Ralph Ineson reveals the secrets of playing the Green Knight

When the legendary Green Knight first appears on screen in David Lowery’s haunting medieval fable The green knight, the public is unlikely to recognize the actor under all layers of costume and makeup. But that penny could drop for longtime movie fans when the creature first spoke. British actor Ralph Ineson has a deep, distinctive voice, a low rumble almost to the edge of the ear. In a recent interview with Polygon, Ineson says that was what Lowery was looking for when he chose the Knight.

“The first discussion was about how I knew he liked my voice, he wanted my voice for the character,” he says. “Then I was very interested in emphasizing that I didn’t want it to be a CGI character, or a fully prosthetic character. I wanted to find a performance within the design I had. “

Fans of the genre have seen Ineson in pretty much everything they love, even if they didn’t realize it. He played minor roles in game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars: The Last Jediand the Harry Potter movies, among many other movies. Most distinctively, he plays the puritan separatist William in Robert Eggers’ impressive period horror piece. The witch, leading an obedient and doomed family (including his Green knight co-star Kate Dickie as William’s wife, Katherine) in the desert to live away from the corruption she sees in the local settlement. His main role in The green knight it is one of its most important and distinctive roles. Even if no one can really see his face, he’s still setting the tone for the film, as a magical forest spirit summoned to challenge future young knight Gawain (Dev Patel) to the honor contest that drives the story.

“It was a really weird experience,” says Ineson, about donning a ton of latex rubber and armor for the role. “In a way, it was incredibly uncomfortable, but there’s no getting around it. There is no way for an actor to play such a character in practice and make it a comfortable and enjoyable experience. I think you have to accept it.

“I really couldn’t open my mouth wide enough to eat. I had to use a straw to eat or drink. He had holes in his nostrils and he had contact lenses for his very itchy eyes. So I was basically looking through tears all day. I sound like a complaining actor. But it was the summer of 2019, so he forgot about that a long time ago. I don’t remember the pain. I’m just looking at the really nice reviews and I’m like ‘Hee hee!’ “

But he says the crew took care of him “incredibly”, trying to make him feel comfortable in the outfit. “People found ways to help me rest: the helmet weighed more on one side than the other, so after a few hours of supporting that weight, I got pretty tired. They found me something like a dentist’s chair, so I could sit between scenes and not have to lift my head. There was a wonderful woman who took care of my contact lenses, and I constantly took them out and put them back on, because I was terribly sensitive to them, like the sensitive actor that I am. “

The costume and makeup, Ineson says, took three and a half hours to apply and an hour to come off, but she thinks it was worth the effort. “The first day I was on set was the day I entered Camelot on horseback. So the first time most people saw me, the cast, the supporting artists, whoever, it was the first rehearsal. So, in order to see the effect this look had on people the first time they saw it, there were children almost crying. The extra kids were just terrified. So from that point on, it was like, ‘Oh, I’m on to something here. I don’t have to worry about making it scary, making it intimidating. Correct. All of that is done by me. I just have to find the acting, find the fun in it. ‘

Costume prosthetics, designed by another game of Thrones Veteran Barrie Gower was particularly difficult for Ineson, but he says his limitations helped him find the character. “Being in those prosthetics, with my ears covered and my glasses on, cut off a lot of my senses. I had to move so slowly. That movement, the pace at which I moved, was not deliberate. That was the rhythm that I had to move, due to restriction. It helped me find physicality. “

“But also, in the ending in the Green Chapel, all my senses were cut off. In that costume, I couldn’t eat, so I couldn’t taste anything. I couldn’t hear anything, it was like being underwater, because my ears were covered in latex. He had very poor vision from the glasses. It was all about smell. And when I walked to the Green Chapel, to the place in this Irish forest, the wild garlic was starting to bloom. So walking through it, with my only sense of being an absolutely massive buzz, getting hit by this wild garlic, it really felt like something from nature. It was pretty overwhelming, in so many strange ways. I never really expected to find a character through smell. But I really did. “

Ineson says her discussions with Lowery focused primarily on “the practicalities of what I could do with that disguise,” given his restrictions. But while most of the latex on the head and body parts was an eighth of an inch thick, the latex around the eyes and mouth, “you know, the parts of your face that you wear as an actor,” they were looser “in places as thick as a condom, but with large chunks of crust.”

