FILM INTERVIEW: HELEN MIRREN & JAMES MCAVOY

Stars of 'The Last Station' Are Surprised by the Humor in Russian Literature

By: Izumi Hasegawa

January 11, 2010

Izumi Hasegawa: One of the things that blew me away from this particular movie is the view of the paparazzi at the time… Is that something that struck you as strange? Were you able to relate to your characters more because this is something we’re dealing with on a very modern level?

Helen Mirren: Well, I don’t get much of that. Do you, James? Do you get paparazzi?

James McAvoy: I don’t get hardly any, actually…

HM: It’s funny. They pick on certain people to do that to, and other people… (To James) You’re a very high-profile movie star, if I should say so…

JM: Thank you very much… [Laughs] No, you’re more…

HM: …And your wife [Anne-Marie Duff] is a very high-profile, famous actress, and they don’t bug you, and yet Britney Spears gets bugged all the time. So it’s weird.

JM: I was taught, very early in my career, that if you go places where there’s free wine or free food too often, you’ll get paparazzi eventually. If you freeload, somebody will make you pay for it…

IH: But don’t they call and say “I’m going to be somewhere”?

JM: Not all of them do. Some people do.

IH: But you don’t put yourself out there in a situation where you’re going to be…

JM: Exactly. You don’t get the free wine and cheese.

HM: But where you do go is the supermarket or wherever — you just live your life normally, and it’s weird. If you do that, they absolutely have no interest in you whatsoever. If, in fact, you’re incredibly accessible ’cause you’re just living your normal life, then they don’t care.

JM: We’re talking about people getting “papped” for not a lot, but Tolstoy got “papped,” not even for just his incredible art — he got the equivalent of being “papped” for his spiritual and political teachings, and I know Obama gets “papped” and all that, but Obama is a publicly elected official with millions of dollars behind him and a multi-media blitzing campaign. Tolstoy just wrote stuff…

HM: …And thought stuff…

JM: …And it commanded the attention of not just the world, but certainly this huge nation.

IH: I read the comment in the paper. They refer to Tolstoy as the first branch on the olive tree…

HM: In a sense. Of course, remember that the camera had only just been invented, so it was a very new and exciting technology. They suddenly realized, Wow, look, you can take film of people. You can take photographs. So they were experimenting and discovering that technology at that time, so that was a part of it, I’m sure.

IH: When you first heard about this project — and maybe you weren’t familiar with Tolstoy and everything that was going on, when you were first hearing about these characters — were you in a little disbelief that these people were real?

HM: Yes, but they lived life at such a pitch, I think was pretty interesting and amazing. I mean, we have an understanding of the Russian character from Chekov and those plays, and that sense of a people who can laugh one minute and cry the next, and to live life on an emotional level with great facility, and Tolstoy and Sophia and all the rest of them fit very exactly into that sort of prototype that we’ve got the Russian character.

JM: I felt really Chekhovian. I loved it. It had that cracking sense of humor that I think Chekov had as well…

HM: In the middle of incredibly serious things going on. And it’s funny.

JM: But the other thing that he was such a demigod, if not a messiah for people, was just the belief in him is so great, I found out. I was so surprised by it, ’cause I just knew of him as the guy who wrote War and Peace. I completely didn’t know about all that, and to go into these rooms and be in those situations and have the emotions fill the entire room was incredible. I know what you mean, though, about was it hard to believe that this was based on reality, but when you get into it, it feels really real.

HM: And it is.

IH: Did you ever feel like you should have had a moment where you confront Tolstoy and say, “Don’t you see how much she loves you? Don’t you know that she needs to be with you?” Did you ever see a scene written like that?

JM: Perhaps for the story, but you need to remember he was a secretary. He was in his place, and as much as he was a complete believer, to begin with, in Tolstoy’s movement, and his character progression… Partly, the story is about him moving away from that and learning how to fall out of love with Tolstoy. He hasn’t been in love with Tolstoy, and he’s still just his secretary. Even at the end, he couldn’t say to the people in the room, “Fuckin’ let her in!”

HM: And also the reality — that’s the one area that Michael [Hoffman] readjusted the history somewhat — Valentin wasn’t at the station. Valentin was in Moscow at that time — the real Valentin. Much of it is based on absolute reality. They did diaries, all of them, and all of this is true, but Valentin was not actually at the rail station.

JM: Valentin learned from what was happening between these two so clearly that he went, “Screw this. I’m going to Moscow and I’m going to find to find Masha,” so instead of Masha coming to him at the end, he doesn’t turn his back on Tolstoy ’cause he went on to become an enclave leader in Prague and a Tolstoyian sort of prophet or something like that. But he went off to Moscow to be with her. But Michael then felt, “Well, if you’re going to Moscow, it’s kind of a weird divide in the story,” so he kept it as he stays.

IH: What surprised me was how much humor there is in it, and I don’t know if that was on the page…

HM: That was absolutely on the page. That was what attracted all of us to the script — certainly me — was that wonderful, delicate, not gaggy but just intrinsic to the absolute truth of what was happening, and a wonderful sense of humor, and that’s very much Michael, I think. That’s the genius of his writing and what he brought to it.

JM: It’s so rare that you see a costume drama biopic period movie with a sense of humor, and certainly a sense of humor that likes to indulge in maybe a bit of slapstick as well. It’s just kind of nice. I’m not saying this is the first of a new genre of films. I’m not saying it’s that genre-defined — it’s not at all — but we’re not used to seeing that all the time in those types of movies.

