The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman

by Neil Daniels

  ‘Other than that, apart from the fact that we’ve all got potentially big mouths and you can say too much and then feel like an idiot, you actually don’t want to ruin people’s surprises,’ he told Den of Geek’s Louisa Mellor, ‘because however much people say, “Oh go on, tell us,” they wouldn’t thank you for it once the show goes out, they’d think, “Oh, I didn’t really want to know that.” As a punter, I love not knowing stuff, I always get annoyed if I’m watching a film or something with somebody else who’s going, “He’s going to,” or, you know. I’d rather feel stupid and find out than know an hour in advance.’

  Freeman has seen his character go through some changes in the three series. He misses being in Afghanistan and being with his comrades, an aspect of his life which was explored in the first series. The closest thing he gets to a thrill is being Holmes’s sidekick, but Watson has developed so much since the partnership first began.

  ‘With this new series, he’s also fallen in love,’ he told Mark Gatiss in a Radio Times interview. ‘He thought his best friend was dead. There’s definitely a sort of light that goes out when you lose somebody you love, but now his life has moved on. He’s in a real grown-up relationship, which he needed to be. So I think that we join John in a way a bit sadder because he lost a friend, a very good friend, but in a way more content, actually.’

  Watson’s love interest in the series, Mary Morstan, is none other than Freeman’s real-life partner, Amanda Abbington. She is a hugely significant part of Watson’s existence and becomes Mrs Watson.

  The first time the conversation came up between Freeman and the writers about who would play Watson’s wife was during series two.

  ‘I said, “Well, to be honest, I think Amanda would be pretty good,” and he goes, “That’s exactly what we were thinking,’” Freeman said to Vulture’s Denise Martin. ‘They knew she was able to be funny and engaging and just right. I mean, the last thing you want is to feel like you’re being John and Yoko, but Amanda can do this all day long in her sleep. Of course, I love her, but I know also she’s really fucking good. I wouldn’t say she should play everything in the world, but as far as this casting, it’s pretty good.’

  Freeman and Abbington went to Mark Gatiss’s house with Steven Moffat to watch The Hound of the Baskervilles and after the film finished Gatiss suggested they go in the kitchen to chat about the next series and the introduction of a new female character. To follow the trajectory of the original stories they needed a love interest for Watson.

  She said to The Independent’s James Rampton in 2013, ‘I thought they were going to ask me, “Do you have any ideas for this part? Which actress do you think works well with Martin? What about Penélope Cruz or Gwyneth Paltrow [two of Freeman’s previous co-stars]?” In fact, what they said to me was, “We’d like you to play Mary.” I probably got quite emotional at that point.’

  Abbington even tried to talk them out of giving her the role but they were adamant that she should be cast in the series. Gatiss and Moffat thought it would be easy for the couple to act together. Her role is pivotal to Watson’s therapy after Holmes’s shocking comeback in ‘The Empty Hearse’. She found Freeman easy to work with and, after all, he is her favourite actor and not just her partner. The two characters go on a journey together in the stories and Abbington felt blessed to be given the opportunity to be cast opposite Freeman. She told The Independent: ‘He’s so easy to work with and so creative. He brings something different to every single take. He is so on top of his lines that he can dig down and find a different angle every time. That really keeps you on your toes. Both characters go on a wonderful journey, and to do that with Martin was such fun.’

  Freeman has described her as ‘unpretentious, unfussy, clear in her decision-making and not a drama queen’ in an interview with the Sunday Times’s Benji Wilson.

  What Abbington found challenging was being the third wheel between Freeman and Cumberbatch. She felt the pressure of the role because she had quite a few scenes with the two of them and found the famous scene where Holmes reveals himself to Watson after everyone assumed he was dead to be a real challenge.

  ‘Ben and Martin have real chemistry,’ she admitted to The Independent’s James Rampton, ‘and I had to hold my own in the scenes with them. It was daunting – not necessarily to come between them, but to arrive as another dynamic.’

