Jeremy Irvine talks Brotherly Love

It’s been quite a year for Jeremy Irvine. With starring roles in the likes of War Horse and Now is Good, he now concludes the year with yet another big role, playing Pip in Mike Newell’s Great Expectations – and we caught up with the star ahead of the film’s November 30 release at the Savoy Hotel in Central London.

Taking on the lead role of Pip, Irvine is joined by a star-studded with the likes of Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes and Robbie Coltrane, and the young actor talks about working alongside such celebrated performers.

Irvine also discusses adapting to fame, working alongside his younger brother Toby on set, and taking his Grandmother to meet the Queen…

You must be living in hotels this year with War Horse, Now is Good and Great Expectations, sounds like an endless press tour?

I have been more on an endless set tour; I did six months shooting in a row, which is great and amazing. Have been in Scotland, Australia and Texas for a few months. It has been weird but for the first time in a couple years I have actually had a little bit of time to spend with the family at home. Hotels always sound great but after a while you just want to be able to make cheese on toast at home and not have to call for room service.

It’s been quite year for what with War Horse at the beginning and this rounding it all off. Have you adapted to the stardom yet?

It is odd actually, everyone expects your life to totally change and actually the only thing that has changed is that I can now get work where I couldn’t get any work at all. I used to go up for five or six auditions a week and all I would here is no, no, no. I still do all the same stuff, nothing really changed. Although seeing myself on the side of a bus the other day was odd. I just try and ignore it and pretend it isn’t happening.

Are you now in a position where you can pick and choose your scripts?

Well that is the strange thing with War Horse; it put me in a very privileged position where I would be offered a few things. I was offered a very big budget commercial movie but I had read the script for Now Is Good and I knew that wouldn’t be for another six months and I knew I would also be able to do Great Expectations after. So I turned everything down and didn’t work for six months because I wanted to do those two movies.

The temptation was huge but I decided quite early that I didn’t want to be famous. This lifted the pressure off by knowing I wouldn’t do these big budget movies and getting what agents call “getting foreign value.” This meant I could do films because I liked the script. I loved the script for Great Expectations. I didn’t know at the time which actors would be involved, I didn’t know that Helena Bonham Carter would be involved or Ralph Fiennes, I just liked the script. Then I heard that Mike would be directing it. I knew that Mike had directed Donnie Brasco and he had directed people like Al Pacino and Johnny Deep, and that was another reason I took it. There are two ways of reading Dickens, you can read it as all these characters with funny names, there is Mrs Joe who beats Pip with a stick called the Tickler, or you can read it for real, which is what David (Nicholls) did. Great Expectations makes so much more sense this way. Pip is a child who is the product of domestic violence and if it were to happen to day it would cause you to shudder. This is someone who has been continually put down every day, every hour of his life and he honestly believes that if he becomes a gentleman this will be his escape. This isn’t some tale of whimsy; it’s a dark tale of a burning obsession.

I had seen some of the other adaptations and I had always seen this wide eyed approach to it. They are really good adaptations, but the sometimes I think it means that you fall into that trap where things passively happen to you, because you are the lead. If you play Pip as a character that has been abused and hardened because of it and become rough and becomes obsessed, the moment when Jaggers comes to him and says, “you have great expectations,” then nothing else matters. Even if it means abandoning the only person who has ever been kind to him then fine. Or if it means not marrying the woman that he is supposed to marry then fine. He is absolutely cruel and heartless and then everything falls into place for the character and explains why he is so cruel to people. Because he isn’t a bad person, he is a product of his environment. If you look at him as rough from the very beginning that also changes it. He is a blacksmith after all and one of the things I did when I got the role was to go and do a load of blacksmithing, which was quite amusing with my dainty actors hands. At the beginning we had him quite well built but rough around the edges, almost Neanderthal, and he keeps that throughout. He is quite violent in his ambition.

When did you first read Great Expectations? Had you read it before you were offered the script?

I don’t think I read it, I must have seen an adaptation or two. Although since having the script I could practically recite the book to you now. But being British it is one of those stories that you absorb.

Seeing as there has been so many adaptations over the years were you at all intimidated about the prospect of playing Pip?

