IR Interview: Neil Marshall (Director) For "Duchess" [Saban] - Part I
Writer/Director Neil Marshall talks to The Inside Reel about approach, characterization and style with his new movie, the action thriller “Duchess” from Saban Films.
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00:00♪♪
00:10♪♪
00:14Nicely done, Duchess.
00:16Duchess?
00:19She handled that with grace.
00:20♪♪
00:23Real power...
00:25can never be given.
00:27It has to be taken.
00:28♪♪
00:31You've got some balls on you, Princess.
00:33It's Duchess.
00:34♪♪
00:39We've talked for a couple of your films,
00:41and I think we might have talked about
00:43for Lost in Space,
00:44but it's all about taking genre
00:47but seeing a new perspective.
00:49And obviously, when you work with Charlotte,
00:51there's a lot of that,
00:52because she helps bring that perspective as well.
00:55Could you talk about taking this specific genre
00:58you guys are approaching
00:59and approaching in The Duchess,
01:01which is a little more gangster,
01:03and making that your own
01:04and making it her own, too?
01:07Well, it's interesting, actually.
01:09As somebody pointed out,
01:11it hadn't really occurred to me,
01:12but this is the first film that I've done
01:14that's kind of in the real world.
01:17Like, it's in the contemporary real world.
01:19There's no genre element.
01:21There's no fantasy element.
01:22There's no horror element.
01:23There's nothing like that.
01:24It's pure action thriller, crime thriller,
01:27gangster movie.
01:29It was first conceived, myself and Charlotte,
01:32back in 2018.
01:33We were eating sushis together in London,
01:36and we were talking about gangster movies,
01:38and the conversation led to the question of,
01:41like, what about a female Scarface?
01:45And nobody at that time, anyway,
01:47that can't think of any, like,
01:49female-led gangster stories
01:51or gangster films at that time.
01:54Since we conceived the idea,
01:56there's been a couple of things on Netflix
01:58and stuff like that
01:59that have had sort of female-led gangster things.
02:02But anyway, so it evolved from that into a script.
02:06The first draft dealt with, like,
02:08cartels and drug smuggling,
02:10and that was like, okay,
02:11I feel like I've seen it all before.
02:14And then so the second draft,
02:16we kind of switched it over
02:17and turned it into the diamond trade
02:19and diamond smuggling
02:21and basing it out of Africa and Europe
02:23rather than out of America.
02:25And it was that little twist, I think,
02:27just made it feel fresh again,
02:29because, again, I'd not seen that kind of thing,
02:32and making it sort of very much
02:34a British gangster movie
02:36in the vein of, like, Sexy Beast
02:38or, you know, Italian Job
02:40and stuff like that
02:41that's just, like,
02:42the Brits Abroad kind of concept
02:45and just have a lot of fun with it, you know,
02:47and just kind of developed it from there.
02:49And the process was, you know,
02:50I do the physical writing,
02:53but we're always knocking ideas
02:55backwards and forwards all the time.
02:57And, you know, every time we write something,
02:59we review it and check it over
03:00and then knock ideas again
03:02and then carry on with that.
03:06Come here.
03:07Whatever happens, I got you.
03:11I never meant to put you in any danger.
03:13Someone stabbed me in the back.
03:17It's going to be okay.
03:21To really understand where this all started,
03:23we have to go back a bit.
03:28So this is me, named Scarlet.
03:31Got some nice moves.
03:32That's Rog McNaughton,
03:34the future love of my life.
03:36Where's the balance when you guys do that
03:38between, you know, her voice,
03:40the voice that needs to come through
03:42that she wants to do it all,
03:43I'll ask her this as well,
03:44versus, say, the action of it?
03:47Because, I mean, we see,
03:49obviously, I love the fact that
03:51one thing you don't get with Scarface
03:52or any of those other films
03:53is you don't see her talking in her head
03:56because it gives a very,
03:57sometimes very unique view
03:59of how she sees the life,
04:01why she's making her choices.
