By Christina Radish

Philip Winchester stars in Crusoe

 

Crusoe will explore the perils and challenges facing the world’s most famous castaway, Robinson Crusoe (Philip Winchester), and his native friend Friday (Tongayi Chirisa), as they struggle to survive on a desert island with little more than their wits. Overcoming militias, cannibals, pirates, wild cats, starvation and lightning storms, Crusoe dreams of the day he will be reunited with his beloved family, which includes his beautiful wife Susannah (Anna Walton) and his mysterious mentor Jeremiah Blackthorn (Sam Neill).

Co-stars Philip Winchester and Sam Neill, along with executive producer Jeff Hayes, spoke with MediaBlvd Magazine about bringing this ambitious story to life.

MediaBlvd Magazine> Philip, how did you end up playing this character, to begin with? Were there lots of casting hoops to jump through, or was it an easy process?

Philip Winchester> When these things happen, it’s a little surreal. I can’t actually speak from experience. This is the largest role that I’ve undertaken, so it was a real surprise. I worked for the U.S. Royal Shakespeare Company last year, and we did King Lear. We were traveling all around the world. And then, I was back between London and Prague, because I was filming in Prague, when my agent had sent me Crusoe. I was getting ready to head back to Los Angeles to pick up pilot season again, and I remember asking, “Whatever happened to Crusoe?,” and she said, “I think they’re still casting for it, if you’d like to go in and have a session.” I said, “Yeah, I definitely would! Before I fly back to Los Angeles, I’d like to have a go at it.” And so, I went in and met with the casting director, Jeremy Zimmerman, who is a great casting director in London. It was a funny casting because I trained in London, so there were a lot of people who I trained with, sitting outside in the waiting room, and everyone was really antsy. I noticed because it’s one of those roles that everybody wants to get. To play Robinson Crusoe, to be able to sword fight and tell this great tale, and travel all over the place, as we have, is such an amazing opportunity, so everyone was very nervous and very excited, all at the same time. So, I did a casting, and came out and had a chat with a buddy who I had worked with years before, who I also went to drama school with. At auditions, I try to do the audition and then forget about it, otherwise you worry about it too much. And then, I got a phone call a couple weeks later saying, “It looks like they’d like to have another meeting to test you.” So, not trying to put too many eggs in one basket, I assumed that it was just another normal test, but it turned out to be a screen test. Then, I got very excited about it. It did go on a little bit. They have to be sure and, to be honest, I’m glad they drag it out like that because you have to be really sure you want to do it as well, as it’s a huge commitment. It went on for a couple weeks. We did a couple tests, and then we retested. And then, I was out having dinner with a friend because I couldn’t do anything. It was consuming everything. I just could not stop thinking about this show. A buddy of mine had called and said, “Look, I’m going to take you out to dinner because you’re driving everyone crazy.” And, while we were at dinner, I got the phone call. It was one of those phone calls where both of my agents were on the phone, so I knew it was important.

MediaBlvd> Philip and Sam, can you talk about stepping into these iconic roles? What kind of preparation did you do to bring these characters to life?

Sam Neill> I have to be fairly honest and admit that I’m not the world’s leading expert on Daniel Defoe. The job description is to have as much fun, and provide as much fun, as we possibly can, and pack as much as possible into a good television hour. As far as the iconic roles go, Philip’s role is much more iconic than mine. He’s got an immense burden on his shoulders, for a young man. I’m just lifting what I can from the page, and running with it as fast as I can for the touchdown.

Philip> When you have a role like this, you obviously have to pour over the original stuff as much as you can. I read the book several times, before looking at the script. You start with the bare bones. I thought about where they would be living, what they would be eating, what they would be drinking, and would they would be dressing like. Obviously, the production does a lot of that. They put clothes on your back, which helps immensely. As an actor, you’re given a job to make believe and tell a story. Trying to have fun with it is very important. With an iconic character like this, you make a choice and it’s going to make some people really happy and some people might not be so happy, but that’s the nature of being artistic and making a choice. You have to stand by that choice. What really helped was getting to South Africa and meeting the actor that was going to play Friday, getting to know him well, and then just piecing together the story that we were telling, as the scripts were being put in front of us. We were pulling stuff off the page and making it real, telling Jeff what we really were excited about and what we weren’t excited about, and getting those things changed. We take it one day at a time, and the characters develop that way as well. They’re very well-rounded now.

