STACK NZ APril 2016 Issue 72

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"I ’m looking at you, sweetheart,”
teases Chris Hemsworth as we
debate the niceties of cannibalism
and who would taste best.
Its not exactly polite dinner conversation
but then again, we’re talking about his
latest starring role in Ron Howard’s epic
historical drama, In the Heart of the Sea.
It's based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s non-
fiction book of the same name about the
sinking of the American whaling ship The
Essex in 1820, the event that inspired the
classic Moby Dick.
Rammed by an enormous angry bull
sperm whale, the ship split in half, leaving
its crew to float at sea for 90 days before
coming ashore off the South American
coast, where the few survivors resorted
to eating each other to stay alive – a grisly
detail later documented by cabin boy
Thomas Nickerson, played in the film by
both Tom Holland and Brendan Gleeson,
in their young and older incarnations,
respectively.
In recreating this grim chapter in nautical
history, the cast were required to shed
30lbs during the course of filming, in
order to look emaciated for the shipwreck
scenes.
Restricted to a 600-calorie a day diet,
out in the worse storms. They shut down
all the roads and it hadn’t rained that much
in like 15 years in the Canary Islands.”
As much as filming on the ocean was
gut-wrenching, the cast dreaded the days
they had to film the cannibal scenes.
“But you don’t see the actual eating
though in the film,” Hemsworth hastens
to add. “You see the preparation, and the
suspense of what they’re going to do,
and just making that decision that this is
what they’re going to do is, I think, more
horrifying than the actual eating process.”
The cast were able to read the original
real-life interviews with the survivors. “In
the journal entries, they talk about how
once they made the decision they were
okay with it and it was like great food, on a
very basic level.
“But after being rescued, it was
traumatic, realising what they had done.
I mean one of them actually ate his own
cousin!” Gill Pringle
Hemsworth recalls how he was almost
wiped out by a wave because he was so
malnourished.
“I hadn’t surfed in months, and it wasn’t
especially big surf, but I almost died,” recalls
the actor, who was filming in Lanzarote in the
Canary islands.
“It wasn’t at all life threatening, it was
just because I had no energy, so thank god
I didn’t surf where it was bigger and more
treacherous. But you just couldn’t do much,
honestly. It was just sleep and food, and by
that I mean a plate of vegetables.”
Naturally for the surf-loving actor, filming
an ocean action movie held great allure,
much of which dissipated after the first few
days of filming.
“In the first week we were out on the
water, the waves were coming in eight-
foot swells, and it was brutal, I mean half
the crew were just at the edge of the boat
vomiting,” he recalls, punctuating the story
with some impressively realistic sounds.
“The camera guys would be hanging
on the edge of the rail holding the
camera and we’d just be vomiting
for 12 hours. We all had the
seasick pills so thankfully it was
alright, but it was intense. You did
not sit down all day and we were
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• In the Heart
of the Sea
is out April 6