Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers - ANDY SERKIS Ran Wild Through Baghdad Souks
Episode Date: April 28, 2026This week on the pod, Seth and Josh welcome Andy Serkis! Andy talks about growing up in a multicultural family with an Iraqi-Armenian father and British mother, being one of five siblings, and feeling... caught between two very different worlds: Middle Eastern adventures and classic British caravan holidays. He also shares incredible stories including spending summers in Baghdad, traveling to places like Syria, Babylon, and Lebanon, and camping under the stars in the desert, his father’s narcoleptic tendencies while road tripping, and so much more. Plus, he shares his experiences second-unit directing in The Hobbit trilogy, directing his latest film, Animal Farm, and his upcoming directing venture in The Hunt for Gollum. Watch more Family Trips episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlqYOfxU_jQem4_NRJPM8_wLBrEEQ17B6 Support our sponsors: Yahoo Stress less with Planner from Yahoo mail Fitbod Level up your workout. Join Fitbod today to get your personalized workout plan. Get 25% off your subscription or try the app FREE for seven days at https://Fitbod.me/trip. Aura Frames For a limited time, listeners can get 25 dollars off their best-selling Carver Mat frame at https://auraframes.com promo code TRIPS. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout! Terms and conditions apply. ------------------------- Family Trips is produced by Rabbit Grin Productions. Theme song written and performed by Jeff Tweedy. ------------------------- About the Show: Lifelong brothers Seth Meyers and Josh Meyers ask guests to relive childhood memories, unforgettable family trips, and other disasters! New Episodes of Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers are available every Tuesday. ------------------------- Executive Producers: Rob Holysz, Jeph Porter, Natalie Holysz Creative Producer: Sam Skelton Coordinating Producer: Derek Johnson Video Editor: Josh Windisch Mix & Master: Josh Windisch Episode Artwork: Analise Jorgensen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey, Baji.
Hey, Sufi.
How are you?
I'm great.
How are you?
Good.
I feel like I'm just going to run this intro.
Yeah, no.
I mean, you had a family trip.
I had an actual family trip, and it involved members of our family.
I took Ash to Boston.
Alexi was taking Axel to California.
Addie was spending the weekend with her aunt and niece.
And it was a big.
Big trip. It was Ash's first trip to Fenway Park.
Mom and dad met us. And it was just exceptional. We took the train. Ash and I took the train up.
We stopped. We picked up his best friend, Huck. And then we got to the city. We checked into a hotel room.
I got a room with a sofa bed, pullout couch. And the plan was the boys. We were
sleep together in this sort of kick-ass queen bed.
Right.
Good sheets, good blanket.
And then I was in a real janky foldout couch.
That was the plan?
That was the plan.
I was because they really wanted to sleep in the same bed.
And I was like, all right, I'll let you sleep in the same bed.
And you wouldn't put the two, like, 10-year-old kids in the janky fold-out?
I don't know.
It felt a little.
That's where they're supposed to sleep.
Who is the Dickens character?
I don't know.
It felt like Fagan.
It felt like, you know, making them, making Oliver Twist, like,
ask for newborn gruel.
The good news is they couldn't, they self-policed,
and the first night they were in bed together, the friend came out,
and was like, can I sleep in here?
I don't think we can fall asleep in the same room.
Because they were too chatty, Kathy.
Chatty and kicky and just like.
And so I ended up with Ash and the bed, so we're down here.
And the proper, like adult, yeah, bed.
We went to an aquarium.
I went to the New England Aquarium.
Mm-hmm.
I love an aquarium.
Yeah.
I love that they exist.
Are you?
With that said, I don't know what the...
I'm doing there.
You know, at some point, like what?
How long am I...
You know what I mean?
Like, you see the coolest fish you've ever seen,
and, like, how long can you actually look at it?
Well, it depends who you are.
But I think that aquariums are designed...
All museums are designed sort of with a path.
Yeah, there was a beautiful path of this one.
you sort of wind up, it's really cool.
Yeah, so you do that.
I do do that.
I just always feel like when I think of like, we're going to go to the aquarium,
that feels like we're going to make a day of it.
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
Reality is it's a 45-minute trip.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, a crazy aquarium, you could probably do a couple hours.
Unless there's a show of some kind, I don't think you can stretch it past 45 minutes.
We did. They were, like, we watched them beat some seals.
Yeah.
Fastened, first time a seal catches of fish, it's the best thing you've ever seen.
Yeah.
Then you sort of understand they're pretty good at it.
Not as much risk as you thought there was.
Classic Seth Myers.
It is classic.
And by the way, you were like amazing.
And then every giraffe after that, nothing.
You like to see things for the first time and then never again.
Never again.
Yeah.
Well, I want to make it, I want to trick myself into thinking, like, I saw something special.
I'm like, and then a dude reached into a bucket, took out of fish through it.
Seale caught it.
Yeah.
I can't believe I was there on that day.
I didn't realize.
Then we went to the North End, famous Italian-American neighborhood in Boston, went to a restaurant.
Mom and dad met us there.
It was great.
I will say we had hug with us for 24 hours, and I would say the restaurant was like hour three.
and that was the first time I was like
Hour 24 can't come fast enough.
It got better.
Did you order everything off the menu?
No, they were just like he ever, I kept, like, I don't like
Kids that aren't yours?
I haven't to talk to them when they're misbehaving.
You know what I mean?
Like, I'd take an awkward thing.
So I kept having to say at this restaurant,
Huck, sit down.
Because he kept just like standing to like,
Just like mess with ash.
And I'm like, huck, honey, sit down.
We're at a restaurant.
Then they came up with this plan where they kept saying they needed fresh air.
And then I would just look out the window and they were sort of running up and down the street.
And whatever, I don't care.
They can run up the street all I want.
Get their steps in.
Yeah.
Very nice.
Also, so you'll enjoy this.
They also kept, like, the amount, they were like knocking over like waters and stuff.
silverware, just everything.
And I'm just, it was so, and this is before mom and dad came.
And it was just like, clank, clank, clank, oops.
I'm like, sit down.
Once you sit down, stuff, stop, stopping him.
And then mom and dad sat down and dad ordered a beer and what do you think he did immediately.
Oh, they either spilled it on his chest or knocked the whole thing over.
Knocked it over, but on the floor, like 10x worse than anything the boys had done.
Mom was probably cool about it.
Mom sighed so loud.
the windows to the restaurant blew open.
They kept saying it to Nor-Easter, and I had to say it's not, actually.
