Developing a Back-Story: “There is a huge back-story but it’s all revealed in Pirates 3. You know, she has her own reasons for doing what she’s doing in Pirates 2. P2 is just an introduction for the character and in P3 she’s throughout [it]. She actually goes on a journey with all the different characters.”
Harris wasn’t fully aware of her character’s arc going into filming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. “No, I had to do 2 without knowing what was happening in 3. But Gore did brief me, which was a little hard because there is so much that happens with her in Pirates of the Caribbean 3.”
Harris gets into the action in Pirates 3 and will hit the high seas with the rest of the pirate crew. “I don’t end up getting thrown overboard or anything like that, which is nice. …It’s so weird because I signed up to do Pirates but I didn’t think about whether I got seasick — and I’d never been on a ship before. There were all these people who suddenly [when we] started filming [were] throwing up and having to leave the ship. Thankfully I don’t get seasick I discovered. It would have been awful if I did.”
Next Up for Naomie Harris: Harris has another huge summer movie coming out in July – Miami Vice with Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell. Harris claims her Pirates character and her character in Miami Vice couldn’t be any more different. “They are like miles apart. She is an Intel Analyst for…She’s an undercover cop basically, and working with a team of undercover agents in Miami.”
Harris adopted a Jamaican accent for Pirates but had to do something totally different in Miami Vice. “I play someone from the Bronx, actually. I have a Bronx accent from that. I’m trying to get in all my accents.”
Both movies were shooting at the same time and Harris had to struggle to keep up with Pirates and Miami Vice. “I was flying backwards and forwards. I was filming in Miami and then flying to the Bahamas to film P3. It was kind of filmed simultaneously. It was just a really different atmosphere onset because there was Michael Mann with Miami Vice, so it’s much more intense experience. And Pirates in the Bahamas was much more fun and a much bigger kind of deal. Even though Miami Vice is a big production, Michael Mann likes to keep it intimate and very much about the actors. It’s not about green set or green scenes or what-have-you, and all those kind of technical things.”
Those Pesky Miami Vice Rumors: Rumors abound about budget over-runs and other concerns over the filming of Miami Vice. Is it frustrating to hear so much being said negatively about a film before it’s even finished being shot and edited? Harris said, “I think people judge the movie on its own merit so that’s really good. I think actually, although it’s not nice hearing negative things in the press about the movie, it actually just adds to the buzz of the whole thing and makes people anticipate it more, so I don’t really worry about it. The only thing is that I actually myself bought into some of those rumors and ended up writing a letter to Michael Mann and saying, ‘Is everything okay on filming because I’ve heard such awful things?’ He wrote me a letter back saying, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s all rubbish.’”
