Helen Mirren & James McAvoy Interview, The Last Station

MoviesOnline sat down recently with Helen Mirren and James McAvoy to talk about their new movie, The Last Station. A tale of two romances, one beginning, one near its end, The Last Station is a complex, funny, rich and emotional story about the difficulty of living with love and the impossibility of living without it. 

After almost fifty years of marriage, the Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren), Leo Tolstoy's (Christopher Plummer) devoted wife, passionate lover, muse and secretary-suddenly finds her entire world turned upside down.  In the name of his newly created religion, the great Russian novelist has renounced his noble title, his property and even his family in favor of poverty, vegetarianism and celibacy. Even after she's born him thirteen children! 

Sofya is consumed by righteous outrage when she discovers that Tolstoy’s trusted disciple, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), whom she despises, may have secretly convinced her husband to sign a new will giving the rights to his works to the Russian people rather than his own family. Into this minefield wanders Toystoy’s worshipful new assistant, naïve Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy). He becomes a pawn, first of the scheming Chertkov and then of the wounded, vengeful Sofya as each plots to undermine the others’ gains.

Helen Mirren is one of the best-known and most respected actresses with an international career that spans stage, screen and television. She has become renowned for tackling challenging roles and has won many awards for her powerful and versatile performances including an Oscar, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for The Queen. James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland) is regarded as one of the UK’s most exciting acting talents and has won awards at the Cannes and Santa Barbara film festivals and at the BAFTAs.

Here’s what Helen Mirren and James McAvoy had to tell us about their characters in The Last Station, the ubiquitous paparazzi, and their upcoming projects:
 
Q:  Do you really call her Dame H?

JM: No. I called her that a couple of times actually. She never responded to it though.  (laughter)  It wasn’t like she went oh, and loved it when I called her that.  I wish she had though.  It would have been like her nickname for her that I invented, but she never went for it.

Q:  One of the things that blew me away from this particular movie is the view of the paparazzi at the time…

HM:  Yes, isn’t it interesting?

Q:  I mean, is that something that struck you as strange?  Were you able to relate to your characters more because this is something we’re dealing with on a very modern level?

HM:  Well I don’t get much of that.  Do you James?  Do you get paparazzi?

JM:  I don’t get hardly any actually…

HM:  It’s funny, they pick on certain people to do that to and other people.  (To James) You’re a very high profile movie star if I should say so…

JM:  Thank you very much…(laughter)  No, you’re more…

HM:  …and your wife is a very high profile, famous actress, and they don’t bug you and yet, Britney Spears gets bugged all the time, so it’s weird.

JM:  I was taught very early in my career that if you go places where there are free wine, where there’s free wine or free food too often, you’ll get paparazzi eventually.  If you freeload, somebody will make you pay for it.

Q:  But don’t they call, too?  Don’t they call and say I’m going to be somewhere?

JM:  Some people do, some people do, but THEY don’t, not all of them do, some people do.

Q:  But you don’t put yourself out there in a situation where you’re going to be…

JM:  Well exactly, you don’t get the free wine and cheese. 

HM:  But where you do go is the supermarket or wherever.  You just live your life normally and it’s weird.  If you do that, they absolutely have no interest in you whatsoever, if in fact you’re incredibly accessible, cause you’re just living your normal life, and then they don’t care.

JM:  The thing is as well is that Tolstoy wasn’t just being, we’re talking about people getting “papped” for not a lot, but Tolstoy got “papped,” not even for just his incredible art, which was incredible, he got the equivalent of being “papped” for his spiritual and political teachings and I know Obama gets “papped” and all that, but Obama is a publicly elected official, with millions of dollars behind him, and a multi media blitzing campaign.  Tolstoy just wrote stuff, and…

HM:  And thought stuff…

JM:  And thought stuff, yeah and it commanded the attention of not just the nation, the world, but certainly this huge nation.

Q:  I read the comment in the paper. They refer to Tolstoy as the first branch on the olive…

HM:  In a sense, of course remember that the camera had only just been invented, so it was a very new and exciting technology.  They suddenly realized, wow look, you can take film of people, you can take photographs.  I mean, so they were experimenting and discovering that technology at that time, so that was a part of that I’m sure.

Q:  When you first heard about this project and maybe you weren’t familiar with Tolstoy and everything that was going on, when you were first hearing about these characters, were you sort of in a little disbelief that these people were real?

HM:  Yes, but they lived life at such a pitch that I think was pretty interesting and amazing.  I mean, we have an understanding of the Russian character from Chekov and those plays and that sense of a people who can laugh one minute and cry the next.  And, to live life on an emotional level, with great facility and Tolstoy and Sophia and all the rest of them fit very exactly into that sort of prototype that we’ve got the Russian character.