MediaBlvd> How true are you to the classic? Where have you taken liberties, and did you have any trepidation in doing so?

Philip> I’ve been mulling that over for awhile because we have taken artistic license with some of the story. It has to happen because otherwise it can get dull, watching a guy on an island build a shelter, get a fire going and go hunting, on every episode. It just wouldn’t be entertaining. So, what I’ve really tried to do, and what I think we’ve stuck to, is keep Robinson Crusoe the same character, but he’s telling different tales, different things are happening to him and different things are coming into this life. Robinson Crusoe has to go through the emotional journey, when he sees cannibals and decides if he’s going to interfere with them. We’ve taken those elements of the story and intertwined them into the 13 episodes. There are probably actually only two or three shows that are completely original stories, where there’s something completely different happening than what’s in the book.

MediaBlvd> What about the marriage thing? Crusoe wasn’t married when he was on the island in the original, was he?

Philip> That’s right, he wasn’t. But, Daniel Defoe wrote The Further Tales of Robinson Crusoe, when he’s much older and married. So, we actually haven’t gone that far off the script. For the drama of it, this guy has to have a reason to stay alive. With the things that are happening to him, the amount of pressure that he’s living with and the stresses of everyday life and survival, having something to live for, i.e. a wife and a family, gives him a real drive. What really comes up, throughout the episodes is, why is he so tenacious? Why does he want to get off this island so bad? For an audience watching, having something that’s relative to all of us, like being in love with someone and wanting to be with them so desperately, is really good to have through the episodes.                                                      

MediaBlvd> Jeff, it seems like it would be a real delicate balance to stay true to the spirit of the book, and still find a way to get modern audiences on board. How are you hoping to achieve that balance?

Jeff> First of all, it’s an action adventure show, so you have to start there, and then develop your characters, knowing that you’re trying to appeal to a broad audience. Hopefully, everybody knows the Robinson Crusoe story. They know about a man on an island, who’s desperate to get off that island, and the adventures that he has to face. You start with that as the foundation, and that’s what you’re being true to. From there, you have to go into your action adventure series. You have to create characters. You have to create a back-story. You have to create a love story. You just try and give it as many layers as you possibly can, and you contemporize it in a way that’s going to appeal to a broad audience for television. I think that we’ve managed to accomplish that, on a number of levels, particularly with the back-story of Sam and Susannah, Crusoe’s wife and his father, who is played by Sean Bean. This group of remembrances actually dovetail into real-time, towards the end of the first 13 episodes. So, it’s a balance, but I think we’ve struck a good balance, in being true to the book and providing a very substantial piece of entertainment.

MediaBlvd> The original novel was set in 1651, in the 17^th century. This seems like it’s probably a little later than that, as a setting. Is that correct?

Jeff> We’re playing it in the 1680s, but it’s still the 17^th century.

MediaBlvd> With doing a show that’s set in the 17^th century, how do you incorporate the modern-day sex appeal?

Jeff> First of all, if you cast somebody like Anna Walton for Susannah, then you don’t have to worry about it because she comes on screen and she’s what every man would hope his wife would be like. She’s just stunningly beautiful, and she and Philip have such a lovely chemistry together, in that B-story. And, as part of the mutineer arc, we will have Mia Maestro, who is actually disguised as the ship’s surgeon’s apprentice. We inject another female character into the island, at that time, who also has her own exotic, Latina sex appeal. And then, beyond that, as you saw in the two-hour pilot, we had Judy (Georgina Rylance), the pirate. You find ways of doing these things, as you sit down and break stories. Overall, you also have Philip and Tongayi as action adventure leads, who hopefully have a lot of across-the-board sex appeal. Men will want to be in their shoes and do what they’re doing, as far as all the stunts and everything, and women will be watching because they like to look at them and they enjoy what they’re doing.

MediaBlvd> Philip, when did you first read the book? Were you a fan of it as a boy?

Philip> My father used to read to me when I was a kid, and I can remember that it was one of the books that he had read to me. And then, obviously, I went years and years without reading it again. When I found out that there was a possibility of getting an audition for it, I was actually flying back and forth between London and Prague, so I picked it up at the Dallas airport and had a read of it. And then, of course, when I got the job, I read it another couple of times. It’s definitely a fantastic read. It’s a great book.

