ne of this summer's would-be blockbusters, currently in theaters, is the high-concept, steampunkish The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, directed by Stephen Norrington (Blade) and based on the popular comic series of the same name by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. The premise is an intriguing take on the superhero genre. Some of 19th century literature's most famous—or rather notorious—and fantastical characters are assembled (with some difficulty) to stop a mysterious, diabolical force from ushering in the 20th century with a world war. The look of the film is at once stylish, spectacular, dark and gritty, with some outrageous action and some ripping performances.
But tribulations and conflicts aren't just on-screen when it comes to this adventure story. Not only did the production take a hit when the city in which it was shooting, Prague, suffered its worst flood in 200 years, but there have been numerous reports of major discord between Norrington and Sean Connery, the film's headliner and one of its executive producers.
Peta Wilson, who plays Mina Harker in The League (known to most as the statuesque blonde of TV's La Femme Nikita), took some time prior to the national release of the film to discuss her character (the only female principal) and the Norrington-Connery controversy.
What was the decision not to be a blond vampire in this movie?
Wilson: What do you mean, "What was the decision?" The decision was this is a $150 million-dollar movie and you do what you're told. [Laughs.] No, the film's vision, it was the director's, Steve Norrington's, and I was his Mina Harker. And I wasn't complaining. It looked great with all the makeup, and my eyes and the costume. It was like a Degas painting. But I liked it, I liked what it did to me. It kind of cooled me off, because I'm warm, and it made me a little sad.
But isn't it strange to be well-known as a blonde and then to be seen in a part with black hair?
Wilson: You know what's really pleasing to me about this? I did the audition [for the part of Mina] on the front veranda of my house in Australia—my uncle filmed the audition, I got a man from town who's an ex-airline steward to do Sean Connery (because he had a sort of dirty, rickety voice), and when I did the audition and I put the camera [tight on my face] and you couldn't really see my hair. You could only see my face, and they cast me because of what's inside. And that's what was great for me—it didn't matter that I was blond, you didn't know.
Nikita could've been a brunette, but I purposely made her a blonde. I fought [the show's producers]. I said, "No, no, blondes have been getting a hard time for a long time." Pamela Anderson—God love her, she's great for that. Marilyn Monroe—fantastic, va-voom and a great actress, Marilyn Monroe. But I thought it was great to play this really strong, ferocious woman and be a blonde, because we hadn't seen it. And I didn't want to do anything like the French film, I wanted to be totally different. So I thought, don't try to do Anne Parillaud, she was great as Nikita, you will not win, absolutely do something else. So I thought of Gena Rowlands, Katharine Hepburn, all these blondes that really were powerful. And I thought, y'know, television, big audience—let's go for blond.
What was the attraction for this particular role?
Wilson: The attraction for this particular role was—Sean Connery, lead female, period film. You know when you're a kid and you do dress-ups? This was the ultimate dress-up film. And here I am an actor, I've chosen a career where it's about sort of stepping into another person's reality. This was so fantastic because of the visuals and to be at the end of the 19th century and play a woman who's really repressed and closed and shut-down and on top of that a vampire's ex-girlfriend, Dracula's ex-girlfriend. What a great part to do. And the idea that we could do it again and again—that would be a great part to do.
But was there a small part of you that wanted the movie to be more like the comic, which would have made you the absolute main character?
Wilson: Well, no, it wasn't a small part. Some people have asked me, "Who's the character you would've been?" And I've said, "Alan Quatermain, I'm used to that part."
The comic was fabulous, and it was so bawdy. And we love that, but the thing is, to make a film like this one, you need a big leading man. And even the greatest, biggest movie stars that are women, Julia Roberts, etc., aren't enough, because you need those leading men. It makes studios nervous [to be without them]. In the '40s and '50s it was a leading woman and the man was the handbag. They were the stars, the women. It's changed, and now it's about the man. "OK, we've got Julia, but who's the guy?" We need "the guy."
But Mina's strong enough, and that's how I made her. There were many times in the scenes where I would think to myself, "I would be making a different decision here." There was some stuff of me giving directions in the car [in Venice]—"No, no, take a left there! I know this city, I'm telling you!" And I sort of put Sean in his place, and they cut that out because, y'know, he's the big man, and that works very well. If we go on for sequels there may be that opportunity that Mina gets to be in charge of something.
But it didn't bother me. She was very powerful anyway. She was the woman. The demon that lives inside of her is so much more ugly than all of theirs. Hyde's pretty rough, but Mina's vampire is really terrible.
