Crafting a great Christmas movie is no easy task. You need an authentically magical story, actors who can give themselves over to the joy of the season and a style that evokes the warmth of the holidays—more than just a barrage of reds and greens, for sure.
Arthur Christmas, which hits theaters this Wednesday, delivers on those expectations. Aardman Animation (the studio behind Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run and Flushed Away) pulls back the curtain on the secret, high-tech business of Christmas present delivery, run by the militant Steve Claus, his bumbling brother Arthur and the placeholder face of the company, Santa. Joining in on their fun (and Arthur’s greater adventure), is Grandsanta, the former head honcho who spends most of his time acting cranky and talking about “the good old days.”
The legendary Bill Nighy, a holiday staple in his own right thanks to a little movie called Love Actually, brings Grandsanta to life, and I had a chance to talk to him about creating the right voice for the 136-year-ol character, the pleasure of making a Christmas movie, the performance differences in his earlier 2011 movie Rango, the upcoming Total Recall remake, Love Actually and more:
How are things going? You’re a busy man! I was sifting through everything you have coming up for the end of the year and in 2012.
Bill Nighy: Yeah!
How do you do it all?
BN: I don’t know. One day at a time. You just get up and think, ‘Where am I today?’ And you do that bit. I’ve been quite busy, and it’s been a nice mixture of things in the last year. And I’ve been able to travel a bit. I’ve been to India, which was extraordinary. I made a film there with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith and Tom Wilkinson, directed by John Madden, called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
And India was incredible?
BN: It’s unlike anywhere else. And we met some extraordinary people and had a very big…a kind of “big” time, and a big experience. We were a month in Udaipur and a month in Jaipur. It’s quite beautiful and quite mad.
Mad?
BN: Well, sort of mad. In terms of noise…rush hour in Jaipur. Nothing quite prepares you for rush hour in Jaipur. But it’s kind of exhilarating. But the noise, and the number of vehicles, and the frenzied—no, it’s not frenzied. It’s just, the degree of activity is a lot to take in.
I assume working on Arthur Christmas was a very different experience than being in the middle of India.
BN: I like to mix it up. I like the fact that I get to play a wide range of things. Partly because you kind of present a moving target. If you didn’t like that, you might like this. But also, just because it’s fun.
But with this, I had to audition to be in this. I read the script, and it was a very, very, very good script. It was one of the best scripts I’ve read for a long time. And I sensed that it might be—if they made it halfway decently—it would be a kind of perennial. And I quite seriously wanted to be in it. There are just certain jobs you really want to be in, and I really wanted to be in this. And it was Aardman—and I like working for Aardman. I’ve worked with them before, and they’re great.
What was your previous experience working with the studio?
BN: I worked on Flushed Away. They’re just really decent people to work with, and they’re smart. It’s a long process, and it’s good to have the confidence of knowing that it’s probably going to be worth it because it’s Aardman. And in this case—I saw it for the first time yesterday, with a bunch of kids in New York. And it was great circumstances to watch it with a cinema full of under-nines. I was bowled over by it. I knew it was going to be good, but I didn’t know how good—I was very proud. Honestly, this is not PR. I just thought, it’s amazing what they do. It’s five years of [director] Sarah Smith’s life and it’s beautifully put together.
Anyway, the experience: yeah, you are in a booth. Occasionally, I got to meet James McAvoy because we had most of the stuff to do together. I’ve played his father before, and now I’m his granddad. It’s okay.
How do you find the performance when you’re in that kind of setting?
BN: Once you sort of click into work, it’s the same really. All right, the circumstances are different. And mostly, with animation, there’s no one else there, apart from you and the director. But the experience of acting, once you get into it, it’s the same whether there are people there or not. The fact that it’s all concentrated in your voice. Although I think if there were a video of me doing this, which I hope there isn’t—
On the Blu-ray.
BN: [Laughs] Exactly. …You’d probably see me screwing my body up into some sort of representation of a one hundred and thirty-six year-old man.
That’s what I imagine. When you’re doing something that’s going to be filmed, you have to be reserved, but if you’re doing something in the booth, you can be as wild as you want to be. Animate yourself.
BN: Yeah. I do tend to wave my arms. I don’t know why, because I’d never do it—even if I were playing a hundred and thirty-six year-old man on screen. I don’t think I’d wave my arms.
I don’t know if a hundred and thirty-six year-old man could wave his arms!
BN: No. Probably not, actually. He’d be dead. No, but I do, and I know that because they often say, ‘Can you take your shirt off and we’ll give you a t-shirt?’ Because shirts always rustle. It doesn’t matter what they’re made of. When you start moving, you hear that…and they’re always so sensitive. So, I always end up in some terrible t-shirt, so I know that I wave my arms a lot. It’s kind of an unconscious thing. You don’t plan to wave your arms, but you just end up doing it.
Did Sarah give you references to help you find the voice of Grandsanta? A previously-existing starting point of some kind?
BN: No. There was nothing she wanted me to mimic. She doesn’t direct like that. She’s very brilliant at directing. She’s really good at it. But she’s quite relentless. And it took a while before I made any noises that she liked. The references weren’t so much to do with other voices or other characters. They were more to do with…they were attitudinal suggestions. Story considerations. She’s really good at that. And she’d give you ideas from life, generally, but not specific cultural references, or anything.
I wanted to get a voice—the two things were: one was, I wanted to do something I had never done before, I wanted to make a voice that I had never done before, obviously. And the other was, I wanted to avoid cliché. I wanted it not to be anything you’ve heard in a movie before. Or quite heard in a movie before. You might have nearly heard it, but I hope—who knows?—I hope there’s an element in there that’s original and unique to this film.
Do you remember how you found the Grandsanta?
BN: You just take this horrible leap. And luckily, there’s only Sarah there, and she’s very, very nice. Although quite direct. But it was only she and I there. But you got a sort of idea in your head, but it’s just a gamble the first time. The first time you make a noise, and you hope that it’s not too embarrassing. And then she says, ‘No. No, no, no, no, no. Well, maybe, but no. Maybe a bit more…’ Then you’re off.
She’s honest.
BN: Yeah, she’s honest. So I don’t really understand, but in the end it just was…there obviously are references, because we are all kind of computers and we take in this information whether consciously or unconsciously. I don’t have any conscious guidelines when I’m going along. I navigate blindly. But there must be somewhere in one’s memory, in the banks, there are kind of references to people you’ve met.Next: Bill Nighy on Rango, the Total Recall remake, Love Actually and Christmas movies.