Jared Harris Plays Foe To Scottish Hero In Historic Drama, Recalls ‘Chernobyl’

With reports of recent wildfires raging dangerously near the remains of the Chernobyl nuclear plant site, it’s inevitable that the topic of the infamous environmental disaster comes up during an interview with award-winning actor Jared Harris, who last year starred in the acclaimed limited TV series that delved into the horrific 1986 accident and the Soviets’ failure to address the power plant’s problems before and after the meltdown of its reactor.

“It was an allegory to the way that power protects itself,” the British actor says by phone from his Los Angeles home, where he has been sequestered with his wife since March. “People in power ignored the advice of scientists. At the time it came out, one of the things that people immediately saw was how it related to the whole climate change debate, but it also relates to what’s happening now.”

The COVID-19 coronavirus and its devastating impact on the world is very much on the mind of the revered actor, who has delivered memorable performances on television and in film, including his roles as a 1960s ad executive on the AMC series Mad Men and as reluctant monarch King George VI on Netflix’s The Crown.

Harris has a small but pivotal role in the historic Scottish epic Robert the Bruce, in which he plays John Comyn, the key rival to the title character for the crown of Scotland. The film, which premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival last year and had a successful theatrical run in Scotland, will now be accessible to U.S. audiences via VOD and Digital platforms Friday April 24.

The historic drama centers on Robert the Bruce, the nobleman/warrior who previously fought in league with William Wallace for Scottish independence. It picks up where Braveheart ended. It begins with Harris and Angus Macfadyen’s characters engaged in a brutal fight-to-the death after Comyn double-crosses the nobleman, to whom he was expected to show allegiance, during the Scottish quest for independence from England in the 1300s.

Although not exactly a sequel to Mel Gibson’s 1995 Academy Award winning film, Robert the Bruce, directed by Australian filmmaker Richard Gray, continues the story of the Bruce (with Macfadyen reprising his Braveheart role) as he journeys from near-defeat to reclaim his crown.

Angela Dawson: You didn’t have a huge part in this but it’s pivotal because you’re Robert the Bruce’s foe. You have that intense battle-to-the-death sequence, which unfolds in segments throughout the film.

Jared Harris: It was a joint speech that was intercut and we had our sword fight that was great fun. There was another scene in which I appear to him in the cave but that didn’t make it in to the final edit. His character is going mad and, in a way, I was the spider in his mind. Obviously, he’s talking to a version of himself because I’m not really there. The mental contortions he’s going through eventually spur him to get out of the cave. We improvised a lot of thoughts and ideas. He was dead already and there was a skeleton in the background. My son has ended up on the throne and it was all for nothing—all those sorts of things were torturing him with all of these fears. But it was fun.

Dawson: Were you disappointed the cave scene didn’t make the final cut?

Harris: That’s what happens when you’re an actor. You’re not in the editing room so you have to let that go.

Dawson: The film was shot in Montana to accommodate the director’s schedule. How long were you there and what was it like shooting there in the winter?

Harris: Yes. I was there for about two weeks. It was freezing cold and I was dressed in this flimsy thing. It was authentic but, obviously, you wonder how these guys managed to get around in the freezing cold during those medieval times.

Dawson: You knew Angus Macfadyen, who also co-wrote the screenplay, prior to joining the cast. When did you meet?

Harris: We met at an audition. We were going out for the same role. It was the final round of casting and there were four of us there, and we hit it off. He got the part. So, we exchanged numbers and we started to hang out. We played football [soccer] together and had drinks and dinner, and became friends.

Dawson: So, when he got the green light for the film, he reached out to you to play this part?

Harris: Yeah, he sent me the script. I knew this was one of the various projects he was working on. He’s got several projects; all of them have to do with Scotland and Scottish history. He’s very passionate and committed to it. One of his projects has to do with all of the Scottish expeditions to Panama in the 1700s. So, he sent the Robert the Bruce script to me and I read it and thought it really worked because it tells the story of the journey of this character in a metaphor. The cabin and the family was actually a metaphor for his journey from essentially the character you saw in Braveheart, who was obsessed with obtaining power for power’s sake and fails several times through that journey.

