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Now, there is only
one man remaining who can even hope to protect his country,
avenge the elimination of all of the Secret Service’s
spies and uncover the fiend behind the fiendish plot to make
off with the lasting symbols of the once supreme British empire,
the Crown Jewels.
Enter Johnny English.
He knows no fear.
He knows no danger.
He knows nothing.
ABOUT THE CAST
ROWAN ATKINSON, the brilliant physical
comedian whose outrageous pratfalls and subversively innocent
humor have made him a star in hilarious classics ranging from
the cult U.K. series Blackadder to the worldwide hit Bean,
is back on the big screen as the title character in the family
comedy Johnny English—an office-bound junior intelligence
worker suddenly thrust into the spotlight when the Crown Jewels
are stolen from the Tower of London and a plot is uncovered
that threatens world security.
A bit unseasoned but extremely enthusiastic,
English is quickly outfitted with a highly-specialized automobile,
armed with the ultimate in intelligence gadgetry and allowed
highest access to the agency’s files. All of England’s
hopes are resting on English.
He isn’t the best they have…he’s
the only one left.
Starring along with Atkinson as Johnny English are international
star NATALIE IMBRUGLIA as Special Agent Lorna Campbell, renowned
comedian BEN MILLER as English’s sidekick, Bough, and
multiple Academy Award nominee JOHN MALKOVICH as the very
French and very crafty business magnate, Pascal Sauvage.
From Working Title Films (About a Boy, Bridget
Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, Four Wedding and a Funeral),
Johnny English is a spy comedy with thrills, chills and surprises
for the whole family. Directed by PETER HOWITT (Sliding Doors)
from an original screenplay by NEAL PURVIS & ROBERT WADE
and WILLIAM DAVIES, Johnny English is produced by TIM BEVAN,
ERIC FELLNER and MARK HUFFAM. The film is distributed worldwide
by Universal Pictures.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
It has become custom within the movie business
to adapt successful ventures from other mediums (books, plays,
television series, even popular songs) into film projects.
Johnny English may be one of the first to adapt a film version
from…a commercial.
Between 1992 and 1997, gifted comic actor
Atkinson was featured in a series of popular British credit
card Barclaycard commercials playing a somewhat accident-prone
spy. It was at that time Atkinson got the idea about making
a feature film based on the character from the television
advertisements.
Atkinson notes, “Those commercials,
even though they were only sixty-seconds long, had a movie
feel to them. They were elaborate and atmospheric with very
high production values. They just felt like a mini-movie,
so it seemed logical to make a maxi-movie.”
Having collaborated with Atkinson over a
number of years, producing The Tall Guy in the ‘80s and
Bean in the ‘90s, Working Title were looking for another
joint feature project with him.
“The idea of doing a film about this
British spy was perfect,” says producer Tim Bevan. “The
interesting thing about British movies is that the two genres
that seem to be successful are the spy movie and the comedy—this
was an opportunity to combine the two.”
A few years elapsed between the completion
of the television commercials and the actual start of the
film project, entitled Johnny English, during which time its
star and the Working Title producers were kept busy by a myriad
of separate projects.
Eventually, screenwriters Neal Purvis and
Robert Wade were commissioned to write the script. (In addition
to the pair’s experience with screenwriting in various
genres, their expertise within the spy genre—having penned
The World Is Not Enough—was highly regarded.)
Atkinson was also very involved from the beginning. He remembers,
“I helped to guide the scriptwriters. I was in on the
ground floor, as they say.”
Prior to Johnny English, Atkinson had been
in discussions with director Peter Howitt (who had helmed
the hit romantic comedy Sliding Doors) concerning a collaborative
project that never came to fruition. Now, with a script ready
for reading, the actor forwarded a copy to Howitt to get his
opinion on the screenplay.
Peter Howitt comments, “I was cutting
a film in Los Angeles and I got a call from Rowan, asking
if I would take a look at the script he had and give him my
thoughts. Then, after a couple of months of these scripts
arriving, Rowan said that he’d like me direct. It was
quite clear having seen the character and the commercials
that they were striking and memorable. Getting to work with
that character and Rowan was very exciting.”
Wade and Purvis worked on the script tirelessly
for two years before leaving the project to work on the next
Bond film, Die Another Day. Screenwriter William Davies was
brought on board to continue to hone the work and smooth the
transition from television commercial to page to the big screen.
