Timothy Spall on Jackboots on Whitehall

Edward and Rory McHenry’s stop-action puppet animation Jackboots on Whitehall opened last week. A bizarre, irreverent and at times hilarious take on the classic British war movie, Jackboots offers an alternative history of WWII, in which Nazis have drilled a hole through to England, causing Churchill and a band of survivors to flee north of the border to form an alliance with the barbaric inhabitants of Scot Land. The film’s miniature world is populated with some of the finest in home-grown talent, including Ewan MacGregor, Alan Cumming, Rosamund Pike, and Timothy Spall who voices Winston Churchill. I caught up with Timothy at this year’s EIFF to chat about his role in Jackboots, as he played Churchill for the second time in one year, and about the upcoming Harry Potter finales.

Twenty years since he first ended up at EIFF by accident while on holiday with his wife and son, Timothy was keen to express his enjoyment of the festival and the variety of films on offer. Jackboots was one of the strangest on offer this year, so what did he think of it? ‘I think it is young and clever’, he enthused, ‘not at all disrespectful, but a fond look at that genre’. Did he think it would do well on general release? ‘Yes, I think it will do very well’ he told me, then expressing his fondness for the filmmakers Edward and Rory McHenry he added, ‘I think they have a good future ahead of them’. I wondered if the process was odd, acting in a film such as this? ‘Well, you don’t see any footage before hand, so you go in and deliver your lines and they work around that. I think I did about six hours work in total.’ What about the other actors? ‘You have little to no contact with the other actors on set’, although since the cast was peppered with British greats, he inevitably knew many of them already.

Coincidentally, Spall was actually in the process of filming another movie in which he also played Churchill, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech. How do his two performances vary, I wonder? ‘With Jackboots on Whitehall it’s very much a caricature, although a caricature with affection. With the King’s Speech, I had to develop this early take that I had on Churchill, and try and work that into a real person, to create an actual character.’ It must help to actually interact with other actors on set? ‘Yes – I mean, you often don’t really see anything when you work on films nowadays: the character, the story and the scene all has to come out of the actors head as they very often have to act in front of a green screen or speak into a microphone. But then, it is the job of the actor to go where required.’ he jokes.

This brings us to Harry Potter and one of the most anticipated movie events of recent years. I wondered if I detected a hint of negativity in his voice, at perhaps working on such a large franchise for such an extended period. He gives a smile, ‘working on films like that are a mixture of protracted tedium and moments of great joy’. It’s interesting to note that Spall, who plays Wormtail, first took on the role more than four years ago, before the books were completed, and he might easily have assumed that his character would not live this long. Is it a relief to finally be done? ‘It is. As far as I’m concerned I’m done. But you never know with films like this, you can always be called back.’ I suppose for the actors as well as for the eagerly anticipating fans, the Harry Potter experience will only really be over when we finally see Harry die on the big screen next July (only joking?).

John Gibb