Martin Freeman Breaks Down His Career, from 'The Hobbit' to 'Black Panther'

[gentle orchestral music] And I phoned my agent,

I said, Did we hear anything

about 'Sherlock' by the way?

He said, Well actually yes we did.

They didn't really feel you were that into it.

I was like, Well, why, what do you mean?

He said, Well, they just felt you

hadn't really turned up.

You know, I was like [beep].

Well, can you please let them know I'm really interested.

I mean, the script is brilliant.

Sorry they felt that.

Let me, you know, do it again.

I can't believe this,

you don't accept any responsibility whatsoever

for your brother's death, do you?

If you're so good at asking questions, ask Martin.

You'll get more out of him than me.

Can I go yet?

Every actor that came out of drama school

was either on The Bill or Casualty or both.

And it was kind of like it was a,

it was extended drama school for people.

It was my first time in front of a camera

and I think it probably shows.

I had that slight deer in the headlights thing,

I think, a little bit.

Yeah, I was playing a small time crook.

I used to go for a lot of small time crooks

before I became lovable, boy next door [chuckling].

You know, I used to play

and go out for weirdos and scumbags.

But I've been out of drama school

for one year at that time.

I filmed it in 1996

and I'd come out of drama school in 1995.

And I was in the midst of doing a lot of theater

and going up for the occasional bit of TV.

No, not on this, though.

You can't do it on this.

It's actually-- You gotta,

no, yeah, oh no yeah, do it. All that stuff as well.

Oh, yeah, the, uh, [rolling tongue]

all that sort of stuff. Just like take control

of the body and it's all that now, isn't it?

Busy?

Yeah, just getting up the morale.

Can we have a chat? Yeah.

I'd met Ricky Gervais on a sketch show called Bruiser

for the BBC that he wrote for.

It was six of us,

containing some fantastic British comedy talent

who have gone on to much bigger and better things,

including Olivia Coleman.

So, I did a lot of sketches with Olivia Coleman

and even then she was very good.

I was then called in to do this audition for The Office.

I first auditioned for Gareth Keenan,

who was then played by Mackenzie Crook afterwards.

But I read for Gareth and then I was on the way out.

And either Steve Merchant or Ash Atalla, the producer,

said, Actually, I think we should get

Martin to read for Tim.

I was like, Okay, 'cause I'd read the whole script.

I thought the script was really, really good.

So, I came back, read for Tim,

and there was a bit of a, oh, that might work better.

So, I thought, yeah, thank God,

they'd stopped me from leaving the room.

I probably wouldn't have got Gareth

'cause Mackenzie's much better casting as Gareth.

You know, Ricky and Steve let me have a couple of,

I guess a couple of episodes, before,

rough cuts of episodes.

I remember showing it to a couple of people

who I cared about and they were impressed.

Obviously, it's not the first mock documentary thing ever.

Of course, it's not.

But it was, I think, one of the best executed of that kind.

And certainly, in 2001, before it had come out,

there wasn't really anything like that

on television at time at all.

And again, you know, Spinal Tap is still the best.

But we were in their shadow in trying to obey

the things that they had learned and done well.

I was very excited by it.

He's gonna get himself killed.

Yeah, yeah, G, it's the LAPD, man.

Yeah, and?

[laughs] Oh, man, you are a bad mo-fo, man.

That was my first film.

That was my first movie.

And Ali G had a kind of, had a television life in the UK.

And it was very popular.

It was on channel four and everyone used to

talk about this character.

It was amazing and Who's this guy?

Oh, apparently, he's some guy

who went to Cambridge, really, like.

So, a little bit more kinda of was leaking out

about who Sacha Baron Cohen was.

I'd just finished shooting The Office

and then I was doing Ali G

and it was very exciting.

Yeah, I felt vaguely successful,

do you know what I mean?

And I was, you know, so I played Ricky C,

Ali G's best mate.

It was ludicrous, very silly [chuckles].

There was a tiny bit of improv.

There were improv moments, definitely,

an improve moment in the scene that ended up

as a scene in the film where cut wasn't called

and me and Sacha just did

a lot of rapping and beat boxing in a car.