It's just a withering sigh.
It's a withering sigh from her mom.
But dad, you know, again, dad's never met a stranger.
He doesn't want to try to turn into his best friend.
There was like a couple on what looked like a first date across the table from him,
because he spilled so much, like, it was an observable amount of beer on the floor.
And the dad was immediately like, I'm going to tell him you did that.
And they were like, what?
I went like, when they got up to leave, he's like, you got to go tell, I'll go apologize for the mess you made.
They're like, huh?
Oh, yeah.
So that was super fun.
And then we went to the Children's Museum.
By the way, something positive's coming because I know.
Good.
Yeah.
Children's Museum, the reality is I think 10 years old is too old for a children's museum.
Okay.
But I didn't know, and then you show up and you're like, oh, my son's the oldest kid here.
It's a lot of, like, bubbles.
You got to go to the Teenagers Museum.
Or just a science museum.
I think at, like, 10, you go to a science museum.
We're good to go.
That was fine.
Then, we went to the Boston Tea Party Museum.
And it was a triple plus.
I cannot tell you how great the Boston Tea Party Museum was.
Oh, by the way.
I talked to mom and dad about it, and dad was gold.
Loving about it.
Great.
By the way, I miss something.
This is how busy my day.
I fully missed the first thing we did on Saturday morning.
We did the duck boat, the duck boat tour of Boston.
Oh, uh-huh.
Classic?
Classic duck boat.
You get on a duck boat.
It's a car that then can go into the water.
Amphibious vehicle?
I told mom she had 10 questions.
She could only ask 10 questions about the duck boat.
And then every time she asked one, I would go quack, quack,
don't let her know.
She was down.
The amount of mom asked,
what happened to the wheels in the duck boat.
I'm like, I don't know.
Just don't worry about it.
We had a real,
we had a real old school Boston tour
narrator on our duck boat.
He was wearing a Bobby Orr jersey,
but the ore on the back was spelled O-A-R.
Uh-huh.
He had a lot of duck,
a lot of duck boat puns.
The best thing about him, though,
was he figured out
somebody on the boat had gone to Harvard, and then he just called that guy Harvard the rest of the trip.
And every time there was a fact before he said it, he would ask that guy if he knew what it was.
And when the guy didn't, he'd be like, too bad, Harvard.
You get a little bit more education for your money.
It was great.
If you went to Harvard at Boston, your nickname is Harvard.
That's a thing.
Duckboat was great.
Also, Ash, like, felt like he wasn't paying any attention, but I realized he'd get
It's a real colonial education at school because he was just like looking out the window, slack-jawed.
And then every now when he was like, do you remember it?
Does anybody here know who brought the cannons?
Who brought the cannons for the battle of Bunker Hill?
And as Ash was like, Henry Knox.
I'm like, oh, Jesus.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shocking.
He would also, he got every kid to come up and drive the duck boat.
And then they would drive it for like 30 seconds.
He'd be like, all right, scram.
I like that.
I like that vibe.
Yeah.
Me too.
Doug Bo was great.
But anyway, back to the Tea Party Museum.
And again, like, if you're going, but I cannot recommend Boston enough as a destination for a family trip.
Tea Party Museum, so good.
First, you go into a meeting house, and it's one of those museums where you got young actors just bring in their A-game to reenactment stuff.
They hand out little cards so that certain people in the meeting house have to stand up and say something about how mad they are, about this T-Tax.
then you go out and there's two boats that are parked there you go the kids get to pretend to throw tea overboard
nobody breaks character then you go in to like a little tea party museum there's a video like a 15
minute reenactment video about a what is it the battle of lexington conquered one of those it was shot
around the world obviously not remembered around the world but the shot fired up fully teared up
Not the last time I would tear up, Pushy.
Fully teared out watching this incredible video about our nation's founding.
Just exceptional.
Then we went to Faniel Hall for lunch.
Yep.
You've been to Fanio Hall.
Yeah.
Often probably often with mom and dad, right?
Yeah, we used to go and do like some Christmas shopping.
Or just like it was a good place to go and grab a bite.
It was great. It's an incredibly famous food court in Boston.
I wanted to check your memory that you had been with mom
because I remember being with mom,
but mom seemed to have no memory as to how Fanio Hall worked
because we walked in and she's like,
now were we going to have seats?
I'm like, seats.
What are you talking about?
And she's like, oh, I go, what do you want?
She goes, a lobster roll, but not if I can't, if we can't sit down.
And I'm like, huh?
Daddy found us seats for what it's worth.
Great.
I felt like a bus boy
because everybody
nobody wanted
anything from the same place
I thought that like we like it
Regina Pizzeria
it's the best pizza
I'm like everyone want pizza right
Ash is like I want sushi
his friend wanted chicken fingers
at a place that had the longest line
of anywhere in Fanon Hall
I mean
you were probably pro chicken fingers
I got my pizza
I stood
I had my plan
mom got a lobster roll
dad got something weird
Dad, to his credit, went up and got himself.
Yeah.
Also, we sit down and mom's like, I'll get a beer.
I'm like, what do you think this is?
Where you're at food court?
I would think you could get a beer at Faniel Hall, but I don't think you can have a beer in the main area.
I think there's probably a bar there.
Yeah.
I don't think you get a liquor license for a hall.
Yeah, but the times have changed, Sufi.
Not enough.
And then, oh, also, sorry, this is, I mean, again, you're listening to a family trip podcast.
We went to the chintiest mini golf place I've ever been.
It was like on two floors inside, but that burned like 30 minutes.
We went to the Museum of Illusions.
That was also right by Fanio Hall.
That's like a thing where like kids stand next to it, like halfway out of mirror.
And then if they raise both, if they raise one arm and leg, it looks like they're jumping in the air.
Like illusions.
Yeah.
Again, you just realize.
As it says on the title.
I just in general was like, I feel like museum.
oversell how much time
you're going to be able to burn
at them. Yeah. You went to a lot of
museums. I went to a lot of museums. I mean,
these are, some of these are
again, tea party museum I think
is 80 minutes and it's chock full
and fantastic. And you're
walking from one of these places to the next?
We did a lot of walking. We did do a lot
of walking. And then
Hux, a family
picked them up and then we went to our first
Red Sox game. And
Red Sox got Terrick Scoobald
one of the best pitchers, obviously, in baseball.
And so the Red Sox lost 4 to 1.
But it was really special.
I mean, I think, like a lot of kids go to their first baseball game,
Ash was maybe more interested in what he was going to eat.
