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HELEN McCRORY ON FRANKENSTEIN
Helen McCrory has quietly become one of the top actresses in the UK over the last few years in a career built on playing strong women. While her latest on–screen role is no different, it is fair to say, her literary beginnings were. In Jed Mercurio’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Victorian classic, scientist Victor Frankenstein has been re-gendered and re-written. He is now a she, and that she is a leading geneticist. Speaking about the original and the traditional, iconic images people associate with it, Helen says:
“I first read it on holiday about two or three years ago and what really struck me was how different it was to what I was expecting. Though I’m not really a horror film person, everyone has seen those Hammer horror images of the monster, and I was really surprised at how different the novel was from a lot of those famous movie portrayals of Frankenstein.
Actually what you came away with, having read the novel is a very strong sense of Mary Shelley’s concern with the difference between nature over nurture, our fears about science and our mistrust of physical appearance. She underlines how ugliness creates real hate and fear in people and goes on to explore the cause and effect of that. I think the abiding memories people have of Frankenstein, are those Hammer horror images of the monster’s birth by electricity, the bolts in the neck shocking it to life with everyone screaming ‘it’s alive’!! Which I do get to say”, she laughs “but really, the novel is about so much more.”
So would she say that this modern re-telling remains a little more faithful to the original text than previous adaptations?
“I think the adaptations which have gone before ours have been more true to the period and we’re updating it to a generic future. This is not set in a specific time but you know that it’s not now, but that aside, I’d say the themes Jed takes are certainly much closer to the novel.”
She goes on to explain:
“There are so many themes in the original; it’s a thriller, it’s partly a horror, it asks very serious questions about science and society. And Jed sticks very closely to those, but obviously Shelley had more space to deal with all of these issues, whereas Jed had the confines of television drama to get his points across. And that’s the genius of him as you certainly don’t feel like you’re being rammed over the head with too many strands. Jed’s very smart like that.
Jed takes a number of themes including our mistrust of science or our lack of understanding of how to interpret research. You’d think we’d be a little more scientifically knowledgeable now because we live in such a supposedly educated multi media society but you only need to look at the way in which various advances such as cell cloning are covered in the press. We have the moral majority baying for the blood of the evil scientists, screaming ‘this can’t go on and it mustn’t go on’ – which seems a little alarming to me.
Jed also deals with the responsibility of creating life. Victoria has an extremely strong sense of responsibility in ensuring the happiness and well being of the creation – very much like Victor was, and that is often not shown in the films. He is usually depicted as hating and abhorring his creation, running screaming you see him screaming ‘oh what have I done’ while running from the basement. When in the novel, he actually loves the creation and feels an enormous sense of responsibility for him.
What Jed has done is incredibly original; by totally sweeping aside the iconography of the Hammer versions and re-working the tale in such a modern way, he has in fact remained truer to the original then anything that has gone before.”
Obviously one of the most significant differences between this and Shelly’s classic is the Victor’s thoroughly modern make over. Now a woman, Victoria is a leading stem cell geneticist working the public sector. Her research into the regeneration of cells for organ transplant is driven by a relentless drive to develop a cure for her dying son. As her experiments take a dark turn, what does Helen feel are the advantages of Victor’s new identity?
“I think that the advantage of re-gendering Victor is that the underlying issue of ‘god, look what happens when men try and unnaturally create life’ is avoided.
Victoria’s creation of the monster is a very separate issue because you understand she’s not some omnipotent, megalomaniac who desperately wants to create something that she unnaturally shouldn’t be creating. Her motives are very different from Victor’s, while she is no less curious than he was, no less ambitious, her creation is born out of an overriding concern for life and a desire to preserve and protect it, rather than as a result of a man with a god complex stitching body parts together in the cellar.”
She goes on:
“And equally her concern for the monster is the concern of a mother for her child. I really felt this during filming as I was pregnant while I was doing this and Mary Shelley had a child who died very young.
I think that it’s a very natural thing as a woman to be concerned with and about the well being of your foetus. When you are pregnant, it is something which totally and utterly pre-occupies you and Victoria is no different. While this thing is growing in the tank, Victoria experiences maternal worries and concerns as well as questioning the scientific boundaries and success of the experiment.
And then of course when it is born, Victoria experiences the concerns of a mother for her child so actually I think it makes her more accessible.”
As a mother herself can she understand the extraordinary lengths Victoria goes to try and save her son William?
“I think whether you have children or not you do. I think that anyone who has ever loved anybody knows what you would do in order to save the person you love or the people you love. And we must remember that of course the monster is created by default. Unlike Victor she does not intend to create life in this way. That’s another major difference here.”
The adaptation is significantly different from the original for obvious reasons and also involved a lot of CGI work in order to create the monster. Did Helen have any reservations when she first received the script?
“Well yes, if I’m honest, I was a bit concerned about it because it’s television, it’s horror, and there’s a monster and you immediately think ‘oh god, it’s going to be some guy with a bucket on his head with two holes in the middle and none of us are ever going to work again!’ But as soon as I heard that not only was Jed attached to it, but that the guys who did Primeval and Walking with Dinosaurs were producing it, I was immediately drawn to the project.
Because lets face it, on top of everything else, the CGI has to look good. It has to be the best. At the end of the day however much we talk about stem cell research, this is a thriller with a bloody great monster at the heart of it and everyone wants to know what THAT is going to look like and it’s GOT to look good. So when you hear that the guys behind what are in my opinion the best SFX on UK television, then you know you’re going to be in good hands.”
The CGI being showcased by the multi award winning Impossible Pictures in Frankenstein promises some genuinely jaw dropping effects. The design of the monster has been updated using CGI and prosthetics rather than the simpler make up effects of previous monsters. Did she find working with Julian Bleach (who plays the monster) and the SFX team distracting?
“No, not at all. You forget if you’re not working on a film set/ television set every day that everything is make believe. Nothing is real. So you’re used to creating your own realities and quite frankly, a man running around with a plastic head with two holes cut into it is all part of normal day. And actually I was just transfixed by it all. Julian’s make up looked incredible; he is a very talented, very physical actor and he would be made up daily in these prosthetics.
They would be making him new hands, new feet, a new spine every day. He had this head designed and moulded around his own with two holes cut into the forehead so he could see out of it. The poor guy was in make up for about 3 – 4 hours every morning and at times I’d look at him, watch the transformation take place and ask myself what the need for the CGI was going to be because, as the monster, he looked so real, so fantastic. His new skin looked like real skin and when you touched it felt like skin. The level of detail was just extraordinary.”
So finally, having added one of literature’s most notorious scientist’s to her list of credits, if Helen could have role re-written for her, what would it be?
“My immediate response is ‘ok, what are the great stories in literature that have men in and that I’d love to play it as a woman. But for me personally, there aren’t many great stories with men in that I’d like to play. Actually there are so many female stories that haven’t been written yet. I remember I went to a photography exhibition called Wild Cats which was about the first ever surveillance operations in Britain the early 1900’s. Police took photographic images of the suffragettes in order to identify and prosecute them.
Here was a group of women who were deemed such a serious political threat that an entirely new way of dealing with their own unique form of direct action was required.
I’d love to tell these stories of these women who were from all cross sections of society; from milliners to aristocrats, to blue stocking girls just down from Oxford. They mobilised the entire police force to launch this type of surveillance operation and have cameras trained on them like never before. It was an extraordinary moment in history and I would love it to be written as a spy thriller, for it to be written as though it would be for men.”
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