CraveOnline: I didn’t know Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance would have been such an influence on you. Was that your idea or did Peter Jackson encourage that?
Richard Armitage: It just happened by chance. He just happened to be down, recording. Peter actually showed up and said, “Why don’t you watch Benedict recording some of his stuff? Because in the stage direction I want you to kind of follow him.” I sort of heard his voice and saw what he was doing, and it felt like I could just let it rub off on me a little bit, just for one scene. Just a tiny shade of that, which I just thought was interesting.
Tell me about the action sequences. You spend a lot of time fighting motion-capture actors. Is that easy for you at this point, after this much production, or is that a trick?
No, I mean, it’s the only possible way to do it. The good thing is when you make an action sequence like that you have to have contact with somebody. You can’t just throw a sword into nothing. You can see when there’s no impact, because the impact kind of resonates through the body. So I was lucky, I had a great opponent in a stunt guy who I think was over seven foot tall, this basketball player. This physicalization of Azog fighting comes through. So I really got to do all of the fighting, and it was something I had requested because I didn’t want them to bring a stunt double in for me, and likely it was a scale issue. So I really did fight every move of Thorin’s last fight of the story.
Can you tell me a little bit about how you got the role, what your audition piece might of been, what Peter Jackson discussed with you?
This was quite a simple process. He evidently had seen some of my other work on British television, and I had to meet him for… I think I was there about an hour and a half. I read one of the scenes, it was one of the scenes from the first movie where Thorin was talking to Balin about why he must reclaim the gold. So we read that scene, but I had actually injured my back doing a stunt on show I was doing, so I nearly didn’t make it to the casting and I had taken quite a lot of painkillers, but I was still in a kind of agony. Which I think maybe played through the audition tape a bit. So when it was time to shoot I just remembered in my head, “Think about the thread of pain that’s running through the character.”
“My expectations of my own work are higher now than they’ve ever been before.”
Do you get requests at parties to belt out “Misty Mountains?”
Not at parties. It’s not really a party song. But I’ve been asked at a couple of interviews to do it, and weirdly enough, when I was down in Brazil, I was invited to sing the song and it was just off the top of my head, and I actually forgot the words. Which was a little bit embarrassing, because you know, one would expect… but it’s been three years since I’d heard that song [and] I forgot the words.
What are you going to take with you from this production? This is years of life and I’m wondering what’s going to stick in your memory the most?
You know it’s really interesting, because we were at the Hollywood Walk of Fame yesterday for Pete, the celebration, and Andy Serkis gave an amazing speech. The one thing he said was that Pete has this sense of mischief and anarchy about him, and it really stuck with me because I think that’s what I’ll take away with me, and it’s something that I find quite difficult. Because I had taken it quite seriously, but he really gave me the ability to laugh at myself and work with that same sense of mischief and anarchy, hopefully.
Has this experience impacted your work on other shows, since? Would you say you’ve learned something as an actor, or gained a certain kind of experience?
Yeah, definitely. When you collaborate with someone like Pete he really forces you to raise the bar in your own work. I work physically and emotionally in a way that I haven’t worked before. So no matter who the next director is or whatever the next project is, my bar is in a certain place and I’m not going to lower it. So my expectations of my own work are higher now than they’ve ever been before.
