A special thank you goes out to Walt Disney Studios for providing this information, photos, as well as the invitation to THE JUNGLE BOOK Premiere and event.
Photo by Becky Fry/My Sparkling Life for Disney
When you get an opportunity to be in the presence of Sir Ben Kingsley, you definitely savor the moment. This accomplished actor impacted me as a young woman after seeing Schindler’s List, and to this day I can watch that film over and over again and be moved to emotion each and every time.
With a long history of great films, TV Series, numerous award nominations, and an Oscar Win for the film Gandhi* I have come to the conclusion that when Sir Ben Kingsley is getting involved in a film, it is definitely worth taking a look at. He was obviously right again, and made another great choice in Disney’s The Jungle Book.
Photo credit Disney
As we began our interview, Sir Ben Kingsley immediately shared his thoughts about this reenvisioned version of The Jungle Book. He explained, “I think it’s very close to what Rudyard Kipling envisioned, which was an enormous leap in his imagination, a child literally living with and talking with animals. (He had not seen the film in it’s entirety yet) I think from what I’ve seen that’s what you experience on the screen here. With all respect to its predecessor in the ’60’s, that was an animated cartoon talking to animated cartoons, but this is a little boy (Neel Sethi), and we are blessed with him, Neel, he’s amazing, literally you see is he’s with animals, which is wonderful.”
We then asked: How do you approach coming into a character? How do you get ready to become Bagheera?
He responded, “I think it varies, because either I’m propelled towards a character through recognition or through curiosity. Sometimes if neither of them are there, curiosity has to be there, because if I’m not curious about him, I haven’t played a her yet [With laughter] Oh, I did in Box Trolls! Then of course that won’t be contagious and the audience won’t be curious. I started my third job as a stage actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he (Shakespeare) still is the maestro of storytelling and of putting patterns of human behavior on the stage, on the screen, whichever. I think that if I can feel that there’s a genuine pattern of recognizable human behavior, even a little bit with animals, that human element which is healing, which provides an explanation, comfort, entertainment, all of the above, then I’d love to be part of it. If I feel that it’s just an invention, an obstruction, that it doesn’t have anything to do with us, then it doesn’t really excite me at all. It has to have that human ingredient to it, that moves us forward even a tiny bit as as a tribe or species.”
Photo by Becky Fry/My Sparkling Life for Disney
The next question was: Did you, in this contemporary production, have to navigate the Indian-ness, or did you just treat it as a childhood classic?
Ben, elaborated, “When I first discussed it with Jon Favreau, I recognized that Bagheera was military, in the Indian Army certainly then, and then in post-colonial times, British and Indian officers serving in the Indian Army. I’ve recently played in Sikh in Learning To Drive, and I’m fascinated by that Indian military combination. So I offered an Indian accent as Bagheera, to play him as an Indian Colonel or General, and he felt that it didn’t fit the universality of the appeal of the story, that it might make it a province of one particular period of history, culture, hierarchy. So I think he made a very good choice in making it more, universal, more accessible. Having said that, there’s still the ghost of the Indian colonel in my performance… I think it’s in his, tough but very affectionate love. I did actually embark on an Indian accent and I saw Jon Favreau’s face slowly fall.”
Photo by Becky Fry/My Sparkling Life for Disney
Q: Knowing that Mowgli was raised by the wolves, did you see Bagheera as more of a father figure to him than Akela?
He explained, “No I didn’t see him as a father figure at all. I did see him in military terms that, it was as if I was training a young cadet into how to survive in, in particular circumstances. I liked Jon’s version of this which is close to Kipling’s, which is a book and a story that prepares a young person for life. You have to prepare young people for life by lovingly introducing them to the fact that there is light and shade, that both exist side-by-side in life, and that if you, dilute, distort, sugarcoat, sentimentalize everything in the hope that you’re gonna keep a child’s attention, you won’t. You get the child’s attention, immediately it goes dark. Whenever I read stories to my children, they would always ask me to read the scary bits over and over again, even as they pull the covers to their faces. They would love it, because they were hearing it in a safe place. That’s the ingredient. If they, if they are introduced to that dark side of life in a really safe environment by their parents, then it’s fun.”
Photo credit Disney
It was then asked: In the original film, Bagheera seems a little more irritated with Mowgli than caring about him. In the new movie it appears as though he cares more about him, even as he’s introducing him to his dark spaces. Did you use your experiences as a parent in that, or was that written?
