IGN Interview: Jason Isaacs

The Harry Potter villain on his new miniseries, The State Within, plus info on Harry Potter 5, Brotherhood: Season 2, Avatar: The Last Airbender and more!

by Eric Goldman

February 15, 2007 - In the past few years, Jason Isaacs has become a very familiar face to American audiences. The British actor is probably best known as the ruthless Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, a role he'll reprise this summer in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. However, he's also made a name for himself in films like The Patriot and Peter Pan, and last year starred on the acclaimed Showtime series Brotherhood. In addition to all of that, Isaacs also voices Zhao on Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Isaacs will be returning to television screens this week, with the US debut of the exciting miniseries The State Within, on BBC America. Isaacs stars as Mark Brydon, the British Ambassador to the United States. Brydon is present when a plane headed for England explodes moments after liftoff, crashing on a Washington DC highway Brydon is traveling along. Driven by his personal observances of the tragedy, Brydon becomes involved in the investigation into who was behind it, which quickly spirals into a much larger web of deceit and conspiracy than it first appears to be.

Last month I sat down to talk with Jason Isaacs for an exclusive interview with IGN. We talked about The State Within, and the dramatic twists and turns it takes, and also discussed The Order of the Phoenix, the future of Brotherhood, and the upcoming film adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

IGN TV: So, let's talk about The State Within.

Jason Isaacs: Have you seen it?

IGN TV: I've seen the first episode.

Isaacs: F**k, I hate that, because the first episode is a bit like hearing the first line of a joke or someone throws a whole bunch of balls in the air, and you don't even know how many balls there are, you don't realize you're watching someone juggle, you just see these balls go. It's fantastically engaging, the first episode.

IGN TV: Oh yeah.

Isaacs: But it's so much more satisfying to see at least the first three [episodes], when the strands start coming together. It was on Thursday nights in England, and Friday morning my phone would just be full of messages. It would be all my friends and family going, "I loved it last night! Just tell me one thing… The guy with the blond hair, that was bad when he did that thing?" And then, by the end of episode three, people would call up and go, "Ah ha! I'm glad you didn't tell me, because now I see that that girl is connected to…" It's just this fabulously labyrinthine plot.


 

IGN TV: Reading the plot description, there's a lot of inherent drama there, but watching just the first episode, there are a lot of interesting elements in play you wouldn't expect.

Isaacs: Yeah, they all come together. Every strand comes together in a kind of beautiful synthesis. You know, it's a real, edge of your seat conspiracy thriller, but it requires the audience to have a bit of a brain. If you want kind of a popcorn thriller or a cartoon, don't watch this.

IGN TV: What did you think when you first read the script? Because it does deal with some pretty hot button topics.

Isaacs: It does. When I first read the script, I didn't think at all, I just turned the pages like a lunatic. It's one of those things where you're going, "What's happened now? What's that guy doing? Get out of there, quick, before he kills you!" It's just a fabulously compelling story. In America, they're showing it in three two-hour chunks, which is more satisfying than six one-hours. But most of all, you want to watch it in one six-hour chunk. That's how it works best. That's how I read it, obviously. So before I engaged anything at all, I was just on the edge of my seat, wanting to know what happens next. And then I thought somebody at the BBC's got big balls to commission this. I didn't know, because I'd been away doing American films and television for so long, and I'd only really read [about] what's on British television; I hadn't watched British television in so long. I thought we didn't make things as grown up, and as engaging and as contemporize as this. And as culturally relevant as this. And I just wanted in! When it's on of course, and it's over, the news is on, and it makes you realize… While you're doing it, you're just trying to tell the story, as accurately as you can. It makes you realize how relevant everything is, because you'd hear lines directly from the script in the news or your current affair shows on Sunday; you'd listen to politicians interviewed, and they're coming up with the same thing that's on our show. And I understand, only in retrospect, that's one of the great things that drama can do. The primary level is to entertain. You've got to engage people, you've got to make them gasp, you've got to make them wonder what happens next. It does all that stuff. But it also helps us think more clearly, about the really important things going on in our world. Things being done in our name by our governments, by our corporations. And also, on a personal level, how we police ourselves, morally. What do we do, when our own self-interests and our professional ambition butts up against what we know to be right? And how important is it to tell the truth, always, and when is it important to lie? All these things are in there, but they're illustrated through gripping drama, and that's as much as you can ask for, really.

IGN TV: In the past week, I've seen The State Within, Children of Men, and the premiere episodes of 24. It's interesting, because they all deal with issues of internment camps and racial or geographic profiling.