  On working with her partner, Abbington enthused to The Hollywood Reporter’s Philiana Ng, ‘I think he’s one of our finest actors and I think he’s just a joy to work with, as is Ben[edict Cumberbatch]. Their chemistry is fantastic, so coming into that was slightly daunting because they work each off each other so beautifully. I’ve worked with Martin on other projects. They were all very small parts, but this was the first part of any substance and depth.’

  However, when it became public knowledge that Abbington would be cast alongside Freeman in the show, she received death threats on Twitter. As quoted in an article in the Express by Tom Morgan, Freeman responded by saying, ‘To me, they’re not fans of the show – they’re fans of a show going off their heads.’

  He continued, ‘Obviously I love Amanda and I want everyone to react positively to her. She plays a fantastic character and brings a hell of a lot to the third series.’

  What’s interesting about Watson is seeing what he has learned from Holmes and he applies the knowledge and skills to solving clues himself with Holmes’s approval.

  ‘I think, as you saw snippets of when Sherlock and I are together, you saw very very small snippets of when Sherlock would occasionally say, “Well go on then, let’s see what you’ve learned,”’ Freeman told Den of Geek’s Louisa Mellor. ‘I think John, by his own admission… probably compared to another normal person in a room might look quite impressive because of his time with Sherlock and just because of his forensic skill, but knowing how small his knowledge is compared to Sherlock’s, I think he would feel quite insecure about that.’

  Series three also saw a new villain with the Scandinavian actor Lars Mikkelsen who plays Charles Augustus Magnussen, Holmes and Watson’s latest nemesis in the vein of Moriarty.

  The series has made both lead stars household names and has proved that Britain is capable of making good telly at a time when there is so much interest in American series such as Breaking Bad, The Wire, House of Cards and Game of Thrones. It is a testament to the writers’ talents that they created such an engrossing, engaging and well-written series as Sherlock even with a BBC budget. Ultimately, regardless of financial restraints, it’s all down to the writing. Big-budget TV shows can be disastrous if the writing is bad (the Spielberg-produced Terra Nova being a case in point) but shows such as Sherlock, which have relatively small budgets by today’s standards, turn out wonderfully because the writing is superlative.

  San Francisco Chronicle’s David Wiegand said, ‘The performances are even better than in previous years, with brand-new but fully credible sides of Holmes’s and Watson’s characters. And the writing, by Moffat and Gatiss, is in a league by itself. Other shows may plateau or tread thematic water once they’re successful, but so far, Sherlock has been, and remains, a great show that only gets even better.’

  The Washington Post’s Hank Stuever wrote, ‘Sherlock moves swiftly and intelligently but also a little too coldly, like a long commercial for better WiFi… Cumberbatch’s take on Holmes’s narcissism can come off as skeevishly robotic. If not for Freeman’s deeper, more human work as Watson, the style would soon go sterile.’

  Writing in Variety, Brian Lowery said, ‘It all works thanks heavily to the chemistry between Cumberbatch and Freeman, which alternates between wide-eyed wonder and exasperation to the point of the good doctor calling his pal a “dickhead” and a “cock”.’

  One thing Freeman is aware of is the online community that is dedicated to depicting sexual and intimate scenes between Holmes and Watson. Ian McKellen, his Hobbit co-star, even sent him some pictures via email with a message ‘Have you seen this dear?’

>   ‘I’ve always seen it as a point of principle not to be offended if people imply you’re gay – so no, I’ve never given a shit,’ Freeman admitted to Time Out London’s Nick Aveling on the subject. ‘If I was offended, I’d kind of think, well what does that make me? I wouldn’t want a fifteen-year-old kid thinking I’m ashamed of it. I’m not. If anything, it’s kind of funny to see pictures of me and Ben doing whatever we’re doing to each other – even if they’re far from the truth. The only time I’m sort of bothered is when people get proprietary about it or think there should be a certain kind of reaction, like it needs to be in the National Gallery.’

