Interview with Vera Farmiga and Rupert Friend - September 11th, 2008

Promoting: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
Venue: The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Kensington
Interview type: Round table


Q: What research did you do for the roles?

Rupert Friend (RF): I read Rudolph Hess's book, but my main priority was trying to understand what might make a young man of my age believe that his actions were not only acceptable but desirable, because obviously they're opposite to what I believe. And I found a book written by a girl who lived on the same mountain as Hitler's lair, who was utterly swept along by the Nazi propaganda machine, to the point where she was believing that it was necessary to do it and not evil, but quite the reverse. And from that, I was able to try to understand how ambition might play a part in explaining away your actions, particularly in light of my character's father having been a deserter – there's that sort of secret which you're constantly trying to compensate for, because you're aware of the consequences, as we see.

Vera Farmiga (VF): I tried to accumulate stuff on the internet and someone found me books and documents and testimonies and online I found journal entries and diary entries, not only Frau Stangel and Frau Hess, who were the wives of Treblinka and Sobibor and Auschwitz, but other ladies of the Third Reich. Emmy Goering, Magda Goebbels, Leni Riefenstahl, Paula Hitler, both of Hitler's significant relationships, which ironically ended both in suicide. And focus on the propaganda of motherhood, the ideology of the time, what it meant to be a dutiful German wife. And Rudolph Hess also, he talks about his wife and what she provided him and what emotional stability she provided for him.

Q: Did you watch any movies from the past with any resonance to the role?

RF: Personally, I wouldn't have found it useful to watch somebody else's interpretation because I think one of the great things about the way that the story looks at the Holocaust is that it's utterly unique in its perception and I think we all wanted to do something that was completely fresh as a take on this period and with that in mind, it was very important to me to not do anything that was a rehash of the way we think of Nazis, or even of baddies, because the whole point about this story is that yes, they committed this incredibly brutal atrocity, but the point about the story is that it's a family – it's a father and a son and a wife and children – and that they all had this credo that was so terrifying but they were doing family things as well. So I think there was a certain amount of wanting to come at it from a fresh angle.

Q: Were you relieved not to have to do a German accent?

VF: (Laughs) Yes, but at the same time, an English accent as well. It's always terrifying, any accent is terrifying, especially doing it with an entirely English cast, I mean you feel like you've got a whole cord of wood that needs to get chopped and everyone's using steel axes and you're up there with a fish. The first couple of days, we didn't have much rehearsal and most of the rehearsal was spent just developing a sense of family, it was very important to the kids to befriend them and create a sense of safety and love and closeness. So there wasn't much rehearsal and eventually, the accent, I could forget about it.

Q: What have you got coming up next?

VF: A Rod Lurie film called Nothing But The Truth. It's a story about the Constitution in crisis and a woman who goes on a crusade to defend it. And also a Nikki Caro film, based on a novel called The Vintner's Luck, by Elizabeth Knox.

RF: I've got a film called Cheri coming out at the end of the year, which is based on the Colette novel, with Michelle Pfeiffer, that Stephen Frears directed. A sort of Belle Epoque French courtesan's son having an affair with a woman twice his age.

Q: Poor you!

RF: I know, it's tough.

Interview with David Thewlis - September 11th, 2008

Promoting: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
Venue: The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Kensington
Interview type: Round table


Q: I heard you on the radio recently talking about the research you did with one of the real commandants of a camp. Can you tell us about that?

David Thewlis (DT): Well, not with him personally, obviously. Rudolph Hess, who was one of the commandants of Auschwitz. It was just very useful for me that this document existed – it's an autobiography of his time at Auschwitz. It brought home to me the reality of it and also the detailing of his time with his family: his love of his children and his relationship with his wife, who did not know for two years, the truth of what was going on, even though it was an extermination camp as opposed to just a labour camp. And some very awful and graphic descriptions of what he was perpetrating. So it couldn't have been more of a gift to have and it was very useful. (153)

Q: I like the fact that the accents were all British accents rather than German. I know that you enjoy the opportunity to do a good accent. Were you annoyed at not having to do a Nazi accent?

DT: (Laughs) I wouldn't say I enjoy it! No, I wasn't disappointed. I thought it was good. As the director said last night (at a Q&A), the main reason was not to burden the children with an already very, very difficult job to get those parts right, which they do beautifully. And I don't think it would be the film it is, had they also have had to take on the accents - their performances would have suffered and if their performances suffer, the film suffers and you won't have the same film, so once you've suspended disbelief - because really we should be speaking German, not German accents. So I was very, very happy to do that, because actually I don't enjoy doing accents at all! Well, not many of them.

Q: I'm basing that on the fact that you enjoyed doing the Welsh accent in Basic Instinct 2.

DT: (Laughs) I did enjoy doing that one, yeah. I did that one because there was not much else to do with the part and I thought, well, he's a detective and most of it was 'Where were you on the night of the fifth?' and I thought, well, that sounds nicer if you say it in a Welsh accent. But not much deep research behind that, really.

Q: Being a parent, do you think your response to the material in the film was that much stronger than it might otherwise have been?

DT: Yes, I suppose so. Certainly, in shooting, I mean, the worst thing one can imagine as a parent is losing a child, so that's certainly what I was thinking about, directly, as we were shooting. But I was also having very bad dreams at the time, when I was doing all the research and immersing myself in this period and the ugliness of it, I often dreamed about my daughter being taken away, to the point where I actually stopped doing the research because it was getting a little weird.

Q: What projects have you got coming up next?

DT: The next thing I've got coming out is a film based on a Paulo Coelho novel, called Veronika Decides To Die. Another cheerful one. It's all set in a mental hospital and I'm the psychiatrist. It's directed by Emily Young, who's this great British director – she did Kiss of Life. And then there's this little sort of independent thing called Harry Potter.