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 Johnny
Depp: The Mad Actor
An Emily Blunt Interview
BUY
Alice in Wonderland
Bonus features include
Finding Alice, Depp on Mad Hatter and more!
Oh, loverly
sunshiny day ...winding through the wilds of LA... en route to
a very important date there's not a blue meany in site. See, Johnny
Depp is in town and even the trees seem to feel it. They blow
a tad cooler; sway with a Sparrow-like swag to the eye.
Of
course it could be my cold medicine...
But
Mother Nature can't claim their dancing as her doing. No. Today
it is a non-weather-related phenom that has them so unabashedly
animated these days. They've probably spied the billboards below
that advise we mere mortals that Tim Burton is wielding his muse
Johnny Depp again.
Depp's
always what one could call a delectable delight. But when the
mad director mixes with the pliable A-List character creator.
It's magic! Not
unlike dear little Alice's tripping afternoon in Wonderland. Therefore,
in scientific terms, this should be a perfectly perfect pairing.
Story and crew that is. And it is.
Am
I biased? Sure. So what. Depp's the real deal and he knows I know
it.
With
this next colab Depp is as mad as a hatter as the Mad Hatter in
Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland. Be warned –
this is a creepy clowny kind of character. If you have a touch
of clown fear, Johnny may just make you throw up a bit in your
mouth as you flee the theater.
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Emily:
So were you sipping tea at the Chateau when Tim rang and asked
you to play the Mad Hatter in a new ‘Alice in Wonderland?
‘
Johnny:
Well, to be honest he could've said 'Alice' and I would've said
[yes]. I would've done whatever character Tim wanted, but yeah,
certainly the fact that it was The Mad Hatter was a bonus.
Emily: Because the Hatter was a character challenge?
Johnny: It was because of the great challenge to try and find
this guy and not to just sort of be a rubber ball-heaved into
an empty room and watch it bounce all over the place. So (hard)
to find that part of that character but also a little more history
or gravity to the guy.
Emily:
Noticed that. There's kind of a tragic nature to the Mad Hatter's
background in this that we've never seen before in an Alice in
Wonderland film. Can you talk about that?
Johnny:
Well, there's the whole Hatter's dilemma really which is where
the term 'mad as a hatter' came from; the amount of mercury that
they used in the glue to make the hats and everything was damaging.
So in terms of The Hatter, looking at him from that perspective,
it's this guy who's, literally damaged goods. He's physically
damaged. He's emotionally a little obtuse.
It was taking that and deciding what he should be as opposed to
just this hyper and nutty guy. We should explore all sides of
the personality at an extreme level. So he could go from one second
being very highfalutin' and with a lot of levity and then straight
into some kind of dangerous potential rage and then tragedy. So,
yeah, it was interesting. Trying to map it out was really interesting.
Emily: Was there ever a time in your career where you felt like
you were 'Johnny Depp’ meandering through Wonderland'?
Johnny:
My whole ride and experience on the ride since day one has been
pretty surreal in this business and it defies logic, why I'm still
here.
I'm still completely shocked that I still get jobs and still am
around. But I guess more than anything it has been, yes, a kind
of Wonderland. I've been very lucky.
Emily:
Did you think that it was going to be that way when you started?
Johnny:
No, not at all. I had no idea where anything was going but you
can't. It's almost impossible to predict anything like that. I
had no idea. I had hoped.
I felt like after I'd done Cry Baby with John Waters and Edward
Scissorhands with Tim, that they were going to cut me off right
then. I felt at that point that I was on solid ground and I knew
where I was going or where I wanted to go and I was sure that
they would nix me out of the gate. But I'm luckily still here.
Emily:
You and Tim have collaborated on so many projects. How did you
see your relationship, both personal and professional, grow on
this film?
Johnny: Each time out of the gate with Tim the initial thing for
me is to obviously come up with a character but then you start
thinking that there's a certain amount of pressure where you go,
'Jesus, will this be the one where I disappoint him?'
I try really hard, especially early on, to just come up with something
that's very different that he hasn't experienced before, that
we haven't experienced together before and that I think will stimulate
him and inspire him to make choices based on that character. So
I basically try not to embarrass him.
Emily:
You've created so many wonderful characters that we all remember.
When you start to create someone new like the Mad Hatter do you
have to look back at your own work and make sure that you don't
repeat anything?
Johnny: Well, because I've used an English accent a number of
times, it becomes a little bit of an obstacle course to go, 'Oh,
that's teetering into Captain Jackville,' or 'This one is kind
of teetering over into "Chocolate" or Wonka.' So you've
got to really pay attention to the places that you've been. But
that's also part of it. That's the great challenge, that you might
get it wrong.
There's a very good possibility that you can fall flat on your
face, but again, I think that's a healthy thing for an actor.
Emily:
Of all the characters and all the movies that you've worked on
with Tim which one of them has been your children's favorite?
Johnny:
My children's favorite, and it's funny because they've seen it
but they have a difficult time watching it because it's their
dad and they make that connection, but it's Edward Scissorhands.
That's by far my kid's favorite.
They
just connect with the character and also they see something, their
dad feeling that isolation, feeling that loneliness. He's a tragic
character and so I think it's hard for them. They bawl when they
see that movie.
Emily:
If the next project was motion capture for you, would you don
a suit like they did in 'Avatar'?
Johnny:
(grinning) I don't know. What color is the suit?
Emily:
Black.
Johnny:
Black? It matches my eyes. (laughter). I suppose. Look, I'll put
anything on. It doesn't matter to me, obviously. Look at me (more
laughs). Yeah, no. I don't mind.
Emily: I think you look French Bohemian frankly. But I digress…You
do a wild “happy Dance” in "Alice." Everyone
knows happy dances are personal. So, was this happy dance a part
of your own personal repertoire?
Johnny:
(laugh) Uh, no. Tim, he had a very curious vision for this happy
dance.
Emily: Did you have to prepare and practice it in front of a mirror
or something?
Johnny: No. I tend to avoid mirrors at all costs. But no, you
had to treat that like a stunt. We had to treat it like a kind
of a stunt.
Emily:
When did the original 'Alice in Wonderland' book enter your life
the first time and how did the story influence you?
Johnny: I do remember vaguely that I was maybe roughly five years
old and reading versions of 'Alice in Wonderland', but the thing
is the characters. Everyone always knows the characters and they're
very well defined characters which I thought was fascinating.
Even most people who haven't read the book, they definitely know
the characters and can reference them.
Ironically this was maybe only a year prior to Tim calling me,
and I had reread 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking
Glass'. What I took away from it was all these very strange little
cryptic nuggets that he had thrown in there. I was really intrigued
by them and became fascinated with them because they were asking
questions that couldn't be answered almost or made statements
that he couldn't quite understand.
Emily:
Like what?
Johnny: Like, 'I'm investigating things that begin with the letter
M.' That took me through a whole stratosphere of possibilities
and finally doing a little research finding that the M is mercury.
Then 'why is a raven like a writing desk?' Those things just became
so important to the character and you realize that the more you
read it. If I read the book again today I'd find a hundred things
that I missed last time. It's constantly changing.
END
The Mad Hatter is a rip-roaring mind-trip. Get ready. Burton fans
will squeal. And, like many of the children’s’ stories
we all remember, there is a touch of wonderful darkness –
especially down this rabbit hole.
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