Q&A on Lucifer with Tom Ellis

hi everyone i'm mara webster within creative company and thank you so much for tuning in to one of our talks today we are digital talk series bringing you the best creative voices across film television and theater and today we are so so fortunate to be joined by the fantastic tom ellis uh to talk all things lucifer and the current season five and i wanted to start by asking you you know about the twin side of it all because obviously you had the character michael coming into the show this season and that was such an interesting challenge and what was fascinating was you made such great choices with how you were playing him so differently that it really kind of brought a lot of awareness to the way that you had been playing lucifer throughout and even just the body language the way you keep him very open in terms of just like holding his arms open a lot to go along with the way that he approaches people so what was that process when you were first taking on this character in physics figuring out the physicality of lucifer to match his demeanor in that way uh to match lucifer's demeanor yeah in the first instance i mean the thing is about lucifer i i guess it's a it's a double-sided question really because the when i was working on lucifer that just all that sort of stuff that body language of lucifer came out quite naturally with the the type of person that he was and he's had this sort of vivacious quality about him he was very open and very kind of like intrusive of people's space and things like that um but i didn't notice it quite so much until i started working on michael this season and then it was like i you know my my sort of problem that i gave myself was that i wanted to make lucifer michael very different and we didn't have time in the filming process to do like big like prosthetic differences or anything like that so i i really had to think old school i had to go back to my drama school roots and think about creating a character and how i would do that and how it would be or why it would be different to lucifer so for example you know lucifer being a big open character i was like okay well my first step is i want to make michael closed and you know that might just mean as an attitude or it might mean physically closed and so loose was like this and the opposite of that is this and as i sort of brought myself in uh you know and this is stuff i was just trying out on my feet with ildi and with sherwin who was our director of um the second episode that michael properly came into um and i was like what am i doing here guys so we you know i started walking around in the room trying to find some kind of weight and gravity to this character and that physical thing was the first thing i started with i went in like this and then i didn't want i wanted him to speak differently to lucifer so i opted to go for an american dialect um and you know he was a man of much fewer words um and you know he was described to me as an observer and a listener and not someone who's always on the front foot like lucifer is someone who lurks in the shadows um and you know that's those were my starting points really i think you know a thing that i really remember from drama school was um was about shoes that character's shoes um and it sounds bizarre to people that don't know but in a rehearsal room you're never wearing your costume when you're doing a play in the theater you never wear your costume in a rehearsal room but what you will do from pretty much the start is try and find a pair of shoes that the character would walk in because it actually dictates a huge amount of your physicality and a huge amount of your presence in a space um and so you know i started i asked the costume department just to get me some really horrible shoes because lucifer is really stylish and all that i just wanted the most horrible loafers that they could find that were really clumpy and i just started sort of adding layers to this you know to the character of michael that i was trying to etch out and then of course the other thing you have to bear in mind is is his attitude about the world and you know what it is that he wants what is his main objective um and you know start kind of playing with all those things and that's that's basically how i started getting the the yin toulouse was yang yeah i wanted to ask you a little bit about the dialect as well because you were mentioning how you know you gave him an american accent and that was one of the pieces of it because you've you've talked in the past about your early experience working on buffalo soldiers and not really having the confidence at that point with your american accent and it ended up being dubbed and and i was really interested in kind of what that journey was from then to now and how you've become more comfortable with doing dialect particularly you know as a british actor coming over to the states it's almost somewhat of a necessity to be able to work over here as well absolutely um i mean it's coming from the uk there are so many dialects in the uk and you know that was something that i was very comfortable doing actually all ever since i've started acting i love working in dialect um but specifically at that point in my career it was it was different british dialects coming to america there's a kind of um or not i hadn't been to america by that point that i was doing buffalo soldiers that's the other thing that's quite important here is that you kind of you have a a version of an american accent that you think is right but like all dialects you know they're very specific to the individual and they're very specific to where that person is from so to say that there is a general american accent is like saying there's a general british accent there just isn't um so the thing that you have to find out is the consistency within the accent in the dialect um and then the most important thing that i've learned you know since that buffalo soldiers experience came when i was doing a play and uh it was an american play about an american family and it was five british actors um but an