Isaacs: Right. Well that's the job of drama. The last couple of years, I've realized something about television, because I hadn't done television in years. And I realized that television talks to grownups, because grownups have children and stay in. It's a really simple equation. I have two small children. I don't go out; I very rarely go to the cinema. I certainly don't feel a need to see a movie on the first weekend that it comes out, if I ever see it. So if you want to talk to grownups about the world we live in, the place to do it is in television or in an indie film. If you're spending 200 million dollars on making a movie, you better make sure that it appeals to teenagers, because you've got to get your money back. So yeah, I think that good television these days engages and has a resonance that stays long beyond the hour or two-hours that you're watching it for. And it's not a public service announcement, but just thinking through and living through the issues vicariously, of the characters journeys, might help us negotiate this incredibly complicated and scary world that we live in or certainly move us in the right direction. Help us understand what our standards are; what we think's important. Because I find it very hard. One of the central questions in The State Within is, if there's a country with a terrible man in charge of it, and people are dying because of his human rights abuses, is it okay to lie to the public in order to effect an invasion and a regime change? And is it important enough to risk human beings lives, with an invading army, if commercial interests are at stake? How important is the regular supply of oil and fuel to the western world? Is it worth some people dying for? A lot of people dying for? What kind of people are we prepared to tolerate being in charge of that line of fuel, as long as our life continues?


 

One of the great things is, none of these things are discussed like political essays, or columns in The New Yorker. I play a guy who's done some pretty rotten things in the past, but for good reasons. I'm a diplomat. You know, a famous quote from an ambassador is, "An ambassador is a good man, sent abroad to lie for his country." And I'm a man whose past catches up with him, because I've made some decisions in the past that were definitely in Britain's interests, but they weren't in the interests of some small groups of people who got very badly f**ked over. But that's the kind of stuff you have to do as a diplomat. When the story starts, I'm about to become a politician, which is a very odd thing for a diplomat. They're different careers. But he's about to jump ship, because he has the close ear of the British Prime Minister, and he's about to become a policy maker, instead of a policy interpreter. So he's got his personal ambition, but then there's a series of events; there's a big bomb, and all the evidence points to supporting this drive to war, to invade this country. And yet he's lied to the public in the past, and he's kind of sick of lying. And it looks like this whole thing might well be a fiction and a conspiracy. He doesn't know who's doing it and he doesn't know why, but he knows that everyone's for it. All the public is for it, and all the politicians are for it, and everybody's for invading this country. And something doesn't smell right to him. And ultimately, these stories can only go to one place. You've got a really good narrative, and it takes your central character to a place where all the most important things to him in the world are in direct conflict. What do I do that's best for the people? What do I do that's best for me? What do I do that's best for the job? What do I do that's best for her? All these things, they're in opposition. So at home, you're thinking, "F**k, I'm glad it's him making the decisions! I don't know what I'd do!"

IGN TV: What was it like shooting the scene where the plane crashes? It's certainly intense to watch.

Isaacs: It was scary, actually. Obviously, we didn't crash a plane. But the set was a mile or two miles long, with hundreds of overturned cars, and smoking wrecks and injured people. And the carcass of the plane is blowing up, and there's smoke, and it was right next to the airport. So lots of people driving by thought there'd been a plane disaster, which was possibly irresponsible of us to have done it there, even though on the hour on every radio station in Toronto there were saying, "Don't worry." People were phoning the police; emergency services. It was very disturbing to shoot. My four and a half year old came down to the set that day - again, possibly not the best day - during a scene in which I'm trying to rescue someone from a burning car, fail, and the screaming woman dies in the wreckage. My daughter loved it of course! Next day at nursery school she said, "It was great. I watched my dad try and save someone who died in the burning wreck of a car!" But you know, I wasn't in England for the Seventh of July [terrorist bombings], and in some ways I felt guilty for not being there. And I have friends who felt guilty for not being in New York. I was in Toronto for 9/11, and lots of people with me were New Yorkers who felt guilty about not being there. So I felt guilty in a way, and there was something about shooting that scene that put that to rest, and I realized how stupid I was having those feelings. Just about everything we shot for the series, just like reading the newspaper ever day, helped me realize what a changed world we live in from just a few years ago. But it was a terrifying day [shooting], not least of all because you're sitting in a car, and the stunt driver's job was to smash the breaks as if we'd been hit by burning debris, and all around us is screaming and blood and chaos. It was upsetting.

in to come up with a vocabulary of moves with wands. Because we've seen the kids learning how to fight, but they're kids; they have no idea what they're doing. We are meant to be as good as you're ever going to get with spells and wands, which means we should come up with some spectacular s**t! So me and Gary, we're in there, and just every day, we go, "Can we do this?! What about if I bounce this off there? Can I spin around?" Constantly coming up with outrageous ideas that must be doubling the FX budget every day. Almost always they went, "No, of course you can't", but some of them got through. We just had the best time. A ludicrously enjoyable time. Gary Oldman is a total hero of mine. I've always thought he was one of the best screen actors I've ever seen. If I'd ever imagined working with him, it was not figuring out different ways to blast bits of each others bodies off with a magic wand, but none the less, I'll take what I can get. It was great.