MediaBlvd> What qualities do you think you share with Crusoe?

Philip> If I want to do something, I tend to put my head down and really work for it.  I think that’s why this character is so appealing to so many people. It’s one of those characters that you just know from childhood, like Robin Hood. You go in the backyard and grab a stick and, all of a sudden, you have a sword in your hand and you’re a swashbuckling pirate or a mutineer, or Robinson Crusoe. It’s something that’s in our psyche, from a very young age. For an actor to get this role, it’s a wonderful opportunity because there’s so many different elements that you can look at.

MediaBlvd> Given that some of the top shows on TV today are about people being stranded on an island, like Survivor and Lost, don’t you think it’s fitting that this show goes back to the original source material?

Jeff> We do take a bit of dramatic license, in terms of how we approach this character and the way that he exists on the island with his partner, Friday. It’s definitely grounded in the book, but after that, we bring it into a more contemporary tone, as far as a period drama is concerned. He did spend a lot of time on the island alone, and that probably wouldn’t make for great drama, over the course of 13 hours.

MediaBlvd> Jeffrey, Lost has a lot of integrating the past into the stories, and bouncing back and forth between the past, present and future. How are you modeling this show?

Jeff> Over the course of 13 episodes, we will deal with an A-story, which is the island story, and that is the predominant story. And then, we have a B-story, which is the UK part of our story, that unfolds in a linear fashion, over the course of 10 episodes. That story then becomes real-time and, ultimately, dovetails into Blackthorn coming to the island for the last two episodes. You manage it by making sure that the A-story is your close story for the week, and then you layer in the B-story in the UK, in terms of the flashbacks and how that’s accelerating to real-time. By Episode 7, the B-story takes on its own momentum and intrigue.

MediaBlvd> Sam, will viewers see a lot of your character, Jeremiah Blackthorn, in flashbacks? How are you going to be worked into the story throughout the season?

Sam> I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to give away, but Robinson has been stuck on this island, dealing with all kinds of bad people and any number of challenges. I filmed all of my material in England, in advance. But, all good things must come to an end, so Jeremiah will go to the island and deal with Robinson, one way or another. If tides have been bad, he ain’t seen nothing yet.                                          

MediaBlvd> Where are you based, in London, Australia or New Zealand?

Sam> That’s an interesting question that I ask myself a lot. In between times, I’ve been home in New Zealand, where I live, and I managed to fit in a movie there.

MediaBlvd> Crusoe was attacked by pirates in the first episode. What other kinds of challenges will he face?

Jeff> We don’t just have pirates, but there are also cannibals and mutineers. A mutineer is a group of guys that take over a ship that’s commanded, in more of a military way. They mutiny and then take over the ship. They could possibly become pirates, but they don’t start off that way. They start off as a ship’s crew. So, you have two different types of characters there, with the pirates and the mutineers, and they’re both bad characters. They’re not necessarily interchangeable, but they both present a danger to Crusoe and Friday. And, we have a Spanish character, named Santana, who was part of the Guarda Costa, from the two-hour premiere episode. He manages to return to the island, redeemed. He helps Crusoe and Friday fight the cannibals. So, we have quite an interesting tapestry of various characters of the period, coming through the island, over a period of time. The mutineers, for instance, stay on the island because their ship is actually wrecked on the reef. While they repair it, they’re there for an arc of about four or five episodes, and we draw on them for stories as we go through that arc. Sometimes, they don’t figure very much into an episode, and other times they are a very integral part of the episode.

MediaBlvd> You’ve got different characters coming to the island, now and again, or getting shipwrecked on the island. How long can people keep coming to the island without Crusoe being able to get off, before it turns into Gilligan’s Island?

