Richard Armitage Interview – Into The Storm
by Debra Wallace

(PCM) In the span of just a few hours, a city is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of the most furious twisters ever seen. The entire town is at the mercy of the erratic and deadly cyclones. One of the heroes in the film is played by Richard Armitage.

Armitage, best known for his role as Thorin Oakenshield, in the epic Hobbit trilogy, plays the role of Gary Fuller, and single father of two sons and high school vice principal, was drawn to the role of the everyman facing extraordinary circumstances.

While most people seek shelter, the storm chasers are a different breed – this is a very human story about how far they will go for that once-in-a-lifetime shot. It is also an action-packed disaster movie, with a family in the middle, and a great deal of heart.

The summer movie is told through the eyes, and lenses, of professional storm chasers, thrill-seeking amateurs, and courageous townspeople. It throws the viewer directly into the eye of the storm to truly experience Mother Nature at her most extreme.

Into The Storm also tells us a value life lesson: how to ride out the storm of life by holding on tight and rising to the challenges that could make you stumble and fall.

Armitage said he enjoyed playing against type in the film from New Line Cinema, since he is often cast as the strong and powerful guy who saves everyone around him.

“No matter who you are,” the 42-year-old Armitage said, “I think that a series of crushing tornados coming through your town forces you to find out just what kind of person you are. I was excited to play a very ordinary man trust into a situation whereby he has to behave in a way that he could never prepare for. “

A tall, dark, and dashing British film and television actor, Armitage’s next movie is the much-anticipated winter blockbuster, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

During a recent chat on a humid mid-August day in Manhattan, Armitage, sporting quite a bit of dark facial hair, took some time off from his hectic schedule to talk about Into The Storm. He was relaxed and friendly, and enjoying bottled water and an easy banter with co-star Sarah Wayne Callies, [The Walking Dead], who plays Allison Stone, a meteorologist, helping the storm-trackers on their quest to film the chaos around them that is transforming all of their lives.

Soon after our chat, the classically-trained actor had to dash back to the West End of London to continue his performance in Old Vic Theatre’s production of The Crucible.

I was just thinking about how much fun this movie is to see, it’s so great to watch with all of the spectacle, it really works because we care about the characters. So how did you do that? How did you pull that off?

Richard Armitage: It’s something that quite hard to write in a script as well. The script was a good framework, but it wasn’t until the real actors came around and the real relationships started to form. Even on the day of shooting, something could happen in a moment that you couldn’t necessarily put into a script which you facilitated. It was being open to all of those things that kept it feeling very real.

How active is your action stuff?

RA: Pretty active, actually. And this is the thing I’m really conscious of: I didn’t want my character [Gary] to suddenly turn into an action hero because that’s a little bit predictable. I wanted him to be struggling with that. I kind of wanted him to run in a slightly different school-teacher kind of way so he runs different from how I run.

Like girly?

RA: He’s not girly, but because he’s wearing loafers and a suit. He runs like a math teacher or an English teacher would run. But there’s a lot of running so you’ve got to think, ‘okay do I want people to think he’s a rubbish runner?’ There’s a fine line. I just didn’t want him to look like he suddenly ripped off his suit and become an action hero, because that would be uninteresting.

What are you up to in the movie?

RA: My character is the vice principle of Silverton High School. He’s got two boys, Trey and Donnie. He’s asked them to create a video diary of the graduation ceremony. So they’re going to make a time capsule video diary of the town and then this storm comes and the two boys get separated.

What is the focus of the movie for your character?

RA: Through the story Gary’s mission is really to try to find out where his son has gone because he can’t communicate with him, he’s lost contact and he’s got Trey with him so he’s trying to juggle two things: protect the older son and go in search of the younger son.

This would be daunting even if he was searching for his son during calm weather.

RA: True. But yeah, he’s an English teacher. I kind of decided as we were shooting that he was also the football coach because I needed kind of a level of fitness that wasn’t particularly extraordinary but the ability to run and kind of shout quite loudly. And it was the dialect coach told me you do sound like you coach the football team so I said okay that will go in the biography as well.

The director, Steven Quale, said he enjoyed casting you sort of against type because in the Hobbit you play such a small, powerful…

RA: Small person. [Laughed]. With lots of hair.

And in this movie you play someone who is at the mercy of a person who is in charge of the [school] bureaucracy and being in charge of all of those details. And you are not the guy who has the final say. Yet you have to rise up. You were the reluctant hero.

RA: Right.

When you are finished filming something so emotional what do you do to leave it behind or decompress? Do you carry it with you in your home life?

RA: I found that a towel and a heater was quite a good way to shake off the day’s work. [Laughed]. Being cold and wet. You see a hot towel coming towards you at the end of a take and it was like God had arrived on set.

So you are saying that your needs get pretty basic?

RA: Very simple. Even the man who switched off the wind machine we were like, ‘Thank you!’

I hear that everyone was pretty uncomfortable with all the water pouring on them – sort of like drowned rats, one of your co-stars said. How did you handle it overall?

RA: I took pleasure at the end of the day of giving Steven a very soggy, cold hug. He was always dry, and I’d be like ‘come on, you need to get wet, too.’

Speaking of costumes, is it refreshing to not have dwarf armor and hair and beard?

RA: Yeah, 10 minutes in the make up chair is great. Although, I like the whole transformation thing because it belongs to somebody else. My face was never my own and then when you’re using your own face again, my face needs a bit of work.

Do you ever feel that sort of phantom limb thing because you were without all of the hair you wear for The Hobbit films?

RA: It was the head because we had this kind of latex head, which was so hot so I don’t miss any of that. But then you’re faced with a whole other set of discomfort of being constantly wet and effectively standing in front of a jet engine from a Boeing 747 for two weeks. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. A couple of shoot days, we were running across the parking lot of the garage and the wind machines were so strong I was literally running on the spot not going anywhere. We were like, can you just turn it down a little bit!

Did you base this portrayal on any teachers?

RA: I went to a couple of comprehensives in England and actually I did have teachers in mind. That was back in the seventies. I did, it’s funny when you’re thinking about preparing teachers like this there was a deputy headmaster that I had in my head. Actually no, he was a history teacher and a sports teacher called Mr. Branchflower. It’s a strange name. That was his name. He was a bit of a dude actually. He was the kind of guy, he was a history teacher so he sat there with his geeky glasses on but yeah if you got into trouble he’d be the guy that would jump in and he was in my head.

Can you talk about any close encounters you have had with a storm in real life?

RA: Personally, I’ve never really been in a storm. I’ve been in an Earthquake which was quite shocking. It’s sort of humbling and leveling when you realize what the earth is capable of doing and shaking you to that degree. That’s the closest thing to anything like that I’ve ever been.