Sir Kenneth Branagh chats about the 'Wallander' finale and directing blockbuster films

well Kenneth bro your long association with uh Wander is over uh we just saw it here in the US a few weeks ago that the the final three movies what was it like for you saying goodbye to this man well it's the longest time I've ever uh spent playing a character it was seven nearly eight years and um it was a very sort of personal connection having read the books entirely for pleasure and not not knowing quite uh that I would be involved with the the show in the way that uh uh I was um it really took a it took a long time and rather like the character and rather like the mood of the films everything to do with the experience of playing it was was sort of measured and uh and slow and you could you could taste you could enjoy it you could go each time I did it I went to either Sweden itself or to a couple of other exotic places and it was always a it was always a sort of of Slow Burn and it was so it was very very kind of memorable you really felt the uh yeah just when you get under those Swedish skies and especially in where uh where most of the shows were were shot it's it's it's it really is cold when that wind blows from off the Baltic it's very very nippy and and uh that Northern Light also is so crisp and sharp you know that and something about there something about it was was was you you felt it you didn't just do the show you somehow felt the atmosphere of the place in a in a very unusual way and because you knew that you were probably coming back um you ended up having a it was very very sort of it was more than just a job you know it felt like it was part of your life and my wife would come over with me and friends would visit and it was you know you're there three or four months and it's uh it's uh it it was very very meaningful to to to to commit to those big chunks of time well I'm so glad you shot them all these years over there because it's it really is another character and I don't think it would have been the same shot anywhere else yeah yeah there there's the when you drive around you feel I feel it in some parts of America but I um but I certainly did in southern Sweden that it is the land of the Big Sky and um the relationship the the swedes are even more obsessed with the weather than we are the Brits are very fairly obsessive about the weather um with and with the assumption that it's going to be gloomy um but um particularly in Sweden the the threat the onset of the winter is a very important part of the cycle of the year and not everybody likes it not many people like it and although um sometimes snow comes along and that can have sort of there can be some fun attached to that it can be a little gruelling people tend to dig in AIT bit for the winter it it can curtail and and in the summer by contrast you know they're looking always at the weather and the because of the um the way the Swedish social system works uh people tend to work shorter hours they pay much higher taxes much higher Social charges but they're very keen on the work life balance and quality of life and uh you could really feel that with our crew you know at the end of the summer days they wanted to you know 4 o'clock in the afternoon they wanted to be gone um to enjoy what there was of the summer and again in northern Europe those white nights were um uh you know very very very special um and so people there was this sense of um the the importance of importance of time and of grabbing your literally grabbing your time in the sun um and uh and also getting ready to sort of shoulder yourself against against the winter so again it kept you very very alive senses are very alive when you're when you're there you're very very conscious of the of U of what's happening in the in the in the day and it feels like four seasons in a day the the clouds are very very dramatic and of course you can see for a long way uh and at night I was always amazed in Sweden in in in schola where we were um once out of the the major towns or small villages there are no street lights so the and and real lack of light pollution so when you were as we often were filming out at at night in the Flatlands of Sweden it would really was Pitch Black um and scary um so it it had that the atmosphere and the landscape had that sort of quality of a living thing that responded really really um you know regularly with with people who liveed there when you first took the role I mean this is a I'm sure a national fictional hero there in Sweden uh were they okay with with a a nons Swede taking the role I think you know because they were proud that uh the um that that particular character amongst others across the whole of Scandinavia were making this quite big inroads into the consciousness of people who are reading and watching uh fiction um around around the world so I think they were they were very pleased for it to be another export because actually you know aside from us doing it was that the Swedish versions featuring Rolph Larson and Christ Hendrickson also played um to to a larger audience as well so it also confirmed the fact that um what Henning man K had done was create a character you know rather like a classical character in in in another piece of drama that was seemed to be of interest to people even in its different forms you know there was there was there was there were and I was used to think of this um because of his Scandinavian connection and make me used to make me think of Hamlet partly because wand was such a brooder and such a a thinker but also because I always love going to see the play Hamlet because it's always somebody different I I mean of course I know what goes on I know the story but I like to see it because I like to see that new individual uh play it so um with Wallander that seemed to be the same thing and the swedes uh uh the swedes seem to like it very much anything they they took exception to was that I was told often that I could not pronounce the word which is the name of the town in which I work whereas I felt as though I'd been saying it and copying it from my Swedish friends accurately for years but they they deny it and they do it for me again I'd copy them exactly and they'd say you still can't say it can't make them happy on that word no way tell us about the finale because that's the uh the Emy ballots here in America were released yesterday and that's the segment that is uh up for the Emy Awards you're very familiar with with with those of course having won one uh I've