{"id":697291,"date":"2026-07-17T21:03:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T21:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/697291\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T21:03:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T21:03:21","slug":"andy-serkis-ive-never-been-able-to-escape-gollum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/697291\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Serkis: ‘I’ve never been able to escape Gollum’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every project is deeply personal to filmmaker Andy Serkis<\/a>, the actor and director who launched himself, hissing and screaming, upon JRR Tolkien\u2019s Middle-earth when he played the tortured antihero Gollum in Peter Jackson\u2019s Lord of the Rings<\/a> trilogy. But some films are more personal than others, and Serkis\u2019s latest, an animated adaptation of George Orwell\u2019s dystopian parable Animal Farm, cuts especially close to the bone. <\/p>\n

After all, while most of us might think we can imagine life under the sort of despotic regime Orwell brings to horrific life in his book, Serkis has first-hand family experience. <\/p>\n

His father, Clement Serkis, was an Iraqi-Armenian gynaecologist who opened a hospital in Baghdad in the 70s, when the authoritarian Ba\u2019ath Party was consolidating its grip on power. A few years into that process, Saddam Hussein seized control of both party and country. After Serkis\u2019s father spoke out against the regime, he was imprisoned for several weeks, leaving his wife and children back in suburban Ruislip, west London, in the dark as to his whereabouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a doctor,\u201d says Serkis. \u201cHe founded a hospital called the Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad. During the rise of the Ba\u2019ath Party regime, he used to treat a lot of British Council and Boac [former British Airways] patients,\u201d says Serkis. \u201cA lot of people started to leave. He made a speech which was not pro-Saddam Hussein. He was arrested for that. A lot of people he knew were \u2018disappeared\u2019 \u2013 in fact, some of the doctors he worked with in the hospital, which still exists, by the way, came to a sticky end. We were aware of that and grew up with that as children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Summers were spent in Baghdad with his extended family, the desert sunshine a surreal contrast to his life in rainy London, where he was born in 1964 and where he grew up with his British mother and four siblings. He vividly recalls the colours, the sights, the sounds of Baghdad in the blazing heat \u2013 though he was too young to appreciate that Iraq was sliding into the sort of authoritarianism Orwell warned about in Animal Farm<\/a>. \u201cI was very young at the time. So I wasn\u2019t particularly aware of that. Other than the fact that my dad had disappeared for a while and it was an incredible worry to my mum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AnimalIn \u2018Animal Farm\u2019, Andy Serkis decided to make the villainous Napoleon likeable and funny, in contrast to the austere figure in George Orwell\u2019s novel<\/p>\n

The eternal struggle between good and evil is a theme running through Serkis\u2019s work, ever since he brought the cadaverous Gollum to life using pioneering \u201cmotion capture\u201d technology, which blended his performance with cutting-edge effects in Jackson\u2019s 2001-2003 trilogy. In Lord of the Rings, good-hearted everyday folk stand up to the wicked Sauron and ultimately prevail. In Animal Farm, by contrast, the farmyard animals who set out to create a utopian society are soon undermined from within when the pig Napoleon becomes a new dictator. <\/p>\n

Both world views \u2013 Tolkien\u2019s optimism, Orwell\u2019s pessimism \u2013 left a lasting impact on the young Serkis, who recalls discovering Tolkien and Orwell in quick succession. \u201cAround the age of 12, I remember reading The Hobbit on the bus to school \u2013 at the same time that I was reading Animal Farm,\u201d he says. \u201cThose were literally two of the first books I ever remember reading.\u201d<\/p>\n

What would the frugal and straight-laced Orwell have thought of Serkis\u2019s family-friendly Animal Farm, with its Pixar sheen and all-star cast that includes Woody Harrelson, Kathleen Turner, Succession\u2019s Kieran Culkin, and Laverne Cox? He would certainly have taken note of the tweaks Serkis \u2013 who voices Randolph the rooster in addition to directing \u2013 has introduced to his 1945 masterpiece of political allegory. These include telling the story from the perspective of a new character \u2013 a young pig named Lucky (Stranger Things\u2019 Gaten Matarazzo) \u2013 and a scene in which Napoleon crashes a Ferrari into a swimming pool.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ferrari-in-pool aside, the most notable departure is Serkis\u2019s decision to make the villainous Napoleon likeable and funny. As voiced by comedian Seth Rogen<\/a>, he\u2019s charisma on a stick. That\u2019s in contrast to the dour, austere figure in the novel. Orwell\u2019s Napoleon was a stand-in for Joseph Stalin, whereas the clowning despot we meet in this new version has been likened to Donald Trump and Elon Musk \u2013 21st-century bullies who disarm the public with humour and irreverence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the book, he\u2019s very gruff, speaks very few words \u2013 much more of a fascist dictator,\u201d nods Serkis. \u201cI felt very strongly we wanted to make him likeable. Many of our leaders don\u2019t operate in such a direct [despotic] way \u2013 they\u2019re cleverer than that. They use all the tools to get what they need \u2013 from humour to making people believe in them, entertaining them. Although it does have some Trumpian flavour to it, it\u2019s certainly not an expos\u00e9 of Donald Trump at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Serkis (centre) as Gollum in \u2018The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King\u2019 with Elijah Wood and Sean Astin (Photo: New Line Productions\/ AP)<\/p>\n

