I had been on TV the night before doing a half-hour comedy and he was with Michael Palin and I knew them from Monty Python I didn't know them personally and he tapped me on the shoulder and to say see me on television and he thought it was funny and we chatted a bit and that was it and then he sent me the script of Time Bandits and I just finished playing Hamlet in the West End at the Royal Court and for very little money and I was absolutely broke and at the same time I was off at the film loophole [Laughter] nothing and loophole paid maybe these three times as much as I was being offered for Time Bandits so and I'd I'd gone to meet I'd read this script and it was a bank robbery that took place through the sewers and I read the script my first nothing special about this but Albert Finney is playing the lead and Martin Sheen is playing the second leave my services Jordan went to meet the director and he was not very impressive he'd been a production manager this was going to be the first thing he was going to direct and I came away thinking well he's not very good and the scripts not very good but although Finney is doing it Martin Sheen is doing it so there must be something in it that I can't say and anyway so I said no to Terry and I started on a loophole in the sewers and I arrived in the car every morning at Bray Studios where the tank was and the director would be waiting in his waders because we spent all day in water and I get out the car and I go money Johnny got hello Jonathan and I said how's it going he got oh wow it's going really well well what do you expect we got Albert we got Martin we got yourself we've got Tony we've got and and every day I get out the car how's it as it going John Artic I'm really well well what can you expect we got Albert and I am talk to other actors and there that's why are you doing this well I heard you were doing it and I went into Martin Sheen's trailer and he was sitting there with his head in his hands and I said Martin do you mind if I ask you a question yes no no no why are you doing this film and he said well when I was a young man I was an usher in the theater when Albert Finney was playing Luther and I thought if one day if I get the chance to work with him I'll do it and we were all there on this chain so Albert Finney was sitting on the stack of money he was getting yeah but when Terry offered me Brazil and which I desperately wanted to do and was thrilled to do anytime there was any difficulty in filming if I was hanging in a harness for too long and it was cutting into my thighs ever and he would say this is your punishment for saying no it's the time bear that step that's great carried on doing there so was there the just because this is a movie that appears on you know all-time greatest lists and we we all kind of think of it now as a classic but in the making of it did you have any sense that it was going very well I mean I know for since one thing that did not go very well was a stunt that occurred very close to your ear right well yeah wasn't seemed a minor thing at the time but a stuntman was guiding me through this battle sequence and he was supposed to be there to keep me safe because there were lots of other stuntmen shooting guns and things and he had his gun yet armed Rama here and a gun he was behind me and for some reason he fired his gun right next to my ear and it I was not to the ground bite with the blast and anyway I've had I've tinnitus about tinnitus for all those years here now which I know noticing because you know we brought in I'll talk about it do you not notice if it's a it it's it's it's awful it means you you never ever experience silence and it's really frustrating the rest of the shoot though I mean it's like other than that this is like it how was the yeah but I mean the rest of the shoot was a bruise right no it was really good and it was a really creative time for making that film and you know contrary to all the other stories you hear about Terry and things being over budget and overtime that came in under time and under budget and it was absolute joy to do and I was there throughout the film and then you'd get visiting you know DeNiro would turn up to do a bit and Michael Palin would do his bit Bob Hoskins and it was shot over a period of months and it was great absolutely great so it sounds like it's it's rarely just simple and straightforward for you to have to you know with some of the things you've had to deal with over the course of your career and maybe one of the ultimate examples of this would be just a few years after that with starting in 89 in England and then 91 on Broadway the role of the engineer in Miss Saigon we're in England you again first of all you had mentioned you you had had the singing voice that was earlier on people knew about maybe people in the film industry didn't know it took them longer to learn that but bottom line in in England you were with New York Times reviewed it as quote the role of your prices career you want an olivier couldn't have gone over better you come to Broadway and again very III guess let me let me ask you to pick up the story from there I don't want to I don't want to characterize because it was like another Tony but it was a road to get there it was in them it's an argument that's even more relevant to now an argument about diversity and inclusion and the role is of a Eurasian pimp and I and the the rest of the British theatre come from a tradition where anybody plays anything and certain things that were kind of off limits but at the time for the play you were Asian character wasn't off limits and I had worked with from the very beginning work with diverse companies of actors and people of all races playing all kinds of roles and none more so than Miss Saigon in in London there were very few and there were quite a few filipino performers is they had a tradition of musical theatre in the philippines but the very few british asian performers there wasn't the history that wasn't the background for them so it was a multi national cast as it were nits it seemed perfectly natural to me you had we had French we had oh all sorts everything so then when the it was going to transfer to New York and they were only going to take layer Salonga and myself we thought this was gonna be great