american director and the american writer was with us in the rehearsal process and about a week into rehearsals and these are all brilliant actors about a week into rehearsals everyone had been doing their american accents and he stopped us and said guys guys guys you've got to stop you've got to stop being british people with american accents and start being american and that was a kind of eureka moment for me because it wasn't just about putting on a voice it was about um the other things that go alongside it like the attitude the delivery um very very different to british sensibilities um and so breaking through that aspect of it and and um being american was that was the kind of was the thing that i needed to do and when i worked on that plan i started working within that character within that rehearsal process and then doing it on stage every night i suddenly started to feel much more locked in about what it was to be american um and then you know it was either a coincidence or it's fate or whatever you want to call it but in the final week of that play i um got a script sent through for a pilot a show called rush and that was my first kind of big break in america playing a leading character and he was american and all those things but because i was so locked in at that moment in time i just felt so comfortable auditioning for it and putting myself there and believing that i was american uh and um and i got the job and that's really where it just started to flourish for me because then i came over and did the job and i i um i did the thing i didn't think anyone that i would ever do i didn't think i'd ever be one of these actors but i stayed in dialect the entire time that i from the moment i left my house in the morning to when i got back at night i was american and i never slipped into my british accent once um which sounds weird and kind of crazy but uh it was really really helpful because what i stopped doing was thinking about american dialect yeah and and that was you know you had to kind of like live live the character and stop thinking about just specifically someone's voice and how about how the rest of that person affects their voice and who they are and what they do which obviously wouldn't have been possible playing both of these characters within these scenes together and i was interested in the fact that you it wasn't just that you had a stand-in for whichever character you were playing against within those scenes with both of the brothers together that it was actually it was an acting double and i was i wanted to ask you about like the specific reason why that was a huge benefit to you and you know that you had someone who understood the character could actually deliver the lines and that you could also give notes to and say this is how i'm approaching the character of michael this is how these lines are going to be delivered and how that really helped you in playing against yourself on screen ultimately it was i mean it was totally new terry i've never done this before so it was totally new territory for me but and they they they gave me the option they said do you want someone just to read in or do you want us to like hire an acting double and i was like i think we definitely need an acting double because i you know like anyone will tell you and you know if you're in a scene with somebody you're only as good as the person that's hitting the ball back to you it's not a game of tennis so you know it's actors who've sort of auditioned a lot we'll find you know we'll we'll identify with this in that if someone is just reading the lines to you it's really difficult to kind of like manufacture a truthful response because it's about energy going back and forth so i i said get an acting double and they hired this guy phil who was fantastic and he came in and he learned all the lines for both characters and you know from the start he was you know he had a real humility about him and which was super helpful because sometimes you start up against it for time and just giving someone sort of bullet point notes in the moment can feel quite abrasive and rushed but he was so responsive to all of that um and yeah it was i mean it was kind of crazy because i was we were blocking a scene and i'd be lucifer in the scene and he'd come in as michael and he'd work off his instincts but then i was sort of gauging what my instincts would be seeing the character and go i think you're probably over here by this point and just trying to gain some some shape to the whole thing um it was it was i guess it was closer to a sort of directorial experience than i've ever had before um but it was it was incredibly helpful to have an acting double if i'd done it you know with a tennis ball on a lighting stand or anything else i i just it wouldn't have it wouldn't have felt the same yeah well in terms of effects one of the things that we've seen you do a little bit more is we've you know as we've seen lucifer's demon face coming into it there's a lot more cgi effects in that um you know in the process for you filming that is having the tracking dots on your face so how does that force a completely different type of performance and and what does that look like for the performance that you're giving for camera knowing that ultimately it has to have an emotional core to it but visually it's going to look very different yeah i mean the technology has really advanced as well since we've been doing the show so at first we know the first incarnations of lucifer's devil face in the first season are very very different to what we see now um i wasn't able to talk as lucifer with the devil face when we first had him that's how kind of basic it was um and now and then it went for a process of um you know i had to wear like a skull cap and dots and all these and i looked ridiculous with a big camera like off my head pointing at my face and all these things trying to do a scene with lauren german with that on my head was the hardest thing in the world um uh because she likes to laugh um but yeah i think like i i try not to think because the the the tech guys the and the