Michael Fassbender Talks Jonah Hex

Although I could have talked to Michael Fassbender all day about his amazing performance in Inglourious Basterds, the subject of his upcoming film Jonah Hex of course came up in our round-table discussion. At Comic-Con, while everyone was asking Josh Brolin about his character, Brolin made sure to mention that Fassbender will surely be the scene-stealer of the film. We may not know him very well yet, but after Basterds, Hex, and his upcoming roles in Centurion, Birdsong, and possibly The Sweeney, we’re about to get to know him very well and if Broline has anything to say about it, we’ll all be blown away.

Check out what Fassbender had to say about creating his character “Burke” for the film Jonah Hex, his tattoos, weapon of choice and more below…

What’s up next for you?

I just finished working on this film Jonah Hex.

At Comic-Con, Josh Brolin said in front of 6,000 people that you’re the guy to look out for in that film…

I paid him a lot for that (laughs). I know, I was very pleased. He’s one of those, special kind of people in the industry that’s very supportive when somebody new is coming up in the business. It was a real joy.

How did you end up working on the film?

I met Brolin through the Toronto Film Festival, almost this time last year and we have the same agent and just kind of got on immediately and said that we really wanted to work together. Then Jonah Hex came about. It was a blast. And working with John Malkovich as well — he’s pretty amazing. And Jimmy Hayward at the front of it and of course Megan Fox.

What can you tell us about your character?

I kind of developed this character and really pushed it — I’ll see how far I pushed it. I was John Malkovich’s right hand man – I had this idea about the character, he’s kind of psychotic, he gets his kicks in perverted ways. I didn’t want to make it very obvious or like something you’ve seen before. But then I went into wardrobe and Michael Wilkinson, who I worked with before on 300 for costumes, had this three piece suit pulled out for me which was kind of green and I’m playing an Irishmen, and I said “look man, you’ve got to take the green down. I’m Irish! I can’t go back to Ireland, they’ll kill me.” So, it was this faded down green-piece suit and I picked up this boiler hat and I put it on and I thought, this is just like Clockwork Orange. I thought I’m going to go along that vain and do Clockwork Orange meets Frank Gorshin,1970′s Riddler with a Carrey accent. Then the guys at prosthetics created this kind of tattoo thing that started at my face and went all the way down my torso and arms (see picture below). It’s like the people around you that are doing these things, do the work for you. It began a really fun sort of character.

How much of the action did you do?

I try to do as much of that as they’ll let me. I do try to inhabit that physical world and it’s just sort of fun really running around and jumping about the place. So I did quite a bit of it. When we got together with the stunt guys they were just fantastic. They watched both Josh and I’s fighting styles, the way we moved and stuff. And then from there they developed the fight between us which was great. It’s kind of like Jonah is like this slugger and if he hits you once you’re in big trouble and my character is more like dancing around working inside the pocket and his weapon of choice is a knife. We did pretty much most of it.

That’s all for now but I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from him soon!

Are you excited to see Fassbender as Hex?