A to the L [Martin beat boxing]

to the I to the G,

Ali G, that's me, that's me.

A to the L to the I to the G,

that G, that's me, that's me.

R to I to the C to the K to the Y,

that's Ricky C.

Ricky C, to the C, to the C, Ricky C.

Oh, wait a second.

I's gonna be late for my class.

Let's go.

To be fair, it's a good scene.

Did I get co-writing credit?

Did I [beep]?

Did I [beep]?

No, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sacha and Dan Mazer, who's like his co-creator, I suppose,

and his sort of spirit animal were, you know,

really funny blokes and clever guys.

And I liked them a lot.

Probably the worst costume I've ever had, I think, yeah.

Lurid, some would say, very, very lurid colors.

I wasn't gonna win any best-dressed awards for that.

Could you take the top off this time?

Lighting and camera need to know

when we're actually gonna see the nipples

and when we're not.

Yes, okay, right.

At least it's nice and warm in here.

Yeah, it's not always the case, is it?

I was standing in for Brad Pitt once

on Seven Years in Tibet.

Yes, yeah.

Bloody freezing, right?

Sorry, guys, Right.

time's pretty tight

and we have to get the actors in.

Fine.

I promise, I won't look.

I got attached to Love Actually

because on the back of The Office

Richard Curtis wrote me a very nice and flattering letter

that contained a piece of chocolate in it,

like it as wrapped.

It wasn't, he hadn't just dropped it.

It was like a wrapped chocolate,

like presented to me saying,

I love 'The Office.'

I love what you did in 'The Office.'

It was amazing.

It sounds like a such a [beep].

I just realized how conceited that sounded.

I'm just telling ya how much Richard Curtis loved me.

What's wrong?

I'm just passing on facts.

You know, I think he's very good

at writing people flattering letters

when he's a fan of someone.

And he was a big fan of that show.

He's a big fan of The Office

so he wanted me to come along and play.

And so, we did a table read for Love Actually

with a lot of people who didn't end up being in it,

just some good comedy people.

Later on, down the line, it was cast properly,

and fortunately, I was still in the cast.

And I thought the beagle made it a dead giveaway.

Yes, well, so did I.

I guess most the people who come to

these sort of parties are drunken idiots.

What?

I said all these people [record scratches]

are idiots.

God.

I went up to read for Arthur Dent

for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

on a houseboat in London that belonged to

the business of Mick Goldsmith, the producer,

and Garth Jennings, the director.

And I had a fantastic time

with these two talking about the film.

They showed me some of the designs.

I think I read a bit as Arthur.

But what I was really thinking about

was the fact that my misses at the time

was waitin' for me in a car.

And so, I was feeling guilty that I should go,

because Amanda's parked and I didn't want her

to be too bored or whatever, you know.

So, I was kind of, Okay, yeah, it's all very well.

Yeah, you want me to be a lead in a film, great.

But I've really got to go.

So, yeah, I think one of the things

that saves me or saved me.

I'm quite good thinking about something else.

So, not thinking about, my God, Arthur Dent,

is a really sought after.

And I'm was hearing names in the ether

about, you know, who was being considered for Arthur Dent.

And some of them were Hollywood stars,

which I certainly was not.

So, I wasn't thinking, oh, this is a big thing.

I was thinking,

are we gonna get home in time for dinner?

Yeah, but Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel,

and Most Def, a he was.

Oh, that is, it was good fun.

It was really, really good fun.

Everyone looked really cool, apart from me.

I had fucking great sort of house coat,

like a big green toweling, terry toweling robe,

pajamas and old-man slippers.

Most looked amazing.

Zooey looked great.

Sam just looked like Elvis Presley and James Brown.

And there was me.

So, sometimes I got bit of an

inferiority complex about that.

I'm your best

friend? Man.

Yeah, of course you are.

Of course, you're my best friend.

I knew, as soon as I started reading it,

that this was unlike anything I was seeing

on television at that time.

Ben Cumberbatch was on board a show

and I kinda thought that was a very, very smart move

'cause what I'd seen him in, he was brilliant.

