Focus Features
Between 'Silence,' 'Hacksaw Ridge,' and now 'The Uprising,' Andrew Garfield as made quite a few muddy movies
Andrew Garfield knows a thing or two about muddy movies, having starred in Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge and Martin Scorsese’s Silence in 2016. His latest film, Paul Greengrass’ The Uprising, may be the dirtiest of them all.
In The Uprising — despite what briefly some confusing marketing suggests — two-time Academy Award-nominated actor Andrew Garfield stars as the anonymous Ploughman, the nameless hero at the center of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England.
And as were most of the people in 14th-century England, Ploughman’s constantly CAKED in mud, dirt, sweat, and various other filthy substances.
Speaking to BroBible’s Post Credit Podcast ahead of the release of The Uprising — hitting theaters on Friday, September 10 — Garfield discussed his latest dirt-soaked film and how it was a “privilege” to get muddy with Jason Bourne, United 93, and Captain Phillips filmmaker Paul Greengrass.
Andrew Garfield details making muddy movies and bonding with a ‘huge’ ox named Prince on the set of The Uprising
ERIC ITALIANO, BROBIBLE: I want to talk about dirt. You spend this entire film wet, dirty, muddy, sweating, and so on — and you actually have some experience with this in the past, on Silence and Hacksaw Ridge. Beyond the obvious aesthetics, how does making a film in which you’re constantly in some state of filth differ from the rest? How does it impact your performance, both internally for yourself and externally for us?
ANDREW GARFIELD: Yeah, it’s a specific relationship to the earth. To the loamy earth. And that’s the character — he’s a man of the earth, a man of the soil. So that relationship is primary, and it’s primary throughout the film.
It was a delight to be able to roll around in the mud and create a different relationship than a modern person would have with it. It’s very primal. There’s a lot of energy there. It feels like people are getting into gardening again, growing their own food and plants — there’s a connection to the soil that people in the modern world are finding themselves drawn to more and more. So yeah, it was a privilege. Let’s put it that way. It was a privilege to be muddy with Paul Greengrass.
EI: So it doesn’t make the job harder for you?
AG: [laughs] Yes, of course it does.
EI: You’re just going to lead with the good stuff.
AG: There’s a transition you have to step over — a threshold. But I have to tell you, I had a couple of weeks ahead of time hanging out on set, in the Ploughman’s hut and his field, and I was introduced to the ox, Prince, who was going to be my ox. And honestly, some of my favourite memories of the film were just leaning on Prince, feeling the warmth of his huge f—— body, the weight of his breath, and the kinship — the friend I found in him. He was kind of agnostic towards me, and there was a beauty to that.
I would feed him, I’d tell him to move here and there. But there was a sweet brotherhood that I felt develop.
EI: That is a truly genius way to connect to the type of person and the time period you’re playing, because that relationship between man and animal has not changed. Of the few things you could experience that are exactly the same as them, that’s one of them.
The Uprising, which also stars Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman and Katherine Waterston, will be released in theaters in the United States on September 10. Check out the official trailer below.