Coming off his role as the Czech resistance hero Jan Zelenka-Hajský in KVIFF opener Anthropoid, British actor Toby Jones opens up about the challenges of playing historical figures, the stage of his career, and an actor’s insight into the price of living a public life.
Was there anything specific you had to prepare for the role of Jan Zelenka-Hajský in Anthropoid?
I don’t know. Whenever you’re playing a historical part or real person, I find that research is not going to help you. It’s a sort of comfort – you feel like, ‘I’m doing something.’ But when it comes to doing the scene in a room and you’re two people acting a scene, this is something that research can’t really help you with. In a way, you’re looking for things not to do.
So what did you find about him that was surprising for you? Because there’s no footage, nothing really...
I think there’s this challenge as an actor in playing the present. And of course there’s this overwhelming sense of looking back at it and saying, ‘Oh my god, how’d these people do this?’ For my character, a disaster will happen, so they feel the present very keenly. But you have to take away all that history and try to imagine the situation like you were there in the here and now; in the actual moment.
I suppose the challenge is a basic one. We’re receiving some extraordinary news and trying to understand the stakes. That’s what you have to be clear about as an actor – what are the stakes in terms of what they’re proposing – to really understand how unrealistic that is. So I was very keen to know how unrealistic this plan was.
And what’s your answer to that?
Well, it was an absurd plan, absolutely absurd. Heydrich exerted such fear, such authority at that time. The idea of killing him, in the script – we might as well have tried to kill Hitler.
You can read the whole interview in today's Festival Daily.
