Director of Planet of the Apes: “Andy Serkis is the Godfather of the Apes”
Serkis was on hand as a consultant on the film and also provided training to the actors to give them expert advice on how to work with motion capture and inhabit their ape characters, which director Wes Ball described as vital. “You know, we’re big fans of that previous movie and what [Serkis] did and […]
Serkis was on hand as a consultant on the film and also provided training to the actors to give them expert advice on how to work with motion capture and inhabit their ape characters, which director Wes Ball described as vital.
“You know, we’re big fans of that previous movie and what [Serkis] did and what Matt [Reeves] and Rupert [Wyatt] what I did with the previous three films,” he said in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com.
“But we also had Rick [Jaffa] and Amandine [Silver], who wrote the first Rise film and was a producer on the last trilogy, they were writers and producers of this film. So there was some continuity, just in the DNA, the creative DNA of this thing. »
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He added: “But Andy is such a generous guy. And obviously he’s like our godfather and the godfather of monkeys, you know. And so yeah, it’s been fantastic to have his support and his wisdom as we move forward sort of before.
“And for all of us, we had never done this kind of movie before, you know what I mean? Even the actors – they had never done it before, so it was a steep learning curve, but because they [Serkis and co] I did it, they understood it, we had to kind of lean on them and their shoulders to move forward.
Serkis’ advice to actors came during a six-week “monkey school” process, led by movement coach Alain Gauthier and described by star Owen Teague as a “beautiful” process.
“We started with some sort of movement work to help us get more bodies,” he explained. “And then we started looking at anatomy and, you know, the movement of monkeys, studying that.
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“And then we started to really understand who these characters were and, you know, their physical nature, how their characters were reflected in their bodies and in their voices.
“And it became a nice sort of rehearsal process for us… we would go on these long improvisations, where we would just get lost in them… you know, it started as an exercise or a game and It would become a thing where we would all become monkeys for about an hour!
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is released in UK cinemas on Thursday 9 May 2024.
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