Jason Isaacs' presence in Paul Greengrass' The Green Zone was announced last week, but this evening The Nicest Man Alive (with a mean line in gossipy anecdotes that we're not allowed to repeat because he made us promise and we're powerless to say no to him) confirmed to us the nature of his character.
"Yes, I'm playing Major Briggs," he told us. "I think we’ve changed his rank; I think he may be Lieutenant Colonel [in real life] or something – maybe they thought I was too creaky to be a major. But, yeah, I play a special forces soldier and I had on tap these fabulous resources of these guys who had just come back – and many of them are going back to Iraq – who had all these stories they were bursting to tell. I was just quite stunned by how receptive Paul is by taking the most dramatic stories and putting them on the screen".
He continued,"[Paul]’s got a masterplan, but he’s changing it every day, depending on what he’s shot and so we’ve got these special forces guys and people who are really seriously lethal and a lot of arabs, who all had a lot of input. Paul takes what’s real and turns it into what’s exciting and watchable and every night you’re on your toes. You’re sat in a restaurant and have a chat and find out what you’re going to be filming the next day. Exactly what the rest of the film will be is up for grabs; it doesn’t mean it’s chaos, it means it’s probably more creative than any film I’ve ever been on."
The Sony Ericsson Empire Awards 2008
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