Filmmaker Ridley Scott tells Empire magazine that just two weeks before filming was to begin on his historical epic “Napoleon,” the film’s Oscar-winning lead actor Joaquin Phoenix told him he had no clue what to do.
Speaking about what happened, Scott says he took time out from just before filming to go through everything with Phoenix and hash out what to do with the character:
“He’ll come in, and you’re f—– two weeks’ out, and he’ll say, ‘I don’t know what to do’. I’ll say, ‘What?!’ ‘I don’t know what to do.’ Oh God. I said, ‘Come in, sit down.’ We sat for ten days, all day, talking scene by scene. In a sense, we rehearsed. Absolutely detail by detail.”
Does that mean Scott’s mad with Phoenix? Quite the contrary. Scott says he’s well aware of how Phoenix works, dubbing him the “best player of damaged goods”. He previously told the outlet casting Phoenix as Napoleon resulted in the script being entirely rewritten to better suit the actor:
“Joaquin is about as far from conventional as you can get. Not deliberately, but out of intuition. That’s what makes him tick. If something bothers him, he’ll let you know. He made [‘Napoleon’] special by constantly questioning.
With Joaquin, we can rewrite the goddamn film because he’s uncomfortable. And that kind of happened with ‘Napoleon’. We unpicked the film to help him focus on who Bonaparte was. I had to respect that, because what was being said was incredibly constructive. It made it all grow bigger and better.”
Phoenix also spoke about what drew him to the part, saying getting to work with Scott again after “Gladiator” nearly 25 years ago was a huge draw:
“The truth is, there was just a very nostalgic idea of working with Ridley again. I had such an incredible experience working with Ridley on ‘Gladiator,’ and I was so young. It was my first big production.
I really yearned for that experience again, or something similar. He’s approached me about other things in the past, but nothing that felt like it would be as demanding for both of us. And so I really liked the idea of jumping into something with Ridley that was going to be that.”
Phoenix stars in the film as the French emperor opposite Venessa Kirby as his wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. Speaking about portraying that volatile relationship on screen, the pair reportedly agreed for Phoenix to slap Kirby during the filming of a heated divorce scene between their characters:
Kirby: “We were using the real words from their divorce in the church. When that happens, you can faithfully go through an archival re-enactment of it and read out the lines and then go home. But we always wanted to surprise each other… It’s the greatest thing when you have a creative partner and you say, ‘Right, everything’s safe. I’m with you. And we’re gonna go to the dark places together.”
Phoenix: “She said, ‘Look, whatever you feel, you can do.’ I said, ‘Same thing with you.’ She said, ‘You can slap me, you can grab me, you can pull me, you can kiss me, whatever it is’. We had this agreement that we were going to surprise each other and try and create moments that weren’t there, because both of us wanted to avoid the cliche of the period drama. And by that I mean moments that are well-orchestrated and designed… We encouraged each other, demanded of each other, to challenge ourselves to shock each other in moments. And that’s what came out of that, that moment.”
The script for the film was penned by David Scarpa, who also wrote the screenplay for the Scott’s “All the Money in the World”. Apple and Sony will release the film in cinemas on November 22nd.
Source: Empire