because of the multi ethnicity that exists in in America and in New York especially and and then there was the protest started by two people that I shouldn't be allowed to play the role in there just because I wasn't Asian and certainly wasn't and as much as I said it's the Eurasian I'm half I'm half way there they they didn't accept it and there were lots of protests to equity and it was it looked as if it was going to result in the production not happening because Cameron said unless Cameron Mackintosh unless he is allowed to play this role I'm not going to I'm going to cancel the production and it was it was frustrating I was in England and couldn't and was being portrayed as one kind of person and I couldn't put my arguments forward that this was you know a multi-ethnic cast in London and it wasn't an issue but of course they what they were fighting for was the opportunity to play these roles and to play other roles and that was a very very good argument to be having and a lot of very good things came out of it people casting sessions we're different people were very aware that you all you know all people had to be seen for all different roles things they weren't ordinarily thought they should be playing or could be playing so very good things happened and and but nonetheless it was it was a painful time because I wasn't getting my side heard but I am I'm glad we've that it was resolved and I was accepted certainly by the cast in New York and it became very successful and it's it's interesting then that that role has not been played by a Caucasian actor since ever since but I am I don't you know I don't know whether that made me means that the argument was understood or or what I'm that's open for debate I think sure so let's talk about a few more films just briefly we'll touch on ruta to post because I think in the aftermath of being a two-time Tony winning actor more and more people probably on this Coast we're aware of you wanting to work with you there's the great part that you play in Glengarry Glen Ross the film with one of the most incredible casts ever Pacino lemon Baldwin yourself on and on and on so well so Mamet dialogue yeah how's that to learn and deliver oh it's great yeah yeah I am absence played Shelley Levine on stage in London that was the heart lemon that's tremolo yeah maybe played it so brilliantly well everyone was fantastic in there no it's it's it's good to do and he wasn't around for the film and he certainly wasn't around when we did the stage production in London but and he was at that time it didn't seem that long ago but he was only using facts and if the director asked if he had any words of advice for the company before we opened in London and he said Noel Coward said just say the lines and avoid the furniture in my case I don't care about that that's what I've heard about him yeah okay next that was Glen Gary was 92 93 was movie called dark blood that was never finished because it was during the making of that that River Phoenix your co-star in this film died very suddenly and he I understand was obsessed with Brazil big fan of yours and you guys even had I think plans the weekend or whatever the day after he was found would passed away right yeah just when you think about him what do you think about well I think about him and one when I think about that whole experience as being a very very dark time because it was up there but the whole thing was a very difficult situation we had an actress who would not cooperate with the director who would not talk to the director who would only be directed through a third party wouldn't talk to me when and there were just three overs in the film it was it was bleak and drawed Switzer was having a terribly the director was having a terrible time and but because of all this all the problems River and I bonded quite strongly and we would he had his gang with him his entourage of young people and I would eat with them every night and got to know him really well and I would tell him he liked to hear theater stories he wanted to know about Terry Gilliam I was going to set up a meeting with him and tear and then we came back to we did we were six weeks I think in Utah in the most glorious scenery in the desert that was amazing and we had two weeks of interiors to shoot and River just reverted and I wasn't going home at nights and staying in a hotel when that was only two nights and the second night or the day after that he came into work and he was ill and couldn't get warm ever it was cold all the time and then we finished that day of shooting and even though I went back to the hotel and was joking up like 5:00 in the morning to say with just the producer saying rivers dead which is just quite an unbelievable thing an extraordinary thing to hear but he was I don't know he was he was 23 and we had it all ahead of him and he was I I just loved him I thought he was a wonderful young man yeah and there's something kind of poetic about the fact that a person who Harold who he was a hero to was I believe his brother Joaquin who you are now in a category at the Oscars with yeah yeah it all carry around I haven't seen what came I saw him the day after yeah the the death and he was very young then I've seen rivers sister since but I have not he hasn't been on the circuit yeah yeah but and they are I I wouldn't have seen River becoming the actor that were canes become they were I think they were very different different very different personalities but I think he's he's an extraordinary actor he's just great prior to the two popes maybe the most correct me if you disagree but maybe some of the most Awards attention that came your way was was for back-to-back projects or very close proximity projects the TV film barbarians at the gate for which you wound up with Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and then the film directed by Christopher Hampton Carrington from 1985 you won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival and I know from our prior conversations people perhaps got your hopes up that that was gonna be the first Oscar nominee and then for inexplicable reasons was not but those were something you're doing some of the best work of your career in those projects leading into then Evita where it's you and Madonna and so I'm