been nominated several times what about the finale appeal to you especially as an actor playing a character that's you know losing his memory uh moving forward with Alzheimer's I mean that's that's that's uh horrible horrible for a person but it's Rich territory for an actor yeah I mean it's uh uh it was such a a culmination of what hening Manel was was writing about and um I uh I I remember I was with him on a publicity trip in Germany his books are very popular there Germans love their crime fiction and uh we'd been I think we've done two series of the show and uh I remember seeing him in a in in the hotel we were working he said I've got it I've got it I've got it I said what mean so I've got the last sentence of the last wer novel uh I said so you finished he said oh no I've got I've got tons of chapters to write but I've got the last sentence I woke up this morning and I realized how I was going to end it what I was going to do with him and I said you want to tell me he said no no no of course I'm not going to tell you um but he he he felt and that he'd found the appropriate kind of wallerian way to get to the end of a journey with a man who began in the First shows and the first novels with a relation ship to his own father who was um beginning to suffer from dementia um and it became this Natural Evolution into something that Kurt was aware of as a possibility because his father had had uh Alzheimer's uh that could happen to him but he he you know he he brings it upon Kurt very slowly lots of little almost detective style hints that he has to find out about himself so that in itself was very very um interesting and and and pleasing dramatically although perplexing and then finally tragic for for Kurt um and as an actor there was this uh opportunity to try and be as as as faithful as you could to what he was writing but also to what I have found when I was working on this seemed to be the numerous anecdotal um instances of people in amongst my friends and uh and acquaintances uh who have knowledge of this condition um so many more people were affected by it than I realized and they all had stories that were not dissimilar to what Kurt was going through so the challenge was to try and bring that to the screen as accurately as possible and um and I was so happy to be able to do that in a in a show like Wallander where I knew that actually the show would be able to take the time that it needed to sometimes take the time to watch someone have their moment be um wiped clean by this snapping of the sinapse in a different way um I felt that I was I was excited that the show could be as slow as it needed to be to sometimes just capture someone lost that's got to be the the single best thing about performing playing somebody over the course of years well the the I mean what I found was particularly in relation to the troubled man was that there was an enormous benefit to uh for instance just the acting relationship personal relationship I had with jeie Sparks who played my daughter um because she joined the show just after she'd left drama school and uh she's a terrific actress and so we spent seven or eight years talking about how that relationship developed you know but we don't see each other much away from the show um so in a sense there's always these the bits of our real lives to catch up with as well and some of the sort of human fabric of that definitely made its way into the show and so um I think that that was that was an enormous advantage and and uh as you know in the troubled man there's a brief appearance by David Waller who by David Warner who played my father poble and uh again the opportunity in the First shows to talk with him about how he was playing that quality how he was dealing with it and how he presented it and just witnessing what he did was also something that um you could you you could bring to the execution at the end so I I suppose that length of time meant that in ways that also the portrayal of Alzheimer's required you just were given the the possibility because of um because of that longevity to to do less and less and less you could be more and more economic IC could take more and more away because you know those seven or eight years had in a way introduced this very loyal audience to who this fellow was he didn't have to keep explaining and there weren't particularly sort of series tropes there weren't things that had to happen every week you know there were there wasn't a certain kind of plot twist or whatever that had to happen every week yes it's a procedural crime drama so something needs to get solved but on the whole it was usually it was usually led by a a character twist whether it was wallander's relationship to nyberg the forensics guy or whether it was the death of spurg in earlier series or you know primarily this this relationship with his daughter and then in the troubled man very touchingly I think with his granddaughter I mentioned any awards a moment ago you've been nominated for wildlander before you won back in 2001 for a conspiracy I I don't and I'm hoping my memory is correct here I don't think you could be there though for that ceremony how did how' you found out you won the Emy award um it was it came as a wonderful surprise and blessing on the first night of a West End show that I was directing that's why I couldn't be there it was a it was a it was a comedy called the play what I wrote which eventually ended up on Broadway it was B it was a show about an English double act called morom and wise comic double act and uh I was at windham's theater in the West End and I because of the time difference I was woken up on the very press night the opening night in the West End to be told by uh our producer that we we'd Ron the Emmy um and it was also uh particularly meaningful and memorable because this was just after and it was a delayed EMS as I recall it was just after 911 so it was also part of a ceremony that was so deeply deeply deeply affecting did as of course the country was by you know what had happened on that day so um in ways that were sad and ways that were joyful uh it was it was a um a memorable moment I I can still remember um your first Oscars uh you were up for directing and acting uh just you know quite a young guy just out of out of school just a few years um what just tell us about your first Oscar experience uh it was a I remember pretty extraordinary thing I uh was appearing in the theater in Japan we were on tour and I'd been in Los Angeles we've been playing at the Mark