Interview: Colin Farrell Talks About The Lobster

If you haven’t seen The Lobster, be prepared. It’s a dark, twisted film, set in a dystopian world where people check into a hotel and have 45 days to find a partner before they’re turned into an animal of their choice.

Colin Farrell plays David, a recently divorced man who chooses to be a lobster (if things don’t work out), because he loves the sea and the king of crustaceans has a long lifespan.  That’s the kind of logic you can expect from this absurdist romantic comedy. I recently caught up with Farrell while he was in LA to talk about it.

Awards Daily: It’s going to be fun to see it again. I’ve not seen it in a while.

Colin Farrell: I haven’t seen it twice, but as it’s such an unusual world to drop into and to accept the conventions of as normal, that some of my friends who saw it again said the second viewing allowed them to notice some of the intricacies of the film.

AD: Because you don’t appreciate it the first time.

CF: They’re too shaken up thinking, “What the fuck is going on? What’s he doing?” The second time they’re over the whole concept of how jarring it is, they could totally enjoy the film more.

AD: It’s so unconventional and you’re like, “Where the hell is this going?” but I’m along for the ride.

CF: Yes.

AD: What were you doing when you got this script?

CF: You know you’re dealing with something very unique. I had seen Dogtooth about 3 or 4 years before I read The Lobster, and I came out of a cinema on a Tuesday evening in Philadelphia and I turned to her and I said, “Who the fuck made that? Are they locked up? Are they still out and about in society? It was just so disturbing and so brilliant, and yet so awkwardly shot. It rang with some twisted sense of truth in regards to observances of the human behavior. All told within this very sick familiar structure. Four years later I got this call about Yorgos, who’s doing his first English language film, and he wants to Skype with you. So, I read the script, I found it confusing, and I couldn’t imagine how you’d breathe life, alongside any sense of normality.

With Dogtooth, it’s a family. It’s not saying this is the world, it’s not saying this is the world ideology, or the world’s social system that everyone lives within. It’s one family, and it can be viewed as a sickness.
With this, I thought about 1942, with Germany living under Hitler’s conformity, and it was such a patriarchal system that it resulted in people just being neutral in their behavior and neutral in their opinions and victims that they weren’t even aware of him.

When I read it first, I scratched my head. I don’t know where it started to make sense, but in doing it, it came to life in a very particular way.

CF: It was very liberating. It was weird, there was this kind of oxymoronic thing where, because I had imposed a level of restraint on myself physically, verbally, and expressionistically, there was great freedom in it. There wasn’t a moment of heroism, there was no existential crisis. I didn’t have to worry about the back story. Yorgos didn’t want to know about back story. The best way to serve the story was not to try to paint it with any of my own particular perception or opinions. I wanted to be neutral and there was a great liberation in it.

I think more than ever before, I think my one job was just to be present. It wasn’t a character that informed the environment so much. He was just present, and things were happening to him. There was no emotional language as a character, there was no subtext, no guile. It was lovely.

AD: Well, now that you say that, there’s no real emotional attachment to the characters either. What was strange, was that for this, it was sort of acceptable.

CF: It’s strange, it’s that whole thing, and I’ve been guilty of it, if you show too much emotion as an actor, you don’t give the audience room to feel emotion. You have to be careful with that. This was an example of that, because the characters didn’t respond to the horrors that they were existing within, in a conventional way, it became a provocation for the audience.

You as the audience have to paint the world with whatever emotion you paint the world with because the people in it are not existing in that way that we do in modern society where we are all so histrionic, and expressing, and slipping each other the finger in traffic, and telling each other to fuck off, or we kiss and hug each other, along with all that shit with high fives and knuckle bumps. It’s not a world of expression, so it allows the audience to imbue the story of the characters with their own feelings.

AD: Did you bring anything to the creation of David?

CF: Just my belly.

AD: Your belly?

CF: It was all on the page, love. It really was. The script was so specific, and Yorgos was such a specific filmmaker. If you were doing too much with a line, Yorgos recoils at the thought of convention. He’s so originally and independently minded. What did I bring? My body.

AD: Did he tell you he wanted David to have this look?

CF: No, we spoke about the character being rail thin or a little bit soft, and we went with soft, and so I mange, mange, mange. It was fun for 48 hours, and then it was, “Not another cheeseburger.”

AD: The movie speaks about loneliness and how painful that can be.

CF: I thought most of the characters have been pre-programmed by this law of the land that the reason why they’re looking for a partner is just so they can stay in line with the line, and this level of regulation.
I thought my character had a little bit of humanity. He wasn’t afraid of being turned into an animal, and the lobster was predicated upon the idea of mating, finding a partner, and staying faithful. So in a sense, he was the closest thing to a romantic character, even though he’s not, but he had this deep loneliness.
I don’t think he was aware of it, but I found that on the page, and I found that very touching. Love does exist within the story. Hope does too, albeit in a much more muted way than we’re used to seeing.

AD: Did you walk away with a new romantic enlightenment?

CF: Not really. It did make me think about human beings and how we choose each other. How we profile other people, and what we think is the right match for us. Opposites attract, and how you should be with someone with different interests, or someone with the same interests. How we have arguments for both. It makes you think about how we couple and how important it is to have someone to share this path with.

It might be that if there is one divine path on this planet. It might that it’s not about bringing a child into this world. It might be choosing someone that you’re not beholding to by virtue of your creation of them and to love them. It could be someone you choose, that you have not aesthetic link with, but you actually choose to share your life with. It’s an amazing thing.

AD: Your character wants to be a lobster and live for a very long time, a hundred years.

CF: I wouldn’t mind living for a hundred years. It’s all happening way too fast for my taste. I can’t believe I’m forty. I can’t believe it’s Christmas again. I swear I took my tree down a month ago, I just don’t know where this life is going.

AD: It needs to slow down. What was it like on set, was it dark?

CF: Yorgos is very calm and methodical. There were laughs, but it was a very methodical experience, and you’re there to really be part of his vision. The mood on the set was good. I just went back and did a film with him.

AD: It wasn’t too bad of an experience then? [laughs]

CF: It’s stranger than The Lobster. I can’t wait.