Talking With Giants

As you all know, I recently walked the red carpet for The BFG. Here’s a quick trailer for those of you who haven’t seen it yet:

Looks awesome, right? Well, I was able to interview 2 of the giants from the film! Mark Rylance plays The Big Friendly Giant, and Jemaine Clement plays Fleshlumpeater. They were a riot to talk to.

Our first question was about how did they get into character every day. Mark told us:

Well, every morning it took about an hour and a half of them sticking glow in the dark marbles on us and battery packs and having a lot of dots painted on like a hockey mask.  There was a lot of time to think and listen to music or just get yourself in a certain head space.  Apart from that, it’s just playful.

The giants in the movie really have their own language.  We asked about how difficult it was to speak giant.  Mark told us:

Very hard.  I don’t think there are any actors in the world that could have done what Jemaine and I have done.

Jermaine told us:

What is hard actually is improvising in giant.

Mark agreed:

Improvising in giant is like improving in Shakespeare.  It’s tricky.  I’ve heard people who can do that actually very well, can improvise sonnets.  You can say I wanna sonnet on a fried egg and they will improvise a Shakespearean sonnet on a friend egg, they’re from Liverpool.  But improvising in giant is a little tricky.

There were able to ad lib.  Jermaine told us:

Little parts were adlibbed.  The vocabulary reins you in a lot.

Mark added:

A lot of the giants actually were really clever improvisers and comedians, so there was a lot of space,  Steven wanted the bad giants to expand from what Roald Dahl had written.

I think Sophie and I stuck pretty closely to the script that Melissa had written.  I don’t think we improvised much.  I probably put in lots of little noises and things like that between the lines.

We asked Jemaine about playing his giant.  He’s very scary, but at the same time, he’s hilarious.

He’s really fun.  The bad giants, we would get to rehearse our motion capture and just walking around like big, lumbering lumps of meat.  That was really fun.  

My son really loves it.  He helped me a lot actually.  I read him the book again when we got to Vancouver, he’d already heard it.  If he didn’t like the voice he’d go, no the other voice, and that’s how I found the voice — he guided me.

We asked them about their favorite scenes.  Jermaine told us:

Oh, I think the first time that I come and see Mark in his cave.  I love that part where I ask if you’re there and you say no.  

Mark’s answer contained some spoilers about scenes in the film.  We also asked about what they hoped people got out of The BFG.  Mark told us:

I think that the film tells a story of what kids have to offer older people.  Older people get tired, they lose faith, they think maybe the world is just a jungle, a dog eat dog kinda thing and nothing will change, so best to just do the best I can, give some money to charity, be kind to some people, but the big problems, nothing’s gonna change.  Young people don’t have this. There’s still the bravery and hope..  There’s such a lot of criticism of young people and it’s so essential that they don’t get pressed down by the fears and the apathy of older people.  

I think that young people can change things.  That’s a good thing.  I also think that you can get into phases as a young person where you feel really alone like Sophie does, but the thing that happens to her because of that is she develops this great imagination.

There are good things even in the worst situation.  So many great adults have grown out of very difficult childhoods where they’ve been bullied or they’re been poor or they’ve been lonely or isolated and not to give up hope in those situations. 

Jermaine added:

Letting children know that their thoughts are valid.  They can have an opinion that’s important as well.

As you can see, we had an amazing time with both Mark and Jermaine.  Make sure you check them both out on July 1st when you go see BFG!