But we did stay for the whole game, which was really fun.
And, yeah, it was just tremendous.
The whole thing was tremendous.
And then we went to the Science Museum the next morning.
The proper – so Sunday morning, that was the day we were leaving.
And we got a little bit of a slow start because Ash slept in.
And I will be honest, I'm going to take back everything I've said about museums.
We could have spent five hours at the Boston Science Museum.
I remember that as being very engaging, very sort of hands-on.
Very engaging.
Ash was a little bit like, what?
Like, the thing that had not happened yet happened right at the atmosphere, he's like, we got to leave the museum.
We went to the IMAX.
We watched an IMAX, like a 50-minute IMAX movie about the James Webb Telescope.
about the building of it.
Yeah, that made me cry
because it was like just interviews
with the people who made this thing
and like them talking about the first time
they saw the images that were sent back.
Fantastic.
Really great.
So got a little ripped off at the end.
I was paying like $2.50 a pop for Ash
to get these little, you know, those penny things
where you like you like do a crank
and the penny gets flattened out
and they print like a little thing, yeah.
You paid $2.50 per.
And I think Ash won and three.
Ash won and three under the guise
of he was going to give one to each of his siblings,
and then I've noticed it's a couple days
and he's not been handed over yet.
Yeah. Wow.
There's still time.
Yeah.
And then, you know what again?
Amtrak as well, both ways.
A hell of a way to travel.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We had, there was someone on our,
Amtrak. Ash and I were sitting next to each other. We had one of those, like, table,
but like a four-section seating arrangement. And the guy across from us was, he was an
interesting cat. Very, very nice, very kind. But a little, I want to be careful with my language.
He was very hard to sort of follow. And it was sort of like talking a blue streak.
And I was doing my best to sort of comprehend him and try to have a conversation. But
scattered, I would say, is maybe a good way to describe it.
And Ash, one point, who was watching something on iPad,
took off his headphones and leaned over it
because this guy was now talking to somebody else.
And Ash goes, what's he saying?
And I go, you know, I'm having a hard time
kind of following what he's saying.
And Ash said, okay, well, dry harder.
And then just put his headphones back on.
It was really great.
And I was like, you know what?
That's good advice.
And then I was glad.
I was glad that we talked to this.
He was a not that sort of individual you run into all the time,
and he made for a very interesting ride.
Yeah.
Well, that sounds great, Sufi.
It was really good.
I think mom and dad were really happy.
Yeah.
It hangs with them.
No, I mean, I talked to them the next day.
They were exhausted.
I talked to them later on Sunday, and they were just, like, wiped out.
I wanted to FaceTime with them earlier in the day to hear how it was,
and they were like, we got to lay down and take naps.
We'll call you later.
I ran them ragged.
I mean, really.
Random ragged.
Yeah.
Well.
Sounds like you did a lot.
Checked a lot of boxes.
And, yeah, no, they definitely,
mom and dad had a great time.
I'm glad here.
So there you go.
That's a family trip.
And now we got a great episode for you.
Andy Circus.
Yeah.
Legend.
We had to cut him off a little fast.
Andy had another interview after this.
And it was, you know, our fault.
We did not get to the speed round.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He answers the last question.
He answers the most important one.
But he answers it badly.
Has he been to the grand king?
He answers it badly.
But we're not going to tell you.
Did you just tell him what he said?
No, I just said he answers it badly.
Anybody, nobody knows what that means coming from me.
Yeah, he's got his film Animal Farm.
Yeah.
Is out May 1st in theaters.
And, yeah, I mean, he's been with Caesar and Planet of the Apes, King Kong, most notably, Ghalem.
Gallum and Smeagel.
Yeah.
I'm more of a smegel guy.
You like Ghalam.
You think Ghalom has some interesting ideas.
Yeah.
He always been very pro-Gallum.
Yeah.
All right.
Enjoy.
Listen.
Have fun.
Hello, Andy.
Hello, Andy.
Hello.
How are you?
I'm wonderful.
It's so nice to see you again.
Yeah, you too. You too, gosh. I'm trying to think when we last met each other.
It was a while ago. And it's very nice to, sometimes you read someone's biography and you realize, for the purposes of this podcast, I'm certainly hopeful that we're going to hear stories unlike any we've ever heard before.
Oh, totally.
So, yeah. You know, in my head, I'm like, oh, Andy.
It's exciting. There's something about the British Empire. I feel like lends itself to places to.
to parts unknown for many of us.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, it's part of our makeup.
We're good at that kind of stuff.
Because you're not just classically.
Obviously, you're British,
but your background is incredibly a great deal more diverse than just that.
It is.
In fact, so my dad was Iraqi, and he was of Armenian descent.
So they came through two generations before he did to Iraq,
settled in Baghdad and from Armenia.
And then my mom, who was recovering from tuberculosis in the, you know, sort of around the time of the war, went over to recover.
Her father was working in Kuwait on the oil refineries.
And she met my dad, who was an aspiring doctor, and they got married and had three daughters, and then myself and my younger brother.
And so we used to spend all our childhood sort of going backwards and forwards between Baghdad in Iraq and then the suburb of Rice Lip.
which is a little rather boring suburban plate.
No, actually, it's not boring at all.
It's home.
It's just outside of West London.
That's unbelievable.
So my first question is, did she meet him while recovering from tuberculosis in a hospital?
Was he there as a medical professional?
I believe that's the case.
Wow.
I mean, you know, this is going back into sort of the annals of history.
But I guess so, yeah.
I think that must have been how they did.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't imagine you're at your best when you're recovering from tuberculosis.
She must have really been something else.
Well, I think, yeah, I think she, well, she certainly turned his eye.
I think he was going to be a Jesuit priest before that.
So I think she must have done something.
Now, when you were a kid and, you know, it's obviously, you know,
due to the incredibly unfortunate events of, like, the Middle East in the last, you know,
at 25, 30, 40 years, you don't think about like vacation to Baghdad.
Was that something you looked forward to as a kid?
Because obviously it's an incredible culture.
Oh, we used to, I mean, I used to go there for six weeks to, you know, or eight weeks of the summer.
And it was an amazing place.
I mean, it was a magical place.
And we used to go and visit, you know, we traveled all over the Middle East.
We went to Syria.
We went to Babylon.
We went to, you know, to Beirut and, yeah, Lebanon.
And it was a remarkable kind of opposite, polar opposite of, of, of, of, you know,
where I was growing up.
And so it really did hold a sense of magic.