I went up for it twice.

I went up first time and apparently,

I subsequently learned, I'd been a bit of an idiot.

I can't remember what,

it was a bit of a schlep to the place.

And I think by the time I got there,

I'm quite easily grumpy.

And I think I accidentally sort of let that show.

And so, a couple of weeks later, I was in L.A. actually.

I said, Did we hear anything about 'Sherlock' by the way?

He said, Well, actually, yes we did.

They didn't really feel you were that into it.

I was like, Well, why?

What do you mean?

He said, Well, they just felt you hadn't really turned up.

You know, I was like [beep].

Well, can you please let them know I'm really interested.

I mean, the script is brilliant.

So, I went back again and read with Ben.

And as soon as we started reading,

it was clear that we had a chemistry

and the room sort of crackled a bit.

You could feel it.

The material elevated.

That's what you always try and do,

whatever department you're in.

I've always never really tried to make

any big delineation between television

and theater and film.

It was like, well, if I like the writing,

I'll do the writing,

'cause I'll go anywhere for good writing.

I haven't got Tom Cruise's film career.

So, it wasn't like, I'm only gonna do

massive leads in massive films.

Like, well, that wasn't what was happening anyway.

I think I've always dodged around a bit between the media.

No, I don't imagine anyone west of Re

would have much interest in adventures.

Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things.

[mailbox squeaking]

Make you late for dinner [chuckles].

[grumbles]

Well, good morning.

I remember going with half of Britain,

I went on tape for it, right?

And when I arrived in the casting room

to go on tape, rather like this,

there was a not from Guillermo del Toro,

who at the time, was slated to direct.

And the note was very nice.

It said, Look Martin, we want this

to be you so do your stuff,

but just so you know,

we think this is gonna be you.

And I was like, wow, how fantastic.

So, that relaxed me a lot, you know?

So, I was able to do my reading

and then sort of forget about it.

We were filming Sherlock.

We were filming the first series of Sherlock

so I sort of had that on my mind.

Guillermo left the project as director,

but again, he reached out and said,

Just so you know, it's not gonna be me,

but you are still the person we want in the frame.

You're gonna hear lots of different names.

Again, big Hollywood stars.

The artistic team want this to be you.

It's a massive vote of confidence.

As it went on, because I had to do series two of Sherlock,

I couldn't do Bilbo.

I couldn't do it.

The BBC weren't playing ball.

No one was interested on the Sherlock or the BBC side

of, okay, let's see how this could work out.

And I remember, distinctly,

I was outside the National Theater in London.

I was about to go and see play

and I said to my agent, Michael,

I'm gonna have to let this go, aren't I?

And he said, I'm really sorry.

I think you are 'cause we are contracted to do 'Sherlock.'

And then I was rehearsing a play

and I got a call from Michael saying,

There's been a change of plan.

Peter Jackson has rearranged the schedule of 'The Hobbit'

around you, so that you can start 'The Hobbit'

then go off and do 'Sherlock

and then finish 'The Hobbit' again.

And that was quite a phone call.

That was an amazing, amazing thing to hear,

'cause talk about a vote of confidence.

He could have had a lot of people doing Bilbo Baggins

and the fact that he had that much faith in me

was astonishing, really.

And the fact that he can move a schedule as titanic

as that, is gonna be a production like that,

which does not move quickly,

was kind of amazing.

And I felt like an extremely lucky person

and I'll always love Peter for that.

I've always had a quite a black and white feeling about,

no, it's over now, it's over.

Once you've made the thing,

everything is suppose to end.

And thank God, we recorded it, we pressed record.

But the last day I did get emotional

'cause a couple of people approached me.

And as soon as their voice started to break,

I was like, God, yeah, this has been

the last two and half years of my life,

with breaks.

But that's a huge chunk of anyone's life

and the old cliche, it's we were sort of a family, you know?

As you are when you're together for any length of time.

Geez, my wife, she's a, ah, hell.

Look, I think I, she's in the basement, yeah.

And, look, I'm freakin' out here.

I don't know what to do.

