The Australian actor, 46, sported a bushy beard, mustache and ornate costumes to play pirate king Blackbeard, archnemesis to the future Peter Pan (Levi Miller) in the prequel to the classic storybook, which hits theaters Friday. Screening Room in Manhattan on Monday.
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While Wright says he deliberately made the tribe Tiger Lily leads in the film as racially diverse as possible, all the key roles in the movie – including the titular Peter – have gone to white actors, with the exception of Adeel Akhtar, a British performer who has a small speaking part. But Peter couldn’t have imagined how different that other world might be. The story picks up with Peter, now aged 12, still dreaming of his mother’s return. He notices that boys are starting to disappear at night and he decides to camp out and try to see what’s happening. “So the more we do [on practical sets] the better it’s going to look and [Wright] knows that secret”. A wild adventure unfolds as they escape from the clutches of the evil pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman). Under Blackbeard’s rule, Peter and his fellow orphans-along with thousands more-are thrown into a massive dirt pit and forced to dig ceaselessly for the rarest of gems: pixum, from which pixie dust is extracted. It’s the most physical role she’s done to date, and she finds working with the special effects green screen to be easy. In this case, the bear has been set to “PG” and “Prebot”, stuffed with believe-in-yourself filler, and then sparkled over with a few proper nouns from Barrie. Wright has done incredible jobs with low-budget films in the past, with the magical “Pride and Prejudice“, “Atonement“, “Hanna” and the incredibly lush “Anna Karenina”.
“When I was growing up, none of my friends wanted to go to my dad’s accounting office”, said Jackman, who brought a band of his kids’ pals to an early screening of “Pan“. Pan is rated PG. We would give it 5 out of 5 smiles. Because of [director] Joe Wright’s unique vision, the movie is very ambitious, has lot of action, and [is] wonderfully colorful.
Right after we saw this wonderful movie we sat down with Levi in the screening room lobby. You have a stars with Hugh and Rooney, but every scene is him. Probably not, but it’s a lot of fun. “It’s a director’s medium, and I have been very lucky to have worked with Denis Villeneuve, Tom Hooper, Christopher Nolan, Baz Luhrmann and now, Joe Wright”.
That’s a tough question.
Do you do your own stunts? “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have done the film”. “He comes from somewhere, but the longer you stay in Neverland, the more you forget”.
“When I first met with Joe, he revealed to me that he’d always seen Hook as somebody out an old John Ford film”, Hedlund recalled.
I did most of the stunt training in rehearsal stages and I didn’t do much prep before the scene. My wife hated it. I quite liked it. It was only a day, but it was a full day of being underwater with a harness on.
CS: Was that an idea on set or when you were already shooting? I was curious about this combination of puppets and CG and deciding which one to use for which. But, no, I’m not really an athlete. “And when people see the movie, they kind of understand what I’m trying to do”. So, yeah, I’m a fan of Peter Pan. “I remember being so entertained when I read the script; I was laughing throughout and there were moments at the end where I was getting teary too”.
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How many places have you been to? His latest film, surnamed simply Pan, is a lavishly nuanced heart-tugger that pretends to be the backstory of J. M. Barrie’s eternal boy. That was six months shooting in London and then in this press tour, where I’ll be on to the premieres and such.
