Capone Chats With DISTRICT 9 Star Sharlto Copley

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. Sharlto Copley is probably the first person who will tell you that he doesn't consider himself an actor, even after you watch his triumphant, startlingly confident performance in DISTRICT 9 as South Africa's ultimate nerdy bureaucrat, who has just been put in charge of relocating nearly 2 million aliens from a shanty town in Johannesburg, South Africa, to a new camp well outside the city limits. Copley has known DISTRICT 9 director Neill Blomkamp since they were high school, and eventually the two men got careers in entertainment. Copley became a television director and producer, while Blomkamp became a graphic designer and special effects expert, which led him to make several awesome shorts films using his abilities. But the bottom line is, old friends or not, the success or failure of DISTRICT 9 rests of Copley's shoulders. After the premiere Comic-Con screening of DISTRICT 9 a few weeks ago, no one looked more relieved and startled by the throng of well wishers who approached him after the movie than Copley, who had, in effect, just attended his first-ever premiere. His character is put through the proverbial wringer in DISTRICT 9, in one of the most physical performances you'll see an actor go through all year. And although this maker of commercials, music videos, shorts, and even one feature (SPOON with Rutger Hauer) doesn't quite see himself as a proper actor, the world has already started telling him different. I could up with him the morning after the Comic-Con screening, and he could not have been cooler. He hasn't learned to hold back the way other actors do, and that's damn refreshing. Enjoy Sharlto Copley [this week's Entertainment Weekly cover boy] and be warned: there are spoiler galore for those who know little about the film's plot, which is most of you.
Capone: So last night was really the first of what I’m assuming will be many times where you are going to get swarmed after a screening. People wouldn’t let you leave. How did that feel? Sharlto Copley: That was surprising. It was very surprising. I really thought we were just going to screen it and disappear, you know? That side of the business doesn’t really interest me, like getting attention or stroking my ego or whatever, like I’m a real filmmaker-at-heart kind of a person. I normally am behind the camera actually, so I didn’t have aspirations of “I want to be a famous,” but I’ve always done characters my whole life just for fun. Capone: I was really surprised. I almost didn’t recognize when you came up on the screen after seeing you in the beginning. This really is a "character." How did you guys sort of come up with this ultimate bureaucrat? SC: Neill [Blomkamp] and I having grown up in South Africa, we had the same frame of reference on a lot of things, and literally he told me in a sentence, he said “Imagine an OfficeCon's telecom worker,” which is a big telecommunications company, “who has a desk job, but every month or so he gets to go out, he has to go out and serve notices on these creatures and get in above his head basically.” That was the brief from him and from that I started with a voice, since that’s how I do my characters, I had two or three different voices I was playing with, and I found a voice that worked the night before we went to shoot a little test. We shot a test, like a five- or six-minute piece, that Neill cut together that was never released, but Peter saw it and based on the strength of that, that’s how it all went down. Capone: Then came the facial hair and the haircut. SC: I had shorter hair and I didn’t have the mustache, but I knew, in that culture, that guy would have a mustache. So I just added that to refine him, but from that first test, it was the same guy. Capone: I love the way the way you and everyone have a matter-of-fact way of interacting with the aliens. For us as an audience, it’s shocking to see that level of casual behavior, but you forget it’s been almost 30 years of living with them. SC: He’s had assertiveness training. He’s learned the language…[laughs] Capone: That’s another thing, yeah, the creatures have been here so long that you can understand each other’s languages. Did you think much about your character’s life before the film? Where he came from? We learn little bits about his marriage and his childhood. What did you come up with? SC: Absolutely. I am a character actor in the fullest sense, like I absolutely know this dude completely with anything and in any situation and any background, what kind of conditioning, the way he as brought up, why he would see the creatures the way he did, and all of that. It’s kind of by osmosis almost, you're getting these influences, so for me the character pops in almost fully formed in a way, and it’s a questions of fleshing out. If you ask me a question about the backstory that I hadn’t thought about, I would know it. If it were with the character, then I would know what would have happened. Capone: We assume that these aliens have been there most of his life since he was very young. SC: One of the things is when he was 10, when they were still trying to work with these creatures, people had them in their houses almost as pets, but it was like a dog that you could sort of train to do the dishes as well, but then they would eat dogs, because that’s one of the things these creatures do, they eat the pets, so he really pushed his parents and pushed and pushed, and eventually his parents agreed and they got one, but it ate his dog and he was really upset about it. Stuff like that, there are a lot of those stories and we actually shot a lot of that. There is so much footage for the behind the scenes DVD, because I don’t know if you know, but it was all improvised, like all the dialog is improvised. There’s a basic script treatment, but as we went, man, we just went. It was really difficult, I think, in the end for the guys to decide what stayed in and what didn’t. We did a lot of