Taper for him but we were playing at the Tokyo Globe Theater and I was playing the role of Edgar in King Lea and I remember finishing a mat on the Sunday and at about 8:00 I got on a plane from Tokyo and I flew to Los Angeles and even then was perplexed to understand that I had arrived before I left so it was much earlier on the same day um because of the time difference and that in itself was a mind uh um fudge that was uh perplexing I remember going to have dinner that evening with the late Samuel Goldwin Jr who had released the movie and uh doing that in the house of Samuel Goldwin father the legendary producer I remember walking past some pictures on the wall and going in my jetl St boy that looks like a Picasso boy that looks like a model Yani oh my God that is a Picasso that is a model Yani and they were part of you know Sam senior's collection and then the next I was joined um by a friend a friend of mine came because my my M then couldn't couldn't be there but I was joined by a friend in LA and I remember being amazed at quite how early we had to get ready the uh the uh there were I was told there was going to be a limo Jam of three miles down to the Shrine Auditorium I think it was in in Downtown LA and uh so I guess I was getting it felt like I was getting my tuxedo on at 1:00 in the afternoon and then at 3 o'clock in the afternoon you were on your way and at 5 o'cl in the afternoon you were on a red carpet and then and then and then the uh and then the event happened and that happened in Hay I just I remember being in in the men's room and that's where I met Steve Martin side by side as we were going about our various business and Cuba Gooding Jr I remember who won that year as I recall um was also uh there Tom Hanks I remember meting was me very very kind to me him and re um and uh and then a bunch of crazy parties afterwards it felt just like the whole world was chasing the next party um and eventually ending up at the Beverly Hills Hotel where I think Steven Soderberg and I put the world to rights till about 5:00 in the morning and then uh I realized I had to get to the airport so I went upstairs and packed no sleep and got on a a VAR Air flight back to Japan and uh I arrived I guess two days later even though the the flight was however long it was and I I having slept as if it a dream uh I then uh I arrived back in in Tokyo and and and went straight from the airport to the theater where I did a performance of A Midsummer Nights Dream uh playing the role of Peter Quint a crazy director and so the whole the whole book ending of that first Oscar's experience was this amazing dream that involved you know great art and great artists and famous actors and craziness and drink and no sleep and then and either like King leer at one end and Midsummer Night's Dream at the other end it was very memorable well because you got the two nominations that year when they invited you to join the academy did you did you join the director's Branch or the writer of the actor's Branch uh I joined the actor's Branch okay and you've been you've been in that ever since I have indeed yeah whenever I've got an Oscar voter on and that's been quite a few times over the last four or five years I always I have and you could be as general or specific as you want to be when you got that ballot in front of you I mean what what's going through your mind what kind of performances stick out to you that that make you want to vote for them um well you well first of all you I think if you're if you're in the academy this is my view you make a big big effort to try and see everything I love going to the movies so I that's that is no for me I genuinely I love it so um uh so it's what you you know it's things that move you I mean things that I remember uh being so vividly strong are things like for me things like Charlie thon's performance in Monster I remember just thinking my goodness me that really is staggeringly good um it's very very nice if it happens to someone you know I know and like Charlie's very much but it's just so that that that adds a certain kind of color to it but on the whole I think you try and respond to what you think is special or remarkable work and I think you try and follow your your instinct your gut I was trying to remember what I felt in the theater I try and you know I try and get to see things at the movie theater as much as I can and uh I I try and I try and remember being moved or being surprised or AED or shocked um and taking you know taking great pleasure I love seeing great work it is a it's it's a thrill and I you know and I'm I want to stand up and applaud it so uh I just try and I try and listen to that there's a lot of good work out there so it's not very difficult well we were thrilled that you got to return as a nominee just just a handful of years ago with My Week with Marilyn that was uh that was quite a special thing for you to one of your Heroes Lawrence Olivier it was yeah I I it was one of the most fun and interesting things to research because you were able to go back on this amazingly rich life and also to read and see so many things that he said and other people said to him and about him on the subject of uh acting and great acting and obviously as an actor anytime you can learn in that way and feel as in in in so learning and absorbing you might become a better actor it's very exciting so I was totally fascinated to do that it was a really a labor of love because it touched on so many things that I was interested in uh as well as you know being centered around this slightly chaotic activity seeming of making films um sometimes making films with very very talented people who are who are challenging individuals so I have you know my own um experiences of of of similar kinds of things and so the combination of those things the chance to research something that was close to my heart with a an experience of something that was also part of what I do was really a pleasing unusual the privilege of a job really that one well we've been enjoying you for years good luck on the Emy Awards nominations will be out in about a month and uh we're just thrilled to talk to you today it's very nice thanks I've enjoyed it thanks Chris thank you appreciate it

Channel: GoldDerby / Gold Derby

Views: 20,297

Keywords: #hangoutsonair, Hangouts On Air, #hoa, kenneth branagh, wallander, wallander: the troubled man, cinderella, thor, harry potter, emmy awards, syndication

Id: 5ZrbzMn1lwE

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 14 2016