Calgary Expo 2023 Andy Serkis Panel

May 4, 2023 at 7:47pm
By Jason Stettner

At the Calgary Expo 2023 there was a Andy Serkis panel at the BMO Center main stage where he went over his career. It was mostly focused on a Q&A style presentation, with lots of questions and some good answers along the way.

To start there was a deep dive into his roles in regards to motion capture. He mentioned being very fortunate to be given an opportunity to do this type of work with actual acting as opposed to interacting with just sticks. Other than Lord of the Rings, a lot of fans come up to him to talk about Planet of the Apes.

A role he particularly loved since it was the full evolution of a character from youth to the end of a life, something that only motion capture could truly provide. From a personal perspective, aside from playing Peter Jackson’s King Kong he’s a big fan of the earlier monster films such as with Godzilla in the stop motion era.

When it comes to challenging roles, the most demanding was Caesar from Planet of the Apes. To try and hit consistency across an emotional journey with the character was difficult. King Kong was another one since it was physically challenging, requiring heavy weights to properly portray the swinging motions.

He would often be on top of cranes to shoot the physical on scene locations whereas the chick in his motion capture portions was a Barbie Doll. He also did the classic Gollum voice with a “my precious”. Noting that the inspiration came from his cat choking on a hairball, a historic moment of throat torture. That about sums everything up, we have additional panel and other coverage from the show in our hub.

View our James McAvoy Panel Coverage
View our Calgary Expo 2023 Hub