#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: It really doesn't seem like a whole year, since last we celebrated #MAYTHEFOURTH #STARWARSDAY! But, here it is! Since last year, the biggest news for us here in our Cushing Star Wars Universe, has been the release of 'ROGUE ONE: A Star Wars Story', with inclusion of a CGI Grand Moff Tarkin in the cast, and the unprecedented interest in all things Peter Cushing! And what a mixed bucket of Ewoks, that has been. For over a year, we covered first the rumor, the clues, the hoaxes and finally, the reveal.
OUR BEST BET was always that actor Guy Henry, was in someway connected with the role and that CGI was also involved. The first story that appeared in the press, spun stories about CGI staff at Disney and Lucas film, digging around in the dusty film archives, looking for 'footage' of Peter Cushing legs and feet... which we also always suspected to be a step too far. Either way, what was archived was well worth the wait, and ROGUE ONE did indeed, come up the goods, as a more than worthy addition to the Star Wars sage. Now we wait, for 'The Last Jedi' and if whispers are to be believed, it too will be a smash! HAPPY STAR WARS DAY!
BEFORE "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," 56-year-old English actor Guy
Henry was best known for his work on the BBC and in classical theater
(he was also Pius Thicknesse in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows").
But now he has played one of the "Star Wars" saga's best-known
characters, even though his face was not in a single frame of the movie.Henry is the man and voice behind the most talked-about character in
"Rogue One": Grand Moff Tarkin, who was brought to the screen through
the magic of motion-capture computer graphics after being played by Peter Cushing in 1977's "Star Wars: A New Hope." Cushing died in 1994.
THE EVENTS in "Rogue One" happen just before what we see in "A New
Hope," and to connect the dots, "Rogue One" director Gareth Edwards
wanted to prominently feature Tarkin because of the character's role in
the main plot point of both movies: the Death Star. But to do that, he
and the team at Industrial Light & Magic decided to do something
unprecedented: use a living actor to basically be the skeleton of their
Tarkin and then replace the actor's face with a digital version of
Cushing's.
ON MAY 5TH 2015, "Rogue One" casting director Jina Jay contacted Henry's
agent and asked whether the actor could meet up for lunch in London with
Edwards. "They chose a very secret lunch in one of the most public media places
in town, the Dean Street Townhouse, which I thought was very clever of
them," Henry recently told Business Insider of getting the role. "So we
talked very quietly." In fact, Henry remembers that a table beside them recognized him from a
show he does on the BBC and the diners came over to say hi. But this was
one of the rare moments when visibility wouldn't help an actor land a
role, since it was Edwards’ job at the lunch to persuade Henry to play
the CGI Tarkin. "It was a very strange thing to get your head around," Henry said about
the offer. "Normally as an actor you're presented to be another
character, but there's another added complication here — it's me
pretending to be Peter Cushing pretending to be Grand Moff Tarkin." Before Henry agreed to the role, he suggested that Edwards do a screen
test of him, just to confirm the director's hunch that he would be right
for the role. Henry acted out a Tarkin scene from "A New Hope," doing
his best Cushing voice with his hair slicked back and makeup to make him
look older.
EDWARDS WAS CONVINCED by what he saw, as were others at Disney and
Lucasfilm. But Henry, who says he was always told he sounded more like
his idol Peter O'Toole than Peter Cushing, was still very nervous when
he agreed to take the job. "I wasn't comfortable throughout the whole process," said Henry, who
spent a month of prep constantly watching Cushing's Tarkin in "A New
Hope." "I was constantly plagued by the thought that I was going to be
the tall idiot from London who let the whole thing down. When they look
you in the eye and say, 'This has never been done before in the history
of film, but we think we can do it,' you really don't want to muck it
up. For them but also Peter Cushing, who was an actor that I always
admired genuinely. I didn't want to go through this slightly weird
process and let him down." Henry's Tarkin scenes were shot during principal photography in the
summer of 2015. During his three-week schedule, a car picked him up at
4:30 a.m. every day for the hour-long drive to London's Pinewood Studios
("Rogue One" production was under the code name "Los Alamos").
