According to Sam Fell, co-director of Flushed Away with David Bowers, Spike and his cohort in crime Whitey (voiced by Bill Nighy) are a couple of bumbling bad guys who don't really have either the brains or the talent to do much harm. "[They're] really just a couple of idiots," says Fell. "They really want to be bad guys, but they're just not any good at being bad."
The Appeal of Flushed Away: “Knowing it was Aardman was a big draw, of course," explains Serkis. "And then the script, you know? I thought it was a really great story with cool characters. I just liked the feel of it. I knew it was in the underworld and sewers. I just thought it was a really great world to play in. I mean, nearly always it’s the script. It was in this case.”
Voice Work vs Performance Capture: Working on an animated film is a much less arduous process than Serkis’ performance capture work in Lord of the Rings and King Kong. “It was very different. It was quite odd because, yeah, usually as you know I’m quite used to working a long time on a character, being involved in it and seeing it progress day to day. But what I found about this is that you do three hours of recording when we started shooting and then six months would go by – and I was still working on King Kong, actually. Then I’d come back, do another three hours and go away for another six months. I’ve never done a voice over for animation before so it was neat to me.”
Serkis is used to having his entire performance captured and then manipulated. Although Flushed Away only involved his voice, Serkis couldn’t help but be tempted to act out the part. “Yeah, you do to get into character. There’s no way you can stop, really. You don’t just stand there at the rostrum and read the script, you know? Well certainly I can’t do that. It is part of the energy. Also, Spike is a pretty energized character too, so that’s kind of pretty much jumping about all over the place.”
Figuring Out How to Play a Rat: Serkis and the other members of the voice cast were shown sculptures of their characters in order to help them figure out how to bring the creatures to life on screen. “They showed us concept art and little sculptures as well, kind of proper claymation sculptures. The Aardman style mixing with CG for the first time… I think when they build all those maquettes it’s kind of pretty much like they would have done in claymation style. That was a really great way of being able to get inside the character, to have that three dimensional thing to put on a turntable and get from.”
The Process of Developing Spike’s Voice: Serkis lucked out when it came time to deciding exactly what Spike would sound like. “In fact, my first session, I was really lucky because I got to work with Bill Nighy. When we both had our first day, we were able to sort of pitch each other our voices – sort of counterpunch each other. Whitey, obviously he’s big and slow and sort of lumbering. Spike is like a non-stop attack and a highly energized neurosis so we were able to pitch our voices.
You come up with it, really, as the actor and then the director will say, ‘Yeah, okay, let’s try making it a bit more nasal. Let’s try pulling it to the back of the throat a bit more.’ But I had this idea of Spike being quite nasal, really, and quite toothy. He kind of grinds his teeth.”
Adding to the Dialogue: “You end up kind of doing what’s there on the script and then you start riffing. You start playing and little bits come out that are incorporated. I think he became more sort of a mommy’s boy, actually. He sort of developed into it. He thought he was a big shot. He probably watched too many rat gangster movies, but actually he goes home and his momma irons his socks and his underpants. He can’t really cope with the real world. He likes to boss people around, but then most people do with low self-esteem, which I think he has.”
A Howling Good Time: Spike endures a lot of pain in the film and Serkis had to experiment with different noises to get that particular feeling right. Serkis joked, “He always sets out to cause other people pain, but it always backfires on him, you know? I did a lot of grunts and falls and screams and shouts and everything.”
Page 2: Andy Serkis on Researching Roles, Performance Capture Work, and What's Happening with The Hobbit
