One of the year’s most brutally subversive comedies, “The Death of Stalin” sees filmmaker Armando Iannucci (“In the Loop,” HBO’s “Veep”)
finding laughs in historical horror. The caustic political satire observes with
deadpan wit the bloody power struggle that erupts in
the aftermath of the titular Soviet dictator’s sudden death. Eager to fill the
power vacuum, the leader’s trusted inner circle — including Nikita Khrushchev
(Steve Buscemi), Lavrenti
Beria (Simon Russell Beale), Vyacheslav Molotov
(Michael Palin), and Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor)
— desperately jockey for supremacy and control of an empire.
In a film
filled with memorable performances, British actor Jason Isaacs stands out
amongst a cast of comedic titans. Despite not appearing until fairly late in
the film, he makes a big impression in the crucial role of General Zhukov,
alpha dog of the Soviet Red Army.
Speaking
with Isaacs by phone, CITY chatted with the actor about laughing in the face of
evil, what it feels like to be banned in Russia, and why sometimes it’s good to
play the villain.
CITY: What was it about the script for this film
that attracted you?
Jason Isaacs: Well, it was funny as
fuck. That’s really the first and last thing, I would say. It was a hilarious
script from [Armando], who’s been the master of satirical comedy for a long
time. And although it was clearly potentially explosive subject matter, it made
me laugh like a drain. If there’s anybody who can steer a course through the
delicate tone it needed, it was Armando.
The film walks a tricky tone — equally hilarious
and horrifying.
Well, it reminded me of the kind of guts
and skill it took to make “Dr. Strangelove” or “The Great
Dictator,” taking enormously controversial subjects and making it funny, but
also tragic and horrific.
Like a lot of Armando’s work, it also has a fairly
bleak outlook on the world of politics; it’s not hard to read some current
real-world parallels into the story. What benefits do you think there are to
looking at these situations through the lens of comedy?
Oddly, we keep getting asked if it was written about the Trump
administration and the cabinet ministers around him getting fired or having to
lose their souls. But it was made in June 2016, a long time before he was [president]. Other people at the time thought that it was written about Downing
Street and Britain; somebody else felt that it was about Robert Mugabe and
Zimbabwe. So clearly there’s something timeless about pulling the curtain back
on politicians, and reminding us that most are venal, self-serving, childish,
narcissistic, and they’ve lost their moral compass a long time ago. And we
should never take them at face value.
The film actually ended up being banned in Russia.
What was your reaction when you first heard that?
It was incredulity, to be honest, it was very hard to
believe, that in the modern day and age anybody could try to ban something. Of
course they failed dismally, because it’s now the most popular underground film
in Russia. Everybody in Russia watches things illegally as it is, streamed or
pirated DVDs.
The film was
granted a license at first, and it was getting phenomenal response from the
press there. And it was the day before [the release] that apparatchik and the
culture ministry decided to issue the statement saying it was the gross insult
to Russia, and it was a blatant attempt to interfere in their election. Which I
can only hope he meant humorously. I don’t quite know why they did it — one of
the cinemas didn’t believe it either. They went ahead and showed it, then were
raided by the police. Armando’s optimistic that the ban will be lifted, though
as far as I’m aware, pretty much everybody under 30 in Russia has watched
it already. So we’ll see.
You’re not an actor most people immediately
associate with comedy, and here you’re thrown in among this group of
performers, some of whom are comedy legends. How was the experience for you
coming into that environment?
I’d like to say I was terrified, but the fact is the script
was actor-proof. It was incredibly funny. My part is a fantastic, upstaging
sort of part. Most people who know me know that I will do anything for a cheap
gag, and that I’m so unlike any of the characters I play on screen and
desperate to try to squeeze a gag out of even the most tragic situations. So it
didn’t feel that alien to me. But you’re right, the thing that was challenging
is I’m surrounded by comedy gods and people I am absolutely in awe of. But
since my character comes in and metaphorically — and literally, in some cases — grabs
them by the balls, I didn’t have too much time to pause for fangirling.
Was there room for any ad-libbing, or were things
pretty tightly scripted?
Watching the film, people think a lot of it is improvised
because it has a slightly anarchic feel to it, but actually it was all
incredibly tightly scripted. There’s very, very little improvisation — certainly
not when the camera’s rolling. We might have done some in rehearsals, or made a
suggestion, but Armando has honed this to a fine art with his writers. He has a
couple writers who hover next to him with yellow legal pads that have the most
toe-curlingly disgusting, obscene selections of
potential insults that he chooses from. And so there’s very little improv, and if you were going to suggest something, it
needed to be brilliant because it had to be better than what he’d come up with.
And that’s very rare.
Tell me about creating the physical look of the
character. The medals are based on fact, as absurd as they seem.
That’s absolutely right. I saw a photograph of him. And there
was this man standing like a peacock, puffing his giant chest out wearing about
10,000 medals. And so when I went down for a costume fitting, I said “Can
we stuff my chest and puff it out?” And they all looked slightly askance,
and I kept on grabbing more and more and more foam ’til I looked like some
pneumatic doll. But I realized my arms looked like noodles, so we started
stuffing my arms as well, and by the end I strapped on an upper body like Mr.
Incredible. And it made me feel like the bull in the China shop that I am in
the film.
Did you get to keep any of the medals?
I did not get to keep anything at all. Not even my pride.
You’ve played a lot of memorable villains
throughout your career, Captain Hook to Lucius Malfoy. Is it more fun as an
actor to play characters who are overtly evil?
The most fun thing is to have a good script. If you have a
good script, people think you’re a good actor. It’s got nothing to do with the
actor; you’re only as good as the material. So when something is three
dimensional, like “Black Panther” — which I saw recently and I thought was magnificent — the antagonist is a brilliant part and brilliantly played. Because you know
what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, and you sympathize in a way. But on the
other hand, he has to be stopped because he’s dangerous. Lucius Malfoy is a
racist white supremacist, and he’s using the same language about Muggles that
unfortunately you see all over the internet at the moment. Captain Hook is a
man who’s terrified of getting older and that he’s irrelevant. God knows, as a
middle-aged actor I could identify with that.
So I try to
take parts that aren’t wafer thin, and if I’m lucky enough to get one that’s
three dimensional, I end up getting showered in praise that doesn’t belong to
me. But the same is true of heroes. You play a one-dimensional, vanilla hero, and
it’s incredibly dull and wallpaper-ish. If you play
someone who’s got something going on, that’s complicated and emotional, I’m
happy to play that because there’s something to get my teeth into. Really, I
just try to look for something in which I won’t suck.
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 3, 2018.