just imagining that that itself in some ways might not be that far off from the Harvey Keitel experience where Rada along Jonathan Pryce and whatever her name Chaconne I forget what her full you know you come from very different backgrounds and yet you know we really well yeah yeah connect just that period of a few years of quite a variety of stuff yeah well I'm it's me go back to when I started when you were played your players cast and you so you you developed all these different skills and we were all always doing things we're doing bits of dancing or juggling or I even did a ventriloquist act with a dummy of the politician our politician Harold Macmillan while tap-dancing so you know you're not afraid to do anything right I I was never a big fan of the musical but the I am was a big fan of Alan Parker and he made a stunning film of that but when we Madonna and I met to do piano rehearsals and I think Alan had just got some kind of award and he said err Jonathan's got a lot of awards you know he's got Tony's he's got yes and that know it there oh oh yeah so we said to him we're done what have you got and she said I got a lot of cash well she worked she did work incredibly hard at that role and I think she succeeded in lots of ways on that she was great yeah so in what must have come as validating news - I think it would have been mr. Perry you did end up playing a villain albeit not on British TV but in a Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997 and your particular guy appeared to perhaps been inspired by Rupert Murdoch it was that kind of a guy we're now seeing him again in succession and in a different incarnation but I guess I I know that that also just as a it might be a cautionary tale about Hollywood that all experienced because you can do the best work of your life but at the end of the day what happens in the editing room is out of your yeah yeah yeah well I think one of the reasons I wanted to do that film I was never you know it wasn't the life times ambition to do a Bond film right I though it would be nice to do if they ever offered it me and when I got this script sent to me it was immediately attractive because it had a political point of view and it wasn't just going to be some strange guy in a strange led somewhere great and it was going to be representation of the power of the press and about this particular press mogul and so I was very happy to do it it was great I mean it did have all the usual think the bond bits where you've you know you've got your gun pointing it at bond you don't because you can't he's got it from money first you in a machine and there was a certain chaos as well to that because they didn't they hadn't got the script finished and this was the Pierce Brosnan area yeah yeah and they were still writing scenes as we were shooting it and there was his important scene and Ricky Ricky J yeah who had been cast by the director because he was a huge fan of his magic work yeah but they didn't bother this is that took about diversity they didn't bother to change the name of the character from patel and he said no yeah I get all the Asian roles this New York Jewish guy oh my god and he was supposed to be a computer wizard I mean Ricky knew nothing and where did we would get pages and I go okay and they will he'd be along the card I got Ricky what you shoot me I do yeah oh wow sitting wait another piece of paper cut Ricky what you don't shoot me I went home out there but the the big speech that was very pertinent to the to my character it was his you know how he was gonna take over the world and the power of the press and everything and it was a long speech and I learnt it and I delivered it as well as I could and they shot in and I go to see the film and I start my speech and after a few lines cut away to bond running fighting fell and you all you can hear me in the background wherever the fight is going on you can hear this voice droning on but it wasn't that that's not the last time was this okay but the videos a if you look at the two popes Fernando says that his work begins when our work is stopped Wow and when he goes to the editing room and I think it's one of the first films I've watched all the way through and not missed anything that and he's cut a lot yeah but I haven't missed it well unlike my experience of Pirates of the Caribbean well you that's where we're heading that's where we're headed where I wasn't there was nothing for me to do in Paris the kv-3 and I was quite happy not to do it well you just cash the cheque right yes right well so just to remind folks alienate it Jamaica governor Weatherby Swann father of Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Swann this was 2003 2006 and 2007 the trilogy did you ever imagine when you signed up for this I mean people forget Johnny Depp was not on top of the world when this thing started no and it's basically adapting a ride into a movie yeah there weren't that many people that believed in this so well III the irony is that I was set to do a film with Anthony Hopkins in Europe and it was a film about the church and it was about a child who'd been left with the priest and was brought up into the church and it was a real case and Tony was to play the main guy and they kept shifting the locations and the more that they were going further and further into Eastern Europe and Tony decided no I don't wanna go there and so that I got the call to say this film was off at the same time my agent said however I've got this script from a pirate movie and I'd gone from doing this really intense the idea of this intense low-budget film and I couldn't see any reason not to do it I was suddenly available yet and and the money was okay and and you get to go to the Caribbean so and also my character only I'd go out for two weeks I come home and I go for another few weeks and I had a great time doing it it was fun but we got to pirates three and again it's chaos film well yeah but they you you've got your starting they wanted to shoot the two simultaneously number two number three two and three it was save money because they would reuse locations and but they didn't have the scripture went written and we started without a script and anyway they said the II said Rama the director whose nameless now has gone out of my head