Steve Coogan, it seems, is quite happy playing somebody not that famous for a change. On UK television in recent years he’s portrayed the notorious Jimmy Savile in The Reckoning, esteemed British political interviewer Brian Walden in Brian and Maggie, and he’s soon to return as another enduring media legend, Alan Partridge.
But in the film The Penguin Lessons he’s Tom Michell, a man who wrote about his teaching experiences in Argentina in the 1970s. That involved him rescuing a penguin from an oil slick and the bird, refusing all efforts to be released into the wild, becoming a beloved mascot at the private Anglo boarding school where he taught. A rare foray into feel-good territory for the comedian and actor, it’s written by Jeff Pope, whose past Coogan productions include Philomena, Stan & Ollie and The Lost King. Meanwhile, Coogan has also been on New Zealand screens in Dr Strangelove, the filmed National Theatre production of Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War black comedy in which he takes on the multiple roles originally played by Peter Sellers.
Coogan is on a media treadmill in London when The Listener nips in for a quick chat before he’s whisked away to a live morning television appointment …
So, a penguin movie. Some might see that as a left-field choice for you. Do you?
Yeah, well, it would have been. I’m not really interested in doing a cuddly penguin movie. I mean, if people want to go and see cuddly penguin movies, great, fill your boots. However, Jeff Pope, the writer, told me he was writing this film about Tom Michell, who adopted a penguin when he was in Argentina in the mid-70s. And, I said, during the time of the military dictatorship? Was that part of the film? And it wasn’t. Tom was a really nice guy, and I said if you make it someone who hates penguins and kids and is just a bit more selfish, and somehow bring the dictatorship into the story, then that would interest me. Because that’s intriguing and different and therefore I’ll jump in with both feet. Let’s use the penguin as a conduit for some quite important issues, and have my character a cynic, who’s as cynical as I am probably about most penguin things.
The adage “never work with animals or children” went right past you?
Yeah, well. I don’t mind doing difficult things. Whenever I do a job, I think that’s going to be hard, but I’ll brace myself and go for it. The thing that worries me the most is being bored and disengaged. I thought it was going to be a technical and logistical challenge working with kids and animals, but it was a lot easier than I anticipated. Because penguins when they’re trained and looked after are perfectly happy animals. You have to accommodate them. They need quiet on set for their own welfare, so that had a strange ripple effect. We weren’t allowed to raise our voices. Any arguments that took place were very quiet arguments, and the atmosphere was quite relaxed and peaceful. Whenever the penguin was on set, you had to be patient. Penguins don’t always do what you want them to and eight times out of 10 it won’t, but two times out of 10 it will. And if you’ve got that, then you’ve got something you can work with.
Having played a few high-profile real people in recent years, it sounds like you’ve made this character, another real person, more you. Presumably that makes it easier?
I’ve played lots of quite well-known people and your options are restricted. You have to be more faithful to who that person is, and you can’t make these huge leaps, because people come equipped with a lot of pre-knowledge about that person. So you can’t go off piste, really. You can find hidden layers to that person, hopefully. With someone like Tom, he’s not particularly well known. He is as an author, but not as an individual. So we were able to be more inventive and actually make the character I played a bit like I did with [journalist] Martin Sixsmith in Philomena, with Judi Dench. Martin wasn’t as dysfunctional the way I played him, but that helped the narrative. It was the same thing with the penguin film – let’s make him somebody who doesn’t like penguins, and let’s see him go on a journey where his cynicism is challenged by the presence of this inscrutable, vertically aligned bird.
I was going to attempt a joke that having done four Trip films with Rob Brydon, having a penguin as a straight man must have come as a relief.
Well, that’s right. I mean, at least the penguin doesn’t interrupt me when I’m trying to think of something or say something vaguely amusing.
Meanwhile, your performance in the filmed stage production of Dr Strangelove has also made it to this side of the world. Playing four characters every night must have been a challenge.
It was. I did nearly 140 shows. Four characters on stage every night. In the film, Peter Sellers was supposed to play four but in actual fact played only three and I wanted to do what his original remit had been. It was technically incredibly demanding. Every night I’d stand backstage and think, “Well, here goes, I’ve got to go and run around like a lunatic for two hours with these superfast costume changes in the wings that were like Formula One pit stops. It was punishing, but I enjoyed it.
Were you playing Peter Sellers playing those characters?
No. I’m playing those characters in my own interpretation. There’s a Venn diagram where there’s an overlap with what Sellers did, but I didn’t slavishly follow what he did. I know how to do different characters. I’ve been doing it long enough that I can put my own spin on it. I wanted things to be more accessible and more recognisable to modern audiences.
The Penguin Lessons and NT Live: Dr Strangelove are in cinemas now.
