WARWICK DAVIS “LIFE’S TOO SHORT” INTERVIEW
By Abbie Bernstein
It may be literally impossible to know current Western movie pop culture and not have seen Warwick Davis. The Englishman began his acting career at the age of eleven, playing Wicket the Ewok in STAR WARS VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI, a role he reprised in two telefilms as well as the footage that accompanies Disneyland’s popular STAR TOURS ride. STAR WARS creator George Lucas was so taken with the actor’s personality and performance that the filmmaker was inspired to craft WILLOW, the 1988 fantasy movie that had Davis in the title role as a hobbit-like protector of his homeland. Davis then essayed the role of the heroic rodent Reepicheep in the British TV series PRINCE CASPIAN AND THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER; he appeared in the feature film THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN as a different character, Nikabrik.
If all this weren’t enough to make film fantasy fans aware of Davis, he’s also been in all eight HARRY POTTER films, sometimes as Professor Filius Flitwick, sometimes as the goblin banker Griphook and sometimes as both characters in the same movie. Horror fans know Davis as the title character in the LEPRECHAUN movies.
Now Ricky Gervais and his writing/producing partner Stephen Merchant, like George Lucas before them, have been inspired to create an entire project around Davis. LIFE’S TOO SHORT, currently airing on HBO Sunday nights at 10:30 PM (ET/PT). In the half-hour comedy, Davis, Gervais and Merchant all play fictionalized versions of themselves. In the show (as opposed to real life), Davis is an egomaniac who runs a casting agency for actors who have dwarfism.
There are elements of LIFE’S TOO SHORT that are based on events from Davis’ real life, the actor observes. “A few of the things that happened in the show happened to me. And the things that hadn’t happened to me that Ricky and Stephen wrote, I always wondered why they hadn’t happened to me. They’ve managed to get inside the head of a little person so well and so believably that I was thinking, ‘That’s a scenario that should have happened by now,’ and I’m sure some of them will come back to haunt me. What starts as an amusing anecdote becomes hilarious once [Gervais and Merchant] get their hands on it and put it in the series.”
Gervais hastens to add that what we see in LIFE’S TOO SHORT is not the real Davis. “He’s used his own name, but it’s not like him at all. This [character in the series] is manipulative. He’s exploitive. He’s jealous. We have to make him an awful person, because Warwick, his screen presence is adorable. He’s drenched in humanity, and we had to make him like a Hitler for you to get the gag. And I’ve never had so much fun - I think Stephen will agree with me - directing. [Davis] is the best person to direct. It’s like downloading thoughts. And his physicality is amazing. He’s like a silent movie star. There’s nothing he won’t do.”
Davis says, “I love the slapstick element to it. I don’t think we always see enough of that in comedy, so it was really fun to have that opportunity. And my life is quite physical anyway. When you are three-foot-six, you have to climb stuff now and again, and find yourself in quite precarious places in what is quite a big world. And so it’s something to play all of that out as well.”
For the series’ premise to work, Merchant notes, “We had to make Warwick a lot less successful in the show than he is in real life.”
“And a lot more desperate, as well,” Gervais adds.
Davis says that he met Gervais and Merchant on one of the duo’s other recent projects. “[Gervais] asked me to do EXTRAS,” Davis recalls, referring to the British-made, HBO-aired series that starred Gervais as an aspiring actor stuck in the background. One episode guest-starred Davis’ HARRY POTTER colleague Daniel Radcliffe, and Gervais thought it would add something to have Davis aboard as well. “He called me at home and said, ‘We’re writing a series, would you be okay if in this episode, I kicked you in the face?’ I said, ‘It would be an honor,’” Davis laughs. “And that’s how it started.”
Playing himself, i.e., a normal human being, in LIFE’S TOO SHORT allows Davis to act without having to wear prosthetics or masks (as he has in the STAR WARS, HARRY POTTER and LEPRECHAUN films). Does this make him happy?
“Oh, very happy,” Davis replies. “It’s always been a dream of mine to get to do comedy anyway, but then to get to do that where I sit in the makeup chair and then get out of it five minutes later looking better than I normally do - that’s something quite unique for me. That’s not to say I don’t love doing those jobs where you are in these prosthetics and it’s all-encompassing and it’s an amazing acting experience, but certainly LIFE’S TOO SHORT was a dream, as far as that goes, just to be able to actually look good, wear nice suits and stuff like that.”
Among the totally invented aspects of Davis’ persona in LIFE’S TOO SHORT is the premise that he owes money on back taxes. Davis says, however, this can all too easily happen to people in his profession. “Actors can get in that situation if you’re not careful. You know, you can be working, and then you earn loads of money, and when the work dries up, you’re still paying tax from previous years, and if there’s no money coming in, you can be in big trouble. And so that does reflect a reality for a self-employed actor.”
LIFE’S TOO SHORT has a lot of big-name guest stars, including Liam Neeson and Johnny Depp. Did anyone ask Davis’ old friend George Lucas to do a cameo. “No, we didn’t,” Davis relates, “but he would certainly fit in. I think I should pursue him for a WILLOW 2 or something like that,” he quips.
Davis says more seriously that he and Lucas are still in contact. “Of course. He’s been responsible for many of the highlights of my career to date, and so yeah, we’re always in touch. For him to write the film WILLOW, which he did - he was inspired by me when I was thirteen and in about ’83, he had the original idea. So he gave me a great opportunity in my life, something quite unique as well, because the character was billed as ‘the unlikely hero’” and indeed, it was an unlikely role for a short actor at that time as well.”
On the flip side, the title character in the six LEPRECHAUN movies (the first one co-starred a pre-FRIENDS Jennifer Aniston) is a fairly unlikely villain. “They were a lot of fun,” Davis says. “For me, it was just, ‘go crazy,’ and I had total free rein on the character and I’m amazed how popular those films are. I didn’t know there were so many deranged people in the world. But there are fans everywhere, and I can see them coming a mile off when they recognize me.”
Davis says he hopes there’s still life in his malicious gold-loving character. “I’d love to do another one, I’d love to do more. I talked to Johnny Depp last year, while we were shooting LIFE’S TOO SHORT and I said, ‘Once your franchise kind of dries up a bit, shall we combine the two and reboot them?’ So a LEPRECHAUN VERSUS PIRATES movie - pirates love gold, leprechauns do, maybe he steals my gold, something like that. He looked mildly impressed,” Davis chuckles.
Doing something like LIFE’S TOO SHORT would seem to require a healthy sense of humor about oneself and one’s career. Davis says he’s always had both. “Oh, absolutely. You’ve got to. It’s the best thing. Everybody should have a sense of humor about themselves. I’ve got two kids, eight and fourteen, and they’re both short, and what I say to them is, if they can have a sense of self-belief and a good sense of humor about themselves and the world, then they’ll go far, which is what my mom and dad instilled in me when I was growing up.”
By Abbie Bernstien - Buzzy Mag Entertainment Reporter