AFTER PUTTING on the gray Imperial officer's uniform, Henry would then go to
the makeup room where he would get his hair slicked back and a
transparent mask with small holes all over it on his face. Then with a
black eyeliner stick, the makeup artist would mark dots through the
holes onto Henry's face. A person from ILM would then put the
motion-capture dots over the marks on his face. Then right before a
scene was about to start, a head cam would be placed on him, which would
capture every facial movement Henry made.
BEFORE EVERY TAKE, Henry would repeat a Tarkin line from "A New Hope":
"You would prefer another target? A military target? Then name the
system." "It would just get me into the flow of the Cushing voice," Henry said of repeating the line. Henry would then perform the Tarkin scenes on the set with the other
actors. Henry said he didn't always do the Cushing voice — sometimes
Edwards would ask him to do takes "as Guy." "I did as much of a Peter Cushing [voice] with the rolling Rs as I
could, which was f---ing difficult," Henry said. "I'm pleased that
people don't find it a jarring voice and it seems to have worked, but
I'm not a mimic. I did every take every day, including reshoots, and all
along I just tried to do my best."
HENRY SAID THAT he actually told Edwards and the "Rogue One" producers
numerous times that he would not be offended if they wanted to bring in a
voice actor who could do a better Cushing voice. Henry even insisted on
doing an ADR session during post-production so he could have another
pass at the dialogue. "I can't pretend that it wasn't really frightening," he said. "When I
offered the option of having someone else do the voice, they said, 'We
don't want that, we want your performance, we chose you because of who
you are, and we want you to inhabit the performance.' For better or
worse, it's my performance." Henry wrapped on his three weeks, but that turned out to just be the
start of his time on "Rogue One." With constant rewrites of the film's
plot during production, along with reshoots, Henry said he was called
back every other month or so up until November 2016. "I would always think, 'Back to the dots, back to the fear,'" Henry said.
ONE OF HENRY'S FAVOURITE moments was when Tarkin had to be his typical authoritative self and get under the skin of Krennic. "He gets into the mood and has got all guns blazing," Henry said of
Mendelsohn's process. "So there was one scene where I play Tarkin
particularly imperialist behind the camera to get him worked up, which I
succeeded at beyond my wildest dreams. Ben thought I was looking at a
monitor behind him, but in fact I was just being dismissive and he
suddenly shouted, 'Don't look into the fucking monitor, Guy!' But
honestly, we got along famously." Other than a brief look at a rough assembly of a Tarkin scene while the
movie was in post-production (which eased his anxiety about what the
filmmakers were trying to achieve), Henry didn't see the finished CGI
Tarkin until he went to the film's London premiere a few weeks ago.
Having to keep his involvement in the movie a secret to everyone he knew
for over a year, he finally saw the fruits of his efforts. "I didn't eat all day," Henry said of the premiere. "I went in full of
white wine and my heart in my mouth, but after the first Tarkin scene, I
enjoyed it. I mean, I didn't get the whole script, so I was working in
the dark. I was watching a film that I knew little about. I'm proud and
relieved that it has been positive."
LUCASFILM received permission from the Cushing estate to show his
likeness in the movie, and Henry said he had heard that Cushing's
longtime secretary had seen "Rogue One" and enjoyed the Tarkin scenes. "If it had been done as a joke or a gimmick, that would have been
stupid," Henry said when asked about the ethics issue. "But in this case
it was an honorable attempt to tell a story with one of the most famous
characters from the 'Star Wars' saga. I thought it was worth doing. If
it doesn't impinge on the real living or dead person's sensibilities, I
think it's another tool in the box. But I'm not in a hurry to repeat the
process — I'll tell you that."
DESPITE THE anxiety around the role, Henry has no regrets and says the
experience is unlike anything else he's done in his career. He looks
forward to seeing the movie again — with less white wine in his system. 'I think it was an honorable tribute to Peter Cushing, and I'm very happy for that," he said.
(January 2017)
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