STACK NZ Jul #64

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gere’s passage to india
Do you enjoy playing Campbell?
In spite of the fact that he’s on the right
side, ostensibly he’s a man who radiates
malevolence. He’s like an awful radioactive
pile, so he’s a lot of fun to play, as there is a
side of him that’s extremely vulnerable too.
There’s nothing pleasant about Campbell,
but I feel I have feelings for him. To play
a character, you don’t have to love your
character but you must have some empathy
with him and I certainly do for Chester
Campbell.
What can we expect in the second
season?
When we started off with Tommy Shelby,
[leader of Peaky Blinders gang, played by
Cillian Murphy] and his nemesis Campbell
it was 1919. The show now moves to 1922
and their empire has expanded. All the
Shelby’s interests have moved into London.
The same things happen with Campbell; his
concerns are much wider. He’s now
no longer simply a policemen, he’s on
the Irish desk at the secret intelligence
service, which is MI6. He has bigger
concerns than simply cleaning up crime
in Birmingham; Ireland has become
increasingly troublesome to the government.
Campbell has a kind of mega plan for
all of this, which eventually will involve
the Shelby family. He still has unfinished
business with Tommy so it’s a bigger game.
What first attracted you to Peaky
Blinders?
Probably the main reason was the language;
there’s something about Steve Knight’s use
of English that’s very appealing. They’re
great words to wrap your mouth around,
really beautiful, particularly Campbell’s stuff.
There are scenes where it’s like he’s tapped
straight into some vein that runs through the
Old Testament and it’s very graphic,
so I was immediately attracted to that.
I was also immediately attracted to
playing a character that’s so vivid and three
dimensional – and so wrong.
Do you enjoy working on these sorts
of television dramas?
I’ve personally got a great deal out of long
form television. I like watching it and I like
binge-watching TV shows that come in
boxes. More than that, it’s great to tell a
story over a longer time. To spend a decent
period with a bunch of actors you really like,
is fun. We’ve had some fantastic people on
this show, people that you like and whose
work you admire and you get to know them
very well when you’re working on something
for a long time like this.
Peaky Blinders: Season Two is out on
DVD and Blu-ray on July 1
Richard Gere checks in at The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the hit sequel.
The Kiwi screen icon returns
as the villainous Chief
Inspecter Chester Campbell
in the second season of the
period British gangster saga
Peaky Blinders.
Arnold Schwarzenegger explains
why Maggie is not your usual
zombie movie.
“This is something very new for
me and for the zombie genre. At
its core, it is a film about a father
protecting his ’ve
seen the zombie hordes and
machine guns in other movies –
it all seems like an unbelievable
future. Maggie makes the disease
real by shrinking the world of the
movie to focus on one family,
in the middle of nowhere, on
their wasted farm.When I read
it, I knew I had to do it. It is
more vulnerable than any role
I have played, more real, more
emotional.This is the most human
zombie film you have ever seen
and it’s the most human role
you’ve ever seen me take on.
I’m proud of it.”
Maggie is out on July 15
“At times it’s almost like a Shakespearean comedy
of manners, with all these human foibles on
display,” he muses.
However, the chance to work with Oscar winners
like Dench and Smith was also an opportunity he
wasn’t going to pass up.
“It’s widely accepted that Judi and Maggie are
royalty in the film industry,” he adds. “They’re such
appealing individuals to see up on the screen, but in
terms of who they are as people...they have wicked
senses of humour!”
The Second Best Exotic Marigold is out on July 22
T hanks in part to a stellar
line-up of British acting
royalty, The Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel turned out to be one
of 2011’s unlikeliest blockbuster
hits, and helped usher in a wave of
films aimed fairly and squarely at
the older audiences.
The original stars – Maggie
Smith, Judi Dench, Bill Nighy etc
– have all returned for the much
anticipated sequel The Second Best
Exotic Marigold Hotel, but this time
there is an American in their midst,
one of Hollywood’s favourite silver
foxes, Richard Gere.
And he found the invitation to be
in the film irresistible. “I thought the
first film was terrific,” he says. “You
see fewer and fewer films about the real dilemmas
of our lives. And then to see such a really good
script the second time around; that doesn’t happen
all that often.”
Gere plays Guy Chambers, a mysterious
American who turns up at the hotel for retirees,
supposedly to work on a novel. However, hotel
owner Sonny (Dev Patel) is convinced that Guy
is actually an undercover inspector for the big US
chain he is trying to interest in investing in his
business. To Gere, the sophisticated wit of the
script was one of the chief appeals of the project.
Soundbites
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visit DVD/BD EXTRAS
Sam Neill
JULY 2015 JB Hi-Fi