*I attended this event as a guest of Disney/Marvel/Dreamworks and any opinions are 100% my own.
While I was in LA for the Thor: The Dark World Red Carpet Premiere, myself and 24 other bloggers got the chance to interview a man that plays a character that people love to love and they love to hate. The charming, amusing, and very well spoken, Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki in Thor and Thor: The Dark World. Now, I am TeamThor, but for the 15 minutes in front Mr. Hiddleston, I was TeamHiddleston. He actually stopped in the middle of the interview just to tell us all beautiful we looked. Did I mention he is charming?! 😉
Photo Courtesy of MomStart.com who took photos of perfection during our interview!
Question: How did you get in character to play a bad, and do you really like playing those kinds of roles?
Answer: Second Part First – Hiddleston really loves playing all kinds of roles. Human nature is like a piano and there are 88 keys and there are some white keys and there are some black keys and each character is a different chord on the piano. He hopes that in the course of his life he will have played all 88 keys in a lot of different ways. Heroes and villains and princes and kings and warriors and beggars and thieves and lovers and fathers and wizards and all of those things. That is why he is an actor – he loves studying people. First Part – Loki is a minor chord with a couple black notes in there. Hiddleston loves playing Loki because of his playfulness and sense of fun, but the challenge is to make him real, vulnerable, and complex.
Question: How has Loki changed since we last saw him and has he reconciled with his father?
Answer: Loki hasn’t reconciled with his father and is still very angry with him. You find Loki in the wake of what happened in The Avengers and he is in prison. He has basically been written out of history and condemned to be forgotten. Unseen and unheard and haunted by his demons for eternity. He is keeping himself sharp by reading and exercising his mind. Loki isn’t very good at the long game, but he is good at improvising. He will always manipulate every situation to his own self-advantage. He is almost freer in one sense, spiritually and more mischievous, fun, and provocative. But, he is more damaged and hits rock bottom in Thor: The Dark World. More alone, angrier, and sadder.
Question: In one of the “Thor: The Dark World” Trailers you say to Thor “….we can work together begrudgingly so…”. Is there a bit of agree to disagree between the two?
Answer: There is and the fascinating thing is the reason they need to get together is one you will see very clearly. Despite their antagonism, which is consistent with The Avengers, and in fact is even more pushed to polar opposites, they are unified by a common bond. Which is why they need to fight back. What’s interesting and what’s wonderful about this film is the need to come together to work as a team gave Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth the amazing opportunity to explore that particular tension between them, that they were two brothers that were brought up as equals and best friends. The circumstances of their adult lives has pushed them to absolute extremes. The difference is in the first Thor and The Avengers, Thor consistently appealing to Loki to come back but Loki rejects the olive branch. This time, Thor makes no bones about there’s no olive branch and its like “I need you, and if you betray me I will kill you.”
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Question: You said earlier you liked the mischief part of the character. When you walk into a franchise like The Avengers and Thor, the fans are really dedicated. Did you have any leeway with what’s going on more with that mischief part that you liked that maybe wasn’t written into the script initially?
Answer: It’s been an interesting evolution because I have always felt is something….you can’t run before you can walk. The first film was about establishing his “Kenneth Branagh” and Hiddleston worked on establishing his origin story as much as it was Thor’s origin story. Loki is the second son, the younger brother who finds out the narrative of his life is a lie, that he was adopted, that he was betrayed, that he was left on frozen rock to die. That breaks his heart. But, he is also a very intelligent sort of fantastic strategiest who was a master of magic. As he got into Avengers, Joss Whedon encouraged him to have a good time and suddenly there was self-acceptance of his true nature and that gave him confidence to play. Hiddleston then spoke with Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, and to Ann Taylor the director, about having fun with Loki. Of all the pantheon of the Norse Gods most are quite predictable. If there was a pack of fireworks, Loki would be the end….your not quite sure what it’s going to do. He’s sort of the wild card. If you light the fuse, the firework will go up and around and spin around you and explode in a ball of multicolored fire. That is spirtually who Loki is. So, playing on that, his unpredictability and his playfulness, it’s been really fun.
Question: In Thor and The Avengers, I found myself rooting for Loki. Are we going to feel that again in Thor: The Dark World?
Answer: It gave Hiddleston pleasure to hear that. As a kid he watched the bad guys, the ones he loved were the ones that you wanted to win or you could understand their motivations. He hopes you will still see Loki as vulnerable and that all of his inclination to provoke chaos and start fires and create conflict, and enjoy all that stuff, his delight in disorder is a mask of control. Behind the mask is someone incredibly wounded and “lost at sea” and conflicted. The duplicity of those things, the dichotomy of the two, the outer and the inner, that’s gold for an actor. To present a particular mask to the world, and yet create an internal which is interesting.
