The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman

by Neil Daniels

  ‘There hasn’t actually been as much craziness as you would think, or at least as much as I was prepared for,’ he admitted to 3 News’s Kate Rodger. ‘There’s actually more Sherlock craziness in my life. Weirdly, I think it manifests itself more from Sherlock than it does from Hobbit people. Hobbit people have been very restrained, actually and the ones who are really on it are Sherlock folks. But yeah, people occasionally say ‘Bilbo’ when they see me. There’s a very broad appeal, age-wise, to The Hobbit. If a nineteen-year-old girl is coming up to me, that’ll be Sherlock. If it’s an eight-year-old boy, it’ll be The Hobbit.’

  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the eagerly awaited sequel to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, was premiered in LA on 2 December 2013 and released internationally on 11 December. The film follows the journey of Bilbo Baggins as he joins Thorin Oakenshield and his fellow dwarves on a quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug. Gandalf the Grey also investigates the evil forces at work at the ruins of Dol Guldur. The film features a stellar cast, joining Martin Freeman, including Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Orlando Bloom and Luke Evans.

  Freeman spoke to Flicks And Bits about Cumberbatch’s role in the film. The pair had both auditioned for their respective parts in London during the filming of Sherlock series one.

  ‘He did the whole physical performance of it in a performance capture suit and all that,’ Freeman explained, ‘but given that he’s not 200 ft tall and not the shape of a dragon, there’s only so much you can do with that. But he brought such a fantastic vocal quality to it, which he has a fantastic range with – especially that lower registry. He’s really good and very right for Smaug.’

  Martin revealed that he never rehearsed with Cumberbatch for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. They were not even on the same continent.

  ‘We knew what we were doing,’ he said at a TV press interview. ‘When we came back for the second or third series of Sherlock, he’d be saying, “I’ve got to go back and do more bits of Smaug.” So, we knew what we were up to but never [in detail].’

  ‘It was great,’ Cumberbatch said to MTV News on working with Freeman on a different project other than Sherlock. ‘I got to hang out with him, and I kept a straight face for a bit and then I started giggling because I know Martin, I don’t know Bilbo. For Martin to be sitting there playing Bilbo is amazing. He’s going to be amazing, he’s going to be fantastic in this film.’

  Bilbo is far more experienced by the second film and the process is gradual, which the audience are able to relate to. He’s not an action hero or a heroic icon but he has seen many things he had not previously witnessed and he’s come a long way since the journey began. He’d never even been in a fight but here he is on a major journey, coming across all manner of foes. He shows bravery and nobility that he probably wasn’t even aware he had.

  Speaking about his character in the second film, Freeman told Flicks And Bits, ‘I really like Bilbo’s innocence, and I like playing the change from innocence to experience. I like that. So that he has a figurative journey, as well as the literal one as he goes on. Every actor wants to play different things or beats within a moment, or beats within a scene. You don’t want to be playing the same thing all of the time, and you certainly get that aspect of Bilbo, definitely in the second film. There’s a person there with more iron in his backbone, I guess. He’s just seen more, so his whole world view has shifted.’

  Also, Bilbo is a flawed, slightly awkward and silly character. He’s certainly not your typical hero.

  ‘He is pompous and he is fairly small-minded,’ Freeman explained to AsiaOne. ‘So it’s not like he can be James Bond. And from Bilbo’s point of view, when he thinks he is being really serious, actually the world is going, “Prat!” because he is puffing himself up in a classically English pompous way. It is funny. Pete was always asking me to do “that English thing”. I don’t really know what that is.’

  Martin Freeman was now, in the eyes of the public, Bilbo Baggins. The actor had fully immersed himself in the role and was very comfortable.

  ‘Just the oddness of it, I think,’ Freeman admitted to Stuff.co.nz’s Tom Cardy about the costume and prosthetics. ‘But I suppose by the first time I’d seen myself in the monitor, I was used to it. I’d had so many fittings, and I’d had so many pictures taken, and so many versions of the costume, and versions of the wig. But yeah, it felt kind of odd. I look fairly different as Bilbo, but what’s weird now, is it just doesn’t feel strange at all. And I genuinely forget – we all forget what we look like.’