JM:  It was very, I felt really Chekhovian.  I loved it.  The reason why I liked it, it had that cracking sense of humor that I think Chekov’s got as well…

HM:  In the middle of absolutely, not tragedy, but incredibly serious things going on.  And it’s funny.

JM:  But the other thing as well that he was such a demigod if not a messiah for people was just, the belief in him is so great I found out.  I was so surprised by it, ‘cause I just knew of him as the guy who wrote War and Peace.

HM:  Yes, I didn’t know that…

JM:  I completely didn’t know about all that, and then like you said, to go into these rooms and be into those situations and have the emotions fill the entire room was incredible.  I know what you mean though about was it hard to believe that this was based on reality, but when you get into it, it feels really real.

HM:  And it is.

Q:  Did you ever feel like you should have had a moment where you confront Tolstoy and say, don’t you see how much she loves you, don’t you know that she needs to be with you, did you ever see a scene written like that?

JM:  Perhaps for the story, but you need to remember, he was a secretary.  He was in his place, and he also, as much as he was a complete believer to begin with in Tolstoy’s movement and his character progression and partly the story is about him moving away from that and learning how to fall out of love with Tolstoy.  He hasn’t been in love with Tolstoy and he’s still just his secretary.  He couldn’t really even at the end, he couldn’t say to the people in the room, fuckin’ let her in!

HM:  And also the reality, that’s the one area that Michael readjusted the history somewhat.  Valentin wasn’t at the station, Valentin was in Moscow at that time, the real Valentin.  I mean much of it is based on absolute reality, they did diaries, all of them, and all of this is true, but Valentin was not actually at the rail station.

JM:  Valentin learned from what was happening between these two so clearly that he went screw this, I’m going to Moscow and I’m going to find Masha.  So instead of Masha coming to him at the end, he doesn’t turn his back on Tolstoy ‘cause he went on to become an enclave leader in Prague, and sort of a Tolstoyian sort of prophet or something like that.  But he went off to Moscow yeah to be with her, but Michael then felt, well if you’re going to Moscow, it’s kind of a weird divide in the story, so he kept it as we say.

Q:  What surprised me watching it the other night was how much humor there is in it and I don’t know if that was on the page…

HM:  That was on the page, absolutely on the page.  That was what attracted all of us to the script, certainly me, was that wonderful delicate, not gaggy but just intrinsic to the absolute truth of what was happening, and wonderful sense of humor and that’s very much Michael, I think.  That’s the genius of his writing and what he brought to it. 

JM:  It’s so rare that you see a costume drama biopic period movie with a sense of humor, and certainly a sense of humor that likes to indulge in maybe a bit of slapstick as well.  It’s just kind of nice, it felt, and I’m not saying that this is the first of a new genre of films.  I’m not saying that it’s that genre defined.  It’s not at all, but we’re not used to seeing that all the time in those types of movies.

HM:  I think it’s also what brings you into the movie.  I felt when I was watching it that I was in that world with them, and so often when you’re watching a period film, it’s beautiful and it’s mesmerizing, and interesting, but you’re sort of outside of it, watching all these people in funny clothes and with incredible hair and horses and carriages going by, but you’re sort of outside watching it.  But with this one, you’re in there.  It’s sort of dirty and it’s around you and the people are real and I really felt that you didn’t have that sense of watching a period drama in the normal sense of the word.  And I think again that’s a lot to do with Michael.  He was saying the other day, he was very funny, when that thing that you were caught on the tarmac and you couldn’t come to that question and answer thing, he was saying how they kept putting mud and dirt on the set, because Russia was dirty, it was muddy, and messy and it wasn’t, and he said the German crew could not get their heads around that, (laughter) and not sweeping it up.  So he’d put the mud down, he’d come back in the morning, it would all have been swept away, (laughter), and he’d put the mud back down again, he’d turn around, half an hour later, and it had all been swept away again, and he’s been trying to find a square inch of Germany that wasn’t cut and manicured, and organized and trimmed.  He said it was so difficult to find that untidy feel of Russia, but I think it is the untidiness of it, and the messiness of it that makes you feel you’re in the real world.  Our hair and things also those kind of messy, like they’re not all perfectly coiffed hairdos, there are always bits coming out.

JM:  When I first met the hair and make up people on the movie, they were like, so we would like you to have long hair, and I had hair just the same as this at the moment, I don’t think so, and they go, no, no, but it’s a period drama.  But I was like, they all had head lice, and all the guys would shave their heads, just like once every three months or four months.  You’d see all these aristocrats with buzz cuts, and then this kind of flattop growth coming back, and then you’d have some of the guys who looked like Rasputinesque and all that and big long hair, but a lot of them just looked like, I don’t know, like jar heads.  (laughter) 

Q:  Helen, when I saw this picture, you were so sexy…

HM:  Oh god, don’t talk to me about the bikini picture…

Q:  Even your hair is messy…

HM:  (laughs)

Q:  So how do you think the people see you as a sex symbol?