humor. We did a lot of character- development stuff that there just wasn’t time for that in the story in the end. Capone: Tell me a little bit about how you played the transformation angle, being ill. How did you sort of shift your behavior, and what did you pretend like you were feeling as that was going on? SC: I basically went through the process of a character who has a lot of insecurity, who is compensating for that, who is dealing with things that most human beings deal with, but it’s a little bit more transparent with him. He’s trying to be cool. He’s trying to be in control. He is trying to be the man As the movie goes along, his conditioning, if you will, gets stripped away from him and his insecurity gets stripped away from him and his fears…he has to confront them, so it’s really a question of stuff dropping away as he progresses, and that bare essence of the man left, and I think as an actor that really interests me, the fact that if I’m going to invest a character like that, the way that I do it is it’s not really a conscious process, it’s almost like I get rid of myself. It’s almost like a pure consciousness--I’m just sitting here and I am just a being that is conscious and now I take on a whole series of conditioned things, experiences that happened to me, stuff my day told me, stuff my mother told me and I separate myself from you by… "I'm Shalto Copley now, and I'm this actor and you as the interviewer and there it is." If I wanted to be you, I would put myself into all of that, so that’s my sort of process as it were, and it was a question then of actually loading a bunch of that illusionary stuff that is really not that important, but feels like it’s the end of the world to every little ego and each personality and then stripping that off as this guy had to face “Jesus, everybody has turned on you.” “What’s left?” and finding a common, some people say a humanity, but I call it a common life with the creatures, because they are not human, they are very different. It’s not a PC kind of story, where it’s like “Oh, they are the same…” They are very different, but they are the same in certain respects, and once you get rid of a lot of the issues of “well, puking on the table would be unacceptable” there are still common points between you. Capone: Tell me a little about the physical transformation. What were we seeing on you that was real. SC: It was all real. Capone: It was all real on you? SC: Yeah it was all real on me. I sat through like five or six hours of prosthetics very often, and that was a big surprise. I thought it was going to be a lot easier. [Both Laugh] SC: but I had great prosthetics people, and we had a good time. It was an incredibly physical role. It was emotional and physically draining. Capone: Why did Neill think you would be best for this? Did he ever explain that to you? Why did he take a filmmaker and say, “You need to be the lead in this!”? SC: You know, he never did. I guess it was a thing that from when we did that test that kind of became… From his first pitching of me to what ALIVE IN JOBURG was going to be, which I produced for him, I got it. I got the world. I got the whole thing, and the project resonated with me very closely. Growing up in South Africa there is a lot of pain, and there is a lot of stuff that has been dealt with there in ways that it hasn’t been dealt with in other countries. And through what happened in South Africa’s transition into democracy, etc.… So there are a lot of different conflicting emotions and things and we can pour those into the work and I think, he obviously knew that I could improvise and write, so obviously it was a safety idea I would imagine. We never discussed it, but I don’t think I will ever have again the level of trust that I had with him. Literally it was like “OK Sharlto, go over there. These are the three things that are happening.” We would talk about it and go. Working that way, I had worked that way a lot with small teams and as an actor, you have got to know like “OK certain things will matter,” like there will be a degree of continuity that is going to be important, so you can improvise where we would play around with a scene, but once it was decided sort of halfway through like “You are going to stand up, and you are going to be on that side of the room, you can change the dialog and do something else once you are there,” but there were certain things for example, we nailed down. There wasn’t a lot of technical stuff having to happen in order to work in a very loose manner, if you will. I understand visual effects, so there was also that, of not having to have a visual effects shot that was nine hours to set up. I think a lot of movies are suffering from that now, the actors are like… it feels fake, because you say that one word and then you have to turn again, so it was incredible. There was one green screen shot in the film that was not even used, for me and actually for the whole movie, of what has made it in. You can double check with Neill if there’s anything else that I’m not aware of, but certainly with my stuff there was nothing. Visual effects at that level now, where it’s like you don’t actually need the tennis ball and the whole thing, like I would be doing a scene and it was like “OK guys, where’s his head?” and they were like “Dude, put him where you want him, and we will put him where you are looking!” [Both Laugh] SC: It sort of makes you miss the tennis ball as an actor, like “Can you give me an eye line?” They are like “I think he’s about… that high! So have you got something?” “Yeah, I’m looking at the top hinge of the door.” They are like “Yeah ,that’s good then.” Literally, that’s how some of the stuff went and then I had the actual actor for some of the emotional stuff. Capone: That’s awesome! You did a great job, and I can’t wait to see the movie again! SC: Thank you. I’m a big fan of the site, so I’m glad you guys enjoyed it. Capone: It was great to meet you. Thank you.
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