And we'd camp in the desert and we'd eat grilled fish by the river Tigris and all that kind of
stuff.
It was amazing.
It was amazing.
But consequently, I've never really felt, you know, I've always felt like a slight sort of
outside or betweener, you know.
Sure.
Because I have to imagine, of the kids in Rustlip, am I saying that right?
Rice lip.
Rice lip.
that you were the only ones who were summering in Baghdad.
I would imagine so.
Were the circus kids, were you all collectively excited about the annual trip back to Iran?
Oh, yeah, yeah, we still.
But that was our norm, actually.
So it wasn't, and it was kind of not exceptional in the sense that that was what we did every summer.
It was, you know, like that was just like, yeah, we flew out.
We stayed, we stayed there and had all these, I mean, looking back, sort of quite magical,
experiences. But also my grandparents, my mom's mom was also part Iraqi and French Armenian. So
she, she was an amazing cook. So we used to go over, she lived in Wembley in London, just in the
west of London. And so we, we've sort of, the culture was sort of present with us as well.
Would you, did you have a family home in Baghdad that you would go to? Or would you?
Oh, yeah, my dad's house. I mean, so he was a, he was a doctor and he founded a hospital
in Baghdad for
at that time
you know there was a huge
well there still is a huge disparity
between the wealthy
and the poor there
and these four doctors
set out to build a hospital
that would really give
good service to everyone
and and that was
that was why he stayed
he didn't you know he'd built this thing
and so he couldn't really
he used to come home at Christmas
for a couple of weeks
and then my mum would go out and visit him
at Easter
but what was the
travel time back then to Iraq?
It was about, I guess
it was about six or seven hours
on the plane. It's actually not that bad.
Yeah. Or B-O-A-C
at the time it was called.
B-O-A-C? What was that? What was that?
The British Overseas Air Corporation, I think.
I mean, it obviously made sense
that at some point the marketing people were like, we got to change them.
Yeah, we'll change it to B-A.
How, what was the age gap between you and your siblings?
So my eldest sister, Carol,
It was like eight years older than me and then five years older and then Anita, my sister,
and then Kath, the youngest sister was four years older than me.
Then there was me and then my younger brother was four years younger than me.
So really, I mean, pretty spread out group.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did you, when you think of, think back to those trips, were the five of you spending a lot of time together
or was the age gap such that you all sort of split off to do your own thing?
Yeah, you know, I mean, I used to hang out with my youngest sister at the moment.
who was four years older than me because we had similar interests.
But, you know, as an older brother, my, you know, I was, when we were growing up, he was like
my younger brother, so I didn't hang out with him.
But, and then my older sisters were getting into boyfriends and, you know, doing their own thing.
I always have this vision.
Anytime I hear of about a city like Baghdad or just a city that I've never been to, I feel like, you know,
if there's going to be a movie scene, there's going to be kids running through the streets of the city,
sort of no parents around was it like that did you sort of have free reign very much so it was
you know it just it was so exciting and so culturally different and you know you'd go to the markets
the sooks you know and just sort of find your way running through there and and finding interesting
wonderful things all these exotic smells and spices and you know all the things that you find in a
market but but seems so different and yeah yeah it was
It was a great time.
It was a great, I mean, I loved it.
I used to really look forward to it.
Would you, was it something where you would buy things to bring home?
Like, were there, you know, souvenirs and the light that you'd bring back to England to sort of show up?
Yeah, my mom used to collect all that stuff.
She loved kind of Middle Eastern pottery and, you know, artifacts and paintings.
And, you know, so the house was kind of full of that stuff.
But I used to just go for cheap toys, really.
I'd find, you know.
Right.
Yeah, I'd look, I'd seek out toy, basically cheap toys.
That was, that was what I used to do at the Suc.
And so you mentioned going to like Syria and Babylon,
were those trips that your father would come along?
Was it?
Yeah.
Yeah, he would take time out and, you know, and whilst he was still, you know,
he still had to work at the hospital,
but we'd have these side trips and we'd go off for, you know,
a week or so to visit these other countries.
And yeah, I mean, it was a, it was a,
It was an extraordinary, looking back, it is kind of an extraordinary education.
I feel very lucky to have had it.
So you didn't see him much during the year.
What was it like for you when you would see him for those six weeks?
And what do you think it was like for him to all of a sudden have his like five British children to send on Baghdad?
Yeah.
No, I think, well, he was very much a man of routine, obviously with the hospital he had.
But traditionally in Iraq, you have a siesta.
So he used to sleep in the afternoons for an hour after lunch.
That's what everybody does.
And so I think he used to feel a little invaded when we all pitched up.
And equally, when he came home to the UK, it was sort of odd and strange to have a man about the house who his position was very unclear.
You know, it was like he was definitely a man who had authority in his workplace in his home in Iraq.
but he sort of had to fit him with a predominantly female-oriented family when he got back.
And so they all had boyfriends and were doing their own thing.
And suddenly he just would try and come in and be this, you know, put his foot down and be a bit authoritarian.
And it never really worked out, you know.
Yeah, now I wouldn't imagine so.
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Now with Planner.
Hey, Baji.
Hey, Sufi.
Oh man, I need to get my life organized.
You know, you host a podcast or in my case two podcasts or in your case two podcasts,
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Dot me slash trip. That's FIT, BOD.m.m.m. slash trip. Talk about this camping trip by the Euphrates. Does that mean that your parents were.
The Tigris, Seth. Tiger. Sorry, my God. Obviously, I haven't been. Did, were your parents sort of rugged people? Were they good at that sort of thing?
My mum, I think, was quite intrepid, and my sisters certainly were as well.
They went on in their lives to go off and do lots of adventures all over the place.
But my dad was, I think he liked calm and peace and order,
and being in a hospital environment.
I mean, he liked a bit of a party.
He was a good holding cocktail parties and things like that.
But he wasn't, I wouldn't say an outdoorsy guy, not at all.
In fact.
Yeah.
I'm in that situation.
I'm him and my wife is your...
Intrepid is a very good word for it, by the way.
I need to start using intrepid more for outdoorsy.
So if you're camping by a river, are you at a campground?
And what's like, what's a day like?
Are you cooking out for your food or...
We went to...
I remember one trip which was to Lake Hibania, which is just north of Baghdad and...
and it was just like, it was just in the desert, you know, you're camping under the stars and,
yeah, it was, it was, for a seven-year-old, it was kind of like extraordinary to have,
I've never, I'd never seen the stars like it, you know, so it was, it, it seemed very magical.
