In the first Pirates, Bloom's character Will Turner fell hard for Elizabeth Swann (played by Keira Knightley) and had to fight alongside the notorious Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) in order to save Elizabeth from the evil Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and his crew of undead pirates. Dead Man's Chest finds Will being hauled off to jail in the middle of his wedding to Elizabeth for the crime of helping Captain Jack escape from the gallows.
A Pirates Life for Orlando Bloom: “The first movie was one movie and we weren’t sure it was going to become two movies. I remember being at Disneyland with Johnny, we’re all sitting around with Jerry [Bruckheimer] and we’re saying, ‘Let’s do a Pirate movie for the rest of our lives.’ That’s when it dawned on us they were going to do more. It wasn’t a done deal in my head that they’d make sequels.
What’s cool about it is that the talent, the writers, the vision of Jerry and Disney and everyone and Gore, particularly, they took what was a one-off movie, but because of what was already there on the page in terms of character-development, they were able to really take it somewhere. That’s a credit to the writers and that first movie. If it hadn’t been great and the characters were too one-dimensional, it would have been difficult to make more than one movie. But because of what was on the page, it was possible to make it into another movie, and then a third movie.”
Depp has said he’s ready for more Pirates after Pirates 3, and Bloom says he can totally understand where Depp’s coming from. “Dude, I know, man. I can’t blame him. It’s like I remember watching the first one and seeing what Johnny did and what Geoffrey [Rush] did. I was like these guys have ‘freedom’ tattooed across their foreheads and they’re doing it - and I’m playing this straight guy. But it wasn’t until I saw it that I understood that you can’t have one without the other. I am the foil to his [wacky character]. This one is different because it’s a real ensemble. You’ve got Davy Jones and Keira [Knightley’s] the beauty - the sword-kicking, a**-kicking beauty at that.”
Orlando Bloom Unlocks His Inner Pirate: Bloom says this time around Will Turner “goes from being a straight-laced kind of upright stick in the mud to becoming more of a bit of a pirate in this one, thankfully. It was kind of like discovering my inner pirate for the first time in a way.”
It’s Not Just About Fulfilling Fantasies: “My whole career has been fulfilling my childhood fantasies. I play characters that are larger than life. Getting to play a knight, an elf, a prince, a soldier, I’ve really lived out all of my childhood fantasies. Pirates wasn’t like living out another childhood fantasy. It was just a great opportunity to work with some great people, like Johnny Depp. It was a big draw. I’ve always admired him as a young actor. When I signed up to do the first one it was to be on set with somebody like him, to see how he handles himself, to see how he goes about it. It was a real privilege. You learn as you go, so I did that.”
Filming Back to Back Pirates: “It’s a real ensemble movie so it’s not like I’m on the set the whole time. But yeah, it was a challenge because, you know, you’ve got the arc of two movies to cover. You can shoot a scene from the second movie in the morning and the third movie in the afternoon, and trying to remember where your character is emotionally or whatever at that point in the movie can be a bit more challenging. You just have to play the truth of the moment. Thankfully we’ve got great writers to create great stories and characters and develop it so it’s not just one note.”
Lord of the Rings versus Pirates of the Caribbean: Peter Jackson shot all three Lord of the Rings films at the same time, while Gore Verbinski shot Pirates 2 and 3 simultaneously. How did the two experiences compare? Bloom said, “It’s not that different. Lord of the Rings was my first experience making movies. I had no idea how movies were done. I thought that’s the way they’re done. In a way, I had nothing to compare it to.
This ties into that answer, really, where the challenge is your character develops over two movies much more than it would over one movie. You have to think about where in that development you are. And sometimes, when you shoot one movie, you have to think about that anyway. But that’s one movie. With two, a lot more time passes, and a lot more development happens, so you’ve got to keep jumping back and forward doing that kind of dance. The great thing about working on something like Pirates is that you don’t really know what to expect. Going to see it, it’s like a feast for the eyes. It’s a shocker.”
Page 2: Challenging Scenes, Pirate Garb, and Life After Pirates