[Lorne] Lester, have you been a bad boy?

No, jeez, yeah.

The hammer in the, look, can you come over?

I'm on Willow Creek Drive, number 613.

Please, please?

[Lorne] Sure, Lester, I'll be right there.

Thank you, thank you.

I was shooting series three of Sherlock.

I was in hotel in Wales and my agent at the time said,

Look, we've got this American TV show.

So, I was like, Hang old, hold your horses.

We've agreed, I'm not gonna do it,

you know, because at that time, it was signing on

for seven years and all that.

I'm just never, I'm never gonna do that.

I'm a dad.

I'm never gonna do it.

So, he said, Yes but this is,

there's no signing on for seven years.

It's 10 episodes, it's a TV version of 'Fargo.'

I'm sending you the pilot.

And I read the pilot.

There's a scene between my character

and Billy Bob Thornton's character in an ER,

so compelling, so beautifully written.

This kind of weird, Svengali-type guy

reeling me in and disturbing me.

And like, I can immediately see how it would work.

And, of course, I was in.

You let him a man beat you in front of his children

to send them a message?

No, that's not.

Heck.

Just heck.

In my experience, if you let a man break your nose,

then next time he tries to break your spine.

Sam, no way.

I mean, I don't think.

The other thing was that,

probably 'cause of the physical thing of the accent,

the technical thing of the Minnesotan accent,

I wanted to reward their trust in me, actually, you know?

I got along very, very well with Billy Bob Thornton.

I would hesitate to say in any way

that I made him better.

But he certainly made me better

because he's very settled, a very calm presence on set.

We got on straight away.

I play a game on almost every set.

If you sitting around for more than 10 minutes,

I say, Okay, let's name bands and singers

beginning with the letter that the last one ended in.

So, if I say The Beatles, then you say

Susan and Banshees, S.

'Kay, Sex Pistols.

That's a lot of Ss, actually.

But so yeah, we just did that for ages.

He's a very underwhelmed man.

You know, he's not kinda of flighty presence.

And I liked that.

So, how's it feel

to spend that time, all that effort

and to see it fail so spectacularly?

Did it?

Well, I became part of the Marvel Universe

at the behest of Kevin Feige

saying, you know, they were interested

in me playing this part.

And that was at the end of 2014.

I was filming in Malta.

I don't think I'm imagining this.

I had a long conversation on the phone

with Kevin Feige, I think.

Very gracious and generous

and he wanted me to play this part.

And the idea was three films,

that was the idea.

Within that, I didn't really know any detail whatsoever.

Less than a year later, I was in both the States and Berlin

doing my fairly small bit on Civil War,

but introducing this part of Everett Ross

among a load of superheroes.

It was kind of funny.

It was funny.

[deep breathing]

Maria?

Maria dead.

Why aren't you in the hospital?

[swooshing]

[ghostly screaming]

I think it was

maybe my first out and out horror, I guess.

In the email that came with the script,

they referenced the film Sleuth.

It was an early '70s film starring Laurence Olivier

and Michael Caine, which for years, as a kid,

was my favorite film.

It was absolutely my favorite film.

And there's a part in it where Michael Caine's character

disguises himself as somebody else and then reveals,

which I always loved.

And the first time you see that film, it's a delight.

Inspector Plotter

becomes Inspector Doppler.

If you see what I mean.

So, there's an echo of that in Ghost Stories

as well as many other things.

But, they sort of had me at Sleuth really.

I was like, well, if you're pulling on that,

then let's go.

I was filming on that job for two weeks

and without question, without question,

it was one of the happiest two weeks of my working life.

It's very odd.

Trump was elected during it, right?

It was so strange, it was so odd.

It was like the very,

very surreal thing of coming on to set,

people looking at each other going,

What's going on?

What going on?

And so, then we had to make a film

that was sort of slightly less bizarre

than something that had just happened in real life.

It was, yeah.

[System] System rebooting in five, four, three, two, one.

System rebooting.

[engines whirring]

[lasers blasting]

[dramatic music]

[booming]

Yes, we did it!

[Woman] Great, now get out of there.

