Joel Edgerton has been on some big—very big—films in the past but nothing has compared to Ridley Scott’s biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings.
The scale of Scott’s production— which filmed at Pinewood Studios in London and on location in Spain and on the Canary Islands—was staggering, he says, and some of the beautifully crafted artifacts created for the film were mind-bogglingly impressive—not the least a 50-foot-tall statue of Edgerton’s own head.
Starring alongside Christian Bale as Moses, Edgerton plays Ramses, an Egyptian Pharaoh regarded as a living god by his subjects—hence the enormous likeness of his head made by the Exodus props department. As Edgerton points out, Scott has already successfully reinvented the swords and sandals genre with Gladiator, and now he’s set to do the same with the biblical epic. “I was joking with Ridley and said, ‘You realize you started all of this…,’” he laughs.
“Every year since he made Gladiator, there has been a couple of those movies and some of them are fantasy and some are legend or based in true fact but he started that.
“He reignited the flame when he made Gladiator and here he is doing something very different. It’s an interesting movie in a way because it has a huge scale to it but it isn’t just like a series of fights, although it is a battle of wills for sure between Ramses and Moses.
Filmed in 3D, Scott’s film will tell the story of Moses, abandoned as a baby by a desperate mother after the Egyptian rulers orders the murder of all boys born to slaves.
He is found in the bulrushes by the Pharaoh’s daughter and raised in the royal household, where he grows up alongside Ramses, the future monarch.
As a man, Moses has a vision from God and turns his back on his privileged life and leads his people, the Israelites, from enslavement. Scott’s film will feature groundbreaking special effects, including the plagues visited upon Egypt, and the parting of the Red Sea.
Edgerton was born in Sydney, Australia, and studied drama at the University of Western Sydney. His impressive film CV includes Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones, Ned Kelly, King Arthur, Smokin’ Aces, Whisper, The Square, Animal Kingdom, Warrior, Zero Dark Thirty and The Great Gatsby.
We’ve just been looking around your set here and the scale of it is huge. It’s a big film.
It really is. Ridley shoots big movies and I gather that this is one of his bigger ones. It’s definitely one of the biggest that I’ve ever been involved in. The scale of the sets, the amount of people around—the crew and the hundreds of extras we have on some days—and the epic scale of the story, it’s really staggering.
What does it give you as an actor when you walk on to a set like this?
Yeah, well, it’s pretty good right? (Laughs) Everybody is great on this movie. I don’t know much about the London movie scene but I do know about Australia and the crews there and generally certain directors can get the best of the departments that they want and I get a feeling that Ridley is one of those people.
And I also notice that there are a number of people on this movie who tell tales of Prometheus and they tell tales of Kingdom of Heaven, which just goes to show that a majority of the crew have been around the block at least twice, sometimes three, four, five times with him, which means that he is a good general. And he really is like a general when you think about it, because the amount of people he is inspiring with his vision and getting them on the same page with him to tell the story is huge.
It kind of does baffle me to look around and think, “How did they know how many people to get? And how to dress them? How many buildings to put up?” And I heard the other day that he does these incredible preproduction prep meetings where he basically orchestrates the whole thing.
Tell us about the character you play.
Well, it’s interesting because the worst description of Ramses is that he is a bad guy. And why I say it’s the worst version is because it’s the easiest description. But the way the script is constructed is that Ramses is very much like family to Moses or Moses is family to him. And I think the best version of a villain is that it’s someone who, in their own movie, could be a hero.
And he just has opinions on a number of things very different to Moses’s but they could be justified and valid in their own context.
What would that be?
That perhaps Moses has lost his mind, that Moses is making very immediate and irrational demands, and that Moses is suddenly changing his opinion because he understands something different about himself, that Moses claims to have talked to God.
So for me, I want to find somewhere between doing my job of being that villainous component of the movie, that counterpoint to the hero, but also finding the humanity within that because then I think then it’s a greater contest. I’ve always felt that when I’ve watched other movies—that if I’ve understood the bad guy, then I cheer for the hero more.
So he’s not an unreasonable man? He’s not some kind of crazy guy?
Yes, he surely is unreasonable. (Laughs) I mean, he’s racist and that’s clearly unreasonable. He’s a tyrant and a dictator, and he thinks of himself as a god, but that wasn’t outside of the parameters of Egyptian thinking. I’m very curious about that actually—if you are ordained as a living god, surely there is part of your brain that doubts it?
But if you are told that from a very young age, wouldn’t you believe it?
Yes, but don’t you wonder about that when you start to see signs of yourself aging? How does that fit into the parameters of you believing you really are a god? Therefore, do you feel fear? Do you actually fear going into battle? And do you fear threats and confrontation with other people? And if you feel pain, doesn’t that then make you wonder if you are mortal or immortal? I’m not saying that this is necessary for the role—it’s just part of my thinking. I’m very curious about that. (Laughs)
Tell us about working with Christian Bale.
This is my first time working with Christian and he is fantastic. Christian is definitely one of the greats! I get impressed watching that guy in a movie trailer. And behind the scenes he is just a nice, regular guy and we have a really good laugh on set and we’re having a good time. There’s no big ego and I didn’t expect one. I’d always heard really delightful things about him and it’s all true. Aaron Paul is the same and Sigourney Weaver is one of my new favorite people. John Turturro is awesome. Unfortunately, I don’t do many scenes with Sir Ben (Kingsley), which for me is the biggest disappointment because I just love him so much.
Could we talk about the religious aspects of the film? Is this presented as a real active God who smites people? Or is there some kind of ambiguity about that?
(Laughs) I think when you even talk about religion, let alone make a film about it, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. So some people are going to enjoy Exodus as a movie, some people are going to see it as a document of history and some people are going to see it as a comment on religion. It all depends on what kind of experience you bring to it. I was raised Catholic and I knew all about these stories when I was young. Some of the components of these stories seem like fables and fairy stories, that they were stories overblown to teach us something. Religion aside, I look at it as a great story and a story that really kind of relates to everybody. And for me, what I really relate to—even though I’m playing the counterpoint to it—is a sense of human equality and also a question of belief and the determination surrounding that and the lack of trust surrounding that. Moses is connected to many religions and belief systems. I will be curious to see how people react to it as a story. And I love a bit of heated debate, as well. (Laughs)
Your brother, Nash, is a director.
How did two brothers from a little town in New South Wales end up in the film business?
I don’t know, to be honest, what exactly happened. It wasn’t like one fed the other, but it happened around the same time. Yeah, we liked watching movies, but most people like watching movies. Yeah, we had a video camera and we made a few little home videos, but tonnes of kids do that, as well. What made us translate that into a career, I’m not really sure. I wanted to either be a painter, like a visual artist, or an actor, based on the fact that I liked doing both things. I did a little theater at school, and I got sent to America as part of a creative exchange program, to do a play, and I was like, “I think I want to do this.”
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Exodus: Gods And Kings opens on December 5 in cinemas nationwide from 20th Century Fox.
Image credits: Lorenzo Agiuz