Tilda Swinton was born to play a villainess — or so she says.
“It was really, really easy,” says Swinton, also known as Jadis, the cold-blooded White Witch who terrorized characters in last month’s Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
“Maybe it was my revenge on people who had been unkind to me as a child,” she adds, laughing.
Penned by author C.S. Lewis, Narnia follows the Penvensies, four children who are destined to save a mythical kingdom from Jadis’ tyranny.
For Swinton, who last starred 2005’s sci-fi thriller Constantine, the role was a chance to break away from more emotional characters. The super-human White Witch, who does not understand mortal compassion, readily hurts children and turns animals to stone.
“She wants all-out domination and she’ll do anything to get it,” Swinton says at a roundtable interview in New York City, fingering a strand of platinum blonde hair. “She has no sentimental attachment to the idea of childhood.”
In one scene, she locks Edmund Penvensie (14-year-old Skandar Keynes) in an ice prison. In another, she hits him.
“We rehearsed the slap for months,” Swinton says with a laugh, glancing at Keynes, who smiles. “I kept saying I couldn’t get it right.”
But if Jadis resembles a wicked witch, it’s only in spirit.
Swinton worked with costume designers to produce an “anti-witch” appearance, one that undermines the dark, ugly, cackling stereotype.
“I thought about fantasy beauties like the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz that played away from the cliché of a villainess,” says Swinton, who received a Golden Globe nod for 1991’s The Deep End. “What children, what all of us at any age, find really frightening is a kind of unreliability and emotional coldness — not black hair, red lips, or black eyeliner.”
Swinton criticizes Hollywood for this “dishonorable” portrayal. White witches can and should be just as evil as non-white ones, she says.
“Jadis isn’t dark, nor is she Jewish or Arab,” Swinton says, comparing the White Witch to a Nazi. “She looks like the utmost white supremacist, which is what she is.”
[Read the rest at Daily Northwestern]
