The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman (17 page)

There was much riding on Freeman’s casting and he felt a great deal of responsibility, though he realised that the ultimate job would be down to the final edit.

He explained his thoughts on his casting in the film to
Collider
’s Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub: ‘In the doing of it, it’s
ultimately my responsibility, but then obviously the greater responsibility, of course, is Peter’s, because he has his eye on the ball – well, on various different balls all the time. And also, he’s got a picture in his head of how it’s going to be edited, and what it’s going to look like. And I could be doing a scene where I think it’s scene ninety-four, it might end up being scene two-hundred and thirteen. So with the best will in the world, you have to commit, but also be open. That’s the hard thing. Because if you think, “I’m going to do this scene, this scene means this, it’s all these characters, and it’s this moment…” it might not even be there, clearly, ’cause that’s the nature of film-making, or it might be somewhere else. And he’s pretty open about that.’

Freeman liked how Jackson tells stories; his style of film-making. The New Zealand director was easy to work with – he doesn’t have the workhorse reputation that precedes someone such as James Cameron. Freeman does not believe in making life any more difficult than it needs to be. Everyone involved in the film had a job to do and they were all there to help tell the story, Jackson most of all. A film is in many ways a negotiation between the director and the cast – if the director does not get what he wants, until he sees on screen what is the right thing, it’s down to the cast to help realise that vision. Actors don’t want to walk off-set questioning if they’ve done the right thing or not. They may have done what’s on the script but is it exactly what the director envisaged? Actors have to please everyone – the crew, the studio heads, the audiences, the critics. Actors are contractually obligated to please the director but they have an artistic plan to please themselves.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
was finally completed on 26 November 2012, just two days before its Wellington premiere. The anticipation was high.

This film was Freeman’s second major literary film adaptation, with the first, of course, being
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
So how did the experience of filming these two projects compare with each other? There was a great deal more green screen time (‘green screen acting’ means acting alone in front of a green screen, with camera devices that make certain characters look different sizes – some consider it disorientating) working with Peter Jackson on
The Hobbit
but the stories are set in completely different universes and both experiences were unlikely to ever be repeated.

Martin spoke to journalists at the 2012 Comic-Con about his experiences on set: ‘…just for breadth of scale and time, and being in a different part of the hemisphere than I’m used to. It’s a whole different experience. It’s like a huge chunk of your life. That, alone, makes it different from anything else. The budget makes it different. You’re constantly walking onto sets and sound stages where what you’re acting on would take up the entire budget of any other film I’ve done. So, just the scale of it is quite phenomenal. For me, they’re incomparable.’

Freeman probably wanted nothing to do with green screen acting before
The Hobbit
but he understands that many big-budget Hollywood films use green screens and that whatever is in the background near the acting will be inserted using computer-generated imagery.

‘The reality is though that the most traditional part of acting is using your imagination,’ he explained to UK’s
Ask
Men
’s Jamie Watt. ‘It’s what I was doing when I was five and it’s what I’m doing now that I’m, er, twenty-eight… Using your imagination is the key to any kind of performance, so when it came to the green screen, I was surprised. I thought it would drive me mad, but the sets were usually a mix of the virtual and the physical – stuff we could touch, taste and smell, so it didn’t seem like the whole time we were speaking to tennis balls. There was some of that, but there was also some actual material. If you look around Bag End, in Bilbo’s house, it’s all real, it’s all tangible, so it’s nice to have that mixture.’

On the experience of working with green screen, Freeman said to
3 News
’s Kate Rodger, ‘Acting is pretending so you just have to pretend. It’s not as much fun as when someone else is there. When someone else is there, that’s really fun, and that’s when I think truly great things can happen. When you’re doing it on your own it is less fun, because it’s less organic and you’re having to manufacture more. But it’s just a matter of digging deep into your imagination. It’s your idea of how the dragon is going to be massive, terrifying and it’s going to have this booming voice coming out that will scare the bejeezus out of him.’

Arthur Dent and Bilbo Baggins are both reluctant heroes who are thrown into a dangerous adventure. There’s a nervous energy about them as well as a bland ordinariness yet an underlying strength, which made perfect casting for Freeman.