Ineson says that Lowery allowed her a lot of leeway to experiment with the character, finding that the only dead end came every time she tried to emphasize the monstrous side of the Knight. That was “just silly,” he says. “Every time I leaned in to try to make it scary, it just didn’t make sense. It’s already scary! Whenever I tried to make my performance great, tried to make my voice deeper or make it more Shakespearean, I felt ridiculous. It was so much more interesting for him to be a huge, intimidating, gloomy-looking figure, but also to be someone who is actually quite funny. If you had a pint with him, it would be quite fun. Behind the mask of the Green Knight, I think there is great joy. “

In the movie, that joy is mostly centered on Gawain, whom Ineson describes as an “irresponsible jerk” who impressed him when Dev Patel turned him into a lovable character. “That performance is one of the best I have had the privilege of witnessing up close. I’ve worked with some amazing actors, but Dev as Gawain is just amazing, so moving and so true, so real and so vulnerable. […] I mean, obviously helped by the fact that he is one of the most beautiful men in the world. “

Lowery and Ineson spent a lot of time discussing how the Green Knight would be “authentically loving” towards Gawain, and how the character’s conflict between humor and horror was meant to be ambiguous to the audience. “We were both very on the same page at the beginning that the most interesting thing about the Green Knight in this world was his joy. He’s a men’s tester, and he likes that. And that’s a bit confusing. We are looking, is he really nice or is he ruthless and horrible? You really don’t know. Because there are glimpses of him being a lovable, fatherly, loving figure, but he’s obviously about to cut your head off, so it’s a strange dichotomy. “

Ineson describes the Green Knight as “a rope merchant”, a “mischievous” figure who reminds her of her own family. “I felt there was a certain soul in him that was almost fatherly, in a strange way. He would challenge Gawain because he wanted the best version of him. So I wanted to get that out. I have a 22-year-old son, so I identified with the character, I want to push [Gawain]but I want to push him for the right reasons, I want a certain care and love to always manifest. I think the challenge was to bring out that mocking quality, to make fun of his honor and his bravery, making him be brave. I thought it was important that it was poignant, although it obviously ends up being pretty scary in the end. “

The end of The green knight, which is clearly designed to draw people out of the theater to discuss and debate what happens next, stems directly from that contradiction, as far as Ineson is concerned. But he cautions against trying to predict the outcome through the original medieval poem that Lowery adapted for the film.

“We talked about a lot of things, with what the Green Knight would get from Gawain in that ending sequence,” says Ineson. “I have talked to some people about the film recently and I have found that people want to learn a lot from the poem and from its intellectual and historical readings. […] But from my point of view, this is very much David’s interpretation. And although I knew the legend of The Green Knight and many Arthurian stories, which I liked very much as a child, I did not know the poem. And I deliberately didn’t go into that. “He says he wanted Lowery’s script to be the” holy text “and he didn’t want to muddy that interpretation by incorporating outside elements.

“In my opinion, movie acting can be very complicated,” says Ineson. “If I start incorporating elements of the original Green Knight, there will be hour-long discussions, with David saying, ‘No, the reason I’m not going in that direction is this, this and is. And I think those are not really interesting discussions for actors and directors. “

Ineson says she prefers to let a director define a vision for her work and then be part of it: “’Okay, this is the character, how do you want me to play it?’ I think acting is much simpler than what people sometimes try to do. […] I think the best performances tend to be obtained from the actors by really good filmmakers, when the actors give themselves up and realize that the job is quite simple. It is essentially existing in the most authentic and real way, in that moment, on set, and letting a great filmmaker do whatever he wants with it. ”