The first time I met Rian,

he came into the room and gave me a hug.

And I thought, we'll be all right here, you know?

I like huggers.

He's a very sweet man.

In many ways, I'm slightly outside,

I wasn't one of the cool guys, obviously, like.

I mean, Everett Ross is a cool character,

but he's outside of the world,

do you know what I mean?

So, he's outside of the main core of the story, I suppose.

Everyone was cool and we all got on.

It's like any other film.

I remember, at the time, people going,

What was it like being like the only? [chuckles].

It was like making a film with like

loads of people working very long hours

trying to get a film made.

It was exactly like that.

But the ratios were different.

Do you know what I mean?

The ratios was all reversed.

But it's a funny one with Everett

because he has real status in his job

and then he's put in a world

where he has very little status.

And he's completely fucking bamboozled

by what he's discovering about this hidden country.

It was good, I liked it.

I liked Atlanta.

Loads of dogs.

I really did, I walked around Atlanta a lot.

Yeah, it's a good place.

Very easy to put on weight in Atlanta, Jesus.

Southern fried portions, my God.

You know, it's American portions, generally.

Like, who else is coming?

Who else do you think is arriving?

I can start back as soon as possible.

And you're actually going to?

Well, what else am I going to do?

I'm a police officer.

[chair scraping floor]

It's all I know, Yvonne.

And I am [beep] good at it.

[Yvonne] Good for you, Steve.

[beep] everyone else.

It's directed by a man called Paul Andrew Williams

and written by Michael Jeff Pope,

who's one of our finest drama writers in the UK.

I play a real-life cop.

There was a case some years ago now

in the southwest of England, that was a double murder.

This cop was able to expose the fact

that this man confessed to two murders.

But because not every single T has been crossed

and I had been dotted by the book,

this cop's career, has sort of hit free fall

and now can't get a job in England.

The style of it, again, is about as real

and the sort of style of acting I really love,

was no acting.

Don't [beep] bring any acting to it

because the story itself is dramatic enough

and the events themselves are amazing enough

without you emoting all over them

or without you telling the audience

what to think with your performance.

I like exercises in stripping away everything.

I like working in that sort of area,

where the audience has to kinda keep up, I suppose.

Big acting is great, sometimes.

But for the purpose of this,

the way it's shot, it's shot in an almost docu-style.

Everything was handheld.

You almost miss little bits of it,

do you know what I mean?

Like, what did he say?

Oh, it's, you know?

Pulling hair is wrong, mate.

I mean all violence is wrong, but you know,

at least punching's a sport.

Is it?

Yes, boxing.

Boxing's in the Olympics.

Hair pulling isn't.

It would be funny if it was.

It really would be.

I had a dream one night.

Well, I dreamt the first scene of the first episode

and I said to my partner at the time, Amanda,

I said, I've had this dream,

and described it to her.

I said, I think there might be some,

there's a show in that somewhere, I think.

And she said, Yeah, I think there is.

You should talk to someone about that.

And she didn't mean a therapist.

She meant a TV executive.

I was put together with Chris Addison as potential director.

And then we got together with Simon Blackwell

as a potential writer.

And between us, we kind of worked up this,

what the show was gonna be, tonally, stories-wise.

Development meetings were basically like parental

therapy groups where you would admit to all the worst things

you've even done as father and all the things

that made you least proud of your own behavior,

with a lot of laughter.

As, you know, when you're admitting things

that you don't readily admit to,

it's sort of outrageous and reassuring

that it's not just you.

And I think you see a side of parenting

that everyone, I think, needs to talk about.

I really do believe that.

Everyone needs to talk about the difficulty of it

and the chaos of it as well as the joy

and the absolute love of it, you know?

That's the easy bit, man.

Like, loving your kids is the easy bit.

Wanting to die for your kids and kill for your,

that's the easy bit.

The hard bit is when you realize

that you are sometimes completely incapable

of doing the job well.

That's the hard bit,

'cause it doesn't make you feel great about yourself.

Sounds hilarious, doesn't it?

I've gotta see that show.

[crew laughing]