Luther: The Fallen Sun is celebrating two weeks in Netflix’s top 10, proving that the demand for stories about tortured London detectives is as high as it’s ever been. The latest movie picks up after the most recent season of Luther, which ended in 2019, and finds ex-DCI John Luther still locked up for his less-than-savory methods of obtaining justice. But when a twisted criminal named David Robey (played by Andy Serkis, The Batman) starts terrorizing the town through the internet, Luther’s old colleagues have no choice but to call him in.
Written by series creator Neil Cross and directed by The Hour‘s Jamie Payne, Luther: The Fallen Sun reunites its star with fan-favorite characters such as Martin Schenk (Dermot Crowley) while also introducing new elements, including Cynthia Erivo as DCI Odette Raine, who is a stickler for rules until she must choose between them and her own child. Robey runs the Red Bunker, an eerily realistic “judgment-free” zone where users’ darkest deeds are collected for blackmail purposes. But in a land of shame, Luther is one person who had already faced his own darkness and has no fear of others knowing it.
Screen Rant spoke to Serkis about getting into the mindset of a depraved criminal like Robey, the effort to he went through to perfect his hair for Luther: The Fallen Sun, and how he is approaching his upcoming film Animal Farm.
Andy Serkis Talks Luther: The Fallen Sun
Screen Rant: I loved your performance, as always. You’re considered the king of motion capture, but you also love to let loose in person, and you love a good villain. Do you consciously one-up yourself, or does it just happen naturally?
Andy Serkis: That’s very kind of you to say. I love playing all sorts of characters, and all in all different manifestations, whether it be CG characters or live-action ones in a more conventional sense. I think it’s a really important thing for people to realize, though, that I’ve never drawn a distinction between them. Acting is acting.
People have said, “It’s nice to see your face. It’s nice to see you being you.” And that is great but, for me, a role is a role. How it is created is almost irrelevant to me, but I can appreciate other people’s perceptions being different. Certainly, in terms of this role and the darkness of it, I feel like I’ve plumbed new depths.
How do you approach a character like that, humanizing them for yourself when they are so out of the ordinary?
Andy Serkis: Yes, exactly. I think you hit the nail on the head. In order for it to be interesting for me, it has to feel human; it has to be relatable. Even with a character like David Robey, the fact of the matter is that this is an individual who is cut off from society. He is non-existent almost, and he’s so desensitized and isolated and deeply lonely.
The tragedy of that character is that he can only feel connected to the rest of humanity through observing them, being a voyeur, and watching them through their devices in their own home while doing the most mundane boring things, and actually trying to be part of their lives in some way. Or at least observe them and, in a kind of vampiric way, take aspects of who they are, and make them his. Even in the way he dresses and the way he has his hair done, which has caused a big stir.
Everyone’s talking about the hair! Did you make it that way? What’s the secret?
Andy Serkis: It was all my own, I have to say. Cynthia Erivo came on set on the third day and said, “The makeup department have done a great job with your wig.” And I’m like, “This is mine. This is my own my own hair.”
But that’s the thing about the character; he’s a construct of other people’s personalities to a certain extent, because he doesn’t have one of his own. For me, what was exciting about this was looking at the Internet and the power of the internet, and how much we’ve handed over power to the internet. I thought that was the true monster of the movie, really.
Speaking of power, Animal Farm was the school-mandated book that most excited me in my youth. I know you’re directing an adaptation. What can you tell me about that and your approach to it?
Andy Serkis: It’s very interesting because it was one of the first books I ever read as a child, and one that impacted me hugely. We’ve been making it for a long time: 10 years before we got into production. Now we’re in production, we’ve been in production for a year. It’s an animated movie, and we’ve got one year to go.
The approach is: if Orwell were writing Animal Farm today, what would he be talking about? What would he be satirizing? It’s sadly an ever-relevant book, in terms of power corrupting absolutely, and the desire to create a utopia being turned on its head. Because what do you actually do with freedom? If you win freedom, can it ever be sustained? Or are we doomed to go wrong every time?
Finding a viewpoint for Animal Farm has been the challenge, [but] I think we have it. It’s a family film. It will be a family film, and will be entertaining for everyone.
About Luther: The Fallen Sun
A serial killer terrorizes London while disgraced detective John Luther sits behind bars. Haunted by his failure to capture the cyber psychopath who now taunts him, Luther decides to break out of prison to finish the job by any means necessary.
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Luther: The Fallen Sun is currently streaming on Netflix.