Question: If someone visited your home and looked inside your refrigerator what would they find?
Answer: Hiddleston has been on the road a bit and was very conscientious and emptied the fridge of all perishable foods. Before he went away, his mom taught him not to come to moldy bread. There are some bottles of fizzy water and maybe some old cheese in back, but old cheese is alright he thinks. Normally it is full of green vegetables, butter, a few eggs, and fridgy stuff.
Question: In The Avengers they team up a lot of superheroes. If Loki teamed up with one super villain, who would it be and why?
Answer: The thing with getting a group of super villains together is they don’t get anything done. They are all acting out of self-interest. “No, I want to take over the world.” “No, but it’s mine!” “No, but it..” Then it’s over and finished and the film lasted two minutes. But, who would Loki team up with? I’d love to see him team up with the Enchantress who is sort of a big beautiful blonde who is as untrustworthy and as skilled in powers of magic as him. They have quite an interesting dance they do of recognizing that they are basically the same, but that is why they shouldn’t be together. Hiddleston loves the bad guy and would also like to see Loki team up with Dr. Doom, who was one of Spiderman’s big villains, and Surtur, a fire demon who is a pretty crazy cat and thinks it would be an interesting alliance. But, he feels like if Loki ever teamed up he would just be using people.
Question: A lot of people are wondering if there will be a Loki spin-off movie?
Answer: At this point in time, Hiddleston knows nothing officially. People have asked him about and the idea that anyone, whether it’s one man and his dog, wants to see Loki in a solo movie is such a huge compliment. We will have to see as the future of Loki is unknown. At this point, playing Loki has been a rollercoaster and more than he ever expected. He feels there is no point in having expectations anymore because whatever happens is going to surpass them. He’ll just ride it out, buckle up and ride it out.
Question: What was your favorite part of Thor: The Dark World?
Answer: Working with Chris Hemsworth. There are a couple of scenes where he feels the two brothers really get a sense of the particular chemistry of these two. His friendship with Hemsworth infused that relationship as they meet in 2009, were both in their late 20’s, and had been kicking around the business for the same amount of time. They became firm and fast friends and have had an amazing adventure together. Their friendship really infuses the Thor/Loki relationship in this film and that is his greatest pride. There is a scene where they are arguing over who gets to drive and that is one of his favorites.
Question: You surprised kids at a screening and I think that is a great thing. How did you get involved with the charities to surprise them?
Answer: It was so thrilling for Hiddleston and it was nothing for him to stop off in New York and introduce that. He’s done work with UNICEF and believes very passionately in the work that charities like Variety and The Children’s Aide Society do for children. He heard they were doing it and hopped over to surprise them, especially with Halloween. The children all had Thor Helmets and Hammers and he got booed and cheered because he is the bad guy, and it was great!
Question: You seem interested in superheroes and villains. How long have you been interested in comics books?
Answer: He knows a lot. but on a superficial level. One of his favorite games as a kid in England was “Top Trumps”. There are these things listed with vital stats and you split the deck and pick. For example. You have a fighter jet and you pick “speed” and you steal a guy who had “speed” and if you have the greater “speed” you win. He had “Top Trumps” for Marvel Superheroes and Supervillains so he knew the vital statistics of every superhero and super villain, but didn’t read comics. It’s funny, Spiderman can beat The Hulk with agility, but in weight, The Hulk could beat Spiderman. Loki can beat Dr. Doom because Loki is more intelligent. That may not be accurate but you get what he is saying.
Question: A blog reader with an Avengers Club at school wants to know if you got the chance to play a bad guy again, would you bring some of Loki to the character?
Answer: If Hiddleston played a villain again, he would have to be very specific to his particular brand of villainy. His job is to be really rigorous to that characters truth. Loki’s truth is playful, mischievous, vulnerable, and damaged. Another bad guy might be chaotic and cold. There is only so much range one man has and if I look out from under my eyelids there is only one way I do that.
We ended the interview listening to Tom HIddleston do some amazing impressions. He is REALLY GOOD at doing impressions of other people being Loki. This time around he did Samuel L. Jackson and Sean Connery. Let me tell you…..amazingly amusing! Oh, and then Hiddleston took a picture with us with was pretty awesome of him!
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Photos Courteousy of Walt Disney Studios
*I attended this event as a guest of Disney/Marvel/Dreamworks and any opinions are 100% my own.
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