Given that Nick Frost already had the beard as well as a
Santa Claus-like shape, it probably didn’t take all that much behind-the-scenes
effort to transform this “Shaun of the Dead” star into Saint Nick for
tonight’s annual “Doctor Who” Christmas special, “Last
Christmas” (which airs on BBC America at 9 / 8 p.m. Central)
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I mean, that brief spritz of white hairspray which Frost had
to endured was nothing compared to the six hours that poor Peter Capaldi had to
spend in the make-up chair each day while he was working on Disney’s
“Maleficent.”
What’s that you say? You don’t recall seeing the latest
Doctor Who in that Angelina Jolie film? Well, there’s a reason for that.
Capaldi’s character — King Kinloch (i.e., Maleficent’s uncle who also happened
to be King of the Fairies) — was completely cut out of that Robert Stromberg
film because, after some tepid test screenings, studio officials decided to
give the Mistress of All Evil a very different back story.
To explain: When principal photography of this Joe Roth
production began in London back in
June of 2012, Maleficent wasn’t the sole protector of the Moors. This
“Sleeping Beauty” villain was actually a member of the Fairy
Court. To be specific, Maleficent was the
rebellious teenage niece of Queen Ulla (played by Miranda Richardson) and King
Kinloch (Capaldi).
And according to Linda Woolverton’s original screenplay for
“Malificent,” there was little love lost between this gawky teen (And
— yes — I just used the word “gawky” to describe the teenaged
version of Maleficent. There are numerous instances in the First Act of the
early version of this script where the Mistress-of-Evil-to-be accidentally
bumps into and/or comically knocks over other members of the Fairy Court
because she still hasn’t quite learned how to control her oversized wings) and
her imperious aunt. In fact, it is Ulla who saddles the then-15-year-old
Maleficent with her signature look as the Queen hurls a particularly nasty
curse at that “… devilish thing” which then causes devil horns to sprout
out of her head, proclaiming that “… you will wear these for a hundred
years so all can see your true nature.”
Peter Capaldi on the red carpet at the 2013
BAFTA TV Awards
Speaking of having to wear things for a long very time, as
he worked the red carpet at the 2013 BAFTA TV awards, Capaldi described what it
was like to be made up as King Kinloch:
“Well, it’s quite weird. You get picked up at half past three in the morning. And you sit in
front of the mirror and they start the stuff. And if you have a little itch in
your scalp, you know that you’re not going to be able to scratch that itch for another
20 hours.
I was in make-up for six hours every day to get these large
pointed ears and a pointed nose. Once they’re done, you look in the mirror and
wonder ‘Who is this old guy? He looks sort of like Peter Capaldi except for the
pointed ears.’
Then you walk on set and everyone looks at you and says that
they think you look great. But you haven’t done anything. You’re just wearing
all this work that everybody else did.”
Sam Riley and Angelina Jolie on set during production of Disney’s “Maleficent.”
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
And the King Kinloch make-up that Academy Award-winner Rick
Baker dreamed up must have really been something. Because — to hear Sam Riley
(who played Maleficent’s sidekick Diaval in the finished film) tell the story
— Capaldi was virtually unrecognizable once he was transformed into the King
of the Fairies:
“I remember on one of the first days, Peter Capaldi and
I were chatting and he was starting to have his makeup put on. Then I went off
and four hours later this goblin — or a man with a proper goblin’s head,
moving and everything with little hairs in his ears — comes over to me and
just carries on the conversation. I was like, ‘Is that you, Peter, under
there?’ “
Well, in spite of what an ordeal it must have been to be
made up as the King of the Fairies every day, Capaldi clearly enjoyed his time
on the set of “Maleficent.” Again from the red carpet at the 2013
BAFTA TV awards:
“I have nothing but nice things to say about this movie. The guy who
directing ‘Malificent’ is the production designer on ‘Avatar.’ So you can
imagine the scale. It has a very magical, dark look and a lot of the film’s characters
— Imelda Staunton’s, for example — are computer generated. There’s only a
handful of us who are real.
And Angelina was absolutely lovely. They had Angelina on
wires. She’d come flying in from way over there and land at your feet. It’s a
big Disney movie with lots of special effects and incredible costumes and
make-up. It was great. It was a big, magical, terrific moving story. I’m dying
to see it.”
Sadly, Capaldi never got to see the version of
“Maleficent” where King Kinloch and Queen Ulla were largely
responsible for this Disney Villain becoming the Mistress of All Evil.
According to what studio insiders have told me about those early
work-in-progress screening of this Joe Roth production, test audiences weren’t
all that entertained by the Fairy Court’s
intrigues. More to the point, they were puzzled that it took almost 20 minutes
of screen time before Angelina Jolie finally made her entrance in this motion
picture (India Eisley originally played the teenaged version of Maleficent).
“We spent a bit more time originally in the fairy world
before we got into the human side of things,” Robert Stromberg admitted
during press interviews prior to the May 2014 theatrical release of
“Maleficent.” “And since we wanted to get Angelina’s version of
Maleficent on screen sooner as well as get our running time under two hours, we
wound up cutting about fifteen minutes out of ‘Maleficent’ ‘s first act.”
It took eight days of reshoots (during which time, Stromberg
was assisted by “Saving Mr. Banks” director John Lee Hancock) to properly
retool / rework “Maleficent” ‘s first act. Replacing all of the
previously-shot Fairy Court
sequences with brand-new back story scenes that now featured Ella Purnell as
the tween version of Maleficent. Who — instead of being a rebellious halfling
(Woolverton’s original screenplay strongly insinuated that Maleficent was half
fairy / half devil) who was constantly challenging her aunt & uncle — is
now a good-hearted orphan who, all by herself, watches over all of the magical
creatures who live out on the Moors.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
Mind you, it’s hard to argue that this was a bad call on Disney’s
part. Given that the retooled version of “Maleficent” went on to
become the third highest-grossing film of 2014. Selling (to date) $757 million worth
of tickets worldwide. Not to mention earning an additional $55 million from DVD
& Blu-ray sales.
And given that “Maleficent” is now the highest
grossing live-action film that Angelina Jolie has ever starred in, it’s clear
that these late-in-the-game changes that Robert Stromberg, Joe Roth and John
Lee Hancock did right by that A-lister. Though Peter Capaldi obviously has a
very different opinion on this matter.
And how do I know this? Check out this August 2014 response
to a “Doctor Who” fan’s question about whether Peter had much
experience working on films & TV shows that involved lots of special effects:
“I did quite a lot of green screen acting in the blockbuster
movie ‘Maleficent’ – from which I was cut!”
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
Given that Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment regularly
pulls films from the vault (EX: The diamond edition of “101
Dalmatians.” Which is currently scheduled to hit store shelves on February
10, 2015) and then tries to entice consumers to buy yet another copy of that movie
by loading up that DVD or Blu-ray with all sorts of extra features like cut
scenes … Well, here’s hoping that — the very next time
“Maleficent” is made available to consumers — WDSHE then tacks on
some of the footage that was cut from the original version of this Robert
Stromberg film’s first act. So that all us “Doctor Who” fans can then
finally see what Peter Capaldi looked like in his King of the Fairies garb.
This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post’s Entertainment page on December 25, 2014