From writer/director Robert Krzykowski, the indie drama The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot follows the alternate reality adventures of a man named Calvin Barr (Sam Elliott and Aidan Turner, who share the role), who was the individual secretly responsible for the assassination of Adolf Hitler during WWII. Decades later, Barr’s skills are needed again, when the U.S. government calls on him to go deep into the Canadian wilderness to kill Bigfoot, before the creature can spread a deadly plague to the general population of the world.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, Irish actor Aidan Turner talked about why he couldn’t ignore this project, how surprisingly heartfelt the story is, sharing a character with actor Sam Elliott, how it felt to have to wear a Nazi uniform and share scenes with Hitler, and how proud and happy he is with the finished product. He also talked about what it’s like to finish the TV series Poldark, after five seasons of playing the character, having no idea what he wants to do next, and his desire to do Broadway someday.

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Image via RLJE Films

Collider:  This is certainly a very interesting project. What was the appeal for you?

AIDAN TURNER:  It was really interesting. It struck me. It was one of those scripts that came in and you couldn’t ignore it, really. The title alone just kept floating around in my head. It’s the kind of movie where I couldn’t quite put it into a genre. It’s probably a very cliche thing to say, but you do movies, as an actor, and you feel the need to say that there’s so much heart to a specific film, especially with some of the lower budget indie films, but there really was with this. And when I met up on Skype with Robert Krzykowski and we spoke for a couple of hours, just about the script, I knew that it was something special. He’s just a very unique individual and a very smart guy. This is his first project, and it just felt so heartfelt. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I really adored it so much, but there was just something there. It was an all-around feeling and cadence of the whole piece, and I couldn’t get it off my mind. And shooting the film was just beautiful. The funny thing is that I never really got to work with Sam Elliott. I came onto this shoot halfway through, and Sam had finished on the morning that I started, which seemed like the right time to hand over the mantle and pass over the torch. It was just a beautiful, strange, gorgeous experience. I don’t think any of us were really expecting the movie to get such a release. I know Sam is having a very big moment right now, with being nominated for an Oscar, and all of the rest of it. It’s just great that it’s finally getting to be seen by more people than I initially thought it was going to be seen by, to be honest. It’s fitting with how special the whole experience was for me.

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Image via RLJE Films

Knowing that you would be sharing this character with Sam Elliot, were there conversations with him about it? Did you talk about what to do with your voice, especially?

TURNER:  Yeah, I tried to. The first morning, I said, “I’m worried about the voice, Sam. I’m worried about the resonance.” And he said, “Don’t worry about the resonance,” in that really deep, beautiful tone that only Sam can deliver. And I really didn’t. It was something that I did on my own, and I worked as much as I possible could, just trying to fill out the register, but I felt, very early on in the preparation, that I had to be careful to not have it sound like a caricature. It’s very different to be sitting in a bar doing impersonations of different people, but when you’re actually playing a real character – in this case, it was Calvin Barr – it’s important to make the character real, first and foremost. Technically, you can try to work in some things to make us both feel like we’re the same person. There were some physical things and, obviously, things you can do, vocally, but it was important that it didn’t sound like a good impersonation of this legendary actor. That would have looked a bit foolish. So, it was just trying to find the middle ground. There’s always a balance with everything with the preparation you make, as an actor, and it’s just trying to find what the right tone is. So, that was a big thing for me, but it was more important to concentrate on us playing this character and making the character everything that Bob had written on the page, and to not have it become something that would have been a block for me. How do you sound like one of the most famous voices that Hollywood has ever produced? I think that would’ve been a difficult task. But, I think we did it. I saw the movie and I believe it. I believe the effort that I made. I believe that it could be the same person, so I’m happy with it.

I would imagine that one of the biggest challenges of this was the amount of time that you had to spend in a Nazi uniform. What was that like? Did it take a bit of mental adjustment, the first time you put it on and saw yourself in it?