Yeah, but you try not to think about it. Although saying that the last period movie version was made in 1946 by David Lean, well for the big screen. There have been TV versions but as anyone who has worked in TV and Film knows, they are incredible different worlds, like the way they are made. I felt that there was a lot of scope to bring it into the new era. The David Lean film is incredible good but it is very much of the era, and you have these very withheld actors speaking in very proper accents. It is all very contained. What we wanted to do was make a modern movie in period clothes. So what you have is a character who is so ferociously in love with someone, whether it is reciprocated or not, and there is this tension where he will shout it her, and pushed far enough would shake her because that is what she knows. There is no need to hold back with this. Because with kids especially you only have to see one bad period movie and you will be put off for life. But that isn’t the case with this movie. Even the costumes are highly stylised and more sexy.

Your brother Toby plays a younger version of Pip in the film – what was it like working with him on set?

Well you see what happened was that I was at one of these ridiculous after party things that I don’t really like going to so I brought my mum along because I know she gets a kick out of it.

The casting director was there and she was saying how she was struggling to find a young version of me. My mum then said, “well actually I have one at home.” What we did was sat down with him and he got it, it was infuriating, there was no vanity, he was just doing it for real. The casting director didn’t mention that he was my brother because we all wanted him to get it on his own merits. It was a lovely thing to do because I am away so much. What I didn’t count on was my Mum being around.

What was it like having your family turn up to work?

I didn’t let them watch me shoot. You can feel quite silly sometimes. I mean like in War Horse, where I spent half my time talking to a tennis ball on the end of a broom. There is an unspoken rule on set that you have to feel comfortable with what you doing, because effectively what you are doing is being eight and playing make-believe.  It was lovely having them around but I didn’t want them watching me, you get self-conscious. It is bad enough when your Mum walks in on you in the shower let alone trying to get your tears up in an emotional scene. But it is great including your family in these things. There was this one time when I got invited to another one of these silly parties, and afterwards I was invited to go to Buckingham Palace for drinks, I panicked and grabbed my Grandma and off we went. In a way I think it is much cooler to say that I took my Grandmother to Buckingham palace with the future King and Queen of England.

What was it like working with Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes? Did you pick up any tips?

They are really playful people. Helena is a very playful person and she has no fear of getting it wrong. I was blown away because these are huge names in our industry and they are incredible famous. I was doing scenes with Ralph and he has this really intensity. He completely commits to the character, 100%, when he is on set he is so committed. He would improvise with me before our scenes for 2 or 3 minutes, and then role into the scene and Mike would then start shooting. Ralph didn’t have to do that for me, I am just a snotty noised little kid, and he was so generous, open and kind. The fame thing fades and you just realise that you are working with someone who is bloody good at what they do. Helena when she first showed up on set had these reams of notes with her ideas, and you see how much work and commitment these actors put into their roles and why they are so good.

So, what’s you favourite Dickens’ adaptation?

Without a doubt, Muppets Christmas Carol, it is just excellent.

And what did you think of the BBC adaption of Great Expectations last year?

It was good, but it comes from a very different place to our version.  There is a lot of stuff that they cut and we included and visa versa. It is 20 hours to read Great Expectations cover to cover, we had two hours and they had three hours. The vast wealth in that material is enough for 20 adaptations a year. But TV is so different to film, and they didn’t it in a completely different style to us. I do think it is good, and Douglas Booth did a great job.

Presumably you were filming when that was on, did you deliberately stay away from it?

We had just finished filming. I wouldn’t have watched when we were filming anyway because I would be so worried about copying. Obviously I was interested to see how Douglas Booth would approach Pip, but the David Nicholls character is very different from the Sarah Phelps version.

There are few literary characters that are as well known as Pip, was it difficult to bring your own unique version of the character to the film, and avoid the caricature of Pip that exists?

Weirdly not, although the audience should really be the judge of that. I looked at Pip like any character I have or might play, I look at what he does and try to understand why he does it and go from there.  It all made sense to me because I think him as a incredibly damaged, unhappy man and what if he gets this obsession as a way to solve his problems. One of the first questions Mike Newell asked me was, “why is Pip such a little shit?” and it is a the main thing that drives Pip, this dark obsession that makes him this dark hard character.

Jeremy Irvine Photos | Great Expectations Film Page | Great Expectations Review

GREAT EXPECTATIONS IS OUT FRIDAY NOVEMBER 30