In Dark Phoenix, the X-Men face one of their gravest and most personal challenges to date. It’s the 1990s, and even as the team attempts to embrace a newfound heroic status and acceptance within society, their close bond is about to be shattered when Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) merges with a strange, extraterrestrial force, one that boosts her already strong abilities to previously unknown levels. Years of repression are torn asunder as Jean begins to find herself and master her new powers, even as those around her start to wonder if she’ll be a threat to the world, and a mysterious alien with an agenda (Jessica Chastain) exerts an influence.
James McAvoy returns once again to play the role of Charles Xavier, the leader of the X-Men. A paternal figure whose ego is inflating as his team’s reputation has grown, he’ll have the hardest time adapting to Jean’s changing powers, especially given his history repressing them. McAvoy here talks what brought him back, working with Simon Kinberg as a director, and whether he’s jealous of his colleague’s superhero suits.
The legacy cast are coming back. What prompted you to return?
I think a combination of things. We all enjoy playing these characters – I know I do. I’ve always enjoyed being in these X-Men films. I love this company of actors. And the crew, I’ve got to say, from people like Hutch our producer, Simon, our writer, and now director, Josh McLaglen, our 1st AD/producer.
There’s a massive extended family that goes back nearly 10 years that you feel very loyal to. And it’s also the character that I feel loyal to, getting to take Charles forward and do something else with him as well, it just feels right. So that’s what brought me back.
Where do we find Charles?
Whereas formerly he was maybe a figurehead or a leader of a social movement, he’s now a figurehead and a leader of a political movement, and I think that’s how he regards himself as well. One of the interesting things he does is, he justifies what he’s doing because he can say that he’s being loyal to his principles, but I think he’s forgotten that those principles only exist to protect the people that he should be loyal to. That’s his family, and that’s his kind, his species and he’s sort of forgotten that.
I think he’s put himself at the front of it all, seen himself as the torchbearer, being the friendly face of mutanity for humanity. He’s justified what his ego is making him do, becoming the center of attention. And if you go back to First Class, that’s something I tried to put into him, as a bit more of a self-centered person.
The thing that was always more interesting about Charles is he’s selfless, his vanity is very low, he’s very wise, his empathy rules him, and his selflessness and almost priestly nature is what defines him, his need to help others.
So, in First Class, whilst not making him evil or bad, we tried to make him a bit more self-centered or self-obsessed. And that kind of disappeared in the intervening two movies. It’s sort of come back here, which I really like; I really enjoyed exploring that fallibility.
He’s separating a little from his support system…
I don’t think he realizes he’s doing that. I don’t think it’s his goal. But where Charles has always been about the emotional and personal and the psychological, he’s gone more macro, he’s more worried about legacy and he’s more worried about politics and things like that.
He’s not being true to who he’s always been, and that does call him into conflict with his longtime not just allies, but friends. You take somebody like Hank, who has been his crutch for decades now… People go on about Magneto and Charles, but Hank has run his life. He’s been all sorts throughout the years, and we always think it would be good to have a little Odd Couple-style side series about what Hank and Charles get up to in the X-mansion, this weird, dysfunctional relationship they have.
Jessica Chastain is the new arrival this time. You have worked with her before. How much did you get to interact?
I think we had only one scene together, unfortunately! Actually, I had a couple scenes with her character, but she wasn’t always there, sometimes it was a special effect. One of the reasons she said she took the job for was she was looking forward to hanging out and acting with me again, and then we barely crossed paths!
I remember us being a little bit pissed off at the whole thing! But she’s an amazing actor and as much as she’s got this very serious actor’s reputation – she is, she does it brilliantly – she’s a lot of fun on set. She can do it and still have fun, which I really, really appreciate.
Also, we’re a big family, we’ve been going a long time and we all get on really well; somebody coming into that might not just slide in there, but she became part of the crew.
Sophie has said they were two pranksters on set….
Yeah, I was the subject of some of that! There’s a bit where my body is being controlled by Jean Grey, so to achieve that, they put me on wires, and they would pull my body around. Those two had a lot of fun with that and an iTunes version of the Macarena!
