Here we’ll start with our sister site NarniaWeb, where glumPuddle and the rest of the journalists interviewed Sergio Castellito and Pierfrancesco Favino.
Q: We saw just now all the costumes and gear that you have to put on. We get to feel the weight of it. Does it help your performance to get into costume and feel the weight of it?
Sergio: Oh yes, absolutely. It’s totally different from my experience – I’ve had a completely different cinematography. So for me, it’s an absolutely new experience. And it will be very interesting because acting is both athletic and psychological too. And I have a lot of admiration for Andrew Adamson because he’s very careful about psychological relationships between the characters. It’s totally different than I could imagine about a movie like this. But at the same time, it’s really interesting to act out a stereotype. This is the first time in my life I have played a villain. It’s really interesting, because after a lot of movies, this is the first time I have played a villain. And so, I have to fight myself with the stereotype I had in mind. Really interesting.
Q: Where you familiar with the books at all before you got the role?
Sergio: No, not so well. But I have two kids. They knew the first Narnia very well. When I told them that I could act in the second Narnia, they had a lot of admiration for me.
Pierfrancesco: For us in Italy, it’s not the same like in the U.S. or in England. We don’t have that saga as you have. For us, Pinocchio is our one. Nothing comparable to this.
Q: They have fleshed out your role a lot [in the movie]. So were you surprised how much they fleshed out your role, and gave him a little more for the movie?
Pierfrancesco: (translating)
Sergio: Oh, I think it’s a good idea.
Q: How did Andrew talk to you about the character? Did he give you very specific things he wanted to see or did he just let you play it broadly?
Sergio: We speak about the character in a psychological way. This is the very interesting side of this work. Because I thought that everything was just an imaginary stereotype. But at the same time, we spoke about the character like a human being. There is a very interesting side of my character that is the fight between youngness and oldness. So the good and evil is like youngness and oldness. It’s very interesting.
Q: Did you have to do a lot of sword practice?
Pierfrancesco: (nods) Especially him. A lot of horse-riding.
Sergio: A lot of practice. We have an extraordinary trainer, Alan. Very good. This is my first… {shows a cut on his knuckle}
Q: Is this your first English language film?
Sergio: No, I shot “The Big Blue,” and the TV movie directed by Jim McBride starring Peter Falk, some years ago. We acted together, in English, an Italian movie about the life of Enzo Ferrari.
Q: Do you have the script translated into Italian so you can learn the lines?
Sergio: Yes. That was very important to me in the beginning to understand the meaning and psychological meaning. But we also study accents. I think Andrew wanted a Mediterranean accent. Spanish, Italian, Greek, North-African, French…a Telmarine’s accent. It’s quite easy for me to do a good accent.
We’ll continue the interview with ComingSoon.net
CS: You two know each other well from making movies together. In the book, at one point, Glozelle has to betray the king, so have you shot that yet?
Favino: We haven’t shot it yet, but that isn’t a problem. (laughter) I’m joking. This is the third movie that we did together, and I’ve always admired Sergio as one of the best Italian actors we have, at least to me. So we have the chance to work together, but when you’re working apart for different things, I don’t really feel I have to hate him when I betray him. At the same time, he has to slap me and stab me in the back. We’ve made three movies together, and in all of them, he’s been slapping me. (laughter)
Castellitto: Not yet, but we have time.
CS: So, I guess one of the biggest moments in the movie is the castle raid?
Castellitto: Spettacolare! Yes, incredible. We show a lot of people who jump. You know, half of this movie, we don’t know what it is, because everyday on the set, we see a blue screen, so we must imagine that something happened, but we don’t know what.
Favino: It will be a surprise even for us.
Castellitto: Yesterday, we shot a scene and they told us that an army was behind us.
Favino: Thousands of soldiers and cavalry. Actually, this morning, we’ve been rehearsing with horses and there were at least one hundred, so there’s a very good mixture of real things and CGI.
Castellitto: Even though the machine is so big, there’s something that he feels which is artistic. He’s been surprised to find this huge machine going on, and at the same time, people working with their hands. This was something that surprised me and was extraordinary.
CS: Is Miraz the kind of king who gets into the fighting?
Castellitto: He is not a coward, he’s a soldier. He’s a murderer; he killed his brother. He is not a coward. The first idea I had of him is of Prince Claudius in Hamlet. That is the first reference, I think, but he’s also a usurper. He had a son, he wanted the kingdom for his son, he loves his son. At the end, he accepts the fight and he tries to win.
CS: What about the actual battle scenes? Are you going to be involved in those?
Favino: I don’t know how much we can say about that.
CS: Do you have a lot of scenes with Ben Barnes, who plays Prince Caspian? There weren’t a lot of scenes with them together in the book.
Castellitto: The most important scene between us is when he comes to my bedroom and he wants to know the truth about the death of his father. This is the first fight. At the end of the fight when William says…
Favino: Don’t tell everything
Castellitto: Ah, okay, read the book.
Sergio Castellito and Pierfrancesco Favino are King Miraz and General Glozelle, The Bad Guys!