that one wasn't for a Penske was it called the buggy yeah yeah it was a wonderful director he really is he's great and he said I want you to be anytime embarrass there's nothing for you to do but we're going to write this scene for you with you and Bill Nighy and so it was a nice scene did it and we shot it and went to see went to Disneyland for the premiere and my son was in film school in New York and I said come over to the premiere you can watch it with me and stay in LA with me for a bit and I was watching this film a couple of things have one it was completely incomprehensible to me lots of running Americans and and I turned to my savvy film student son who I thought he'll know and I said Gabe what's going on and he said dad I have enough so I thought well anyway I've got my scene coming up and of course I'm great anticipation and nothing and I turned to Gore Verbinski he's staring resolutely at the school and I didn't mind I did I didn't miss it yeah so let's talk about just these last very recent few years of the some of the most seen and a plotted work that you've done in projects of such different kinds I'm gonna mention them then we can take them however you want the high Sparrow on Game of Thrones 2015 to 2016 having previously by the way and I'll ask you to maybe address this having been approached earlier in the show's run to play a different part then every bit is great for my money as Glenn Close in the wife for which she got a lot of attention and then we come to the two popes but let's I guess let's knock out those two before the two Pope's first anything you would like to Oh Game of Thrones Game of Thrones and the wife well Game of Thrones I it's they had asked me to they'd offered me a role in the pilot which and they they sent me the script and I it isn't a genre filmmaking that I really like sword and sorcery or anything anything with hobbits in rows the robes again sort of magical mystery things and all whatever and I got this script of Game of Thrones and it was incomprehensible to me and I couldn't understand the story I looked at all the names they were weird they said the weird things so I know it's not for me and I passed on it but then would it be five years later at least when it had become an international worldwide hit without me they sent me the role of the high Sparrow in it if it's a really good role and I always remember what my agent I was I had the same agent in in the UK for almost 30 years he took me on while I was still at drama school and he used to say to me when he said it's semia script and if it wasn't the leading role it was he said read it and if this character see if this character changes the situation or if the story could exist without him and if it's either of those you know the answers are whatever yes or no either do it who don't do it and high Sparrow is definitely one the this his sword line that story I couldn't exist without him and he did come in and change to change the situation and I had one of the well two of the best years of my life working on it it the whole production side of it were unbelievably professional and I turned up in Belfast to do my first scene thinking of these you know big hit five seasons these guys are going to be so cynical they're gonna you know barely keep my head above water with them and it was absolutely far from it never that some of the best directors available the best everything was the best and he got to go to Dubrovnik and he got to go to other places and then the to producers Dan and David great people who like good food and wine and they take you for very nice dinners and wherever we were and then they killed me what's that about but the irony is that when I was doing press after that first season and I'd only read season five the one that I'd done we'd I hadn't read season six so I had no idea what how high Sparrow was going to turn out I was likening him to Pope Francis because he was doing he was he was coming in there to change the situation for the the poor and the oppressed and the disenfranchised and he was feeding them when he was washing their feet he was doing everything that Pope Francis was doing and I was drawing this analogy between the two of them and then of course season six is a monster and people change people but I'm looking forward to two Pope's - yes well Francis goes back which thank you for bringing us right up to two Pope's which was it was my favorite movie of 2019 I've run into about seven people on my way to over here who felt the same way and we should note that you knew you I think you probably had to know even before you open the script you're gonna probably have some good material because just to remind people Anthony McCartan he has had directed three of the last five I believe Best Actor Oscar winners Eddie Redmayne and the theory of everything Gary Oldman and darkest hour and rami malek and bohemian rhapsody' I don't know if I said directed I meant wrote those those parts he's about to be in for a big disappointment it's not it's not over till it's over but but tell us about getting the script and your actual just personal reaction to somebody imagining you as the pair well it has started the day he was made Pope and the internet was full of the images either me and Pope Francis or high Sparrow and Pope Francis and you know I was getting messages about was I the Pope might have sung the same one who didn't know what was going on in said daddy you that are you the Pope so I there was an affinity between the two I felt for him yeah uh the world there was a certain inevitability I thought if anybody's gonna make a poem about him then I should do it and when this but when the script came I was bit apprehensive you know a living Pope and I played lots of real people in the past but they've always been dead you know so there's no direct comparison to make right and he wasn't somebody that you could just pick up the phone and you know chat with right no no but I did feel an empathy towards him because I'm not a Catholic and I am I was brought up in the Christian faith but in Welsh Presbyterian Church and I went to church until just before I was a teenager and then stopped and he was the first pope that I'd begun to take any notice of because I felt he was speaking to me and thousands like me