As you've said, Steven Norrington is a visionary. ...
Wilson: I loved him. Genius.
But he had problems with the executives of Blade, and there's obviously problems with this film we've all heard about. What is he like to work with?
Wilson: Genius is as genius does.
Was it the most tense set you've ever been on, as Entertainment Weekly reported someone as saying?
Wilson: No, absolutely not. What was interesting was I thought La Femme Nikita was more tense than what this set was. I don't know, imagine being Van Gogh's wife, or Van Gogh's publisher.
You don't see [Stephen Norrington] in the film, but he's like the missing link. He's the superhero you can't see. He was all of us, and I commend him so much, that one man directed this movie. That's a lot of movie to direct—all these special effects, and on top of that a big movie star and floods. There was so much going on. He's an ex-makeup and visual-effects artist, so his attention to detail ... He decided the buttons on my costume.
He was totally in control, [but] he let me do whatever I wanted with the character. Once he'd hired me, we had lunch once—that was it. Everything I liked, he'd say, "Yup, great. That's it, great." And if I had a question about a scene, I did something different. I realized the guy was busy so I wrote him little letters—"I'm concerned about this ... ", "This is what I'm
thinking, what are your thoughts ... ?" And when he had time he'd grab me and say, "Oh, yeah, I thought about that. Yeah, that's good. Great."
There were moments of ... how should I say? ... not tension—passion, y'know, passionate spirits.
But weren't Sean Connery and him ready to come to blows?
Wilson: Oh, that was very funny. That was nothing. They weren't ready to come to blows. It was never that. It was 5 o'clock in the morning, we'd been shooting 18 hours, [there was] a lot of pressure to get the film done, floods are coming, there are three camera's on the car, Sean Connery's a little tired, Stephen's trying to make things safe. [Connery asked,] "What's going on? What's taking so long?" Well, we just want to make sure a $3 million dollar camera doesn't land into your lap! It's something like that that the press has blown up.
But when the press asked Sean Connery at the premier in Vegas where Stephen Norrington was, he said, "Have you checked the local asylum?"
Wilson: Oh my goodness. Isn't that terrible? Well, then, I don't know where that puts me, because I think [Stephen]'s a genius, I think he's wonderful. I wonder what it would've been like working with Kubrick [on] 150 takes. Do you hear Tom Cruise say that about Kubrick? Probably not. Y'know, let's give the guy a go, let's see his film. He's a vegan, Sean Connery's a meat-eater. There you go, there's the difference.
But there's also the question of whose version of the film has made it into theaters. It's been reported that, in post-production, Sean Connery (who also served as an executive producer on the film) was working on one cut of the film and Stephen Norrington was working on another.
Wilson: I don't know—if it's the take that I saw [at the premiere] in Vegas I hear that Stephen's very happy with it. Stephen would like a five-hour-long version. Guess what? So would I—all of the things I say and every scene that we shot would be in it. But you cannot put everything in the film. Luckily, the film works really well. If there's a sequel, we can use some of the stuff we couldn't use here for that.
[Connery] loved the movie. That's great that he loved the film. And he likes himself in it. So I don't know whose take it is. I know Stephen's totally responsible for the way it looked. He directed that film.
Do you think this movie has any sort of war message the audience will get?
Wilson: War message?
With the terrorism and the weapons of destruction and ...
Wilson: Well, what do you think?
I think it could be read both ways, to be honest. I couldn't tell whether the bad guy was supposed to be George W. Bush or Saddam Hussein.
Wilson: Well, how about every one of them? The thing that's interesting is you can never tell who the bad guy is. In our film the bad guy is supposed to be the good guy. And that's the kind of polarity of the society we live in—you don't quite know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. If it's there from the writer, James Robinson, who's English, it's very subtle. The comic book doesn't allude to [any such thing], but in this film the writer may have been inspired by what's going, maybe. If so it's so slight and subtle.
But it's about being entertained, really. You can take your whole family to go and see this movie. And if it's there, if you see it, that's great. But I don't think it's on purpose, intentional. I don't know that this movie is on-the-money for that. I think it's more about—if you're going to fight the very bad then maybe you need your bad to go do it. My father was saying that the Australian Special Forces is the strongest in the world. Well, I think they're probably all nuts. So you want those guys to go in, because they're the guys who're gonna know how the really bad people think. It's like homicide detectives who are after a serial killer—they've got to think like the mind of [the serial killer]. So in this film there's no way [the powers that be] can get the bad guy, they can't understand it. So they need to bring in the people they don't want in their society and see if they can.