On illustrating the character of English,
Atkinson says, “Johnny loves being a secret agent so
much that he oversteps himself. He always thinks that he’s
better at something than he actually is. He’s the sort
of person who, in a hurdle race, would clear the first hurdles
extremely well, but he’d be waving at the crowd and he
would trip and fall on the last hurdle. It’s the last
10 percent of his activity which is fatally flawed.”
Howitt concurs, “The character is quite
smart—he just makes errors in judgment along the way.
He’s not a stumbling, bumbling incompetent. Johnny English
isn’t really a liability, he just steps into the wrong
room or into the wrong place—but keeps on going because
he believes in himself.
There is always that little moment where
you see him think, ‘I got that wrong, I won’t let
anyone know.’ He just smoothes his way out of it, thinking,
‘Good, I got away with that.’ Rowan is genius at
this difficult type of not-so-obvious comedy.”
With the script in place, the filmmakers
set about finding the right actors for the roles. One key
piece of casting for the film was Bough, Johnny English’s
partner.
Howitt remembers, “The character of
Bough is very difficult to play as he is in every scene with
English. He cannot be the ‘straight’ man to English’s
‘funny’ man, but has to be someone who compliments
English’s behaviour and who is funny in his own right.
He has to represent the audience so that we have someone in
the room with English, experiencing all the things he is going
through.”
After a number of actors were seen, Ben
Miller proved to be the person that was right for part. “He
knocked us all away,” continues Howitt. “He is very
experienced at this type of comedy and he is really fantastic,
smart and clever and incredibly understated. He has made Bough
an individualistic character that you care about, who is funny
and who makes you laugh in a completely different way than
you laugh at Rowan.”
For Miller, the prospect of working with
Atkinson was a large factor in taking the role. He also responded
to the script and comments, “It’s incredibly funny.
What it gets right is the tone, which is very seductive. It
treads a very considered and accurate path between over-the-top
and reality. I felt it had a real sense of humour and a confidence
about it which I liked very much.”
The filmmakers were looking for a French
actor to play Pascal Sauvage so initially had overlooked John
Malkovich until his agent suggested him.
“John is the classic villain in a straight
film so we could not believe we had not thought of him before.
We went to meet him and he was great,” remembers Bevan.
Howitt enthuses, “Pascal is a mixed bag—like villains.
There is the good side, the icy side and
the crazy side. John is able to play all of those quite neatly
switching from one to another at a drop of a hat. He has a
good command of the camera and understanding of the language
of film because of his vast experience, so he does not need
to do very much to get an effect.”
A veteran of more than 70 films and 100
plays, Malkovich notes that he has, of course, played his
share of villains—but not one like Pascal, for several
reasons. He elaborates, “I’ve done a lot comedies
before, but really usually only in the theater, very few in
the cinema. I’m not sure that the characters are always
entirely new, but the stories are new and the people you work
with are new. And a director might ask you to do something
you’ve never done before.”
Additionally, this is the first time Malkovich
has had to speak English with a French accent, which did not
prove a problem—he has lived for several years in the
country and completed numerous films in French.
Did he aim for a “realistic” French
accent? The actor muses, “Well, realistic, it depends,
of course. You can meet French people who speak English quite
well. And you can meet many others who, when they speak English,
it’s completely undecipherable. Pascal isn’t someone
utterly fluent in English. For example, I have a friend who’s
lived in New York well over 20 years. And she still has her
little French accent. I have no idea why, but she does.”
“John catches it perfectly,” says
Atkinson. “He is so languid and, of course, living in
France, he has some sort of inside track to the whole way
French people think and speak… so he is as perfect casting
as we could have hoped for.”
On working with Atkinson, Malkovich observes,
“He’s really fun to watch. All accomplished comics
always seem to be incredibly serious, and thoughtful, and
a perfectionist, as Rowan is. I think he’s very bright,
he has a fantastic face, a kind of great comic face. He’s
quite exact and specific in his choices. And he’s sort
of truthful and painful, because I really believe part of
what we laugh at in comedy is the recognition of pain. It’s
the recognition of our own ludicrousness, our own failing
and inadequacies.”
Central to the success of the film was the
casting of a strong and intelligent actress in the role of
Lorna. Australian singer Natalie Imbruglia had only recently
decided that she would like to juggle her singing career with
acting when she received a copy of the script through her
music company and was called in for a reading.
Her draw to the project was based on specifics. Imbruglia
remembers, “What initially drew me to Johnny English
were Rowan Atkinson and John Malkovich. Then I read the script
and it made me laugh—and then I definitely wanted to
play Lorna.”
