Naveen Andrews “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland” - Exclusive Interview

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EXCLUSIVE NAVEEN ANDREWS “ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND” INTERVIEW
By Abbie Bernstein

Thanks to the synergy of now-joined companies Disney and ABC, the network’s new limited series ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND (spun off from ONCE UPON A TIME) is able to incorporate not only many elements from Disney’s animated ALICE IN WONDERLAND, but also ALADDIN. Here, Alice (Sophie Lowe) and Genie of the Lamp Cyrus (Peter Gadiot) are in love with one another and fighting to remain together despite the machinations of those around them. Although Gadiot’s Cyrus is an attractive, romantic, young-looking three-dimensional fellow, rather than Robin Williams’ huge blue jokester, he is still pursued by the power-hungry magician Jafar.

However, the Jafar of WONDERLAND is not the cartoonish villain of the film, but rather embodied by actor Naveen Andrews. Andrews is probably most famous for his six years as the conflicted but ultimately heroic Sayid Jarrah on LOST. The London-born actor also starred in the British series THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA and as Lord Akbari in the fantasy series SINBAD. Andrews’ feature film credits include the Oscar-winning THE ENGLISH PATIENT, LONDON KILLS ME, WILD WEST, GRINDHOUSE and THE BRAVE ONE.

At a Q&A panel for ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND, Andrews is present, along with cast mates Lowe, Gadiot, Emma Rigby (the Red Queen) and Michael Socha (Will, the Knave of Hearts), plus executive producers/series creators Edward Kitsis, Adam Horowitz and Zack Estrin (the fourth creator, Jane Espenson, has obligations elsewhere today).

Asked if he feels in any way obliged to previous incarnations of Jafar, Andrews says, “In the popular imagination, I know he exists almost as an icon, a sort of incarnation of evil, I think it’s fair to say. But I think what we want to do is to present the audience with something they’ve never seen before. There has to be ambiguity.” Also, he points out, nobody is all bad. “Everyone had a childhood, yeah?”

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That evening, at a party thrown by ABC for the Television Critics Association at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Andrews is seated on a couch, cordially making himself available to talk more about WONDERLAND – along with LOST and his love of classic films, among other topics.

Given that SINBAD and ALADDIN share certain aspects as narratives, does Andrews see any similarity between WONDERLAND’s Jafar and his earlier role as Lord Akbari?

“Not at all,” Andrew replies. “For a start, [Akbari] is human. He doesn’t have supernatural powers. He’s power-less. So that’s a fundamental difference. The thing about Jafar is, you can’t put a barometer on his mortality like you can with any other character that I’ve ever played. There’s an aspect of him that is supernatural. I’m thrilled by it. Power, magic, the ability to change space and time.”

If he isn’t altogether human, then who or what is Jafar? Andrews gives a somewhat elusive answer. “I know what the writers want to do is tantalize the audience in terms of who he is in terms of the first four, five, six episodes, and give you flashes of understanding of why he may make the decisions that he does. Because he obviously does have a rather dark, twisted agenda. But I think I said it – everyone had a childhood, even Jafar.”

On WONDERLAND’s parent show, ONCE UPON A TIME, Robert Carlyle’s character Rumpelstiltskin started out as a scary villain, who over time has evolved into a heartthrob. Might the same sort of transformation be in store for Jafar?

“If by that you mean a full, well-rounded character that has more than two dimensions and is complex, then I would say yes,” Andrews responds.

Prior to this, had Andrews ever imagined being part of a Disney fairy tale? “No. Absolutely not. Because it’s almost outrageous, the idea that you have what’s not an overly reverent homage to a nineteenth-century classic mixed in with elements from the Arabian Nights. It’s extraordinary, really. So I see it as a glorious sort of synthesis that has to work somehow. And that’s what makes it trippy, as well, because again, I don’t know what ALICE IN WONDERLAND means to you. To me, it means Jefferson Airplane.”

This is a reference to the Jefferson Airplane classic rock song “Go Ask Alice.” Andrews sings a line from it. “‘One pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small …’”

The reporter reflexively supplies the next line. “‘And the ones that Mother gives you don’t do anything at all …’”

“There you go,” Andrews concludes, pleased that his reference has been understood.