It seemed very magical.
And we would, you know, we'd cook food, but we were just on camp beds under the stars.
There were no tents or anything, you know, so it's, so, and I remember one time there was a
a desert rat climbed into my bag, which I didn't realize.
a little desert rat climbed into my bag
and when I got back to my dad's house
I opened this bag and it just kind of jumped out.
It was adventurous.
But it was adventurous.
Yeah, it was adventurous.
How when you, what is the travel,
you know, pardon my ignorance,
but how do you get from Iraq to Syria
when you go to visit there?
Was that, would you drive?
What am I thinking?
Yeah, yeah, I think it was probably,
yeah, we drove.
Yeah, we did.
It was a long sort of driving trip.
a road trip.
And what sort of car would you pack in seven circuses?
He had an old Pontiac, which was quite, I just have this, I just remember the sensation of
sitting on the seats, plastic seats, and burning the back of my legs every time we got
into the car, because it was so hot in Iraq.
And as a child wearing shorts, it was not a good thing, you know, getting into that car.
I just remember vividly every time it was just.
just like, wow, you know, how can it get that hot in a car, you know?
But it was a, it was quite, I remember it had little, it had fins on the back.
It was quite a start, looking back, it was a proper, you know, it was a Pontiac.
So it was quite exotic, really, you know, not suburban rice lip in, just outside.
Yeah.
I bet probably not downtown Baghdad either, right?
Like a Pontiac scene.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because it was a bit of American influence as well with, with, with vehicles and stuff.
But my dad is a, was a rather, a bit of a narcoleat.
So he would fall asleep at the wheel constantly, which was not good.
And we all inherited that.
We all inherited.
Really?
Yeah.
I mean, if I fall asleep, by the way, do not be offended.
No, we won't.
It'll be thrilling.
But I have been known on many occasions and people, you know, they rip it out of me.
because I have literally been in studio meetings in L.A.
and sort of started to go, you know,
and I've sat opposite my brother and, you know, having dinner with him,
and he'll, you know, he'll just kind of start nodding off.
You know, so it is a circus trait, for sure.
I mean, that is so, the idea of just driving from Baghdad to Syria
in an old Pontiac with hot seats
and not knowing if the guy at the wheel is going to doze off.
Occasionally, you'd all wake up and...
I also like, you said he liked calm, and I'm like, well, now, that's going a little too far.
Yeah, exactly.
I guess it could be worse.
You could be the person he's currently operating on.
Yeah.
Dr. Circus, Dr. Circus, please.
But you know what?
I'll tell you, I had an archaelectic experience at the Museum of Monart in New York here, and I was, I went to see a photographic exhibition with Lorraine, my wife, and we were standing there.
And we are, I was jet lagged, admittedly, but I remember standing, looking at this picture thinking, God, that's an amazing picture.
It was Ouija, you know, the photographer, Ouija.
Yeah, of course, yeah.
So I was looking at these pictures, and then suddenly I felt this wave of tiredness, and then I just fell over the security line, set off, set off the alarms, and headbutted one of the pictures.
You know, it was.
That's the one thing they don't, like, when you feel like how they build those lines, they never think somebody might.
just doze off.
No, exactly.
Exactly.
Were there ever any accidents, any notable accidents where you were driving on these trips
with your father falling asleep?
No, just the occasional kind of like driving.
The desert roads, you know, so luckily if you go off the road, you're not going to hit anything, you know, particularly.
There's an interesting thing where I've got three kids and I, you know, sometimes just on a long drive,
you know, I wouldn't say it's a narcolepsy, but just getting tired.
It is that weird balance of like,
I know my wife will be so mad if I say,
hey, I need to pull over and have you drive.
But it's funny that what you're weighing that against is,
you know what?
Or I just drive into oncoming traffic and our whole family does.
I'm more afraid of her than actually, like, going into the traffic.
Obviously, you know, you have three kids, you know,
you know, they're at the age where they're born late 90s, early 2000s.
I imagine you've never had any chance to bring them back to the,
Middle East or have you?
No, I really want to.
And in fact, in recent years, I've been trying to write a project, a film based on the hospital
that my dad built.
Because, and I really want to go back there.
And I think it was getting to a point where it was getting safe.
Yeah.
And clearly, not right now.
But it was getting to a point where it was getting safer.
But because the hospital covered an interesting period.
It was, he built it in 1964, which was the year I was born.
born with these founding
other founding doctors. And then
and then very
quickly of course there was the Barthist
party under Saddam Hussein was beginning
to ascend and
there was
not a good feeling towards the West at that
time. So he used to
my dad was a doctor for the British Council
and for B OAC
you know
operatives
and everyone started to leave
and he gave a speech
at a party in his house.
He had a cocktail party, invited lots of people over,
and then his speech was recorded,
and he said some rather unflattering things about Saddam Hussein,
and he was arrested and disappeared.
And so we were obviously incredibly worried.
We didn't hear from him for a couple of months,
so it was a very difficult time.
And this was going on.
People were beginning to be disappeared,
and the other doctors faced threats as well.
And then it got taken up.
over by the party and was only, the Barthist party took the hospital over so it was only
able to be used by Saddam Hussein's family and high-ranking officials. And then, so there's
that period. So there was a sort of pre-Bathist party period. Then the sort of Saddam Hussein
and then it began, and then when the, the American intervention in Iraq happened, the US intervention
in Iraq happened, it was taken over and it was part of the green zone. So it's gone through this
huge journey as a place. So I'm putting together a project which is sort of based on on the,
transitions really, seen through the eyes of people who were around in that hospital throughout
that period. So I do want to go back. I'm desperate to go back. You know, I really, really want
to go back. Yeah. Is it still there, the hospital? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it still exists.
I think it's amazing how a physical space can show how the passage of history.
Like just, you know, you think like, oh, a hospital's going to be a hospital for all this time.
But, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It is, it's really something.
It's also like, you know, there's many bummers to this story, but it's such a bummer that your dad started a hospital.
And it might not be a cool thing to tell people there.
You know what I mean?
They're like, oh.
We don't like people who start hospitals.
Do you still have family there?
Any extended family?
I mean, there's like some distant family there.
Now, most people got out, started to get out where there was a big diaspora and some of them went to Canada, some of them to New Zealand and some of them to France and the UK.
So most of them got out during the troubles, you know.
Wow, that's crazy.
What do you remember about Babylon?
Just the lion of Babylon, the sculpture, this huge thing.
sculpture of the, you know, yeah, that was, that's my main memory. And just, just, just, just lots
of architectural, you know, artifacts and ancient buildings and, I mean, amazing place.
