Long before he was cast as the
casually terrifying Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov in The Death of Stalin, the critically acclaimed, shockingly funny black comedy
directed and co-written by Armando Iannucci (In the Loop, HBO’s Veep),
Jason Isaacs already had quite a few rogues on his resume. Chief among his credits:
Col. William Tavington, the sadistic British officer who makes life miserable
for Mel Gibson’s reluctant Revolutionary War hero in The Patriot; a demented researcher at a dubious rehabilitation
clinic in A Cure for Wellness; and,
of course, the dreaded Lucius Malfoy in the Harry
Potter movie franchise.
But in Iannucci’s film, which
expands its slow-rollout run into Houston, Nashville and other markets today, Isaacs
dials the intimidation level up to 11 — while clearly having the time of his
life.
His Zhokov struts into a maelstrom
of shifting loyalties, competing power plays and ever-increasing paranoia that
erupts in 1953 Moscow following the demise of Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin), the
Communist leader who ruled and nearly ruined his country with a whim of iron
while demanding, and receiving, sycophantic support for his reign of terror. The
Russian tyrant’s sudden death generates fear and loathing — and, in some cases,
unbridled ambition — among a Soviet Central Committee that includes the
malleable deputy general secretary Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey
Tambor), Machiavellian secret police commander Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell
Beale); anxious foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin); and the improbably savvy
(or perhaps just plain lucky) Nikita Khrushchev
(Steve Buscemi). Zhokov looms large above them all, with all the sneering
authority and brass-balled confidence of a kingmaker who controls every
situation — and, not incidentally, commands the Red Army.
Be forewarned: The
Death of Stalin is a brutally hilarious comedy about an unstable despot who
inspired adoration even from those he exploited and oppressed, and the movie
doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the atrocities committed in his name by his
loyal lackeys. But don’t let that keep you away. “As Stanley Kubrick did with Dr.
Strangelove,” critic Bilge Ebiri wrote in The Village Voice, “Iannucci has built a satire not by twisting the
truth but by nudging reality just a few inches further in the
direction it was already going. It should not be incumbent on people of good
sense to hold their laughter in the face of such absurd evil. If anything,
laughter should be a requirement — because
only in well-observed ridicule can we sometimes find a power strong enough to
put such monsters in their places. And make no mistake about it: These are
monsters, not ghosts. The Death of
Stalin might be set in 1953, but you don’t have to look hard
at it to see today.”
Isaacs phoned me a few days ago to
talk about The Death of Stalin, the
movie’s surprisingly compelling contemporary relevance, and the sheer joy that
comes from portraying a character who always is absolutely certain — with ample
justification — he is the smartest and scariest guy in the room. Here are some highlights from our conversation.
How much did you know about this period in
Russian history before you signed on to play Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov?
It was unknown to me. I didn’t
know anything about Stalin — and I certainly was shocked to find out how much
of the film is true. I’ve seen audiences fall out of their seats laughing — and
it is incredibly funny, albeit the
comedy comes from tension and terror — but so many of the insane episodes in
the film happened. Stalin did make
them all sit and watch cowboy films all night long. And the orchestra did have to record [a symphony
performance] three times for him. His son did
lose a whole hockey team. And when he woke up after they thought he was dead
and pointed at a strange painting, they did
try to interpret his gesture for hours. And he did lie in a puddle of his own
urine for days because they were too frightened to get a doctor — in case they
got the wrong doctor, and he came back to life and killed them for it.
Years ago, I talked to Malcolm McDowell about
his portrayal of H.G. Wells in Time After
Time. In that movie, Welles was depicted as painfully shy around women. But
when McDowell picked up a biography to do research, one of the first things he
read was that Wells really was a notorious rake. So he figured, well, he’d better
toss the book aside and just play what was in the script. Did you do much
research about Zhukov?
Well, if you talk to Andrea
Riceborough, who plays Svetlana Stalin, she’d say she read a giant weighty
tome, this book called Stalin’s Daughter,
and then looked in various other tomes. Me?