  Freeman continued to be very protective of his privacy. On a recent trip to Japan Benedict Cumberbatch had been greeted by cheering fans as though he was the reborn messiah, but that is not something Freeman has experienced. Of course, Martin is famous but he is not one of the industry’s most recognisable figures. He does not go out of his way to stay anonymous but remains reluctant to give too much away in interviews.

  ‘Whenever I’ve been anywhere else, I’ve not been chased by people – it depends where I am and how visible I am,’ Freeman told GQ’s Oliver Franklin. ‘You can still be reasonably invisible. Not that I want to be – despite what people may think I’ve not gone through life trying to be anonymous. At the same time I want to have my private life and you can’t have that if people are screaming and shouting at you while you’re in a restaurant. I don’t mind standing out in some ways.’

  LEGO The Hobbit: The Video Game was released on 8 April, which relives the adventures of the first two Hobbit films LEGO style. It features the voices of the original cast members.

  ‘You know I just like it if it’s good,’ he explained to Steven Balbirnie of The University Observer. ‘If it’s something that someone’s made up yesterday and the first thing is a screenplay and I love it then I’m in. If it’s an adaptation of something that I like then I’m also in. It’s always just about what that screenplay is like, because you could’ve had a terrible adaptation of any of those things, I mean you could’ve had a terrible adaptation of any of those beloved books and I wouldn’t have wanted to do it.’

  One script that had an instant ‘yes factor’ for Freeman was Fargo.

  Martin appeared for the first time in a major American TV series as Lester Nygaard in the dark-comedy crime drama series Fargo in April 2014. Written by Noah Hawley and filmed in Calgary, Fargo is inspired by the much respected 1996 film of the same name by the Coen Brothers, who are also executive producers of the series. The premiere was seen on US TV by 4.5 million viewers.

  Set in January 2006, the story concerns the mysterious loner Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) who passes through Bemidji in Minnesota and meets oddball insurance salesman Lester Nygaard (Freeman) in a hospital waiting room. Malvo encourages Nygaard with violence and malice, which sets off a chain of unlikely murders. On the case is rookie Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) and Duluth police officer Gus Grimly.

  Freeman didn’t even audition for the part – it was a straight offer. Hawley had seen something else Freeman had been in and was impressed that the actor was not all sweetness and light.

  He admitted to the Daily Telegraph, ‘I didn’t audition for Fargo. It was a straight offer. They didn’t even ask to hear the accent.’ And then added, ‘It could have all gone very, very bad. Yeah, I was surprised that they didn’t want to hear that. ’Cause I could have had a cloth ear.’

  Any reservations he had about the TV adaption of the original movie went out of the window after reading the first script and the subsequent nine. Each script became more enthralling and surprising. Freeman found the characters, the setting, the overall story arc and subplots all very alluring. Fans of the original movie may have been dubious too, as it has a rather high cult status among movie buffs, but the film offered a different approach. They are two entirely different entities.

  There is an anger in Freeman, something dwelling inside him that is waiting to burst into films. This anger is present in many of the great British actors, including Oliver Reed and Anthony Hopkins.

  ‘Some of it is a sort of lighthearted anger that I know will pass,’ admitted Freeman to Josh Rottenberg of Entertainment Weekly, ‘but some of it is pretty deep-seated and a fundamental part of me that I think people often don’t understand.’

  His partner, his children and Martin’s love of soul music and clothes give him periods of unmitigated glee but, ‘it will probably never last that long without me puncturing it,’ he continued to tell Rottenberg. ‘It’s a pain in the ass in some ways, and in other ways it’s a blessing. For all of my faults as a person that it brings out, it’s helped put food on the table.’

  What impressed Freeman about the script was how impeccably written it was and how finely laced the story is with dark comedy, emotion and suspense. His decision to accept the role was based on the first episode, especially his character’s first encounter with Billy Bob Thornton’s mysterious loner, Lorne Malvo.

