Andy Serkis on his ‘shocking’ new play, AI and cancellation: ‘I defy anyone not to tap their foot to Michael Jackson. Your body won’t let you cancel him’
Towards the end of my conversation with Andy Serkis, a young man sidles over to our table and apologises for interrupting, but he simply had to say hello. He is a huge fan of Serkis. The actor who starred as the bug-eyed hobbit Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and Caesar the chimpanzee in the Planet of the Apes reboot is warm, self-effacing, gracious. “There are days where this doesn’t happen at all,” he later admits, in his rich, natural growl – “and then there are days where it is, you know, a lot.” It can get a little hairy if he’s on the Tube, he continues. All those people doing the Gollum voice or expecting him to do it. That can “cause a bit of a traffic jam”, but he’d still rather take public transport to get around – when he’s not on his bike, that is. At 59, he’s lean, fit-looking, and sort of startlingly real, when you’re used to seeing him as beings that exist only on screen or in the mind’s eye.
We’re in a Christmassy pub in west London. Serkis is wearing a thick navy-blue cardigan; tucked into it is a paisley silk scarf. Beneath a head of unruly grey hair, he pings between piquant facial expressions, eyebrows dancing above glacial blue eyes. His visage is a canvas of creases and crags, its most southern tip a pointed beard that he strokes routinely. He’s handsome. He’s also tremendous company: open, perspicacious, seemingly lacking in ego.
As we talk, Serkis is in the final days of rehearsing . Written by David Ireland, this relentlessly scathing three-hander revolves around the escalating tensions between Leigh (Serkis), a milquetoast director), a righteous dramatist whose violent play about Northern Ireland they are about to stage in the West End. By turns rowdy and brilliantly outrageous, Ireland’s text is a merciless satire on identity, gender relations and liberal hypocrisy.