Jeff> That’s one of the reasons why we had the mutineers arc, which puts people on the island without having to come up, each week, with a different Gilligan’s Island type of character. What we’ve also done is go out of our way to develop four scripts where it’s really just Crusoe and Friday, together on the island. Those are very character, exploratory type shows between our two leads, in a situation on the island, whether it’s them against nature, or they’ve found an ancient civilization that leads them on some kind of an adventure, or it’s just the interpersonal adventure, such as Friday’s failure of a test when he was a young boy, trying to become a warrior. Something like that, in Friday’s character, motivates Crusoe to set up a whole series of tests and challenges between the two of them, in order to make Friday feel like he has become a warrior, finally. There’s a number of things to explore between Friday and Crusoe, as characters, without people being injected into the island life. The more you end up writing for characters, or developing characters, over the course of the initial episodes, the easier it is to evolve stories out of those characters. I think we can come up with at least four seasons worth of stories.

MediaBlvd> Philip, being American, how did you get the British accent down so well?

Philip> Actually, my mother is English, so it was something that was always around, as long as I can remember. When I graduated, I went to school in Belgrade, Montana, and lived there all of my life. So, when I graduated at 18, I moved to England from 18 to 21. I went to drama school for two years and it was definitely something that was on the curriculum. I’ve done a lot of work in England, over the last years, so it’s just something that came out.

MediaBlvd> You do a tremendous amount of your own stunt work for this. What are the physical challenges of this series, and have there been any injuries?

Philip> I don’t think we really knew what we were in for, when we started in York. This was supposed to be a nice, meandering drama, where we were riding horses and meeting people in pubs and having conversations. When we got to South Africa, it really came out of the blue, just how many stunts we would be doing. I have a really strict health regime, and I just really take care of myself, but we also have an incredible stunt team, who has really looked out for us. They give us the option to say yes or no, but most of the time, I do end up doing my own stunts. It just helps the character along. If you know what the character has done physically, you can go there emotionally as well. But, we’ve been pretty lucky so far. The doctors are treating my back a little bit, but that’s the first time something’s happened. In three months, we’ve been pretty fortunate.

MediaBlvd> What exactly are you doing to maintain that shape and be ready for all the action?

Philip> It’s probably more just eating healthy things and good foods. And, I do get up very early in the morning and work out. We have calls at 5:30 in the morning, so I’ll sometimes get up at 4:45 to get some work in, but I’m not doing anything crazy. I just wanted to do things that Robinson could’ve done on the island, so I’ve been running on the beach, and doing push-ups and pull-ups, and things like that.

MediaBlvd> Did you know anything about sword fighting before you got this part, or was it something you had to learn?

Philip> I did a lot of training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, where I went to drama school, and we had a wonderful stage combat department there. And then, actually working with the Royal Shakespeare company this last year, I played Edmund in King Lear and there were several fights in that. So, all of last year, I was sword fighting. And then, I finished off that year by doing a film, called Solomon Kane, which had another bit of sword fighting. I really enjoy that part of the work. That’s what kept me in drama school, on the days where I wasn’t enjoying it so much. I knew that we had fight classes coming up.

Sam> I’ve been on a very strict regimen as well. I’ve been on two glasses of wine a night, and it’s working very, very well indeed. It’s tremendous!

MediaBlvd> How do you think that you, personally, would fare on an island like this? Do you have survivor-like skills that you’d be able to use?

Philip> After we’re done filming this, I think I’d be better adapted to it. I grew up in Montana. I was fortunate enough to have a really outdoor upbringing, so I have camping skills and things like that. The things that Robinson Crusoe did are pretty brilliant. The way Daniel Defoe wrote the book, and the way Crusoe deals with things, are amazing. I’d like to think that I could fare well, but at the end of the day, you never know.

MediaBlvd> Is there something that you would be most afraid of, on an island like this, like bugs or something like that?

Philip> I’m okay with animals and insects, and storms and things like that. I think it’s just being alone for that long. You could probably start to lose your mind. When thinking about the character of Crusoe, I’ve thought about the things that start to eat away at him, and the biggest thing that I came up with would be just loneliness and being away from community, and being away from your friends and your family and the people we take for granted. Those would be the things that really would come back and haunt you, if you didn’t have those key elements in your life.

Sam> Nothing about the island would worry me except for my own company. I can’t figure anything more stultifying or dull. You always think, “Oh, I’d really like to be on my own and just have some quality time with myself.” And then, you get bored right away. That would freak me out.

MediaBlvd> Crusoe was stuck on the island for something like 28 years, which is a very, very long time. What’s the longest you’ve ever been stranded somewhere, for a period of time?