I glanced at a Wikipedia page — and what became clear instantly was that
Zhukov was the only person that could speak the truth to Stalin. The only
person who wasn’t in any way fearful. And that was reflected in the script. And
then, most usefully to me, I saw a photo of him. I noted this man standing like
a peacock puffing out his giant chest, on which he wore 10,000 medals, and I
thought, “Who does that?” And apparently he was one of the first people ever to
do that, and then it was a fashion picked up by Idi Amin and various other
people. And I thought, “OK, I know everything I needed to know. This is a man
without whom a coup is not going to take place.” So, whereas everyone else in
the story was still terrified of Stalin’s size, of his shadow, Zhukov is a guy
who knows that they’re all after [his approval]. Without the Red Army, no one
can be in charge. And that was all I needed.
I don’t want to give away any spoilers…
Well, Stalin dies. I think it’s
safe to say that for a start.
True enough. It’s kind of like Death of Salesman — you know where that
one is going, too. But there’s a scene in Death
of Stalin where you’re suddenly really scary. And then, when you see how
much you’re terrifying someone, you let them know you’re kidding. And the poor
guy is so relieved, you can’t help thinking he might pass out anyway. When you
read a scene like that in a script, do you find yourself thinking how much fun
it will be to play?
Well, funny enough, that’s the one
moment that I remember from the entire shooting that I came up with. Everything
else — look, I know the film feels and looks improvised. And when we’ve done
stuff with the media and Q&A’s, as we’re doing at the moment in cinemas,
people always ask, “How much of it was improvised?” The answer is, none of it.
It was all incredibly tightly scripted. But that bit, I came up with. There was
just something about playing this character, and about this plot. It’s cheap
therapy for anybody who’s a people pleaser to be someone who doesn’t give a
flying fuck what anyone else thinks of him, because they hold all the cards. It’s
a very juicy thing to do.
Of course, it’s kind-sorta ironic that this
movie is coming out at a time when there have been, ahem, questions about what nefarious
connections Russia’s current leader might have with the current U.S. President.
What’s really ironic about this is
that [Death of Stalin] was written and
shot a long time before Trump was even a candidate. But other people have made
other connections. Since it’s been out there, I was at a screening where
somebody came out of the audience and said to Armando, “Thank you for telling
our story.” And it turned out they were from Zimbabwe. They saw it as about Mugabe,
and the climate of terror around Mugabe, and what the cult of personality had
done to that country.
And in fact, when we were
shooting, Brexit happened. I had the day off to go and take part in the
commemoration of The Battle of the Somme — and I met David Cameron, the British
Prime Minister who had just resigned because of the Brexit vote. He asked me
what I was doing and I said a film about the scrabbling for power in the absence
of Stalin. And he said, “Sounds like my daily life in Downing Street.”
So there are all kinds of shadows.
With the Orange Oompa Loompa in the White House, nowhere was that more obvious
than during that extraordinary cabinet meeting that he held where cameras went
around and everyone had to pay homage to him in the most cringe-worthy way. But
in fact, it could be any situation where the cult of personality and the
strength of one character means that everybody else loses their moral compass.
Can you see a day in the not so distant future
when someone makes a black comedy about Donald Trump?
The problem with Trump is that he’s
beyond satire. He is his own satirist, Donald Trump.
The whole thing is some strange kind of Andy Kaufman performance art with
monumentally cataclysmic consequences. At the time of Stalin, people lived
in utter terror. Because let’s not forget, and the film doesn’t forget, that he
sent tens of millions of people to their deaths. But the one thing people had
to save their sanity was jokes. And people would circulate joke books about
Stalin. Even as they slept full clothed facing the possibility that they’d be
spirited away in the middle of the night and shipped off to a gulag. Thankfully,
we’re not quite there yet with Trump.