special effect guys that come in and help me i said just give your performance um and we we will do the rest like always stating the most important thing is the eyes and you know the truth of an actor will always be seen in their eyes whatever you know they're doing whether it's you know uh mask work or whether it's just you know anything at all it's all it's all in here so i just had to kind of maintain the belief that i was lucifer and you know once i'd seen the post-production stuff of what they were doing that was great but i kind of can't think about that i've just got you know assume that that skin is already on me and um and just play it as truthfully as i can from that yeah one of the other interesting things that you know in your process overall was that you've mentioned how even when you film scenes from an episode that you still at the end of the night take the script home and read the entire episode to really just re-establish the entire lay of the land and and i wanted to ask about like how that became an integral part of your process particularly for working on television um i think again when i did rush actually um because there's there's a lot of things at play i mean there's so many words to learn um in such a short amount of time and you know you're not filming in sequence so you know that finding it remembering where you are where you've been and where you're about to go to and all those things it can become very complicated and i just found that um the easiest way for me to do it was once because i think it's about brain training as well like if you're at work all day weirdly the easiest time for me to learn my lines is at the end of that day because my head is in some kind of space where i'm just in the story you know i've been living it for the day so that that's kind of like my hot spot so i yeah i will come home and rather than look at my lines for the next day i'll read through the script and um the the you know the more stuff we shot the quicker that process becomes but what it does do is it just helps me energize and infuse the scenes that we still are yet to do and it helps sort of carry that energy forward um and you know i i don't think everyone does that but and it's it's a bit time consuming but it also means that i don't sit there for ages like looking at a script and then looking away trying to remember lines because weirdly by doing this process it happens by osmosis so i you know i've just um it's it's it sounds slightly crazy but it's the most helpful thing i've ever done certainly when i'm doing non-sequential filming yeah i want to also talk a little bit about the overall tone of the show because it pulls in so many different dynamics you know your performance is both comedic but then there's also procedural elements to it there's a very dramatic side to it there's a lot of kind of stunt and action work and so do you kind of like sit there with the scripts and kind of figure out what the different tones and beats are going to be because even within a scene you're often touching on two or three of those different directions within your performance yeah i mean i think by now i've sort of um it's just a sensual thing for me like i i i i've been doing it for doing the character of lucy for such a long time and you know working with these scripts and these writers for such a long time that i kind of know where what roughly what the beats are um i i like to be very specific about stuff so when you know i'll work on work on things but then when i'm on the set with the writer of the episode and i don't quite get something or something isn't quite working i will always go to them and say what did you mean by this when you were writing it or what what was it you were after when you wrote this and if it still isn't quite resonating we'll tweak it and work it and you know because essentially that's what we want we want something translate the idea translated as truthfully as possible onto the screen um and sometimes that's lost in translation a little bit um but yeah it's it's it's always been a very um collaborative process on lucifer i think that you know there's a lack of ego there which is really really helpful when you're working at this pace creatively um and it's always been a kind of best idea wins scenario um yeah yeah and when it comes to characters one of the things the show does so well is you know beyond just how developed the character of lucifer is all of the supporting characters have so many different layers and they really think in depth about not just the narrative art that they're going on but how they're going to respond to situations what their backstory is and i wanted to ask you about like how that's a valuable tool for you particularly when you were starting out on the show to have more information about these characters to be able to respond to them as seen partners and figure out what that dynamic was going to look like on screen together i mean it's been a kind of natural evolution because you know when you start these things you don't know how long they're going to go for and you don't know you can only go with what you've got in front of you so if i think about our pilot script now you know now at the end of you know season 5 of lucifer i look back at our pilot script it probably feels very surface um because it literally is setting the tone and just sketching out you know what roughly what this is going to be and that includes character development as well you know it's it when you're shooting a pilot this is new territory for me as the actor to kind of step into these shoes every day um and that you know over five years that becomes like putting on a piece of clothing um it's like putting on a glove now but before you know there's a lot of self-doubt and all those things that come with it and it's the same for all the actors in that process so you know i don't know if lauren and i would really have thought that the decca star thing would have developed in the way that it has for example over five years of the show we've gone with it because we've we've trusted in our characters