HM:  I don’t know, I just carry on my own sweet way and I learned very early in my life, fairly early in my life, that you are two things.  You are what other people see you as being, and you are what you see yourself as being, and you will never see what other people see.  All of us in this room will never see what I’m looking at, ‘cause I’m looking at you, and you will never see yourself as I see you, in your whole life.  You are two people for the whole of your life, and I came to terms with that a long time ago, so I let people get on with it.  I’m just who I am and I deal with the person that I know that I am. 

Q:  How was it doing that scene with Christopher in the bedroom?  That was like so much fun to watch.

HM:  It was great, the important thing for me was to make a relationship with Christopher, and we didn’t have a lot of rehearsal time, and Christopher to me is a legend and an icon, right from obviously The Sound of Music, and he’s been a huge star for such a long time, and for me also a great theater actor.  He’s one of our, I believe, great living actors, in every sense of the word, so it was intimidating or anyway, I knew that I had to get over my incredible sense of respect because Sophia does not respect Tolstoy at all (laughs).  So I just spent all, every spare minute I had, I’d sit with Chris, we’d just sit together and chat and kind of laugh and get to know each other and have a good time.

JM:  I was very jealous, incredibly jealous.

HM:  (laughs) So that was important, so when we came to a scene like that, we were both going, oh my god, this is going to be so embarrassing, but never mind, we just have to do it, so we got on with it and you know.

Q:  Are you half Russian?

HM:  I’m half Russian. 

Q:  The director told us and how much did that influence you playing this character?

HM:  I don’t know, it’s probably, it’s hard to unpick.  I’ve grown up in England, my father grew up in England.  He came to England when he was two years old.  So I think of myself as English, but I am a mix, racially I’m a mix, ethnically, but I’m sure there are, I have characteristics that are Russian.  I’ve got a kind of Russian nose to start off, but it was great.  My family very much came from the world that the Tolstoys came from.  My family back in Russia came from that level of that kind of a class of intelligence and low aristocracy, and that was very much my family’s background, so it was amazing for me to sort of find myself in one of my family photographs, which was my sort of experience when I started the film. 

Q:  Can you talk about what you’ve got coming up next?

JM:  I’ve just done a film called The Conspirator which is about the assassination of Lincoln, and the defense, one of their conspirators called Mary Surratt, the first woman to be hanged or executed in anyway by your country and I play the guy who defended her, and then a movie called, I’m With Cancer, which we did in Vancouver in February.

HM:  I’m going to be in Toronto in February, the other side of Canada…

JM:  I’m going to be there during the bloody Olympics.  We’re the only movie filming in Vancouver during the Olympics…

HM:  Fabulous...

JM:  It is fabulous, but there’s a reason nobody else is filming (laughter) for fucks sake…

HM:  Can you go and see it or?

JM:  I hope so, I’ve got proper weekends.  So I’m doing that.

Q:  Is that a comedy ‘cause Seth Rogen…

JM:  Because Seth Rogen is in it everybody is saying it’s a comedy.  It’s like this, you wouldn’t call this a comedy, but there’s bits of it that are funny, but it’s based on one of Seth’s best friends, who got cancer when he was 25, no 27, and got over it and it’s about him and Seth during that time for a couple of years.  So Seth is playing himself.

Q:  What about Wanted 2?

JM:  I don’t know, it’s going to happen and it might not happen.

Q:  Helen, what are you going to do?

HM:  I’m going to work in Canada as well on a film called Red, which is based on a graphic novel, which should be fun.  I play an assassin. (laughs)

JM:  Welcome to the club…

HM:  I know, exactly, but I’ve done one once before in Shadowboxer, so that’s me really.  I mean, I’ve just got a couple of films hopefully coming out this year.   One is called The Debt, which is based on an Israeli film about Mossad agents finding a Nazi doctor, and that’s sort of a thriller story which is great.  John Madden directed it.

Q:  What about the award season craziness that’s about to be…

HM:  Well I mean one step at a time and we’ll deal with what comes along as it comes along and it’s just one, great for the film and I love it that the film has been seen by people and loved by people and as much recognition as we can get, the better, because we want people to see this film.  Great acting all around I think, yes. 

Q:  James, how was it working with your wife?

JM:  Nice, we’ve worked together before.

“The Last Station” opens in theaters on January 15th.