The gap between William Wallace dying and the battle at the end of Braveheart was about 20 years. It fills in that gap. All through those 20 years, [Robert the Bruce] was still battling England and trying to get the crown. Eventually, the journey he goes through—it’s a humanistic idea but it’s also one we hope our leaders have in their heart, which is they’re not seeking power for power’s sake, or their own sake, their own advancement. We hope they rule with the intention of doing the most good for the most people. He connects to simple folk, simple Scots people, and he has to fight to protect them.

Dawson: You are friends, but how do you see him as an actor?

Harris: He’s a wonderful actor. There’s a movie [1997’s Snide & Prejudice] in which he plays Hitler. It’s set in an insane asylum. It’s a wonderful performance.

Dawson: The tone and arc of the film and Angus’ character reminded me of the fall and rise of Maximus in Gladiator. Also, Angus, physically, sort of resembles Russell Crowe in that film a bit.

Harris: They’re both big burly physical men with a wonderful tinge of madness about them, which is exciting. It’s always a miracle every time a movie gets made because they’re hard to get made. But when one gets made like this from this point of view of the passion of someone who’s been driving it for 20 years, it is a testament to their perseverance, dedication and willpower.

One of the things we were doing when we were filming the scene in the church, I improvised a bit that whole “Freedom” speech like William Wallace to mock him. He wants to be like William Wallace; he wants to be loved, but he doesn’t have that connection to the people.

Dawson: Was there much historic information you could find about John Comyn?

Harris: Yes. Obviously, Angus knew a lot about him, and he and I chatted about it. They were rivals for the throne and they had competing titles. The thing that amused me most was that they would have been speaking in French to each other. They wouldn’t have had Scottish accents or English accents, they would have been speaking French or Latin. The same with the English. They would have been speaking French. English was considered the language of the common people, and they [as nobles] wouldn’t have spoken it.

Dawson: What were you working on prior to the pandemic?

Harris: I was working on an Apple TV+ show Foundation, which was written and showrun by David Goyer [Dark City, Batman Begins]. It’s a series based on the Isaac Asimov novels. We were shooting that. I was due to head back in a couple of weeks. After that, I was going to do a five-part miniseries for Britbox, based on the novel, The Beast Must Die. In the winter, I was going to do a movie with my brother [Damian Harris]. He co-wrote it and was supposed to direct it.

Dawson: I’m sure that’s disappointing.

Harris: In the great scheme of things, it’s not that important when you think of the people who have lost loved ones [during the pandemic]. The interruption of one’s plans is nothing compared to what people are going through.

Dawson: Speaking of disasters, I thought of you the other day when the news came out about the Chernobyl fires. Did the series have special significance to you?

Harris: Yes, it does. [As for the pandemic], so many of the Western democracies completely failed at being able to see this [virus] and reacting in real time to it, not just in the U.S, but the EU, which is supposed to be politically and economically integrated. We should have had an EU-wide response, which there wasn’t at all. I read the other day that a handful of countries that have had the best outcomes are run by women: Germany, New Zealand, Belgium, Finland, Iceland and Denmark.

Dawson: What does that tell us?

Harris: I know from observations of my mum and my wife, that in the mysterious female mind there is a lot of looking down the road and figuring out scenarios. There’s a protective instinct and part of that maternal instinct is about figuring out what could happen and turning it off. For whatever reason, the male mind is more instantaneous focused. It’s in the moment. Those words “proactive” and “reactive” are the distinction. The Western democracies that have had the worst outcomes are run by men who have been reactive, and they reacted too late. They were constantly behind the event rather than trying to get ahead of it, whereas the female leaders looked down the road, saw the crisis ahead and prepared properly.

Dawson: What have you been doing while staying home?

Harris: I’ve been able to take care of those little things that need fixing around the house, clearing stuff out and tackling projects. I’ve been reading, catching up with a lot of scripts. I’ve had work to do on scripts that are coming up. Those projects that I mentioned will eventually be made so there’s prep work I have to do on those including my brother’s movie, Brave the Dark. There’s still fine-tuning to be done on the scripts and the research one can do. Right now, I’m having chats with David Goyer about Foundation.

I’m lucky. I’m quarantining with my wife. If there was anyone in the world I’d want to be stranded on a desert island, it’s only her. We go along very well. We give each other space when it’s needed and we play games, virtual games, with our family. We’ve got all these board games. We watch movies, listen to music and sit and chat. So, our lives are centered around the evening meal. I feel for the people who are doing this [quarantining] by themselves. It’s tough.