04:03Can you talk about that voice
04:04and doing that in both
04:06the action element of it,
04:07the visual element of it,
04:09versus sort of the internal aspect
04:12of the character?
04:14I mean, it's all, you know,
04:15it's all ongoing character development
04:17that they're working very much
04:19hand-in-hand with Charlotte
04:20on the development of that character,
04:22Scarlet in particular.
04:25She tends to leave the physical action stuff
04:28to me when it comes to the writing process
04:31of like, okay, you can handle
04:32that kind of stuff.
04:33But coming up with the voice,
04:36in some ways, the Scarlet character
04:38is the closest to Charlotte
04:40of all the characters that she's played.
04:42So, you know, an East End girl,
04:46you know, that's where Charlotte grew up as well.
04:48So East End of London.
04:50And so there's a lot of parallels there,
04:54but then obviously at a certain point,
04:55the characters deviate wildly.
04:57But I don't know, it was using,
05:01the voiceover was brought in
05:02to sort of obviously like help introduce characters
05:05and further the story,
05:06but bring a real sense of humor to it
05:08of seeing all these larger than life characters
05:11through her point of view
05:13and bringing that kind of British sense of humor,
05:16that sarcasm,
05:17and taking the piss out of things
05:20that we do so often to a gangster film,
05:23which I'd not really seen before.
05:25So yeah, seeing it from that point of view.
05:28So there's a lot of elements
05:29that came together to form the whole.
05:35Welcome to your new home.
05:37You must be Scarlet.
05:39Scarlet.
05:40Welcome.
05:41Tell me who you really are.
05:43I deal in diamonds.
05:44Diamond trade is dirty and corrupt.
05:48That's when I saw the real world.
05:56The man who killed for me.
05:59But in terms of the production,
06:00obviously going back into the action
06:02and when you're dealing with obviously CG
06:05and stuff like that,
06:06you can do different things,
06:07but here it's more doing it more practically.
06:10It's that brutality,
06:11intimacy of brutality.
06:12In a lot of what she is doing,
06:15but you have to capture that
06:16and do it in the right way.
06:18Could you talk about figuring out
06:19what you wanted to do?
06:20Because you've done it in so many different ways
06:22in a lot of what you've done,
06:25but here it had to be very specific.
06:27Even the thing with the tiger,
06:28that's an ode to Scarface too.
06:33There comes a point in the process
06:35where Charlotte stops being a writer
06:38and says,
06:39okay, I'm done being the writer.
06:40Now I'm just going to be the actor
06:41and focus on that part of it.
06:44Then when we're filming or whatever,
06:46it's like if there's any changes need to be made,
06:48I'll do all that kind of stuff
06:50and I focus on the writing and the directing.
06:53Prior to this,
06:54obviously I have a certain kind of filming style.
06:57I like doing stunts.
06:58I like doing physical action.
07:00It's not a superhero movie.
07:02People aren't on wires.
07:03They're not flying around.
07:04It's like I like that raw brutality
07:06of two people trying to kill each other
07:08and how far they'll go to do so.
07:12She went into training very early on
07:14with boxing and other stunt work,
07:17learning how to handle firearms,
07:20none of which she'd done before.
07:22This is all new to her.
07:24Then I work with the stunt coordinators very closely
07:28and plan out all the sequences
07:30because it helps me enormously.
07:33It's not just her.
07:34It's like Philip Winchester and Sean Pertwee
07:36and the rest of the cast,
07:37that they're all physically adept
07:39and good at this action stuff.
07:40The more that they can do themselves,
07:43the easier it is for me
07:44so I don't have to hide actors' faces
07:46and stuff if we're using stunt doubles.
07:49We don't have the budget
07:51to be doing face replacements on people
07:54because it's very expensive stuff.
07:56Better that we can actually just get the actors
07:58into the thick of the action.
08:0190% of the stuff that you see is the actors.
08:07I'm going to kill all the men that betrayed me.
08:10They will eat you alive.
08:14Do your worst.
08:17It's not enough to be as good as a man.
08:21You have to be twice as ruthless
08:25and ten times a bitch.
08:26Oi!
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