Did you work much with the writer, James Robinson?
Wilson: He was great. I mean, the one thing I'll say about Steve Norrington—genius Steve Norrington, visionary Steve Norrington—is that he's not the greatest people person. You know, he's kind of shy, though he was great as a director. But—and I love this—he really respects the writer, he really respected James. James was there on that set, and that's unusual, to have a writer on the set. And they really got on very well. And quite often I would sort of look at James and go, "What'd you think of that?" and he would say, "Mmm, that's good." It was really nice that he was really respected—by the studio, by the director, by the actors.
Did anyone give you any comics to read other than the The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series?
Wilson: No, I came on late, as the girl does—"Get everyone else, then get the girl." I got there three weeks before they started. And four days after I'd done that test on my veranda I'm in London. The costume designer Jackie West gave me the comic. And by that stage I'd read Dracula, I was on the Internet trying to get as much literature as possible. I read about the royal families in Eastern Europe that believed that bathing in blood kept them young. And then I read the comic and that took me to read Isadora Duncan's story and to look at the film [Isadora], actually, because of the scarf—she died from the scarf, and Mina's always got that scarf on. And when I looked at that I realized that Isadora Duncan was a vampire, because she chewed through men like I change my underwear. So I looked at that analogy because I thought, well, Mina's half human, so the challenge for me is "How am I gonna play a human vampire and make it believable?" Well, I hope I did it. I hope that you see the torture that she feels.
The thing about Mina is she's not like the character in the book. It's past the book. Which is what's interesting—there's all these literary characters and it's past their stories. Mina was bitten by Dracula. He's killed. Jonathan Harker then dies of a broken heart, because even though Dracula's dead, there's enough of him flowing inside Mina's blood that it's forever ruined her husband and her. Forever. So he dies of a broken heart, and Mina lives with that. And whenever she gets emotional—agitated, excited, nervous, anything at all—up comes the vampire. So it's a big challenge for her to control that demon and suppress it, keep it down. It's almost like someone who likes too much chocolate, likes to drink or do drugs or gamble. You can't do what you want because you know it's going to feel great for 10 minutes and then you're going to feel guilty and terrible. And it's kind of like what Mina was. In the beginning of the film, she's very tense, and as she drinks a little more blood, a little more blood, she starts to kind of relax with her true nature.
All the characters in the League come from deep, rich, dramatic stories, but the film doesn't seem to have quite as much in the way of substantial interrelationships as one might expect. Were there scenes that were cut?
Wilson: When we shot the film, they were there, interpersonal relationships, and more of them, and they were really funny. But, when they cut the movie, stuff had to go, and that's the stuff that kind of had to go. And I think their rationale is, let's get them in, if they like it, when we come back, we can do all that.
On the DVD?
Wilson: No, if they do a sequel, I think that's what they'll do. Because the stuff looked great, it was really funny, but there just wasn't enough room in the movie. You guys don't want to sit and watch a movie that's three hours long. It's an MTV-age, you know—quick, quick, quick. It's an entertainment film, it's not like Meryl Streep in Adaptation. But you do think, because of the literary references. We come with a great backstory, all of us, but let's not forget that this story begins after all those stories are finished. We've all had some kind of catharsis happen after those books. My Mina Harker is not Winona Rider's Mina Harker. And so therefore, we had a bit more artistic license.
Certainly, Mina Harker before being bitten by Dracula, with some virtue, was very different. Also, there's this whole Dorian Gray story that's not explained. Dorian and Mina met, I believe, before she met her husband, and he had his way with her and she didn't know he was immortal, and she was kind of heartbroken. So he chipped away a little bit of her virtue. And in those days that's what a woman had, she had virtue. Y'know, she didn't have balls, she had virtue. It was a very different period in time for us. We were far from being able to vote. And then she goes on to meet Jonathan Harker, she falls in love, her virtue comes back. Then she meets the vampire, she meets Dracula. And, you know, she didn't have to have that affair, but she did, and now it's forever ruined her virtue.
So this is all what I've created with the character, that started as a woman of virtue and she's reaching for virtue throughout this film. That's why when she does the act [of blood-sucking] she totally freaks out that [the other League members] have seen it—because it's not virtuous at all, and [she] didn't want people to see that side of [her]. So I guess it's sort of a metaphor for how we are today. Y'know, a woman like her would be given Prozac.
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Also in this issue:
The cast of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