and we've trusted him the writing and um you know we found a way to to believe that and root for that as the performers yeah i also love that in terms of the musical moments within the show when you're sitting down at the piano that that's not just a case of them giving your script and saying this is going to be the musical moment that you're going to perform you're actually involved in the arrangement of it and working with the composers to figure out what that's going to look like so how does that help you in terms of really being able to make those moments you know not just kind of like a fun musical moment but really speak to the development and evolution of your character well the music has always been part of the language of the show and certainly part of lucifer's language because what he can't express verbally he certainly can express musically so um the the every time that um the idea of a song has come in they've always come to me and said what do you think you know what what are your ideas for songs um a source material initially and then you know when we've got the song we have to think technically about how much screen time we have and i always want the song to service part of our story so a song in itself is a storytelling device so you know i i always want to even if we've got only a minute and a half for screen time i want a beginning middle and end to this song so it helps push our story forward um it's a little bit like you know if you watch x factor or american idol or something like that you know all these kind of famous songs that we know they have to find a 90-minute version of it so it's good sorry a 90-second version of it so it's you know it's it's tricky you've got to find you know lyrics that resonate that that help help it and something that you know musically is climactic as well um but you know music is something that i grew up with and and did and so that's just been a sort of happy accident that that happened on this show and that i'm that they've drawn on my sort of um musical knowledge and stuff to to progress the the musical notion of lucifer in the show yeah and one of the things that feels very serendipitous with the way that this role came about for you was you know you've mentioned how going out for pilot season at that point that for you it's not just about getting the work it's about what's the right job what's something that's going to really kind of fulfill you creatively but earlier on in your career when you're first out of drama school you were just kind of taking whatever opportunity came your way as many people have to you know just be a working actor is such a challenge and you know but i think there's such a fascinating experience within that because you got to do so many different things you were dipping into movies and television and theater really working in all these different mediums and how did that really allow your craft to evolve in a unique way in getting to try out so many different things early on and being stretched in so many different ways creatively i think well the one thing you don't learn at drama school is actually how to turn up and do a job it's weird it prepares you for lots of things but like you know the notion of being on a tv or film set you just you'll never have that experience until you do it so it was the best piece of advice i got at drama school was just take everything you can for the first couple of years and that's you know under the assumption that you're even going to book jobs but doing all those different things you know it was great because i got to work with lots of experienced people um and i observed a lot during that time of how different people work and people that i really admire and respect and people to people whose careers i'd like to kind of emulate and stuff so i just i was like a sponge for you know the first five years of my uh of my acting career really um and part of the you know being judicious at this stage in my career it comes from uh i want to say a knowledge or a comfort or a sense that i will work because that is the biggest hurdle to get over as as the actor in the first instance it's like oh i'm never going to work again you know every actor does it even actors that have a huge degree of success it's like well i'm never going to work again after this and the reality is that some people know that they probably will this probably will be their career after a certain while they seem to have been booking jobs and there's a natural progression that seems to be happening and i felt i found myself in that category and then other things come into play you know like your life and whether you have children or whether you have a partner and um you know how long something takes to film all these kind of like things that you have to think about um where something's gonna film really important um if you're in a position where you feel like you have the luxury of choice there that's really important um and then first you know the the thing about like lucifer for example i'd been over here auditioning for pilots and i and i you know here's the reality you do you can do a lot of pilots and none of them happen but you have to think one of them might turn into a series and if it were to turn into a series do you want to be doing this for the next six years of your life um and you know gain the more experience you get the more you can sort of see how things are going to pan out so lucifer if it had just been a procedural show and i wasn't the devil in it and i was just a police detective um solving a murder every week i as tom don't think that's what i want to do um i did no disrespect to that but i know that like i you know i'm spending a huge time away from my children for example i want to be stimulated on a daily basis creatively when i'm doing the job that i'm doing and you know i so that's where my judicious you know feelings come from and something like rush before this and something like lucifer when those scripts come in and i look at the character i think that is a character that i definitely could live with for a few years and i could