TURNER:  Yeah, it’s a really strange thing. You’ve seen these uniform so many times, but when you have it on and you see small details, that you’ve not forgotten about, but that just come back in super HD form, where the heels of the shoes are metal caps and you’re making this crunching sound, like if you’re walking through stones in a courtyard, or you’re walking down a corridor, you really hear these shoes coming, it’s quite eerie. And there are the small things, like the skull and crossbones that exist on the Nazi cap, that you don’t really notice until you’re wearing it, in detail, and you have a look at yourself. I suppose what separated those feelings, for me, was the fact that Calvin was impersonating a Nazi soldier to infiltrate the operations of the Nazi ranks to inevitably take a shot at Hitler and try to kill him, so it never felt like I was fully embodying what it was to be a Nazi soldier. But, yeah, it’s a very, very strange experience. The uniforms are incredibly authentic. More than anything else, it’s just strange how people on set react to you. That feeling of power is a very strange, scary thing, as you’re dressed in a black uniform and you’re with a German Shepherd guard dog. In one of the scenes, I had to do a Nazi salute and some German is spoken, and that just levels everyone. The tone changes in the room. There definitely is a feeling of something has shifted. It’s very curious, the way that uniform still does embody this real sense of isolation and fear, even if it is just for the sake of what we’re doing. We’re making a film, but it still does evoke those emotions with everyone. It makes you think it wasn’t that long ago that this horrible atrocity happened, and you’re reminded of that, when you do something like this. So, yeah, it was a very, very strange experience, to say the least.

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Image via RLJE Films

When you play a man who kills Hitler, obviously that means that you’ll have to shoot scenes with Hitler. What was it like to shoot the moments that you spend with him? Is that just as weird as wearing a Nazi uniform?

TURNER:  Yeah, it is. It’s as weird as it sounds. It’s not something that you really get used to. We shot a lot of those scenes were shot in two days. We found this incredible old house, somewhere in New England, that was gorgeous and beautiful and of the right era, and dressed it like an old Nazi headquarters. In one afternoon, we shot the scenes where Hitler gets killed, and that was bizarre. The man who plays Hitler looked remarkably like him, especially in the latter days of Hitler’s life, from what we can see in photographs and old video stock footage. He had that tremor, and he looked a bit disheveled and beaten by everything. It was really bizarre, and still is. When I think about it now, it’s as weird as it sounds when I try to explain it. The thing that worked in my favor was that Calvin Barr is nervous. He’s not a captain who needs to be around Hitler, all the time, and knows him very well. It’s a very new experience for him, too, so to be slightly freaked out by the experience didn’t go against what I was trying to play, anyway. So, it was a strange thing to shoot for a few hours, and then when it’s finished and you go home that night, you think, “Wow, I did that today at work.” Your best friend says, “What did you do?,” and you say, “I think I just killed Hitler.” It was a weird moment, but those moments happen, all of the time. They’re some of the trivial, fun moments in our job that you look at and go, “God, what am I doing for living?! This is crazy!”

This truly is such an unusual and odd, and yet still beautifully told, story, which makes it feel like a really special project.

TURNER:  Yeah, it really is, and it’s nice to hear you say that. It’s everything we hoped the film would be. In an industry now, where it’s quite hard to stand out and be different, it doesn’t happen all that often. You get pigeonholed, very quickly, and we understand why that needs to happen. People want to know, when they see a 90 second trailer, exactly what something is about, where it falls in line with them, and whether it’s their taste. We just feel that this surprises people, on many levels. It’s a mix of different genres, and it’s got a lot of heart in it, that people wouldn’t necessarily expect. It’s got a lot of that old, ‘80s epic, almost, Spielberg-esque moments, and it represents Rob Krzykowski’s taste, in a real way, which I’m really happy with. It felt like he didn’t have to compromise to make this film either, and to make it at the money that it cost is a real tribute to him. So, to see it all come together, and working with great people, has been incredible. I’m just very, very proud of all of it.

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Image via PBS

How does it feel to officially be finished with Poldark now? What’s it like to say goodbye to that character, and to that cast and crew, after five seasons?