Amazing place. Yeah. No hanging gardens, though. I was quite disappointed. I see. I see.
Yeah. You wrote, you left a very angry Yelp review about the lack of hanging garden.
If they're not there, stop talking about them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And would you ever,
if you weren't going so far
a field as going to
Baghdad or to Syria
would you travel in the UK
ever for smaller trips? Oh yeah
yeah yeah I mean we used to
as a family like when my dad was away
my mum used to take us to caravan sites
kind of on the south coast of Bogner
and what was it called
I can't remember there's another place now
Bogner Regis was where we used to go
and then and then
sort of up to the Lake District
and travel around.
We did lots of traveling around the UK, yeah.
So a caravan holidays, which I hear a lot about from British people,
is that basically those are campsites?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what we used to do.
We didn't have our own caravan by the own stretch.
You know, we used to go to a caravan site and, you know,
they had a social center and, you know what I mean?
It was sort of like, it was really good.
I mean, really happy memories.
So do you look back, are you like just in awe of the fact that you're,
it basically seems like, you know, for most of the year,
you had a single mom who was managing five kids.
Yeah, I'm full of admiration for what she did.
And she was also a teacher.
She taught at what was then called a disabled school, you know,
but people who were physically impaired and or physically challenged.
And so she had a lot on.
She had a lot on.
We did have opairs who came to stay, you know, from time to time.
But my older sisters really kind of.
around the house.
Right.
Were they benevolent leaders?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Totally.
I just worry about two younger boys that could break either way.
Were you ultimately, do you feel like you were, there's that thing of like when you have,
you know, you have a working mother who obviously is doing an incredible job raising the five of you,
it seems like maybe you all understood to behave?
Well, I wouldn't say that.
I mean, I was quite, I suppose I was.
I was, we were all kind of rebellious in our own ways, put it that way.
Yeah.
We all, you know, we all got up to stuff that we shouldn't have done perhaps.
Right, right.
But, you know.
When you got to these caravan holidays, was it sort of policy of your mother that it was just like, go leave me for a bit?
Or would you stick close and stick together?
No, we'd pretty much stick together.
We'd sort of holiday, you know, yeah, yeah, we kind of hung out.
You could rent these kind of, well, they were called social cycles at the time, but, you know, like four-wheeled bikes that you, that four-wheeled sort of that you could all sit on.
Oh, fine.
You know what I mean?
It's like two bicycles tied together, basically.
And so on a social cycle, is everyone responsible for some amount of peddling or some people just getting a free ride?
The two front people.
Two front people, got it.
And then the others at the back just kind of social cycles.
I've not remembered that word for a long time.
Yeah, that's a new one for me.
Would you go to the same sort of places year on year?
We tended to.
Would you make holiday friends that you might encounter?
I don't remember that.
Again and again.
I don't remember that so much.
I don't remember.
No, I don't think so.
No, no, I don't think so, no.
Were there people in Iraq, kids your age,
that you would go back every summer and reconnect with?
Well, we had lots of cousins at the time, you know,
because my dad's sisters lived out there.
So we had a lot of cousins.
We used to go and play with and hang out with.
Were you sort of like this interesting foreign visitor when you showed up?
Were the cousins like enamored with your Britishness?
I don't think so.
I think they just thought of us as, you know, it was just family.
You know, it was just family.
We did used to go, there was a club called the Alwea Club,
which was a sort of a lot of expats used to hang out.
And that had an amazing outdoor cinema.
So we used to just, well, it wasn't an amazing out.
wall painted white
with a few deck chairs
in front of it but
but that was great
and I remember watching films
and hanging out there and
that was cool. I think it's a lost
delight
the outdoor cinema.
Totally. Especially like that thing
of like there's no also
the absence of choice
is actually feels like such a freedom
like we're just going to go see what
the movie is.
You know, when I think about how much time I spend paralyzed by the options,
like I love the idea of just walk into an outdoor cinema.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I was always so enamored with the idea of driving movies,
which we never had in the UK.
But, of course, this was huge here.
I'd bring back the driving movie as well.
That's what's...
Yeah, yeah.
Shouldn't we?
I mean, wouldn't that be cool?
I live in Los Angeles, and there's this film series at a summer.
And it's just one of my favorite things.
It's about three to five thousand people on a lawn in front of a mausoleum, which is a big white wall.
And they just project an eclectic mix of stuff on the side of it throughout the summer.
And it's fabulous.
It's just so nice to be around all those people and be outside.
And it's great.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just something.
I love cinema outdoors is the best.
You know, if you've got no moreover, obviously.
You know, there's just nothing like it.
It's beautiful.
I love it.
We went to, my wife and I were on like a Greek island.
I want to say like Mekanos, who were just like walking after dinner.
And there was just like in this little like sort of this copse of trees.
There was this little cinema, outdoor cinema.
I'm like, oh my God, we have to go and see a movie.
And it was just so romantic.
And then I think it was like the second Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.
And I was just weird.
We got like, you know, we got like beers and we sat down.
And like half an hour in, my wife was like, I'm sorry.
Are we staying for the whole movie?
I was like, all right, that's fair, that's fair.
I go, in my head, I'm a 13-year-old kid, and I can't believe my luck, but you're right.
This is not match with everything our evening has been up to this point.
My funniest experience of watching cinema abroad was I was filming in Russia, actually, about just after the wall had come down in the early 90s.
And I went to a cinema that was showing the bodyguard.
Oh, wow.
but it was all simultaneously
translated by one person
behind the screen
with a mic
into Russian
so they had the volume
kind of half turned down
so Kevin Kossner
and you know
you know
and so it was
I mean
bad rubbish
Russian impersonation
but it was just like
what this was good old scus
what's a good old
you're just a
you know
you know
you know
I really hope he didn't
try to hit that note and I will always love you.
Exactly.
It was quite brilliant.
And I watched the whole film just mesmerized.
Oh, that's really.
That is fantastic.
What did you film in Russia that early?
It was a TV series called Grushko, which starred Brian Cox as a, it was based on a Philip
Kerr novel.
And Brian Cox was playing this cop, and it was all about irradiated meat.
And it was all, it was kind of, you know, because obviously the war,
the wall had, you know, do not come down long before.
And so it was going through, I've never been in a country sort of that was going through
such change, sort of, and actively sort of seeing it happen in front of you.
Yeah, it was crazy, it was a crazy place and a crazy time.