“Although this is Natalie’s first
feature, she’d been on television for some time before
becoming a singing star. We tested a lot of actresses, and
Natalie scored the part on merit. I mean, we didn’t just
cast her because we thought the lads would fancy her—although
there’s a good chance they will,” the director says
with a smile.
It was a welcome challenge for Imbruglia
to combine shooting a film while continuing to perform and
support her latest album. She says, “I really enjoyed
the fact that I could do both. It has been a testing period
because, at the time, I had a single coming out. I would do
a couple of days shooting the film and then I would have to
perform on Top of the Pops. It was a bit surreal, but I started
to get the hang of it. I think it would be nice if I could
juggle the two without spreading myself too thin.”
Atkinson felt Imbruglia brought just the
right note to the proceedings. He says, “She fitted in
well and was a delight to work with. The important thing about
all the casting apart from Johnny English is the dynamic between
English and whatever character he is playing against. There
is a lovely dynamic between the slightly tense but over-confident
English and that sort of languid evil that John Malkovich
brings to Sauvage. In the same sense it is that dynamic that
Natalie brings—a kind of crisp common sense. It is a
good contrast to this man who likes to be rather theatrical
and Lorna is not at all theatrical.”
For her, that ‘non-theatrical’
style was the key to playing a comedy. Natalie offers, “How
I approached the comedy is something that was discussed before
I even auditioned—I’m just playing straight. I think
that’s what makes it more funny. The difficult thing
there is to not laugh, because Rowan’s so hilarious.
And I kept getting in trouble for giggling. It’s very,
very hard to control yourself when you get a bit giddy after
you’ve been working all day.”
An impressive slate of talent in front of
and behind the camera were locked into place before shooting
began. Rounding out the cast were such accomplished British
actors as Tim Pigott-Smith (Remains of the Day), Oliver Ford
Davies (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones)
and Greg Wise (Sense and Sensibility). Impressive behind-the-camera
talent included director of photography Remi Adefarasin (About
a Boy, Elizabeth), production designer Chris Seagers (Spy
Game) and costume designer Jill Taylor (Sliding Doors, The
Full Monty).
With script, cast and crew in place, Johnny
English started principal photography in July of 2002. The
film shot for 14 weeks, filming at Shepperton Studios, on
location in London and St. Albans, and finally setting down
in Monte Carlo for two days to complete filming the final
scene.
During the course of filming, Atkinson and
Imbruglia got involved in their own stunts. Supervised by
stunt co-ordinator Paul Jennings, Atkinson found himself parachuting
and completing almost all the driving stunts in the Aston
Martin DB7 Vantage. Lastly, he had to spend hours suspended
from a cable from the ceiling of St. Albans Cathedral (posing
as Westminster Abbey) while filming the climax of the movie.
“I know how professional Rowan is in his application
to work and was constantly surprised at what he was prepared
to do to get the shots required,” comments Jennings.
Atkinson explains, “I’m certainly
not someone who insists on doing his own stunts in order to
say that I do my own stunts. I was very keen, however, to
do as much of the stunt driving as I could, as I love cars.
But there was a scene which I would not have been seen dead
doing. Luckily, I have a very good stunt double, Rob Inch,
who had to be suspended over the roof of Canary Wharf, staggering
along the top and lurching right over the edge. And the camera
comes right over the top of him and looks down past him to
the ground. It’s a fantastic shot. Rob later told me
he was terrified, and I thought, ‘If you’re terrified,
there is certainly no point in me even considering a stunt
like that.’”
Imbruglia performed extremely well in her
fight sequence, as she was intent upon executing as much of
it as she could with minimal use of a stunt double. She also
trained to drive a full size motorbike (a Triumph); the filmmakers
were reluctant to allow the diminutive performer to attempt
to control the Triumph, but Imbruglia was insistent. After
learning on a smaller bike, she graduated to the larger motorcycle.
Jennings offers, “Natalie did so well we ended up letting
her ride the Triumph and eventually shot her riding that bike—although
we did use a double for the faster sequences.”
The actress recalls, “The fight scenes
were really great. I do a bit of kickboxing in my spare time
so I really enjoyed that head butting of walls! Lorna’s
a fun role to play. You know, I get to do so many different
things. I’ve gotten to dance, to fight, to ride motorbikes.
What more could a girl from Australia ask for?”
Release Date: 11/04/03
Certificate: TBC
Running Time: TBC
Distributor: UIP
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