  Speaking about Lester Nygaard, Freeman told Anne Bayley of TwoCentsTV.com, ‘I just got the feeling that this was going to be a role where you could give rein to a lot of stuff, to play a lot of stuff. And even within that first episode the range that he goes between is really interesting and so I knew that was only going to grow and expand in the next nine episodes, and so it proved to be. In all the ten episodes I get to play as Lester pretty much the whole gamut of human existence and human feeling, you know, he does the whole lot. And that’s exactly what you want to do as an actor.’

  In terms of story development, Freeman knew very little about his character. There was much speculation about what Nygaard’s ultimate demise would be but everything was shrouded in secrecy. He had great trust in Hawley though, which is why he signed for the part. He only suggested a rough character outline, which wasn’t specific or detailed. It was just a general idea of where the writer wanted to go with the character. Hawley knew a great deal more than he was telling Freeman and he was careful with what was leaked out. Martin, therefore, did not have any particular clues as to what was coming in each episode. The cast were drip-fed the scripts when Hawley was ready to show them. As with many first-class writers, he did not want his actors to see the scripts until he, as the writer and creator, was a hundred-per-cent happy with them. Each script was, therefore, a surprise for Freeman and his fellow cast members. It also meant that nothing could be accidentally leaked to the public and thus potentially ruin the show’s climax. Martin didn’t know until past the halfway stage of filming the series what this would entail.

  Freeman would read the script for, say, episode three and go, ‘Wow, I didn’t think that would happen,’ and then read another episode script and think, ‘Christ, I can’t believe what’s happened to…’ The whole series was a surprise, which, in some respects, was easier for the actor because he didn’t have to over-think or prepare too much and he could just be ready to move in whichever direction was necessary as the character moves on with each episode. It was all down to Hawley’s command of the story as the writer and creator. By the end of the final episode Freeman was as surprised as anyone to see how Nygaard was capable of doing things that he had not been able to do at the start of the series.

  However, Martin was initially dubious about taking on the role since he wondered – as he did with Sherlock – if there really needed to be a TV update of the original film. But then, of course, after reading the brilliant script, all initial reservations were debunked. He was quite vocal in correspondence with Noah Hawley that he did not want to be part of a Fargo tribute band. Hawley put his mind at rest and said that such a notion would not be the case. ‘The fact that it uses a very famous and brilliant film as a jumping-off point was not really an attraction; you could have an appalling version of Fargo,’ Freeman explained to Vulture’s Denise Martin. ‘But this is a really, really good version! I can only go on the script that I’m sent, and this one was interesting, it was engaging, and it was surprisin
g. I got to cover ground that I haven’t covered before. I showed it to my missus and she’s like, “You have to fuckin’ do this.” So I did.’

  Freeman admired the work of the Coen Brothers from afar but said he had never been fanatical about them. He saw how the episode scripts tried to bring a sensibility to the films which was reminiscent of the Coen Brothers’ best work. The brothers were only tangentially involved in the series but Freeman liked the fact that, in a sort of removed way, he was working with them. The series wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t been involved. Martin was not interested in a literal remake – he liked that it echoes some of the traits of the original film but also brings a new sensibility to the story. The TV series stands on its own weight and does not rely on rehashing the original film. It inhabits the same world as the film but not the same characters, though it has the same darkly comic tone that the Coen Brothers excel at.

  ‘Noah Hawley, who wrote all ten episodes, was definitely trying to tap into that,’ Freeman told The Observer’s Andrew Anthony, ‘and I think he did that successfully enough for them to give him their blessing. I don’t know the Coen brothers but people I know who do say that’s not easily won. But I had no interest in being in just a TV version of the film. As Billy Bob Thornton said, “If it was called Detroit, you’d still have to want to do it.”’

  Billy Bob Thornton has often come across as an enigmatic man, slightly odd and mercurial, but Freeman enjoyed working with him. He found Thornton to be a very easy and interesting actor to work with. They hit it off immediately, mostly talking about their shared love of music. Their first scene together was the emergency-room scene, which is the first time they meet on screen too. For Martin to work with such a distinguished and terrific actor was for him an absolute joy.