HM: I think it’s also what brings you into the movie. I felt, when I was watching it, that I was in that world with them, and so often when you’re watching a period film, it’s beautiful and it’s mesmerizing and interesting, but you’re sort of outside of it, watching all these people in funny clothes and with incredible hair and horses and carriages going by, but you’re sort of outside watching it. With this one, you’re in there. It’s sort of dirty and it’s around you, and the people are real, and I really felt that you didn’t have that sense of watching a period drama in the normal sense of the word. I think, again, that’s a lot to do with Michael. He was saying the other day how they kept putting mud and dirt on the set because Russia was dirty. It was muddy and messy, and he said the German crew could not get their heads around that. [Laughs] So he’d put the mud down, he’d come back in the morning, it would all have been swept away. [Laughs] And he’d put the mud back down again, he’d turn around half an hour later and it had all been swept away again, and he’s been trying to find a square inch of Germany that wasn’t cut and manicured and organized and trimmed. He said it was so difficult to find that untidy feel of Russia, but I think it is the untidiness of it and the messiness of it that makes you feel you’re in the real world. Our hair and things also were kind of messy, like they’re not all perfectly coiffed hairdos. There are always bits coming out.

JM: When I first met the hair and make-up people on the movie, they were like, “We would like you to have long hair,” and I had hair just the same as this at the moment — I don’t think so — and they go, “No, but it’s a period drama,” but I was like, they all had head lice and all the guys would shave their heads like once every three or four months. You’d see all these aristocrats with buzz-cuts and then this kind of flattop growth coming back, and then you’d have some of the guys who looked like Rasputinesque and all that and big long hair, but a lot of them just looked like jar heads. [Laughs]

IH: Helen, when I saw this picture, you were so sexy…

HM: Oh god, don’t talk to me about the bikini picture…

IH: Even your hair is messy. How do you think people see you as a sex symbol?

HM: I don’t know. I just carry on my own sweet way, and I learned, fairly early in my life, that you are two things — you are what other people see you as being, and you are what you see yourself as being, and you will never see what other people see. All of us in this room will never see what I’m looking at ’cause I’m looking at you, and you will never see yourself as I see you in your whole life. You are two people for the whole of your life, and I came to terms with that a long time ago, so I let people get on with it. I’m just who I am and I deal with the person that I know that I am.

IH: How was it doing that scene with Christopher [Plummer] in the bedroom? That was so much fun to watch.

HM: It was great. The important thing for me was to make a relationship with Christopher, and we didn’t have a lot of rehearsal time. Christopher, to me, is a legend and an icon, right from, obviously, The Sound of Music, and he’s been a huge star for such a long time and, for me, also a great theater actor. He’s one our, I believe, great living actors in every sense of the word, so it was intimidating… Anyway, I knew I had to get over my incredible sense of respect because Sophia does not respect Tolstoy at all [laughs], so I just spent every spare minute I had — I’d sit with Chris…we’d just sit together and chat and laugh and get to know each other and have a good time.

JM: I was very jealous. Incredibly jealous.

HM: [Laughs] So that was important, so when we came to a scene like that, we were both going, “Oh my god, this is going to be so embarrassing. But never mind, we just have to do it,” so we got on with it.

IH: Are you half-Russian?

HM: I am half Russian.

IH: How much did that influence you playing this character?

HM: I don’t know. I’ve grown up in England. My father grew up in England — he came to England when he was two years old, so I think of myself as English, but I’m a mix ethnically, but I’m sure I have characteristics that are Russian. I’ve got a kind of Russian nose, to start off. But it was great. My family very much came from the world that the Tolstoys came from. My family back in Russia came from that level of that kind of a class of intelligence and low aristocracy, so it was amazing for me to find myself in one of my family photographs, which was my experience when I started the film.

IH: Can you possibly talk about what you’ve got coming up?

JM: I’ve just done a film called The Conspirator, which is about the assassination of Lincoln and the defense. One of their conspirators, called Mary Surratt, the first woman to be hanged or executed in any way by your country, and I play the guy who defended her. Then a movie called I’m With Cancer, which we did in Vancouver in February.

HM: I’m going to be in Toronto in February — the other side of Canada…

JM: I’m going to be there during the bloody Olympics. We’re the only movie filming in Vancouver during the Olympics…

HM: Fabulous…

JM: It is fabulous, but there’s a reason nobody else is filming [laughs], for fuck’s sake…

HM: Can you go see it, or…?

JM: I hope so. I’ve got proper weekends, so I’m doing that.

IH: Is that a comedy?

JM: Because Seth Rogen is in it, everybody is saying it’s a comedy. You wouldn’t call this a comedy, but there are bits of it that are funny, but it’s based on one of Seth’s best friends who got cancer when he was 27 and got over it, and it’s about him and Seth during that time for a couple of years. So Seth is playing himself.

IH: What about Wanted 2?

JM: I don’t know. It’s going to happen and it might not happen.

IH: Helen, what are you going to do?

HM: I’m going to work in Canada as well on a film called Red, which is based on a graphic novel, which should be fun. I play an assassin. [Laughs]

JM: Welcome to the club…

HM: I know, exactly. But I’ve done one once before, in Shadowboxer, so that’s me really. I’ve got a couple of films hopefully coming out this year. One is called The Debt, which is based on an Israeli film about Mossad agents finding a Nazi doctor, and that’s sort of a thriller story, which is great. John Madden directed it.

IH: What about the award season craziness that’s about to be…?

HM: One step at a time and we’ll deal with what comes along as it comes along. It’s just great for the film, and I love it that the film has been seen by people and loved by people, and as much recognition as we can get, the better because we want people to see this film. Great acting all around, I think.

IH: James, how was it working with your wife?

JM: Nice. We’ve worked together before.