Chiwetel Ejiofor on His Role in ‘Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’ (EUR Exclusive)

*Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is the sequel to the 2012 live-action hit starring Angelina Jolie. In the sequel, Maleficent is wrestling with complex family ties as her goddaughter Aurora reveals plans for marriage.

Along with Jolie reprising her role as the classic Disney villain, Elle Fanning returns, and is joined by franchise newcomer Michelle Pfeiffer (Queen Ingrith) and a cast that includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ed Skrein, Harris Dickinson and Sam Riley.

EURweb‘s Jill Munroe sat down with Ejiofor to discuss his role in the film, the intricacies of good vs. evil in life and fairy tales, plus what his proudest moment from childhood is.

Jill:  I was researching you and I read that you said that when you get into roles there’s a chemical element that happens. So what was your inspiration for this role and what type of chemical element did you take on in creating Conall?

Chiwetel:  I think there was a lot of different things that I found that were really exciting about this role. I think one of the things was this community of the Dark Fey, which I thought was just so fascinating. That psychologically, they’re all quite damaged in a way because they’ve been in this conflict with human beings for so long that it’s really created a very sort of bonded environment for them in this space, in this cave. I thought that that was a fascinating way to look at a community, to look at a group of people and some of the trauma and complications of that. Then I thought that somebody who is leading a group like that. Conall is a kind of leader of this group, but having to balance a certain kind of a warlike nature, a kind of militarized sense of things, just as a kind of general or something in their community, but also this really deep sort of sensitivity and ability to lead in a heartfelt way and in a kind of an emotional way. And that being what kind of connects him to, Maleficent — that she engages with his strength, but also with his sort of sensitivity, his desire for peace, his need for an alternative.

So in a sense, it was just things that I related to, themes that I felt understood, and that I felt were sort of easy to engage with, to internalize in a way.

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Jill:   Fairy tales are often boiled down to good versus evil. In this, there are complexities — good is not exactly as we view it; evil is not exactly as we view it. How did you apply that through your character?

Chiwetel:       All of the characters actually in the film have both are shaded, if you like — they have both light and dark. They’re complicated and nuanced. And people do bad things for good reasons and the opposite.

I thought that that was a great way of accessing all of these characters. And I think it’s very true of people. And I think that yes, very tales often give these kinds of tropes, and I guess we’ve all grown up with a lot of these kinds of tropes from fairy tales — of the princess or wicked witch — and all of these ideas, binary ideas of good and evil.

So it’s really interesting, I think, to look at something that’s aimed at young people, and a way of discussing not only the wider themes of integration and so on, but also these ideas then of what motivates people, and how things can seem bad and actually come from different routes. Or even be the opposite. Things can seem good but actually come from a place that isn’t as good as you immediately think.

These ideas I think are quite complex and nuanced and I think that the film does a really remarkable job of upending some of those tropes that we’ve seen and introduced a few new ideas.

Jill:   Was this the most physically demanding role you’ve had?

Chiwetel:       No, I wouldn’t say that. It was definitely the most demanding in terms of how long I was in hair and makeup, which was several hours in the mornings and an hour or so to de-rig every night.

But what was great about it was that it was a really interesting way of getting into character — that you do all of this preparation beforehand, before shooting, of just how you see a character and how you feel about a character, and especially a character like this that needs to create a certain kind of tone or impression that’s not necessarily even spoken; it’s just kind of felt, and how you do that through how the character looks and just the wardrobe and the look of the character and the general feel of the character — and then just seeing that come together every time, every morning, that you’re spending hours in makeup and arriving.

That was quite a collaborative experience when we were designing Conall.

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Jill: Were you heavily involved in the design and physical makeup?

Chiwetel:   Yeah, exactly. It was a lot of time of just sort of talking through what we wanted to communicate. And just looking through a lot of images and talking about a lot of different ways of approaching it in terms of hair and makeup and in terms of a wardrobe — what it was wearing, what communicates that sort of war-like sensitivity, charisma, but also discipline, all of those elements.

So creating all of that and then going through the process of hair and makeup — allowing that to arrive every day was the most kind of if you like, “grueling,” but it wasn’t… I don’t mean that entirely negatively; it just took a long time to do that every morning. But I haven’t done that much of that. I haven’t done that much in this sort of very deep fantasy world. So it was great.

Jill:  Last question. You have many accolades as an adult. What is the proudest moment from your childhood?

Chiwetel:       Wow, that’s great… I hadn’t thought about it. When I look back on my childhood, I feel like what I loved most, I guess, in a way unsurprisingly, was when I started to discover drama, and I started to kind of fall in love with drama and I wanted to explore. It started in English classes when we were doing English literature, and I kind of started to get interested in plays, just in terms of language and poetry. And then I was curious about seeing how those things were represented in their form that they were designed for — what they felt like on stage. So I went down to the theater and started to watch plays and audition for plays and stuff like that.

So I guess the proudest moment from my childhood, just being about that age of being like 13, 14, and being so determined to experience the drama and to see what that was.

“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” hits theaters October 18th.

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