TURNER:  It’s really strange, and it’s only just happened. Today is Monday (February 4, 2019) and we wrapped on Friday (February 1, 2019) in the UK. So, I wrapped and then flew over to Los Angeles, so to be honest, it’s quite a fresh experience. I’m still just adjusting. It’s been a very long time and, obviously, a very big job for me. Even though it hasn’t been all of the year, it takes six months to shoot the show, and then there are a lot of press engagements and things like post-production ADR, so the entire job takes a lot of the year, maybe seven months, in total. And I’m in most of the scenes, so it’s a very busy job. So, maybe it’s a little early to answer that question for me. I don’t know quite how it feels yet. It doesn’t quite feel real. It feels like I’ve got to have a sleep after this movie tonight, wake up tomorrow morning, and put a tricorn hat back on and jump on a horse. It doesn't feel like it’s quite over yet. But that being said, it does feel like we naturally came to an end. I know there are some more books that Winston Graham has written, and they happen a lot later in Ross’ life, about 15 years down the road, or even a little bit longer, so it just feels like we’ve naturally come to an end with it. I’m very proud of our show and what we’ve achieved, and the demographic of the audience that we’ve managed to obtain by putting on this show. It’s been a real success, and I’m glad that we got to finish the stories as far as we could go with it. I think we’re all very proud of the show, but like everything, there does come a time to move on, and naturally, we had to. It’s nice that we got to finish the stories, and that we didn’t have to finish early or compromise, in any way. I think we’ve done a great job, and the fifth series is looking like it might be one of the strongest. It’s a strange feeling to speak to you and, for the first time, actually hear somebody else, who’s not part of the production, say that it’s finished and all over. It’s odd, but I think we’re all ready to take on the next project.

Do you feel like you might be looking for some contemporary work, after spending so much time in that period, or would you jump into another period project, if the material was appealing to you?

TURNER:  I think, if the material is appealing, all bets are off. I don’t think it matters, necessarily, what the genre is. If the script is really strong, and you feel like a character appeals to you and the story appeals to you, that’s it. I think it becomes difficult terrain for an actor, when you start to choose based on what era you want to perform in. Maybe for some actors it works okay, but I don’t know. I find that troubling because you could miss out on some of the really good stuff, if you don’t want to, for instance, play in a 19th century period drama, or you’ve done something that’s Victorian, so you don’t want to anymore, or particular parts of American history don’t appeal to you, so you decide not to read a script based on that. I think that can be tricky because you can miss a lot of good stuff that comes through. So, no, I don’t really look at it that way. It’s gonna be nice, for the first time in years, I’m actually available completely and my schedule is free, to meet some people, read some scripts, and just see what’s out there now, and then make some judgements based on that, as opposed to narrowing down my search results, as a result of me not wanting to put on a tricorn hat again or a piece of costume, or whatever. I’m just gonna see what’s out there. It’s an exciting time.

So, it sounds like you have no idea what the next thing is then.

TURNER:  No, I don’t. I was out on the West End, doing a Martin McDonagh play (“The Lieutenant Of Inishmore”). Martin McDonagh is one of my favorite writers, and I did a play in the West End, right before I started the fifth and last series of Poldark. I really enjoyed that. There’s a possibilities of getting back on stage quite soon and doing something. There’s the possibility of maybe working stateside for a little while, but I just don’t know. For years, I’ve been very lucky and I’ve had jobs lined up. I could work around Poldark with different things, like this great Bob Krzykowski movie. I could squeeze all of these in because I had time, but it was always a tight squeeze. I had to be careful of getting a haircut, or of losing weight, or of putting on weight, or even simple things like what country I would be in because I would need to get to fittings. So, right now, it’s nice to have that freedom. I think a little break is probably not a bad thing for me, just to consider where I’ll be going from here. It’s nice to be free, for the first time in awhile, to see what’s out there, as opposed to the usual actor thing that will probably never go away, which is the constant fear of never working again, or the fear of just having to take jobs because jobs present themselves. I can enjoy a position, even for a small amount of time, where I don’t have to do that.

Do you have any ambitions, at all, to do Broadway?

TURNER:  Yeah, I really would love to. There’s always a possibility, when you do a play that’s successful on a West End production, that you could get a transfer. There was a possibility in the pipeline, when we were doing our show, but with dates and other things, we were going to lose some actors and it was just gonna be quite difficult. That would be an amazing thing to do. I think you’d struggle to find an actor on the planet who hasn’t got that on a bucket list of some sort, where they want to do at least a small run of a Broadway play. That would be quite cool, but it’s just finding the right job, at the right time. It’s definitely something that I would strongly consider.

The Man Who Killed Hitler and then Bigfoot is in theaters, on demand and on digital on February 8th.

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