The Man of Many Faces

The Spy Landscape has been fairly unpopulated lately, with neither James Bond nor Jason Bourne on active duty.

But fear not, for unto the breach – running, jumping, parachuting, snowmobiling and even, er, speed-wheelchairing – comes Johnny English.

Yes, eight long years after the surprise success of the spy spoof Johnny English (2003), Rowan Atkinson returns to action as the well-meaning but bumbling MI-7 agent in Johnny English Reborn.

“It’d be a lie to say that I’ve been working studiously on the sequel for eight years, because that’s not the case,” Atkinson says during a telephone interview from his home near Oxford in England. “We were thinking of doing a sequel when you’d normally do sequels, about two or three years after the original release. I remember that the original script meeting for this movie was in 2004. We were going for about 18 months and we were getting somewhere, but not a long way. We decided to stop and do a sequel to another character I play, Mr. Bean, so we did Mr. Bean’s Holiday in 2007.

“Then I decided to do a musical,” he continues. “I played Fagin in a revival of Oliver in the West End of London two years ago. That took time to do. Then eventually, in late 2009, we got around to working again on the Johnny English sequel. And here we are.”

OUT OF CHARACTER

Clearly the 56-year-old Atkinson didn’t particularly miss playing English. Actually, he says, he’s not overly attached to any of the roles he’s created, a beloved lot that includes the inept Edmund Blackadder from the various Blackadder series, the clumsy Mr. Bean, the nervous Zazu in The Lion King (1994) and the tongue-tied Father Gerald in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).

“I don’t get sentimental about my characters,” Atkinson says. “I quite enjoy the job of performing them, if they’re fun to perform, which I think Johnny English is. He’s quite an interesting character, because he’s not a total klutz, not a total idiot. He’s just not as good as he thinks he is.

“The essential joke about him is the gap between how good he is and how good he thinks he is. It’s that overreaching ambition, combined with a strange smugness and arrogance, that gets him into a lot of trouble.

“And that’s all combined with a strange sort of decency, I think,” he continues. “You really do believe that he’s a good man. He’s not lazy. He’s brave. He wants to see the missions through. He’s very keen. It’s just that he’s not a natural spy, it’s fair to say.”

Out now in the UAE, Johnny English Reborn finds the disgraced spy training at a monastery in the remotest part of Asia when he’s recalled by MI-7 to protect China’s premier from a threatened assassination.

Also involved in the effort to prevent a global diplomatic crisis are Pegasus (Gillian Anderson), the no-nonsense boss of MI-7, and Kate (Rosamund Pike), a comely behavioural psychologist. Joining him on the mission are his inexperienced new partner, Agent Tucker (Daniel Kaluuya), and English’s personal hero, Agent One (Dominic West).

Apart from the obvious commercial logic of making a sequel to anything, Atkinson says, the goal should be to do something different and/or better. Johnny English Reborn is both, he believes, because it’s more sophisticated, with a mission and story that are more credible than the original film.

“I think it’s quite a neat little comedy/thriller,” he says, “rather than just a sort of cheap and cheerful spy spoof. I think you’re actually quite interested to know what happens next, which is not how I’d describe every moment in the first film. You were just waiting for the next joke.

“Here I think you’re rooting for the character,” Atkinson says, “and I think we put the character through a lot more hoops of fire. We test him a lot more and take him through a greater range of emotions. So I think he’s more three-dimensional, actually, than he has been – and I think that’s good because, as I say, the net result is that you root for him.”

Clearly moviegoers are enjoying the second coming of Johnny English: the film has already been released in 15 international markets, opening at No. 1 in 13 of them. Its initial success suggests that it won’t be another eight years before Atkinson reprises the character again.

“Well, it would seem foolish to leave it eight years to revisit it another time,” he concedes. “Whether I’ve got another movie in me, I do not know. We haven’t had any of these conversations yet. A conversation may be had, but we haven’t had it yet.”

UNDER CONTROL

Truth be told, Atkinson doesn’t act very often. In the eight years between Johnny English films, he guest-starred on a handful of British television programmes and made cameo appearances in Love Actually (2003) and Keeping Mum (2005), but Mr. Bean’s Vacation (2007) was his only starring role.

“I think it’s two things,” he says. “Firstly, I like to have a lot of control over what I do. That’s probably the main problem. You can’t just turn up for five weeks and then go away, and then make another film two weeks later.

“I tend to be there from the first script meeting to the last sound mix. If you devote yourself like that, then every film project is going to take you at least two years, and possibly four.

“Secondly, I don’t think I’m very castable in other people’s movies,” Atkinson says. “I think I’m a difficult person to cast because I’ve got quite a singular performance style – I’m not easily adapted.

“And I bring a lot of baggage with me because of things like Mr. Bean and Johnny English. There is a fairly heavy preconception from the audience about who I am and what I do, and I think that’s quite difficult for producers to adapt to.

“Another problem is that I don’t live in L.A.,” the comedian adds. “I’ve always wanted to live in Britain and, if you insist on doing that, then you’re not really there to do the auditions or readthroughs or whatever you need to in order to please the Hollywood machine.

“Fortunately, I’ve been lucky to have Working Title, the production company with which I’ve made all my films since Four Weddings and a Funeral,” he says. “They’re a British-based company with British attitudes but quasi-Hollywood budgets, and that is a rare privilege.”

Atkinson’s most recent appearance in the news didn’t relate to any film: in early August the noted car enthusiast crashed his McLaren F1 sports car, spinning out on a wet road and striking a lamppost and a tree.

He chuckles when asked who got the worst of the impact, him or the McLaren.

“I think the McLaren, actually, which is the right way around,” Atkinson says. “I broke my shoulder blade, but that’s mending very well. It’s just the usual physiotherapy you have to go through when the healing is more advanced. So I’m doing that, but I’m able to do normal things and drive and what have you, which I wasn’t able to do at first. So I’m coming on quite well.

“The car is another issue,” Atkinson says. “The car is quite a challenge, not just because it was badly damaged, which it was, but because it’s such a rare car – they only made 100 of them – and there are no spare parts. Almost everything has to be made from scratch. So it’s going to be a long and expensive business, getting it right, but the news at the moment is good. I think we are going to mend the car.”

(Ian Spelling, The New York Times Syndicate)