Andrews is also a guitarist and a singer who has played in rock bands. Did he and any groups he performed with ever cover “Go Ask Alice”?

“We played a lot of things,” Andrews replies with a laugh. “We’re talking about it just as Jefferson Airplane. That was California acid rock to us. In England,, we have more the Stones and the Beatles, and then Hendrix, of course.”

“Go Ask Alice” aside, did Andrews have any particular views on ALICE IN WONDERLAND as a book or a story or a film before becoming involved in the television series?

“I was aware that Lewis Carroll was part of a trend in writing that seemed to look to an earlier in the nineteenth century for their influences. I mean, him, Edward Lear with nonsense poetry, to me seem to sort of look backwards to people like Thomas Duquesne and even earlier Coleridge, the poet. They were interested in describing altering of the senses, almost hallucinatory sort of literature.”

In some ways, it can be argued that ALICE IN WONDERLAND is actually nightmarish. “Well, yes, absolutely,” Andrews agrees. “Because I think the reason why Alice tied in with her counterparts in the late 1960s was the idea of a trip gone wrong, do you know what I mean?”

Andrews says he had not seen ONCE UPON A TIME prior to becoming involved in WONDERLAND. “No, because I don’t watch TV. I’ve never seen LOST. I saw the pilot, because you have to see the piece that you’re involved in, but I never saw any episodes.”

Wait – almost everyone in the known world has seen LOST. Is Andrews one of those actors who does not like to watch his own work? “Correct,” he says. “Yes.”

Is this because he feels that having done the scenes, he’s seen it already, or does he find himself picking at what he perceives as mistakes in the work?

“I don’t even get that far,” Andrews says. “I mean, I try to literally sit down and watch the piece and I appreciate everybody else’s performance. As soon as I come on, the whole thing’s ruined. So I don’t put myself through it.”

However, Andrews did wind up watching the LOST finale in some unusual circumstances. “As I said, I never saw the show,” he relates. “I remember the finale causing a great deal of controversy and at the time, I was hanging about with Marilyn Manson and he made me sit through the finale while he sat next to me explaining why he thought it was good. Because you know, he and Twiggy, who’s his guitar player, were huge fans of the show, and Twiggy had actually tattooed the numbers [which appear everywhere throughout LOST] into his arm. He was serious, you know what I mean? He’s hardcore. So I had to [watch it] – I didn’t want to offend him, obviously, but they found a great deal of merit in the finale.”

Therefore, Andrews says of his own feelings about LOST’s last episode, “I’ll just go with what they felt.”

As Andrews isn’t keen on seeing his own work, what sort of fare does he enjoy? “Usually stuff that’s from a long time ago for some reason. Maybe it’s because I’m old. I was born in 1969. I’ve been dragged kicked and screaming into the twenty-first century, and I still can’t believe I’m actually here. My idea of a great film is BRIEF ENCOUNTER by [director] David Lean.”

In fact, asked about recent projects, Andrews says he thinks his recent feature film DIANA, starring Naomi Watts as the late English princess, has some similarities with romantic movies of the past. “I play a heart surgeon called Hasnat Khan, who she was having a relationship with for the last two years of her life. It’s basically a very simple love story, in the same way that I thought BRIEF ENCOUNTER was – very intimate, very quiet and very pure.”

When playing a real person, Andrews says he does a good deal of research. “If it’s a real person, if you don’t get to meet the person, then you have to meet people who knew them, and have an idea of the time and the kind of milieu they were working in, their own background, where they were born, what informed them as human beings before the events in question. Whereas,” he brings the conversation back to WONDERLAND and Jafar, “there’s a great deal more freedom with a character like this.”

Freedom, Andrews adds, should not be confused with making the performance larger. “I’m very wary of the word ‘larger,’ or ‘bigger,’ because of what it implies. I feel – again, if it’s not too pretentious, as in Shakespeare, what we’re dealing with here, in this piece, is a heightened reality, but that reality has to be grounded in something real. It has a core that has to be real in order to believe the characters.”

Is there anything else Andrews would like to say about ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND that nobody’s asked him during the all-day barrage of questions? He laughs. “I just want the audience to be genuinely surprised.”

Written by Abbie Bernstein