‘With Arthur Dent, he serves, I suppose, a similar function to Bilbo, in that he’s the nearest thing to an audience member, in the film,’ Freeman explained to reporters at Comic-Con in 2012. ‘He’s the audience’s way in. And to a certain extent, you
could argue that they’re archetypes, in the hands of a much lesser actor. Cue laughter. They’re ciphers, in a way, I suppose you could say.’

The role would change some significant parts of his life: his bank balance and fame being two primary factors. He’d been famous in London for a decade, where people would chat to him in the street, question him about
The Office
, ask for photographs and autographs but he’d never had that in Spain or France. So being internationally famous was an entirely different ball game. Freeman had been cast in many independent films with little distribution but
The Hobbit
was going to be shown all around the world and, as such, his privacy would be compromised. He knew that when he took on the role.

There was an enormous marketing campaign. The very first trailer was released before
The Adventures of Tin Tin
, produced by Jackson, in the US on 21 December 2011. Jackson, along with Freeman, McKellen and others, appeared at the San Diego Comic-Con International in 2012 to promote the film and a screening of twelve minutes’ footage. Such was the level of euphoria in New Zealand that on 8 October 2012 Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown announced that the New Zealand capital would be renamed ‘Middle of Middle Earth’ for the week of the film’s premiere.

‘It’s kind of weird when everywhere you go there are pictures of you,’ said Freeman to the
Daily Telegraph
’s John Hiscock. ‘It’s certainly unusual for any film I’ve ever done. But it’s a good picture of me and at least I’m happy with it, because if it was a picture I hated I wouldn’t go out.’

The 2012 Comic-Con was his first experience of such an event. In terms of comic books and movies, the San Diego Comic-Con is the biggest social event on the calendar. Fans meet and greet some of their heroes, buy and sell merchandise, attend Q&As and watch previews of upcoming films. It’s a major event with global publicity.

Freeman told reporters at the 2012 press conference, ‘So in a way it’s fulfilling my expectations of what I heard about Comic Con, and exceeding them as well. I was struck by just how emotional people were talking about the film, talking about anticipating the film. With each question came a preamble about what the previous films have meant in people’s lives. So all clichés aside, it’s a really nice thing to be part of something that actually touches people, genuinely touches people. It’s quite a lovely thing.’

Martin joked that people had been annoying him in restaurants in the UK for years but with the imminent release of
The Hobbit
this attention will be with him all over the world. But that is the price actors pay for fame – for taking on such an iconic role in the first place.

‘I’m getting a glimpse of that external reaction to it now, the nearer the film gets to release,’ said the forty-one-year-old Freeman to the
New Zealand Herald
. ‘I mean that level of fame obviously is something very different to what most people will get to experience, but my life doesn’t feel any different yet.’

Released on 28 November 2012 in New Zealand and internationally on 13 December,
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
grossed over $1 billion at the international box office, which surpassed both
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of 
the Ring
and
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
It was the fourth-highest grossing film of the year and the seventeenth-highest grossing film of all time. Martin Freeman was now box-office gold.

The movie was such a success that Freeman was worried it would change his life more than he anticipated.

‘I remember having those conversations before
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
came out [in 2005] and thinking, fuck, is everything going to change?’ he said to
Time Out London
’s Nick Aveling. ‘And it didn’t, really. I’m a big believer that life changes as much as you want it to. If you invite in all the madness, it will. If you don’t, if you kind of let the world quietly know, “No thanks, I still want to get on the train and live my own life,” then somehow it doesn’t have to.’

Empire
magazine’s Dan Jolin enthused, ‘His Bilbo does take his predicament seriously, and while this is the jauntiest – at times silliest, at times funniest, certainly the most child-friendly – Middle-earth movie yet, Freeman remains its emotional lodestone.’

He continued, ‘Jackson holds on Freeman’s face. This isn’t just Tim-from-
The Office
or Watson in pointy ears, but an actor at the height of his prowess finding every layer to a character it now seems he was born to play.’