 

David Yates, the director, is a lovely man. I've been on some very big films, but nothing touches just the size of the Harry Potter machine. But he, none the less, even though you're doing a giant special effects battle sequence, made us feel like we were doing an off-off-Broadway play. It's all about the minute details and interplay between characters, with every moment, and every wand blast and every shielded movement, which was great. And one of the nice things about it peripherally, is I go back every year or two, and I see Dan, Emma and Rupert, and they're so different. It's like time-lapse photography for me. I go back and do that thing where I talk to them like last time, but it takes me two weeks to adjust, because they're nothing like they're nothing like they were when they were 15, and when they were 15, they were nothing like they were when they were 13. So now they're basically young adults, and I'm shocked by them. I no longer have to try not to swear around them, for instance! Dan will be in the West End doing a play while I'm doing a play, and I hope he has matinees when I don't so I can go and see him.

IGN TV: You can see the nude scene everyone is talking about.

Isaacs: Yeah, I might look away from that!

IGN TV: You were in one of my favorite movies of the past few years, which is Peter Pan.

Isaacs: Oh, I loved that. I love that my daughter watches it, not because I'm in it, but because I think it's one of the most truly beautiful, simple children's stories. It's not told with any sort of post-modern irony. There was no winking at anyone or grown up pop culture references for the adults. There's no dirty jokes and sexual innuendos and stuff. It's a really straight forward telling, of a beautiful, complicated kids story. My daughter doesn't watch television, she watches movies. We don't like her to watch kids TV, because it moves too fast and it's sensory overload. But she watches Mary Poppins, Sound of Music and Wizard of Oz and she watches Peter Pan, and I think it belongs in that mix of things. It's filled with such beauty. I was so proud to be in it. I know it didn't do very well commercially, for whatever reason. Everyone's a genius after the fact. It's easy to say now, "Oh it was positioned wrong," or sold wrong or whatever. I just know that after I got over the initial shock of it being a commercial failure, which was upsetting for all of us, it still lives on, because so many people I know are playing it all the time for their kids. Every element is magnificent; the music, the costumes… the cinematography is breathtaking. It's a real fantasy ride for children, and it's one of those things I think that as the years go by, people will still be watching and I'll always be glad to be in. There are other things I'd much rather never get seen and get buried! I saw Perfume, and the girl who plays Wendy is in it, and it's bizarre. Her I haven't seen in four years, which is a big gap. And I was going, "No, Wendy!", because Wendy is frozen in time like Peter Pan is in my mind, and there she is, a woman, and the object of lust for the lead character. It was very strange.

IGN TV: You played Captain Hook. How did you approach playing a character many others had portrayed before?

Isaacs: Well I thought that was a real gift for me, because while people had played him before, no one has ever [really] played Hook. They'd played a theme version or cartoon versions, but the real Captain Hook, as written by JM Barrie is such a tortured and fascinating man. He's broken hearted from the first time you meet him. He carries that thing where he knows he's missed the boat in his life. His whole life is a train of melodramatic tragedy. Youth pays him no respect and escapes him. I think he has this kind of beauty that he can't capture; Wendy. His fantasies that he knows will never be fulfilled. He's as tragic as any characters gets. It's a real gift for an actor. He's also an incredible showman. He's such a ham in his own life. He's such a drama queen and he's so sorry for himself. So instead of thinking, "How can I be different from the other people?", I felt sorry for them, having been given the great material that I was, which was JM Barrie's words and scenes.


 

IGN TV: Your first scene really establishes how different he is, when you see you possibly hung over, laying there shirtless, with the stump where your hand was bitten off showing.

Isaacs: Yeah, the stump is fantastic. Kids are always asking me [about that], if they know I'm Captain Hook. It takes them awhile to get around to it, but I can see their eyes flicking to my hand the whole time. At some point, and often their parents encourage them, they'll go, "What happened to your hand? How did your hand grow back?" But I loved it. I think [director] PJ Hogan's a bit of a genius, and I hope that he gets to make more films. Because obviously, when you make a very expensive film like that, sometimes people give you a wide berth for awhile. I know they certainly gave me a wide berth for awhile. But he's fantastically obsessive, which is why the film is so great.