That is like, that's the worst case scenario.
The wall finally comes down in the first show they make is about a radiated meat.
Yeah, yeah.
They don't even hire local actors.
I am always delighted.
By the way, I love Philip Kerr.
I'm very excited to try to find Grishko.
I mean, the fact that it's got you and Brian Cox
and it's a Philip Kerr adaptation shot in Russia.
I mean, sign me out.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Oh, cool.
Cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know.
Didn't I buy you a Philip Kerr, like three?
Yeah, you did.
Yeah.
The Berlin trilogy.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's right at my alley.
I love that stuff.
Oh, amazing.
Oh, cool.
Hey, we're going to take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors.
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Hey, Sufi.
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Would not just say.
Yeah.
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You know, you could send it to her,
but what's she going to do with it?
Yeah.
A much better move is to send it to her ORA Frame,
and then that picture will pop up from time to time,
from time to time and remind her of a great time that you guys had together.
We just took a trip together. We were just talking about it. I went to Boston and dad was like,
send me all the pictures and I was sort of like, I'll do you one better. I'll just send them
straight to the aura frame. And you can see them pop up as they come. Yeah. You texted me a picture
of you and mom at Fenway Park and right away I posted it to their aura and my aura. So it'll just be
there. It's such a good way to see the best pictures in your
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And we do a fun thing with our mom, which is we upload pictures, individual pictures of ourselves
and then individual pictures of our dad so that she will cheer and boo based on them.
Yeah.
Based on which one comes up.
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Your kids, did you raise your kids in England?
Yeah.
Great.
And did, what was your, has your professional life led to
unique travel opportunities for them?
or are the two been separate?
Oh, yeah.
No, no, I mean, they've just lived and breathed growing up.
Lorraine, my wife, she's an actress,
and she's very quite prolific British TV actress,
and all our kids have ended up being actors
because they were literally born into it.
You know, Graham was filming a TV series,
rushed home, gave birth,
went back onto the TV show,
and I was, you know, she was expressing milk,
and I was feeding Ruby, our daughter,
and then she'd come off set,
and for you know it was just like that's how it started and it's never been any different they've just
been an integral part when i went to new zealand they all came down when they were very very
young to do lord of the rings and then you know and then at various stages they've been back when we're
shooting king kong and they went to school in new zealand then when we went back to do the hobbit
they've actually started doing school in the UK so they couldn't so that was the worst period actually
because i was away for a long period of time because i was directing the second unit on that and it was
it was like I was away for a year basically so I didn't get to see them but that's that's my that's my that's the biggest thing the biggest biggest downer of you know in terms of having great opportunities and things happen to you and then being away from your family that's a tricky one right and because my dad had been away all his you know I'd sort of I thought this is history repeating itself a little yeah and you didn't even open a hospital you know no exactly exactly hey I I I
I noticed that in your bio.
So had you directed anything before the second, you knew, The Hobbit?
Because obviously, and I want to talk about it, you just directed Animal Farm.
So obviously, but was that the beginning of your transition into doing behind-the-camera stuff?
I'd always wanted to, you know, whilst, you know, I'd been acting for many years and started in theater.
And as soon as I started acting on screen, I mean, I studied visual arts before I became an actor.
I'd always been interested in telling stories visually and made short films and was always doing things like that.
And I knew that acting, I loved acting, but I also knew that I wanted to direct.
And so it sort of, it sort of transitioned actually.
When we were making Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson became aware that I was very interested in directing.
And so when it came around to The Hobbit, and it was going to be like a huge cast of,
of actors that would go between the main unit
and the second unit
they asked me if I'd direct the second unit
and so we shot for 200 days
on the second unit
and it was
and I was getting ready to make my first
sort of feature independent feature film
with like three actors in four locations
and suddenly I found myself in front of
a crew of 200 people
shooting native stereo at 48 frames a second
with you know
going across New Zealand
And I mean, it was, it was a phenomenal education.
It is so funny because, like, second unit, that part sounds right for a first job.
And then the Hobbit is, like, massively wrong.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
It was just like, I had to learn very quickly.
And I, and, yeah, just the responsibility was so enormous.
But, I don't know, Pete, Pete just trusted me.
And we'd been through a whole journey, of course,
with the kind of creation of the character of Gollum
and the whole visual effects side of things
and the tying together of performance and technology.
And I guess we,
and then I'd work with him on King Kong
and these are my people really.
The family in New Zealand,
they're such an incredible team
and a phenomenal sort of, you know,
the same people that I'm working on, you know, with now.
We're going back to do the film,
now the Hunt for Gollum is like it's a lot of the same people 25 years on regrouping and I keep
going back there because they just it's just such a great creative atmosphere where everyone is
treats each other with respect and is valued and it's the sort of the perfect working scenario you know
it's like a big family and we've all got kids that have grown up now and everyone knows each other
it's it's it's pretty cool it just happens to be on the other side of the world from where I live
right that's the only problem yeah uh and the hunt for Gollum uh
I didn't know it was happening, but you're directing that and obviously starring in it.
That'll be the next in the series.
That will be. Yes, indeed.
And we're in pre-production right now.
And so, I've been down there for months and months.
We're funny, we were talking with Vincent Donofrio, who's a wonderful actor,
and he was talking about how he's been in the Marvel universe playing this character, Kingpin, for 10 years.
And he was talking about how rare it is for an actor to play a character for 10 years.
and I mean
when you think about your relationship with Ghalam
I mean it is
truly something
and I mean by the way
it would have been truly something
if it had stopped
you know after the first trilogy after
you know like so all these moments
it would have been the most complete body of work
and so it really is something
and it's so exciting that there's
there's going to be more of it
it is
I mean and there's a lot to investigate
with the characters still so
it's a really interesting
exploration
Yeah. What about a, so you did, I mean, I will say animal farm, one, does not naturally adapt itself to an animated film or a film at all, really. And the undertaking of this, you know, I was talking, I had Kate and Matarazzo on the show, and he was, you know, talking on my show about how there was an interesting approach. You had to sort of add different characters. How long has this process been going on for you, like from the... Just about 15 years, I suppose.
That's fine.
That's not a big easy time.
It's a quick one I knocked out, you know.
And it's under two hours, right?
So I can watch it in under two hours, but it took you 15 years.
Yeah, exactly.
I know.
I mean, that's the thing.
Look, that was the first film, actually.
When we formed our company, Jonathan Cavendish is my producing partner.
We set up at the Imaginarium, which was a performance capture studio in the UK, and a production company.