right not necessarily about the church but about issue world world issues and talking about the environment and about the economy and about inequality and they're talking about the refugee crisis and I saw him as a and still do as an inspirational world leader but the type that we're all sadly lacking at the moment some of the idea of playing him was very attractive I want to be here in yeah and the couple with that with the couple that with the the script which avoids any kind of biopic or hagiography and directed by one of my favorite directors and these made don't it Terry Gilliam hear this he's my absolute favorite director I've ever worked with yeah Fernando Meirelles and I'd been a fan of his in City of God and you know not only is he a great filmmaker and visionary but he's a wonderful human being is a activist the humanitarian he speaks on the environment on behalf of Brazil Tracy seaward our producer again an activist working for refugees and working for the environment so you've got all these great people coming together to make this project and kind of not even skewing it but working towards those final scenes when I become Pope and I'm able to save the things I want to say and you know it's the first time I'd seen references to building bridges and not walls and it's it's just then it's a great piece of filmmaking and we're leaving out a key detail you and Anthony Hopkins who I know you really had held in such high esteem going into this you said there was almost that chance almost time when you almost work together before Fernando has described your Styles is very different but meshing well together he said that you are jazz and Anthony is by the book so you're able to maybe adapt to different things but so put out of your mind all those hangover story yeah right because now that is jazz yes that's right yeah that's right that's that's what Stewart Rosenberg kind of thought yeah so just you know hope you are some money yeah well just so we are very tony are very different I mean the same instincts of of storytelling and character building he is very formulaic in what he does he likes to learn his lines before for weeks or months in advance he plots bits of business that he wants to do even to the point of wearing a scene together and he went and then carried on talking I thought certainly there's fly had come I hadn't seen the fly by I brushed away until you know we do two or three takes and yes this fly kept coming back because Tony had plotted in and he told Fernando at this point I will swat a fly away from my foreign and so when you see the film you see you hear and it's the CGI but but we work together I think because of those differences I didn't think you don't think about it at the time oh this is really interesting the way I work and where Tony works I don't you don't think of that at all you're in the scene and you you know I've learnt my lines as well but it it's the what happens between those two men kind of happened to me and Tony in life so you it very easy to sit and listen to him talk and listen to him play the piano and and grow to like him and love him and got a little fun with each other too we had a lot of fun yeah but it's interesting the fun was never when I was dressed as a priest or whatever I would that I'd never it wasn't a written rule but I would never undermine because I'm very a great facility for jokes and you know I didn't want to undermine the authority in my character I'm you know and there's so that when you make a joke like two popes or eating pizza and that's funny but that you want to keep it for those moments right but there was between Tony and I cuz he we worked together 27 years ago on a recording of Under Milk Wood and he was voiced number one and I was voice number two and that's fine and he cut to 27 years later and you look at the call sheet and it's got big REO Jonathan Pryce number one Anthony Hopkins Benedict number two so who would greet each other most mornings with a very grumpy Tony Gwynn morning number one or number two and he had signs made for his trailer that were bigger than my trailer and all that but he'd when we write to each other by email now he always signs off yours or love from sir Petrus revenge last question is just you know I was lucky to be there in Telluride where I think it was the world premiere of this film then also as it went to the Toronto Film Festival and you know just has gathered momentum ever since then and people have been so moved by the film but specifically I think by your performance and I guess I just wonder you know we've had a lot of experiences a lot of experience and we've talked about a lot of the experiences was there anything that were you surprised by how well this has all gone over in the response to your well in it yeah I mean it you wouldn't expect I mean I'm knowing the film as it is now but the expectation wasn't I didn't know what to expect and it wasn't until I saw it with the audience at Telluride it was the first time I'd seen it finished and with the big audience and what was because what you can hear more than anything you can hear the silences we can also hear the laughter and that first in the opening sequence on the telephone trying to Booker a plane ticket and the operator puts the phone down on him and that first big it's a first big laugh that comes and it's happened consistently everywhere I've seen it and you can feel the audience go oh here we it's not going to be just two hours of two old men talking it's it's gonna be and it's great because it's like all good theater and all good drama you have the dark which lets the light in and the light makes a dark darker and this film is constantly doing that playing with it so it's it's you know it's it I've seen it with an audience more than I've seen anything else and it's very rewarding the response it gets on behalf of all of us Jonathan Pryce thank you so much and congratulations [Applause]

Channel: SAG-AFTRA Foundation

Views: 5,260

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: SAG Foundation, SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Acting, Actors, Q&A, Interview, Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes

Id: f-Tb34GQo0U

Length: 76min 27sec (4587 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2020