Ben expressed his thoughts, “I’m sure it’s inevitable to use one’s experiences as a parent, but I think in Kipling’s time, which was colonial Britain, and I think actually Victoria might still have been on the throne when he wrote the novel which is extraordinary, you did discipline your children through irritation and lack of empathy and impatience, rather than love and encouragement. I think that if we want to translate it into the 21st Century, then yes there is irritation in Bagheera, and there are those limits that he won’t let the boy transcend, but that it’s done with more empathy and more affection rather than from the book of rules. So there is a shift.”
Photo by: Sarah Dunn. ©2016 Disney
We then asked: Which character do you personally relate to the most? Is it Bagheera or a little more free spirited Baloo?
He shared, “I think I’m both. I think we’re all both. I think that when you see, read a great novel or see a film like this, you realize that they all represent different aspects of you. As these animals all represent different challenges to the central challenge of the young boy, which growing up, adolescence and adulthood, massive challenges. I think that all the characters are, we’ll find that they’re all part of us rather than any one individual character, that we change according to the people in front of us, to Dads and Moms and that’s how we approach them.”
Photo credit Disney
We then inquired : Which is tougher for you, onscreen acting or voice? And does voice bring particular challenges to you?
Ben explained, “I go back to Shakespeare and, the density of that text, and how you have to give every word its appropriate weight and emphasis. In a great speech, I play Hamlet, for example, so that I do enjoy and find it empowering and important, urgent, to express things vocally. It’s part of my DNA, it’s part of my training, but then to surrender one’s whole physical side to an animating genius who is thousands of miles away and maybe there’s 12 of them working on Bagheera’s body, you know that’s very exciting and makes it very imperative that I explain to them through my voice, so that they can hear what I’m doing and they can animate to my voice. It’s all very exciting, story telling for me is the essential thing, if I’m telling a story with my voice or my voice and my body or my voice, my body and my accent, and in a costume and then all sorts of things added on, the essential is the story telling.”
Photo by Becky Fry/My Sparkling Life for Disney
We then asked: Could you tell us a little bit about the recording process and how long it took?
He detailed for us, “It was spread out over at least a year. As we developed it with Jon into the story, he was able to show us more and more what our physical shape would be on screen. I did have two days with the boy (Neel), which was great so we were able to establish that dynamic between us and then keep that as part of our performance even when we were separated by geographics. You really cannot embark on a massive project like this unless you’re director, he or she, has amazing taste and judgment. Jon has both and therefore, he has the intelligence to see the bigger picture always in his head, he was a wonderful guide as to tone, timbre and pitch in the film. So it was really a wonderful experience.”
Photo by Becky Fry/My Sparkling Life for Disney
After listening to his enthusiasm for this film and his profession, I can’t wait to see what is up next for Sir Ben Kingsley.
Want to see what other contributors to this film had to say? Visit Strength In A Mother: The Jungle Book Interview With Lupita Nyong’o and Giancarlo Esposito and Strength In Family: An Interview With Director Jon Favreau and Neel Sethi of The Jungle Book.
About The Jungle Book:
Directed by Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”), based on Rudyard Kipling’s timeless stories and inspired by Disney’s classic animated film “The Jungle Book”, this all-new live-action epic adventure about Mowgli (newcomer Neel Sethi), a man-cub who’s been raised by a family of wolves.
But Mowgli finds he is no longer welcome in the jungle when fearsome tiger Shere Khan (voice of Idris Elba), who bears the scars of Man, promises to eliminate what he sees as a threat.
Urged to abandon the only home he’s ever known, Mowgli embarks on a captivating journey of self-discovery, guided by panther-turned-stern mentor Bagheera (voice of Ben Kingsley), and the free-spirited bear Baloo (voice of Bill Murray).
Along the way, Mowgli encounters jungle creatures who don’t exactly have his best interests at heart, including Kaa (voice of Scarlett Johansson), a python whose seductive voice and gaze hypnotizes the man-cub, and the smooth-talking King Louie (voice of Christopher Walken), who tries to coerce Mowgli into giving up the secret to the elusive and deadly red flower: fire.
The all-star cast also includes Lupita Nyong’o as the voice of the fiercely protective mother wolf Raksha, and Giancarlo Esposito as the voice of wolf pack’s alpha male Akela.
The Jungle Book is in theaters April 15 in 3D, RealD and IMAX 3D! For more information about the film, check out Disney.com/thejunglebook, also follow along on Facebook at facebook.com/DisneyJungleBook, and Twitter twitter.com/
Want to know more details about the film? Be sure to check out my adventures in Los Angeles as part of The Jungle Book Red Carpet and Premiere Event.
Carlee @ FLL
*(Source imdb.com)
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