Death was so arbitrary at that time that the slightest joke, even a bad joke, could do you in. Stalin was
delusional, narcissistic to an extraordinary degree. Nobody was safe anywhere.
In fact, only Zhukov was. The parallels of course to the White House, and the
turnover of staff, are extraordinary. They might not get sent to a gulag and
shot, but they’re sent out into the media wilderness. Which I suppose is worse
for half of them.
Have you ever worked with a director you
thought was as mercurial and dictatorial as Stalin?
Oh, God yeah. I’m not
so professionally suicidal as to tell you who I’m talking about — but yeah, I’ve
worked with some crazy despots. With directors, you see, we’re all parts of
their train sets. And they can be as benign as they want, or they can be
monstrous. And I’ve worked with all types.
Is it at all difficult being in a
situation where you’re playing a character who spooks the hell out of just
about every other character? Does that affect how you interact with the other
members of the cast?
No, because I was surrounded by heroes of mine.
Comedy gods. The hardest thing about doing that film was to decide who to sit
next to at lunch. I’m a massive fan of all of them, and I was desperate to talk
to Jeffery Tambor about The Larry
Sanders Show, and Michael Palin about Monty Python, and then Steve Buscemi about
everything he's ever done. The thing is, everybody is so great at their job,
and from so many different disciplines. The lead in the film in many ways is Lavrentiy
Beria, played by Simon Russell Beale, who’s a massive superstar of the theater
in Britain, but unknown to film audiences. And I’ve seen almost everything he’s
done — he’s played the lead in all the Shakespeare plays and all the Russian
plays — and I knew he was hilariously funny. The whole experience of making the
film was embarrassingly enjoyable.
Of course, this isn’t the first
time you’ve played an unpleasant character. Do you ever encounter people in
public who confuse you with the roles you’ve played? Like, after all those
nasty things your character did in The
Patriot — did total strangers walk up to you on the street and spit at you?
[Laughs] You know
what, I’ll tell you what’s odd — and I still don’t understand it to this day. I’ve
been doing this job for a very, very long time. And I’ve found that they may do
that when you’re on television, but they don’t do it when you're in films. They
confuse you with television characters all the time. I have a friend who was in
a show and got beaten up on the subway in England, on the tube, because his
character had stolen someone’s purse. With me, instead, they come up and they
say, “So sorry, don't take this the wrong way, but I really hated you in The Patriot.” Or, “I was scared of you
in Harry Potter.” But they never
confuse me for the characters. It doesn’t happen. People love the bad guys.
They love to hate, they like the fact that they get riled up.
Finally, you’re a native of
Liverpool. How do you think that prepared you for your career? What do you
think growing up there gave you?
What did it give? Well, first of all, everybody
in Liverpool is a standup comedian — even though only three percent of them are
funny. Everybody is always trying to entertain. Literally everybody. You get
into a taxi at Lime Street Station, and it starts, and it never switches off
until you leave. So, it’s a culture down there, and there are certain cities
that are always like that.
And the other thing, I suppose, is
it inadvertently gave me is ability to do accents. Because I used to talk like [a
Liverpudlian] until I was a teenager. But you can’t really
survive as an actor if that’s your accent, so you’ve got to learn to do other
voices. So I learned early on. We moved to London when I was a kid, and I was
incredibly self-conscious of my accent. So, overnight I went from sounding like
a Beatle to sounding like Ray Winstone. Then I went to university, and they all
sounded like Hugh Grant. And so did I in a couple of days. And I’m speaking to
you from New York, but I’m currently working in Los Angeles shooting a film. I’m
playing an American, and I do the accent all day. And I find myself at night in
a restaurant, and I’m halfway through a conversation with someone before I
think, “Shit! This isn’t my voice!” That’s when I go, “OK, I’m talking like
myself again.” But the fact that I came from Liverpool made me very mobile when
it comes to dialects.
Really, I’m unbelievably well paid
to put on makeup and do silly voices. It’s stunning to me. But I’m glad —
because I’ve got no other skills.