  The Hobbit was originally slated to be a two-film project but a third feature was announced and so the second film was consequently renamed The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The screenplay was penned by Jackson with Fran Walsh, Philippa Bovens and Guillermo del Toro. It was shot in 3D with principal photography taking place in New Zealand and at England’s legendary Pinewood Studios. Additional filming was scheduled for May 2013 and lasted for approximately ten weeks.

  Freeman was juggling Sherlock series three and the second Hobbit movie. It was a hectic period for the actor.

  ‘I always am around this time in the series,’ Freeman said to Mark Gatiss in a special feature in the Radio Times dated January 2014. ‘I think the schedules on this show are quite brutal – The Hobbit is a doddle, actually, comparatively. So yeah, I’m quite tired, but I have to say I’m enjoying it. I have to say I’m enjoying it. It’s contractual!’

  Freeman enjoyed the months spent filming in New Zealand but, of course, Wellington differs massively from the English capital. He certainly enjoyed the more laid-back, outside lifestyle of Wellington, though he loves London more than anywhere else in the world.

  ‘Wellington is a pretty small place,’ he told AsiaOne. ‘It’s easy. I mean, I love London more than anything else, but Wellington doesn’t have the stress about it. It just doesn’t. It would be impossible to be as stressed in Wellington as you are in London. If you are travelling fifteen minutes in Wellington then that’s quite a long journey. I was travelling six minutes to work each day. Could you imagine that in London?’

  How did he cope being so far from home?

  ‘When you’re working for very long hours through the days and nights it’s easy not to look after yourself and not to eat and sleep properly,’ he expressed to the Daily Mirror’s John Hiscock. ‘So I had regular massages and without them I would have gone barmy.’

  He continued, ‘I love my home and part of the reason I love it is that it’s private, so I don’t want to talk about it. It’s where I feel sane and where I feel safe, and I love it for that.’

  Freeman especially enjoyed filming the fighting scenes with the Wargs, which are giant wolves kept by Orcs. Usually, however, those scenes involved the stunt team dressed in green-screen outfits carrying a head that Freeman had to stick a sword in, and the rest would be done with computer-generated imagery by the computer geeks.

  ‘This is the film where Bilbo becomes totally invaluable to the group – he’s not a mascot or someone to be patronised,’ Freeman told Time Out London’s Nick Aveling on the progression of his character. ‘In fact, he saves their arses on numerous occasions, so he’s really needed. He finds more character, more backbone, than he knew he had. I love Bilbo’s “plucky” side, but I’m also interested in when he has to get serious. In times of war, manners and politeness don’t mean too much.’

  Despite the abundance of special effects, stunts and action sequences, the writers were shrewd enough to include those tender human moments that audiences can relate to.

  ‘… even though he [Peter Jackson] wants people to be able to escape into these worlds that he helps create, it is meaningless unless you cut back to what you really think or what you’re really feeling about this,’ Freeman expressed to James Rocchi of MSN Entertainment. ‘So it’s always the small bit I think. It’s always the devil’s in the details. And I think you nee
d to kind of focus in on how is this person reacting to all this. That’s why I love Pete’s battles. The battles are never just about, “Yay, we’re all goring each other to death.” It’s actually, you know, you cut back to a child and the fact that the child is terrified or the fact that Thorin has just seen his father’s head cut off…’

  The film had a major marketing campaign that dominated the entertainment media for much of the year. Jackson held a live event on 24 March 2013 in which he revealed some plot details and screened a scene from the film. The first trailer was released on 11 June 2013 and a longer trailer was shown on 4 November. A special live online fan event (hosted by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper in New York) was staged across eleven different cities on 4 November with Peter Jackson, Jed Brophy, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Orlando Bloom, Luke Evans, Andy Serkis and Richard Armitage. Freeman took part in the heavy marketing campaign by appearing on TV, radio and in various press events around the world.

  Speaking to the Radio Times’s Susanna Lazarus about working with Freeman, Richard Armitage enthused, ‘He was just very good at being a little ninja Bilbo. Behind the scenes he’d have a little crack at everybody who was a bit bigger than him but he’d try his kung fu ninja moves on everybody which always made me laugh.’

