The Mist: Star Toby Jones
By: Mr. Disgusting
Toby Jones is known for playing quirky, over-the-top characters. In The Mist, however, Jones tackles supermarket manager Ollie, a more bland, everyman (and an American accent) with a special twist. Here are his thoughts on his experience with The Mist:
BD: This is your first horror film?
Jones: Yeah it was kind of an interesting challenge to work on a horror film I mean, that was the reason for doing it. The idea of working with Frank on a Stephen King book at all, but then the fact that it was a horror film, to work on new genres is fantastic, whatever it is.
BD: This is sort of an atypical horror film, in that you could have movie without monsters?
Jones: Like a lot of films that are made nowadays, it's a horror film about horror films isn't it? It's about the nature of what fear does to people. Because King didn't provide an ending and because of where he sets it, in a non-horror, almost like a anti-horror location, it's almost drawing attention to itself, it's artifice, in a way; it's horror genre, and I think to talk about probably the most controversial element of the film, the ending, you could say… it would be odd if you didn't go out for a pizza and need talk about what on earth was that all about? Because I think somewhere the ending makes you think about what you tolerated, in a way that normal horror films don't make you think about what you tolerate, it's just what you needed to do.
BD: Did you like the fact that you were playing a somewhat normal American character, versus some of the more over-the-top ones you've tackled?
Jones: I think the characters I get are often people who draw attention to themselves and my job is to try and humanize those people and not make them seem like freaks. I think yes, it was nice to be able to play someone who is a common sensical character. All he has is his common sense and we recognize that person in the community, in the course of the film as the guy who's inconspicuous. He does inconspicuous good and he's drawn out of the crowd because of a skill he never thought he'd have to use and he's forced to use it in a way that he never thought he'd have to use it. It was fun to do that. Every time I'm asked to play an American, and I know this is going to sound sentimental and yucky, but I feel very flattered every time I'm asked to play an American because there are plenty of very, very good American actors and the idea that I come over here, I take it very seriously and I take the compliment.
BD: You mentioned the location, the story is specifically set in Maine and there are suggestions in the film that it's still set in Maine. Were there ever discussions about having Maine accents among the actors?
Jones: I assumed it would be Maine so I started work doing a Maine accent. I quite like doing accent work and dialect work and it was told to me, "No, we're going to do it neutral," and I think the decision was made quite early on to make it as neutral as possible, possibly for the same reasons as all this stuff, to make it feel like America rather than that part of America.
BD: How do you sustain the level of fear throughout the film and playing off these monsters that may be there as puppets, may be there as CGI?
Jones: As an actor, that is the interesting challenge of the genre because the way he structures the film, once the trouble starts it doesn't really stop and you're in danger of being in a state of consternation for weeks and weeks. You're trying to find your way as an actor modulating that fear. In a strange way, not in a strange way, it's sort of the way we get on everyday even though we're told to be fearful all the time. You can't actually be scared. People wouldn't actually be going around like that all the time; they'd be trying to lead their life in the new sort of ratcheted up situation. You can't be on Code Red all the time about terrorism. People can't live like that, they [need to] normalize it.
BD: What did Frank do to bring some sort of connection to the not-there monsters that were to be replaced with CGI?
Jones: Well we were working with really brilliant people on this film. Special effects people are amazing; I've never worked with special effects like that before. They work very, very fast, it's very practical, it's very low maintenance people. They don't need lots of time; they just need to take a few reference points. They give you a puppet that gives you the scale of where you're going to look, you're given very careful eye lines and stuff like that. It was really impressive, the way that it didn't interrupt the process. One of the great tools of working on movies is your often working with people who are experts in their field and you get to work with the experts and here, that's how I felt working with those guys.
BD: Did they do anything to shake things up or was it just a matter of getting from A to B?
Jones: Not that I remember, it just didn't feel litek that, we were given very specific sight lines. Although it's amazing, in a play you can rehearse in a play a 20-minute sequence once and remember everything, but if you're doing a special effects sequence, you find yourself not being able to remember tiny little details of movement because you're working on such a microscopic scale. In a theater you can remember huge troughs of business. After one rehearsal, it's art the brain doesn't want to keep.
BD: Did your theater experience help with the horror film and did you draw upon anything?
Jones: It felt very like doing theater being with the same group of people in the same location. Everyday I went, "Oh yeah, we're here again." It's another day in the supermarket and we've got to try and reinvest. Where are we in the story? How scared do we have to be? That felt very theatrical, being part of an ensemble all the time and exhausting in the way that theater is exhausting because in movies a lot of time you get a shot of energy just from shifting location.
BD: We could assume the British response to the monsters in the mist would be like Shaun of the Dead?
Jones: You know, I got asked by a journalist yesterday, what would you rather be chased by, 20 zombies or a vampire and I went, I'll have to go for a vampire because zombies always feel so slow, don't they? I must have a fighting chance there.
**Spoiler alert** (from here on out)
BD: Your character has this great turn, what do you do as an actor to make sure the audience is going to relish that turn?
Jones: I haven't seen it with an audience. I'm slightly disturbed that they relish it. I was slightly disturbed by what he does. We can call it heroic, I can see why people might do that because he apparently does away with someone who is preaching, bullying, whether they're preaching or not is neither here nor there to me, I've got nothing against people preaching, but when they're bullying and threatening to kill someone, something needs to be done, something radical needs to be done and that may be to kill them. In this situation, the only way to do it is to kill this person. Okay, I follow that, so he's forced to compromise his life by killing someone, sorry to go into this too deep, I think the film merits it. What I fought about in the script well, I didn't fight, what I challenged Frank about was the second gunshot because I think that means something very, very different. To shoot someone, to take an action like that and kill someone because you can't see any other way through it is one thing, but then to take another shot at someone means something very different. It means something very different to an audience and if an audience cheers, I think an audience should think about why they're cheering.
BD: In talking about audience reactions and certain political implications might have, what did you think about those implications?
Jones: I had a long conversation with Frank about the second bullet. I understood the narrative function of killing the woman; I understand that. I had a long conversation with him about the second bullet and he said "I want the second bullet," and I'm an actor and so I said "Okay, you'll get the second bullet." I think the fact that the audience cheered that is different than cheering the second bullet.
BD: Do you think he wanted the second bullet because he wanted the cheer?
Jones: I think he wanted the second bullet because he was trying to create a complicated response to a horror film. You get what you need from a horror film, but the ending is asking you to go, "Was that what I normally get from a horror film or was that something else?" And we see people responding to a state of sustained fear. Ring any bells? Being told to be fearful the whole time, be scared all the time, and everyone responds differently to it. I don't think anyone has a morally unquestionable response to that in this film.
BD: Did he say that or is that your interpretation?
Jones: He said, ‘I think you should shoot the second bullet’ and I just wanted to make sure it's deliberate.
BD: Were you sad that you died in this film?
Jones: It's a nice way to die. I think I got mangled way before I got eaten. I had the curious privilege of going upstairs to the studio where the special effects guys were and feeling my own innards – the innards that were going to be spilt from the crane onto the car windscreen. They said, "Do you want to come and feel what you feel like?" I said, "Okay." So there's all those intriguing pleasures you get when you work on a horror film.
BD: Did you keep the piece?
Jones: No but I should have done.
