Interviewer:  So we’re talking with Jason Isaacs, stars as Captain Hook, one of the roles. 

Jason Isaacs: Hmm, I play Mr. Darling as well. That’s true yeah. 

Interviewer:  In the new Peter Pan movie. Umm, you made the Hook character comedic. Was he initially written as? 

Jason Isaacs:  Did I?! I thought… Oh no, I’ve gone wrong *starts laughing*  I tried to make him desperately serious. I can’t believe it. No, he’s everything. The thing about this story is uh, it’s been working its magic for 100 hundred years now and it just works. Kids are thrilled by it and uh, grown ups sob at it, ya know. And it just has these incredibly rich characters and multi-dimensional characters. And Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, I think in many ways, are two split sides of the same person. And Hook is a deeply melancholic, bitter and resentful man and uh, and sometimes I think cruelly, we like to laugh at other people’s misfortunes, shall we say?

*interviewer says something, but I can’t make it out*

Jason Isaacs: Yeah exactly, so I didn’t think about making him funny at all. I thought about making him extremely angry and extremely upset, but obviously you thought him funny *laughs* 

Interviewer:  No, I did yeah *you can hear Isaacs chuckling*  So umm, you had a few flying scenes. 

Jason Isaacs:  Yeah 

Interviewer:  towards the end. Tell us about that Jason. Is that fun or is it a pain in the ass being in a harness for hours on end? 

Jason Isaacs:  It is so little fun, I cannot even begin to describe to you. It’s different, remember, for a young…boy and young girls who don’t weigh very much and are built slightly different than me. You got a big, fully grown man like me and you stick him in a very skin tight set of metal underpants and you hoist him up in the air, you’ll give him a wedgie that lasts for about four months. And you can imagine where it chafes, ya know and uh, its…its no fun at all. And it doesn’t look like fun, when you’re there. You can see, ya know, you can’t see it on film, but most of the time you’re just wincing and desperate to get down and desperate to get some blood back in your nether regions.

Interviewer:  Tell us about your costume. That looked like it was a pretty big production.. 

Jason Isaacs:  Yeah 

Interviewer:  getting that put on in the morning. 

Jason Isaacs:  It is. I’ll tell you what, you put the harness on. And then you put the costume on and you put the wig on and all that stuff and you go to the set. Umm, it takes hours and hours to do it. You need to go to the bathroom and everyone goes, “Oh no” *laughs* cause it’s gonna be three hours before you come back again, but it’s uh, it was heavy. What they did, was they made me a cool suit that went underneath. It was this skin tight latex thing with tubes in it. And in a very undignified way, in between shots, they would come and plug a hose right up in my rear end and pump freezing cold water all around my body because otherwise I would’ve passed out. Cause it was, ya know, it was hundreds of degrees inside there *puts hand to chest and lets out a puff of air*. It was pretty gamey, let me tell you *starts laughing*  when it came off at night. 

Interviewer:  Maybe they should have something like that in Acting 101. 

Jason Isaacs: Yes 

Interviewer:  To say to people, ya know, it’s not all fun. 

Jason Isaacs:  No, it wasn’t fun! Actually the strange thing about it, it wasn’t fun. It was fun being Captain Hook down on the ground because it wasn’t that hot. It wasn’t that uncomfortable. *Crosses arms over chest* Captain Hook in the air, and there’s quite a lot of Captain Hook in the air, but it took us a very long time to shoot that stuff, umm, was probably the most painful and most difficult filming I’ve ever done. Not that you see it onscreen much, obviously, to make it look like fun. And I’ve been in some pretty hairy situations, in Black Hawk Down for instance, which was very physically difficult. None of it touched this. 

Interviewer:  Right, and uh, tell us about- 

Jason Isaacs:  And I could use that, by the way, just because Captain Hook is in pain all the time, and he’s always angry and so uh, it was absolutely appropriate that I should be so uncomfortable. 

Interviewer:  Right, so what’s next Jason? 

Jason Isaacs: Well, we just finished it. Actually, we finished it very recently, month or two ago. And I came into England. I’ve been away for fourteen months. We were in Australia most of the time, shooting it, and some of it’s in California. I’m just slowly getting used to the dark and the rain *laughs* and the urban sprawl again in London. And in the new year it’ll be time to go off and do various things that I can’t talk about because they may not necessarily happen. 

Interviewer: Thanks a lot. 

Jason Isaacs:  Thanks much.