  Not only was there a heavy promotional campaign but also a great deal of Hobbit-related merchandise, from action figures to posters and all manner of collectibles. ShortList.com spoke to Freeman about the Hobbit-branded bath and shower gel, to which the actor responded, ‘Well, I haven’t seen that… I occasionally get sent things, I occasionally get sent a new batch of… whatever… I think the majority of the stuff that happens in The Hobbit merchandise wise I honestly never see and I’m not really aware of that’s the truth. I hear about stuff… I know the figures and I know books…’

  The film premiered in Los Angeles on 2 December 2013 and was released around the world on 13 December. It grossed $953 million worldwide, surpassing the box-office takings of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It became the fourth-highest grossing film of 2013 and the twenty-fourth-highest grossing film ever. The reviews of the second Hobbit film were far more positive than those of An Unexpected Journey.

  The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote, ‘Martin Freeman is Bilbo, and Freeman’s laidback, more naturalistic line readings make a pleasing and interesting contrast to the more contoured saga-speak that comes out of everyone else’s mouth, whether they are speaking English or Elvish or the guttural Orcish.’

  Total Film’s Matt Maytum wrote, ‘Freeman does at least deliver the goods in some challenging early scenes that see Bilbo in thrall to the lure of the all-important One Ring, with a standout moment plumbing depths of moral murkiness rarely addressed in family entertainment.’

  Empire’s Nick de Semlyen wrote, ‘As Bilbo (a still spot-on Martin Freeman) and co. near their destination, the film gets increasingly busy, splitting the group in two and intercutting between those strands and Gandalf (Ian McKellen), who’s off poking around the ruins of Dol Guldur. That storyline still hasn’t quite caught fire (it basically amounts to the wizard yelling at a giant, evil ink-blot), and it could be argued that more screen time might have been usefully given to the dwarves, who remain largely anonymous.’

  Robbie Collin of the Daily Telegraph wrote, ‘It even begins beautifully, with a too-rare bit of comic business from Freeman, whom you can’t help feel has more to offer the part of Bilbo than the film is prepared to give him room for.’

  Freeman picked up a Stella Award for Best Actor In A Leading Role and was also nominated for Best Hero at the Comic Vine Movie Awards, MTV Movie Awards and YouReviewers Awards. At the time of writing, he was nominated for Best Male Performance In A 2013 Science Fiction Film, TV Movie, Or Mini-Series at the Constellation Awards.

  It was revealed by the Sunday People that Prince William is a fan of The Hobbit. Speaking at the Olivier Awards for stage plays, the paper reported that Freeman said, ‘He was a nice guy. He is the biggest royal fan. He knew all the facts about Middle Earth and obviously wanted to be there. Kate was in hospital at the time.’

  During the promotional round of interviews, Freeman appeared on the UK’s The Graham Norton Show with fellow guests Ben Stiller and Jamie Oliver. ‘It’s done, it’s all finished – for however long you think you are going to be in a Peter Jackson film, you are going to be in it longer,’ he told Norton.

  ‘It was a long gig. My main challenge was checking in with Peter to see where Bilbo was at a given time. Two-and-a-half years is a very long time to keep a handle on it,’ he continued.

  Freeman was now a bona fide Hollywood star, not of A-list pedigree, mind you, but he was now a fully recognisable actor of the big and small screen, and also a national treasure.

  ‘We all make films hoping people will come and see them and I’ve made plenty of films people didn’t come and see, so it’s nice to have things people do like,’ he said, commenting on the worldwide success of The Hobbit.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FARGO AND THE RETURN TO BAKER STREET

  ‘I do think – in a very real, common sense way – that if you want to be famous, you can be. It’s not a great talent; if you put yourself forward, it will happen to you.’

  FREEMAN SPEAKING TO NICK AVELING IN TIME OUT LONDON, 2013

  In January 2014 Steven Moffat announced that a fourth series of Sherlock had been commissioned and scripts were planned. Plot lines have already been developed for both series four and series five but it all depends on the schedules, not just of Freeman and Cumberbatch but also of writers Moffat and Gatiss. It’s a hard show to get together because of the growing successes of the careers of each person involved, including the creators.