When Animal Farm was released in the US last year, it was received as a critique of 21st-century hyper-capitalism and of American political dysfunction. On this side of the Atlantic, however, some may see parallels with Brexit and, in the clowning Napoleon, with Boris Johnson, who cheerfully played the buffoon<\/a> while using the Leave campaign as a stepping stone to Downing Street. Was Brexit \u2013 the doublespeak, the manipulation, the red bus plastered with lies<\/a> \u2013 on Serkis\u2019s mind? <\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely, yeah,\u201d he says. \u201cIt feels like [part of] the destruction of community and the rising levels of powerful leaders who are beginning to pull the wool over the eyes in many different countries,\u201d says Serkis, who, ever the Hollywood pro, is careful not to make any sweeping statements or call out any specific politicians by name. \u201cThat [Brexit] is certainly part and parcel of it, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the first of the Lord of the Rings came out a quarter of a century ago, Tolkien was largely the preserve of geeks. But lately, Tolkien has attracted an altogether more sinister fellowship of fans \u2013 figures such as right-wing tech executive Peter Thiel, who has named his data analytics company Palantir, after Tolkien\u2019s seeing stones.<\/p>\n

Then there is the one tech bro to rule them all. Elon Musk<\/a> has weaponised Tolkien\u2019s writing with his claim that, before large-scale immigration to the UK, Britain was a land of happy hobbits in bucolic shires. As the son of an immigrant father and a British mother, what does Serkis feel about such attempts to turn Tolkien into an icon of the right? <\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, literature can be bastardised or interpreted in so many different ways,\u201d he says, adding that Tolkien would not have wanted people to read any political meaning into his work. \u201cTolkien, in the preface to Lord of the Rings, virulently quotes that it\u2019s not his job to tell people what to think \u2013 it\u2019s for them to discover it for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CaesarSerkis as the simian leader in \u2018War for the Planet of the Apes\u2019 in 2017 (Photo: Twentieth Century Fox) <\/p>\n

Serkis makes for matey and avuncular company, and it is hard to picture him as the slimy, emaciated Gollum \u2013 even allowing for the miracle of Hollywood special effects. But he feels that Gollum is always sitting on his shoulder \u2013 a shadow from the past that has never quite gone away. \u201cHe\u2019s still inside me, slightly,\u201d he nods. \u201cI\u2019ve never been able to escape him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is squeezing in time to promote Animal Farm shortly before cameras roll on his next project \u2013 The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. Telling the story of events that take place off camera early in the LOTR\u2019s first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, the feature doubles as a mini Middle-earth reunion. In addition to his work behind the cameras, the director reprises his part as Gollum: it will, he says, be an opportunity to \u201cexorcise\u201d the character.<\/p>\n

Also back is Ian McKellen<\/a>, now 87, as the wizard Gandalf and Elijah Wood as Frodo, alongside heroic fantasy newcomers Anya Taylor-Joy, Jamie Dornan, Kate Winslet and Leo Woodall. <\/p>\n

But, popular though these actors are with Tolkien followers, many devotees of the books and movies are uneasy \u2013 a few downright dismayed \u2013 about the prospect of another Lord of the Rings film. It is just one of several spin-offs, including the dire Prime Video Rings of Power series<\/a> and another retelling of the early part of the Lord of the Rings, to be co-written by US talk show host Stephen Colbert. This avalanche of content has not been well received in all corners of the fandom. The original stories are done and dusted \u2013 and the concern is that Serkis is helping turn Tolkien\u2019s world into just another Marvel-style Hollywood cash cow. Can he understand these misgivings? <\/p>\n

\u201cHollywood do love a franchise \u2013 there\u2019s no denying it,\u201d concedes Serkis. \u201cBut I think the spirit and the heart of these movies are told with the same love and dedication. And a realisation that there is a huge fan base who want to see more of Tolkien\u2019s stories. And there are so many more stories to be told.\u201d <\/p>\n

He assures anxious Tolkien fans that the new film is anything but a cash-in and that the Hunt for Gollum is in good hands \u2013 referring not only to himself as its director but to the involvement of Lord of the Rings writers Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh, who have written the script.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all down to the creators. And it couldn\u2019t be in better hands than the people who are making The Hunt for Gollum,\u201d he says, eager to soothe the nerves of worried Tolkien aficionados (there are a lot of us out there). \u201cThere\u2019s definitely an appetite for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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