definitely have a lot of fun with and i could definitely you know do lots of different things within that character i mean like you say lucifer for me is it's like the sort of dick van dyke of characters because he just does so many different things you know throughout the six years been doing the show and that for me keeps me on my toes as a performer and keeps me from going stale um and that that's what i look for basically that stimulus yeah i also love that you know your drama school was also encouraging you and other students to take paid work and to take work within the industry as you were still studying and one of the ones that really kind of peaked my interest was that you went off to do pantomime with james mcavoy for beauty and the beast you know but pantomime has such a specific comedic style to it that i think is really interesting and and i wanted to ask you about that in terms of what that really taught you about comedic timing and comedic performances because you've obviously gone on to do so many great comedic performances whether it's roles on miranda pulling katherine tate show and kind of how that was like an initial launching pad and great learning curve and opportunity for you well i always loved comedy i always loved um funny plays and i always loved working on funny plays and working within comedy even though i was training as a dramatic dramatic actor comedy was always something that i felt was a natural stomping ground for me um so you know going off to do panto i was very fortunate you know that our drama school had that philosophy but it was great because it was that same thing of like i was suddenly working with professional actors who had done this for a while and worked within these realms and i was in a rehearsal room witnessing people do really funny stuff and really pushing it um and you know particularly knew how to do the thing that we were doing because that's another key thing when you're an actor it's like you've really got to know what it is that you're in um best bit of advice i ever had mark strong there you go know what you're in and don't fight it um because that's you know that's part of the fun finding the tone of the piece and obviously panto is a ridiculous tone but it's you know once you find yourself working in that realm you it unlocks all these kind of oh that's funny that's funny this is funny you can do that in this scenario you can do that in these circumstances um so yeah again it was like it was that being a sponge and and taking it all up i think the biggest thing i ever learned comedy on though was from miranda literally from miranda hart herself and you know she wrote every episode of that show and the way that her mind works and the way that we would be in rehearsal for example you know because we were planning to we were rehearsing to shoot something in front of a live audience and miranda knew where the laughs were going to be and we'd be rehearsing and she'd be like you know hold you're going to have to hold there on the day because there will be a laugh there and you'll be like really and on the day lo and behold there was a big fat laugh she just knew the science of comedy inside and out and part of that was um she'd learned that and part of it was it was in her and you know having that experience and working alongside her in that format for all those years it really really gave me a lot of confidence about working in comedy yeah well there was also such an interesting dynamic to the way that that show was filmed in that it constantly was also breaking the fourth wall um in terms of the way that it acknowledged the audience and pulled it in so did that kind of create a different style of comedic performance that you were looking to because of that i think well there's much like pantomime it's like you know there's that direct address to the audience it's like letting people in on the joke and that was something miranda really wanted to do from the start um you know she was a huge eric morgan fan um and that that was a huge part of eric's stick was that he would like you know they'd be doing a sketch together i need to turn it out to the camera and give a funny look as if to go are you guys watching this um are you thinking what i'm thinking it's that kind of like it's that knowingness and um you know it it was a great device for that show because it made that show tick um and you know it was a lot of shameless fun that we had on it but the thing miranda's connection with the audience was the thing the glue that kept it going and the people the thing that kept people engaged and felt like they're in on the joke so it was very specific to that but it is something that is used you know it's used a lot in the theater um you know i think of famous you know plays recently like one man two governors that was a huge hit you know a lot of that was about direct address to the audience and letting them in so it's something that's been done for years and years and years but not so much in a tv format and that's why it was so much fun yeah well thank you so much for talking to us not just about that but obviously lucifer as well really looking forward to the second half of season five and hope that you're able to get back into production to finish everything up and fingers crossed thanks maura

Channel: In Creative Company

Views: 229,089

Rating: 4.9720068 out of 5

Keywords: In Creative Company, Entertainment, Q&As, theincreativeco, tom ellis, lucifer, netflix, miranda hart, james mcavoy, lauren german, morningstar, deckstar, mara webster, lucifer netflix, creatrive process, actor, acting, auditions, tv show, tv series, english, british, british actor

Id: loFkGuOJ47c

Length: 27min 31sec (1651 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/galwithdimples]

Loved this one, there were some insightful questions. Tom's a gem!

[u/onyxpup7]

Wow, what a great interview. She asked phenomenal questions and yes, it is wonderful to just watch and listen to Tom talk. And I love the admiration and credit he gives to Miranda Hart.

[u/WhereWolfish]

He reminds me so much of my brother %)