  Series three was hugely successful and was met with great acclaim from fans and journalists. ‘The Empty Hearse’ was first shown on BBC1 on 1 January 2014 with ‘The Sign Of Three’ to follow on 5 January and ‘His Last Vow’ on 12 January. Sherlock is one of the most watched BBC dramas in a decade, if not the most watched, and certainly one of the most revered TV series of modern times.

  Cumberbatch reportedly received a letter from the Sherlock Holmes Society about how they think he should play Holmes. People have ideas about how iconic roles should be played, especially characters such as Sherlock Holmes, but both Cumberbatch and Freeman had their own thoughts and were not going to be swayed by the opinions of the fans. They had absolute faith in writers Gatiss and Moffat.

  As has often been the case with shows that have cult appeal and that are genre based, they attract people who are perceived as outsiders, even though there are millions of them. Genre fans are attracted to stories such as Sherlock and The Hobbit because they represent escapism from the modern world – it is total fantasy. Fans dress as Benedict Cumberbatch, such is the level of success of the show. Shows like Sherlock touch many people in different ways and Freeman and his co-stars find it very gratifying.

  Curiously, three series of Sherlock only equal nine episodes, which is not very many, especially when you consider that US TV shows can run anything between half a dozen episodes per season to as many as twenty-four. It just goes to show the enormous cultural impact Sherlock has made on the global viewing public. As with all good TV series, Sherlock has become its own thing. It has taken on a life of its own. Of course, such success makes it harder for the writers to live up to the heightening expectations that build with each pending series.

  As the success of the series has risen over the years, the logistics of filming on the streets in public has become increasingly difficult. When they film in North Gower Street in central London, where Holmes’s flat is located, it’s akin to filming in the theatre. As soon as the fans spot them, they start clapping and cheering. It gets distracting for all concerned. Fans – mostly female – stand behind the barriers and cheer at Cumberbatch and Freeman. During breaks in filming, they ask the two stars for autographs. Such is Freeman’s appeal that he’d get ju
st as many fans hounding him as Cumberbatch. Tabloids shot photos of fans behind barricades as they filmed the latest series. They even took photographs of the two lead actors sipping coffees and eating paninis during a break from filming.

  Sherlock is a series that does not patronise its viewers. It tricks them, surprises them and makes them think.

  ‘Actors bang on about this a lot, but it’s true: sometimes there is proof that audiences aren’t stupid, however much they’re treated as such [laughs],’ Freeman said to ShortList.com. ‘Sometimes there are occasions where you go, “I get that, I totally get that.” There are bits of Sherlock I have to catch up with. I have to work hard. “Hang on, what’s this? How does this fucking work?”’

  Two years had passed since Holmes faked his own death at the end of series two. It had fans gasping for more and the wait felt like an eternity. There was a period of mourning and then Watson tried to pick up the pieces and move on to create a fairly steady life until Holmes comes back into the picture and his world is shaken up again.

  ‘His best friend has died horribly in front of him,’ Freeman told the BBC of Watson, ‘which took a long time to get over, but the way that his life has moved on is that he has fallen in love with Mary. He is leading a functional, normal-ish life really which doesn’t have the highs and lows of his life with Holmes but is certainly a bit more steady. But there is a sadness with John which will always be with him when you lose someone that you love – he is slightly dulled by life.’

  When Holmes comes back Watson is so overwhelmed, so taken aback by surprise and shock that he faints. As the story progresses the duo become sharper with each other; there is more bite to their reactions with one another. Watson also punches Holmes, which shows just how angry he was.

  After the huge success of the first two series, Freeman was not complacent about the third one. The important thing for him was making sure that he did his job as best he could. There are many twists and turns in the series’s narrative but Freeman was not always in possession of the full facts. He was given the plot devices more or less as the filming began so he saw everything as it happened. He was able to create his own theories on such things as Holmes’s death. It also made things easier during interviews so that he wouldn’t accidentally let slip important events.