The cast seems to be better behaved this time…
On Apocalypse and this one, we were better behaved. I think we tried to make the movie in a shorter time period than ever before. And we all realized that this was Simon’s first film as actual director, and so we all wanted to show up for him and work as hard as we could. I think that gave us a renewed focus. And just to have someone new in the chair might do that anyway, but he’s part of the family, so we all wanted to bring it for him.
There’s a reference in the trailer to the speeches Charles makes and how Michael Fassbender’s Erik is sick of it. Is that poking at the tropes?
I don’t think it’s poking fun at it, but it might be, by nature because Simon is trying to make something that is a little bit the antithesis to some of the tropes that you always get and make it more grounded. I don’t know, I think it was more character stuff between Charles and Erik, because they have had this argument so many times. Which is essentially, “there’s good in this person, I’ve got a messiah complex, please let me try and save the person at great risk to the greater public.”
And Erik being much more pragmatic and clinical, saying, “let’s just cut the problem out.” And so, Erik is just saying, “let’s just not do this again. We’ve done it for years, so cut to the chase and get the fight on!”
Simon is director this time. How was it working with him?
By the time Simon took over and directed Dark Phoenix, he’d already been working with us as a writer/director/producer in some capacity. He’d always been very collaborative about the screenplay, if we had ideas to tweak things, lines or even just whole character arcs, he would sometimes, at one end of the spectrum, completely re-design a character arc and, at the smaller end, let us flip lines in and out.
Then, also on the days if he had an idea for a moment here or there, we were very comfor table with Simon giving us a bit of direction to augment what was already going on. It did feel extremely natural when he slid into the director’s chair for this movie. What was interesting was his natural instinct was to pare down, rely on the acting.
Still going to have spectacle, but to pare down some of the more primary colors and make them more nuanced shades of colors, that was his way to do it. To strip it all back, keep it real, go for the drama as well as the crash, bang, wallop, but definitely go for the emotional drama.
Grounded seems to be the buzz word this time…
If you’ve got characters that you’re interested in enough, and who are extreme enough, the acting and the story can be your special effect.
Could this be the last time?
Every single one we’ve done has felt like the last one we do. As an actor, I’ve pretty much only in the last five or six years started to think, ‘maybe it isn’t the last time I’ll ever get to act again.’ So, in terms of X-Men, I’ve always gone, ‘if this is the last one, it’s been great.’ We’ve got new owners for the franchise, and who knows what they’re going to do.
But if this is the last one, it feels, narratively speaking, like a good end. It feels, at least the four films we’ve done over the last decade, like it ends up well and you’d be happy to walk away at this point. And I’m certainly happier to walk away at this point than I would have been at any other point.
Is it interesting to develop the character over the last decade?
Yeah, it’s been fun playing with Charles for this long. I’ve got to do him in so many different modes and so many different stages of his life, so many stages of his career, even, if you like. As a public figure. From First Class to Days of Future Past, he’s unrecognizable.
And then even more different in Apocalypse. This one again, he’s slightly different, he’s more like he was in First Class, but with a huge platform, a public figure; getting to flex different muscles as an actor is cool. And it really doesn’t feel like I’ve been playing the same person, it feels like he’s been slightly different people each time.
Partly it’s the fact that even though we’re only aging a year or two between each movie, each film has about 10 years between it, it means that you can take big leaps and show what has happened with them in the intervening narrative, and generally in between each film something vastly different is going on with each character.
You don’t really get to suit up like the others. Are you jealous?
I am, a bit. I’d like to wear a daft superhero suit. And, this time around, they were quite sparse and practical I thought. But I generally like to get suited and booted in the stuff. Even when it’s uncomfortable, it’s worth it.
I’m slightly jealous. I do get my in-the-field look with a turtleneck, which I rather liked.
This interview is exclusive to bazaar publishing in Kuwait and text and images are courtesy of 20th Century Fox Middle East, @20CenturyFoxMe on Instagram.