Total Film
magazine’s Matthew Leyland wrote: ‘Elijah Wood’s Frodo may have carried an incalculable burden but he was, frankly, a bit of a whinger. Freeman’s Bilbo likes a moan too, but the part gives the Brit licence to show off his sitcom-honed comic touch.’

He continued, ‘He also straddles the tone’s comic/dramatic
divide. Just when you worry his self-effacing performance is getting lost in the monster mash, along comes the centrepiece confrontation with Gollum (Andy Serkis, showstopping as ever), a game of riddles where Bilbo’s wit and mettle are shaded with genuine anxiety.’

Philip French of
The Observer
wrote, ‘Bilbo (Ian Holm, reprising his role from
The Lord of the Rings
) is seemingly writing his memoirs, puffing on his churchwarden pipe and blowing out smoke rings as big as haloes and eating regular meals. As he contemplates the past he’s replaced by his equally pacifist younger self, to which part Martin Freeman brings the same decent, commonsensical, very English qualities that informed his excellent Dr Watson on TV.’

The role of Bilbo Baggins won Freeman acclaim as well as some awards and nominations. He picked up Best Hero at the 2013 MTV Movie Awards and Best Actor at the eighteenth
Empire
Awards as well as Visionary Actor at the Short Awards. Freeman was also nominated for Hottest Actor at the 2012
Total Film
Hotlist Awards and Best Actor at the following year’s Saturn Awards as well as Best Scared-as-Shit Performance at the MTV Movie Awards, Best Actor at the
SFX
Awards, Hero Of The Year at the New Zealand Movie Awards, Best Male Performance In A 2012 Science Fiction Film, TV Movie, Or Mini-Series at the Constellation Awards, Best Leading Actor at the Tumblr Movie Awards and Best Ship at the Tumblr Movie Awards.

‘I’m geek royalty now,’ he joked with
Hollywood Reporter
’s Jordan Zakarin. ‘That’s the main responsibility. It’s not playing Bilbo, it’s my responsibility as a geek prince.’

Jon Plowman, the former head of comedy at the BBC and
executive producer of
The Office
knows how well Freeman can act when he’s cast in the right roles. ‘He’s great at playing the everyman, which is why he is so good as Watson and in
The Hobbit
. He’s got a wonderful ordinariness which you’d think most actors would have but curiously they don’t. That’s not an insult – it’s the absolute opposite – and if you’ve got it as an actor you bloody well hang on to it.’

Such was the hype surrounding the film that its success was surely going to upset Freeman’s relatively peaceful life. How could he possibly stay relaxed with the inevitability of worldwide fame?

‘Until it actually happens it’s all an intellectual exercise,’ he said to John Hiscock of the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘What if everyone hates it? I try not to count my chickens but yes, it’s clearly a bigger film than I’ve ever made. People are so enthusiastic about this story that if I thought about them hating it or hating my rendition of it I wouldn’t be able to go to work.’

The Hobbit
is one of the productions Freeman is proudest of and it’s probably going to be the one film he will speak fondly of in decades to come.

Freeman had Arthur Dent, John Watson and Bilbo Baggins to his name: three iconic characters of literature. How did he feel?

‘I’m very proud of all of that,’ he expressed to
Digital Spy
’s Morgan Jeffery. ‘It is a weird thing at the moment to be Bilbo Baggins and John Watson. I can’t deny that it’s quite strange. I never think about it, but when it’s put like that, I think “Christ, that is odd.” They are iconic roles, but it’s all accidental and it’s all happenstance. I certainly don’t think
there’s a casting director somewhere going, “How do we get Martin the iconic roles?”’

There was never any plan to immerse himself in any of these projects. He didn’t wake up one morning and wonder what adaptation he would tackle next. It all happened by accident and, as the writing was so good, he could not turn any of them down.

Freeman was not daunted by taking on these iconic roles – not through arrogance or some self-absorbed higher belief in his own talent but rather because being scared would be counter-productive. Also, he was not steeped in the work of Conan Doyle, or Tolkien or Douglas Adams.