Ralph Ineson commands attention on the screen in The Green Knight, arriving at Camelot at the start of David Lowery’s movie named after his character and then reuniting with Dev Patel’s Gawain in the Green Chapel. Paul Simpson caught up with him to discuss the challenges of the role.

 

 

How did you get caught up with The Green Knight? Was it something that you knew much about before you were approached?

Not at all. It came completely out of the blue for me; very flatteringly I was offered the part. Thankfully David had liked my work and other stuff and I think that it was the voice, principally or originally they talked about. Before I got involved, they talked about various ways of portraying the Green Knight but eventually I think he wanted it as close to a performance with real prosthetics and an actor’s performance.

So yes, I got the offer through and was very flattered and delighted, knowing David’s work and being a fan of Arthurian legend and the whole world all my life really. Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by it, it’s been a recurring theme throughout my career, from being at university. I think I did an Arthurian play about Percival at the Edinburgh Festival when I was about nineteen and one of my first films was First Knight with Richard Gere and Sean Connery.

What do you think the attraction of this story is? It’s one that’s probably not as well known as, say Guinevere and Lancelot but there is something about it that you get really caught into, don’t you?

I think people come into the film and the story with a lot of preconceptions about knights and knightly order. What you’re about to see is Gawain is the epitome of a boy who’s not yet a man, he’s certainly not yet a knight. I described him in an American interview recently as ‘A feckless dickhead’ and (laughs) I don’t think the interviewer really understood what I meant. I was trying to describe him as this rich young kid, spending his time in really nice clothes, hanging out in brothels getting pissed and not really making much of himself.

My interpretation of it is that his mother wants his mettle tested so she sets a challenge through the Green Knight which Gawain accepts. It sets him on this journey of self discovery, of learning about temptation and bravery and honour and all of these things before he eventually has to face the Green Knight at the end of the year and face up to the bargain that he made at the start of the film.

I know movies aren’t usually shot chronologically through the story but did you do the bits with the Round Table before the ending?

Yes, my first stuff was, thankfully, all at the beginning of the movie. It was shot chronologically, for me, which was very helpful because the stuff in the Green Chapel is  much less practical and much more performance based, whereas the stuff in Camelot was much more about controlling horses and getting on and off horses in armour and getting up off the floor in a suit of armour twenty times. So yes, it was like two different shoots, in a sense, for me.

When I spoke to David yesterday he talked about his relief when he saw you in the costume for the first time. He really knew it was going to work and there wasn’t an option because it had to. What was your reaction when you first saw the concept and then what you actually saw what you’d got to wear for it?

I was just blown away, it’s incredible stuff. If you look at the detail of not just the prosthetics but the costume: the ancient runes that are carved into the armour, the detail on every piece of the costume and the axe itself, all the design…

When I saw the head design, as an actor one part of you, your heart sinks because you realise how much earlier you’re going to have to get up than everybody else but you don’t sign up for something like that unless you’re going to appreciate that there’s going to be a certain level of discomfort to achieve what everybody wants.

But it’s also very exciting to think that I’m going to be able to make that come alive. My first day on set was incredible because we’d done some tests so I knew, pretty much, what the makeup looked like and I knew that everybody was very happy with it – from the prosthetic side Barrie Gower and all his team everyone was happy with the design and how it was working.

But I didn’t get to see its effect until the first time I entered the Court of Camelot. It was a rehearsal on horseback just as in my opening for the movie, so [I got] to ride in on that huge horse. Obviously it didn’t have the amazing sound design making the screening room shake every time that the horse hoof comes down, as it does in the movie.

When I walked in, the look on the cast, crew, child extras’ faces just convinced me that this absolutely worked. I felt the intimidation radiating off me and I thought, ‘I don’t have to play that side of the Green Knight, I just have to play the fun part.’

How physically challenging was it wearing it?

It was very heavy and it took three and a half hours every morning to put on. Because the major piece on the top of the head was asymmetrical, it was weighing to one side all the time which was quite tricky.

I’m not a big fan of contact lenses – I don’t wear them and I think I must have sensitive eyes – so I found them quite tricky to deal with even though I had a lens specialist and she looked after me wonderfully all the way through. We took the lenses out whenever I needed to take a break. Also the costume people had like a dentist chair that they’d bring next to the set so when I wasn’t working I could have the weight taken off my head.

Everybody, in that situation, does as much as they can to keep you comfortable. I was offered endless cups of tea, through a straw obviously! Everything’s through a straw, you can’t eat. You live on smoothies when you’re working on a job like that.

There’s no doubt, it’s physically demanding to do it but it’s also a great privilege to show that kind of amazing work, that level of costume and prosthetics work and everything. To be part of bringing a character like that to life, it’s just a few hours of sweating y’know?

How many days were you shooting the Camelot bits?

I’d guess the Camelot bits were about five days and I think the Green Chapel was two days.

It was all the same costume and prosthetics for both sections, I just didn’t have the horse to deal with in the Green Chapel. Because I’m left handed, I had the Green Knight’s axe in my left hand and I’m riding with my right hand but I’d actually broken my right wrist and just had an operation on it!

I had a broken wrist which I was controlling this horse with and the horse was very skittish so I was constantly having to reel this horse around and line it up to retake and retake. In a suit of armour and all those prosthetics and a broken wrist, there were times when I did question my career choice!

Yes, I can imagine. When you saw the final version back, what did you think of The Green Knight as a character within the piece?

It was kind of everything I hoped it would be, in a way. The sound design and the way the mood just makes him seem so huge and powerful and of the earth, the way vines crack every time he moves and things grow out of the earth where his feet fall. That just gave him this scale and size that was joyful as an actor to watch, added to your performance.

Also I think, especially in the last section in the Green Chapel, there’s a real intimacy to the relationship between the two of them. The quality of the prosthetics meant that I really felt that I could get that intimacy, get that performance that me and Dev found on that day.

I felt like it came over and you’re never quite sure if that’s going to happen when you’re wearing that much prosthetic stuff. I think it’s a tribute to Barrie Gower and all the team; it was so amazing.

The Green Knight launches on Prime Video and in theatres on 24th September