Philip> When I was in high school, we used to have pep rallies for the basketball team, and I was with either in the choir or the band. I remember going from Bozeman over to Billings, which is about a three-hour bus drive, and this massive storm came in, shutting Billings off from the rest of the state. We were actually there for about a week and a half. So, there was a lot of foosball and air hockey played, but it was good times. We missed a lot of school, and we just did a lot of things that didn’t involve sitting down at a table and learning math and English. It was great!

MediaBlvd> Philip, this role looks like a dream come true, for an actor. What are some of the challenges you encountered, with either the character, the set or the locations?

Philip> The biggest challenge that we’ve had so far is just the physical and the emotional stamina because we’ve had so much to shoot, in such a short amount of time. There’s been a lot of physical demand on everyone, not just the actors, but also on the crew, the grips, the  mechanic team, everybody. Melding those altogether, with coming home and learning eight or nine pages of dialogue for the following day, and knowing that you’ve got to incorporate a sword fight that you’ve learned two hours ago with some other stunts, have been big challenges. Those are challenges that you really couldn’t tackle until we got there. We were looking at character issues and emotional arcs. When the scripts came in, I would just pore over them. But, the biggest challenge has just been the physical and emotional demands. We actually had some crazy things happen while we were filming. South Africa had the biggest storm come through that they’ve ever had, in 100 years, and it destroyed some of our sets. It was an epic storm that wiped away some of our beaches and sets. We’ve all been challenged, in that way. Nature has been against us. You wake up the next day and go, “Well, gosh, this is what today’s offering, so let’s deal with it.”

MediaBlvd> Jeff, what is it like to film in South Africa, aside from the storms?

Jeff> It’s great to film in South Africa. It’s all about people, when it comes down to it. I’ve been on shoots where it was work, and I’ve been on shoots where it’s been a joy, and it was predominantly a joy because of the people you’re working with. That’s the experience we’ve had in South Africa. I can’t think of any other place where we would’ve had so much dedication, in terms of the hours we’ve worked and the weather that we’ve had to work in. It was very cold on Crusoe’s desert island, in the winter in South Africa, and it rained and we had storms, and everybody kept a great sense of humor and pushed through it. It’s been a fabulous experience.

MediaBlvd> Did you hire all of your key production crew in South Africa, or did you bring some of them from the United States or England?Jeff> This is basically a three-way co-production between Canada, the UK and South Africa, so there is a certain balance that we need to achieve. We brought our production designer down from the UK, who had worked in South Africa before, so that was a bonus. He knew all the key people we wanted to hire down there, so  we’ve been very fortunate. The South African crew, across the board, has just been so gung-ho and enthusiastic about what we were doing, and they delivered way beyond anything I could’ve hoped. It’s a testament to them that we’ve been able to achieve all the things that we’ve achieved.

MediaBlvd> Sam, you’ve done so many interesting roles, such as in Event Horizon, The Piano and The Tudors, and you do period roles particularly well. Do you enjoy doing period roles, versus more contemporary characters?

Sam> I don’t really think of things in terms of contemporary or historical. But, if you’re going to differentiate roles between bad guys and good guys, I’ve been leaning a bit towards the bad guy end of the spectrum lately. I’m not sure if that reflects something about me or not, but they’re a lot of fun to play. I’m really enjoying Blackthorn because he’s a guy that has many, many layers to him. He’s a conflicts guy. His predominant passion is greed, and a lot of us can relate to that. You can unfortunately see the effects of greed on the world, in these last few weeks. Blackthorn is a fun guy to play, and I’m enjoying every minute of it.

MediaBlvd> If the series is successful and you went for as many as four seasons, what would be the long arc for it?

Jeff> In terms of the flashbacks, the B-story in the UK really doesn’t have an end to it. You’ll see that, as it evolves over the course of the 13 episodes. That’s left us with plenty of room to move, as far as storytelling is concerned, back in London. Without giving away anything, as far as the Blackthorn character is concerned, he does come to the island and he does leave. And then, as far as the A-story is concerned, we feel like we’ve had some very strong success in telling stories, just with our two main characters, let alone all the other characters that we’ve brought to the island. The island is a very big, unexplored place, so who knows what else lurks in the jungles out there. As we see what degree of success we have, if it means breaking more stories, I’m not too concerned about our ability to do so, now that we’ve done the 13.