IGN TV: Has it been nice for you, the last couple of years, to go back and forth between TV and film projects?

Isaacs: Well, you know, there's no difference, really, as an actor. I'm doing a play now in London, and there's no difference. I'm in a room with someone, trying to find out what the truth of the scene is. So if there are eight cameras on you, or 300 pairs of eyes, or a single camera, or if you have a beautiful giant caravan, or you're all in the back of a van eating sandwiches, the job is still exactly the same. I'd like to say it would be lovely if the truth was I just went from job to job just trying to find the most interesting stories to tell. I do that, balanced with the fact that I have to pay my bills! So I'm trying to keep a healthy mix. But I've been lucky so far. I haven't really felt in my life, apart from once - a job that took three days to do - I don't think I've ever really whored myself and done something rubbish just for money. And I hope I never have to! Currently, I get to do interesting things, and I'm very lucky. I hope it continues, because I've seen it stop for many other people.

IGN TV: They just announced that M. Night Shyamalan is doing a movie version of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Isaacs: I saw that! I can't imagine they'll be coming to me, because as far as I'm aware, I'm the only Caucasian actor that does a voice in it. It was very odd, the first time I went to record. I looked around, and it was like I was in the wrong studio. I said, "Do you guys want me to do an Asian voice or something?" They said, "No, no, no. Just be yourself." And then after we started recording, they went, "Okay, just to slightly clarify that. Be yourself, but be your American self." I said, "Okay, fine." But you can't help but be influenced by the fact that all the other actors are Asian. I met the guy who plays Appa. He came up to me, a very cool looking guy, and he said, "Hey, how are you doing man?! We worked together." I said, "Really?" It's a big success, apparently! Because I've been in England, I haven't seen it or been aware of its success. I wear the T-shirt they gave me occasionally, and people come up to me and go, "I love that show!"

IGN TV: Well, if Night came to you and said he'd like you to be in the feature film, would you be interested?

Isaacs: In a heartbeat! I think he's a great filmmaker. I met him at the Harry Potter premiere last year. I was talking to him for about an hour, and he said his name was Night. I had no idea who he was! Only when I walked off at the end, I went, "Night… that's an unusual name… Oh my god!" I wanted to run back and thrust my resume in front of him, but it was too late. Probably just as well!

IGN TV: Is Brotherhood coming back?

Isaacs: Yeah! I'm going home to do a play with Lee Evans, and then the day that finishes I'm going to Rhode Island, and we start another season in April.

IGN TV: Last time we saw him, your character took a pretty big blow to the head…

Isaacs: He did! I emailed Blake Masters this morning, who's the writer and co-showrunner, and I said, "Blake, I'm doing lots of interviews today with television journalists, and I have a suspicion they might ask me about Brotherhood. I'm going to tell them that I suspect that there are serious consequences of me having my head staved in with an iron bar! If that's not okay, get in touch with me!" I have no idea what they're planning on doing. I don't know many people whose skull would have withstood what happened to Michael Caffee, but who knows? I know I'm going back though. I might go and find out that it's to do the funeral scene!

IGN TV: I assume you don't want to play coma for a few episodes.

Isaacs: Oh, I don't mind! There's a comfy bed and a sponge bath every now and again. We'll see what they have in mind. God knows, they could take the story in any direction they want.

IGN TV: Was that a fun character to play and did you do research on that kind of New England guy?

Isaacs: No, I like my job overall. I had a baby while we were shooting. It wasn't a fun character to play, because he's do desperately unhappy. But I'm not pretending for a second that I become the people that I play; there's no confusion between me and him. However, he's miserable and angry and violent and upset and insecure, and I am pretending to be those things all day, so I can't say it's always fun. But it feels complicated and it feels engaging and I just try to be truthful with what I'm given.

IGN TV: So I have to tell you, I am a huge Harry Potter fan.

Isaacs: Very good. So am I! I'm a big fan for as number of reasons. I'm desperate to read number 7 when it comes out in July, because I want to know if I'm in it!

IGN TV: I was going to ask you that, since you're not in the sixth one.

Isaacs: No, no. It's a source of some regret and an open wound for me. I had such a good time on number 5. I had to take the wig off and stick it in the box, and it was a very tearful farewell. I might not see it again for a few years. I might never see it again!