And the first film that we thought, and it was actually when we were doing the Planet of the Apes movies.
And there's a scene in the first Planet of the Apes movie.
I was playing Caesar, you know, the central kind of ape character.
And he's in a facility.
He's incarcerated in this facility, which is obviously experimenting on apes.
And he leads the apes to freedom.
And there's a sort of rebellion.
And I suddenly, I'd always loved Animal Farm as a book as a kid growing up.
And I suddenly thought there hasn't been an adaptation of Animal Farm for a long time.
there was a 1954 animation
and then there was a 1990
kind of animatronic Jim Henson style
Hallmark film version
of it but I just thought
performance captures the perfect way
of doing it and then
and then
so Jonathan Kavanish
and I was a big
film producer he'd done the British
Bridget Jones films and we'd become
you know sort of linked for life as it were
and we still have our company
and we thought we'd get this off the ground.
We got the rights.
We went to the Orwell estate.
They gave us the rights.
And we said we want, if Orwell were writing this now, who had his, you know, we wanted to update it.
We always wanted to update it, making it more contemporary, not talk about totalitarian Russia in the 1940s, but transpose the exactly the same themes about power, the corruption of power and, you know, fake news and, and, or.
You know, the disseminate, you know, misinformation and the utopia gone wrong.
But it was like, how do we make this applicable to a young audience?
And this was back in 2011, where we get first, I first had the idea.
And it's taken ages.
Because we thought it immediately, it would be like, oh, Animal Farmer, everyone would want to see Animal Farm.
Every studio would want to make Animal Farm wrong.
Nobody wanted to make animal farm.
It took forever.
Everyone thought it is a very spinachy, kind of, you know,
sort of beating at the audience over the head politically.
Orwell's too dark, et cetera.
And I do love that you thought, like,
you know kids love animated film,
and they love George Orwell.
Well, I just remember being so knocked out by the book.
Did you read the book?
I did read the book.
I would knocked out by the book, too.
And, you know, by the way, it is, you know,
look, Lord of the Rings is a challenging book
that kids love and then made a great movie.
So I would understand the impulse.
Yeah.
So we started work on it and went and approached a whole bunch of actors,
most of whom have ended up in the film sort of 12 years later when we were actually making it.
I mean, like Seth Rogen and Jim Parsons and Glenn Close were all people we approached immediately who all loved the book.
And everyone who's in it, and it is an exceptional cast.
you know
we've got Woody Harrison
and Kieran Culkin
and Steve Bussemi
and
Iman Valani
and
it just goes on
you know
every single
Laverne Cox
it's just a fantastic
cast
everyone we approached
was just like
I'm in
definitely
I love the book
so
but we had to
find a way
of telling the story
which
I wanted to make it
for a young audience
I really
crucially wanted
to have a debate
between
young kids, their parents and their grandparents
all watching the film together in the same room.
Nobody, no studio could understand that concept
that this could possibly be a family film.
And my argument was, you know,
yes, it's dark, there are dark things in it,
but if you present it in such way as an animated version
where you use that animation,
the bucolic kind of the feel,
the
you know
the innocence of the animals
because it is
and you know
the whole point
of Orwell writing
about totalitarianism
using farm animals
is that
he wanted to communicate ideas
to a younger inquiring mind
so so that that fits in
with our version
but the book doesn't have any
protagonist or a central character
where you can follow the story
through you know
in emotionally engage with
because it's quite an objective book
and so that was why we
there's mention in the book of sort of in the last part of the book
of these young piglets who are elite pigs
because obviously the pigs ascend take over control and power
and the rest of the animals are treated like dirt
and I thought well what happens if you take those
you know the pigs in the book are very off stage characters
and you hear what's going on and the corruption of power
and how they're becoming more interested in
trading with humans after saying that we will never ever communicate or trade with humans.
So it's, so these, so I thought, well, what if, what if we actually make the central character,
a young piglet who we then follow and go on the moral journey with?
And he's, he's an innocent, he just sees himself as an animal like all the other animals,
but gradually gets corrupted by this powerful, charismatic, narcissistic, funny, you know, leader.
and gets pulled away from the sort of slightly more community-orientated leader, Snowball,
played a lot by LeVern Cox, and gets sucked in by this very funny guy who eventually takes over,
and a good entertainer.
And so he gets corrupted, and then at a certain point, he realizes what's happened.
And as their utopia falls apart, and it becomes,
another version of the greed and cruelty that was that they'd faced with humans,
he has to make amends.
So then we've got a sort of an interesting story.
And it's still, I mean, thematically, it's still entirely the book, but it's just the
only other thing that we changed, really, I suppose, was not ending in such a bleak place.
Because when kids sit down, hopefully, after having watched this movie, you know, you
didn't want them to kind of go, well, oh my gosh, the world is,
hopeless, we're never, what can we do?
Right, right.
So we've got an ending which is an open-ended question, which is, you know, in the book
it ends with all the animals standing outside the window, looking in through it and seeing
pigs and men and looking from one for a pig to man and man to pig and not being able
to tell the difference and it's a very, very bleak ending.
Whereas we end with a much more sort of open-ended, as I say, open-ended question, which is, history
repeats itself, this has gone horribly
wrong, it'll probably go
wrong again, but we have to keep trying
and it's in the trying that
hopefully you'll find a solution. So it's
not a sort of a Hollywood ending or a
wrapped up neatly and a bow ending.
It's very much a kind of,
okay, this is going to be down to you kids.
When we're gone and
it's like, you know,
you've got to start thinking about this.
That's fantastic.
So that's the idea
behind this.
When we released the first trainer.
15 years.
It's really something.
I mean, it's truly really something.
And we're glad that as soon as you wrap up, the press for this,
you can start doing a new Lord of the Ringsman.
Just that you can rest.
Hey, before we know you have to run.
We know you have to run, Andy, but we do have a speed round of questions.
Let us know if you have time for this.
If you don't, we understand.
But we can try to be quick.
You let us know.
Maybe one.
Okay.
All right, one.
Have you been to the Grand Canyon?
No, I really want to go to the Grand Canyon.
Great, perfect answer. Thank you so much, Andy.
Just quick. You did it.
Thank you so much, Andy.
Okay, thank you. It's been lovely speaking with you, yeah.
Bye, great to see you again.
Family Chips, Brothers.
Avel too bad every summer with his mom things to see his dad.
Steps to Siri, but his dad was not going to watch, chow.
Are you?
Just not often.
fall asleep he was driving off the stream social side
