When we heard Michael Bay was producing a pirate series on Starz, we all wondered what kind of pirates we would meet on “Black Sails.”
Captain Flint is just one of those pirates. As played by Toby Stephens, Flint is a brutal, grizzled sailor. In his career, Stephens has played subtle costume drama and elegant Bond villain. We got to talk to him about his imposing pirate character, which you can see every Saturday on Starz.
CraveOnline: I met you at the press junket for Die Another Day.
Toby Stephens: Oh my God. How many centuries ago was that?
And because I watch those movies every few years, I’ve still seen you as Gustav Graves recently. This is a much more grizzled character, isn’t he?
Yeah, yeah, he’s a different ballgame.
How intense was shooting the sword fight on the deck of the boat?
It was really arduous because it was incredibly hot and the ship that we were shooting on, there was no wind when we were shooting. Also it was just absorbing the heat of the deck and you were stuck in this kind of pen. It was a really tough few days. But in the end I really enjoyed doing it because that’s part of what I do. I love that physicality of it and for me it was the point where, because we’d already shot episode three and episode four, we then went back to one to film that. So it was me really getting to grips with the character of Flint because the physical side of it is so important with Flint.
It’s like why are people fighting with this guy? Why is he the top captain? That fight really stamps why he is feared and why he is what he is. So it was a big part of the jigsaw of the character for me to do that fight. Once you’ve done that fight, you don’t have to work quite so hard at posturing about being scary or anything like that because that’s done all your work for you and the audience. They know after seeing that, okay, you don’t mess with this guy. There is something slightly unhinged about him. Although he seems very urbane at times, there is this side to him that is very frightening.
It did remind me you have a sword fight with Pierce Brosnan in the Bond movie. Was it very different choreographing a movie fight versus a TV fight, or a Bond movie sword fight versus a gritty pirate sword fight?
Yeah, it was different. I worked with Bob Anderson on Die Another Day who was an amazing fight choreographer with swords. I think he was in his 80s at the time and he was just phenomenal. He’d done all the big sword movies, so that was very detailed, it was very thought out. Not that this one wasn’t, but we had a long time to prep it. It was months of working it out. What we were doing in this, we worked out the fight for a long time. I worked on it, I was choreographing it a lot but we wanted something that was very visceral and very real.
So it wasn’t really the same as the Bond film. The Bond film was very stylistic. You know it’s a movie. You know it’s got a place in it, but you know Bond is going to survive. In this, you have a real feeling like you don’t know who’s going to survive. In fact, Flint looks like he’s going to die and we wanted to make the violence very real. There’s no glorification of it. It’s brutal, it’s nasty, it’s totally any means to get your end, any means to survive.
I even wondered if this could be one of those tricks where they kill Flint in the first episode just to let you know anything goes.
[Laughs] That’s what I hope you think because also, I think for the first episode, you’re like, “Who is this guy?” He’s on the back foot for the whole thing, so you’re really not quite sure what he is. Only at the end do you go, “Right, okay, I see who this guy is.” That’s good.
Who or what is the biggest threat to Flint?
Himself probably. I mean, I think it’s really interesting because one of the great things I think about this series is if you think you’re watching a pirate show, it’s going to totally flip you because what it does is, it is a pirate show but these people are real people. They’re real human beings and they’ve got very complex lives, complex motives and Flint is really a very complex, very dark personality. His reasons and motives of why he is the way he is and why he’s doing what he’s doing are revealed very gradually throughout the series.
I’m now into filming the second series and we’ve now gone back into his past. You’re revealing who he is gradually and through these flashbacks. It’s great fun for me as an actor, but I think it’s really good fun for an audience as well. I think up until now, pirate shows, pirate movies, the pirates in them have been a sort of generalized wash of people. They all sort of speak the same, they all kind of look the same, they all have the same motives which is basically to get treasure and kill people. This is suddenly a very complex story which gives you a historical context to these people, and real reason, an economic reason for what they’re doing.
Also the mechanism by which if you raid a merchant ship, you get the treasure. Well, how do you make money out of that? You’ve got to then fence it. It’s got to then be sold on as legitimate trade to get the money for it. So the mechanism of how that worked, how piracy worked is revealed. It hopefully gives the sense of these are real people in a real world.
There’s a lot of politics on “Black Sails” that might be more than people expect if they’re just thinking of pirates and action and sword fights.
Yeah, yeah, but also I think that’s what makes it fun. It gives it a feel of it’s dealing with things that we’re dealing with now. I think to do a pirate show, just for it to be some fantasy doesn’t really inform us about anything, why are you doing that? Whereas this is taking things that we’re still wrestling with now and puts them in this context. For example, on the ship, on my ship, I’m like the boss. I’m the CEO of this company and they are all my workers and they all have their own constituencies and they’ve all got their beefs. They’re all disgruntled about various things and they’re all complaining. In many ways, it’s like an office context and people can identify with that, so these people seem very present. They may be wearing these costumes, they may be sailing ships but at the same time you can identify with them.
What would be the ultimate treasure for Flint?
I think the ultimate treasure for him, that’s a really interesting question because it’s also something that as we go on is revealed. I think the ultimate treasure for him is to be loved. Like all of us, we all want to be loved, and I think he wants to be loved. He wants his men to respect him, to love him, to see him as this deliverer, but unfortunately just his character makes that impossible. So he’s constantly alienating, even though he’s doing the right thing for them. He can’t help but alienate because of who he is.
Is Flint like a parent who has to use tough love?
Yeah, one of the things about Flint, what makes Flint is he’s a pragmatist and he’s incredibly clinical in the way that he analyzes situations and the way that he plans things. He’s a planner and a plotter. He’s political and he can see five steps ahead. That’s what makes him better at these things. It’s an instinctive thing. It’s not something that he’s cultivated. It’s just innate within him, but it’s also his flaw because in the end, it’s quite a peculiar thing to be able to do.
It’s like a chess player. Somebody who’s brilliant at chess is normally quite a strange personality. That is what he has, but it makes him lack certain human qualities that would make him a more benign ruler. To get to his ends, he will do whatever it takes because he sees that the end is greater than the means. At the same time, that’s what makes him ruthless and brutal, but his motives are good. There’s that sort of duality to him.
Do you prefer working on the real boat or the gimbal boat?
Both of them, the boats that they’ve created are just so awesome and visually amazing. What’s weird is that you’ve got a green screen behind you and you’re pretending to be in the middle of the sea. When you see it completed and rendered, you would never know. That was what was amazing for me when I watched it for the first time, because while I was doing it, I was having to make that leap of imagination in my head. I’m in the middle of a raging sea trying to sail this vessel, and then you’re actually 500 meters from a motorway on the backlot of a studio with a green screen, wind machines and water machines spraying you. Because the CGI now is so sophisticated, you can do this kind of show for the budget that we’ve got in the conditions that we’ve got and an audience will never know.
Is there a love interest for Flint?
Yes, there is. There’s the enigmatic Mrs. Barlow and we’re not quite sure what their story is together but they live together in the interior of the island.
