Andrew Benson (HH1)

A&E: What brought you to the project & why did you want to make this film?

ANDREW BENSON: Well, the novels of C.S. Forester have been hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic for what, forty, fifty, sixty years? When you get the opportunity to make something that most people only dream of, you can't really turn it down. You're talking about period naval vessels, you're talking about action-adventure, and you're talking about romance. You're talking about great stories, fantastic characters, and an opportunity to do something of a scale never before attempted on television. And that's got to be exciting for any program maker.

A&E: What's at the heart of the HORNBLOWER story?

AB: The heart of Hornblower is the character of Hornblower. We first meet him as a seventeen-year-old, a shy, gawky teenager who joins the British Navy, gets bullied on his first ship, is scared of heights—which is not great if you have to climb to the top of a mast—and gets seasick, even in the harbor. It's a kind of rites-of-passage, I suppose, where we gradually show this young boy growing into manhood and coping with the stresses and strains of growing up, against the historical context of war.

A&E: How was Ioan Gruffudd selected for the lead?

AB: We must have seen fifty, one hundred young actors, and we narrowed that down to a short list that we screen tested. I can honestly say from the first time we looked at Ioan, we had a pretty good idea. He looks like the character and he's a terrific young actor. I think he's going to be a huge star. He had in himself some of the qualities we were looking for—a sort of shyness, and a lot of the characteristics that sometimes have fallen a little bit out of fashion these days—honor and looking after your friends. The bonus has been that he is not only talented, but he's got a maturity and a concentration which is quite astounding for someone who's only twenty-three or twenty-four. That concentration is what's going to make him a star, because he can bring that performance across, time after time after time.

A&E: Tell us something about your locations. How many locations have you shot?

AB: I've lost count. So many. Let's put it this way. We've spent twelve weeks in the Ukraine, we've got nine weeks in Portugal, we've got three weeks in the U.K. and eight weeks of model shooting. So you're talking about, I don't know, fifty or sixty locations.

Some of them are at sea and some of them are on land. So you mix all that together, it's quite an undertaking.

A&E: Tell us about the model shooting.

AB: We cheat all the time on film and television. We only have two real-life vessels: one frigate that was built for us and one smaller schooner. But how do we suggest a navy? How do we suggest sea battles? How do we blow things up? Because to blow up a real ship and sink it would be just a bit too expensive. Well, the answer is models. But when I say models I don't mean the kind you have as a child that you made out of a kit from the local store. I mean models that are 20, 25 feet long, 30, 40 feet high, fully masted, complete recreation of the period. They were actually built for us in a Russian shipyard because those people have the skills of making those period vessels out of wood and out of the traditional materials. They were then shipped to the U.K., to Pinewood Film Studios, where they have a huge open-air tank, which is like a sea where we could maneuver the ships around and create the fantastic sequences we've managed to create. Equally, we went to Pinewood because of the expertise of the people there.

A&E: You have Academy Award winners working on the film.

AB: Yes, we've got an Oscar-winning costume designer in John Mollo, who is also a great historical expert on the uniforms and on the manners of the period. I utilized him not only as a costume designer, but to help me out as an historical advisor as well, which he's happy to do unless I bug him too much. When you've got in excess of a thousand costumes, and you're trucking them across Europe to the Ukraine then back to the U.K., and then out to Portugal, you need someone who's pretty organized as well as being pretty creative. And in the model unit, we've got a man who won an Oscar for miniature work. What I found is that when you're doing something very specialized like this, you've got to get around you a great team—it makes your life if not easy, then easier. Without it, I don't think you could pull this off.

A&E: What do you want the audience to get from watching this film?

AB: I hope the first thing is that you'll be entertained, because they are great stories, they're great yarns. I hope that you'll be drawn to the character of Hornblower, and you'll be involved in his life and that what you'll take away from it is a sense of overall enjoyment. I also think that in an age with a bit of moral uncertainty, to have a lead character who encapsulates certain things that perhaps have gone slightly out of fashion—like honor, like sticking up for your friends, like perseverance and loyalty—that the audience will warm to it and go away with a bit of a glow afterwards. That would be nice.

A&E: What are the difficulties in shooting a period piece?

AB: Well, we live in the late twentieth century & there's a truck stopped behind you, there are cars, there are airplanes, there are modern buildings, etcetera, etcetera. So first of all, you can't have any of that in a show that's meant to be in the late eighteenth century. You have to recreate costumes, you have to recreate hair and wigs, locations, sets, language, everything which is alien to the world we live in. So that, from the art department's point of view, from the production department's point of view, from everyone's point of view, it is an added burden. And if you're also trying to suggest eighteenth-century Western Europe and you're in twentieth century Eastern Europe, well you've got to disguise things, hide things, and make them look right for the shot.

A&E: Is there a scene you think that you really nailed?

AB: There's a scene where Hornblower takes over a group of men who have been a rabble. He's given a challenge to bring these men in line. Through a rather clever mixture of events, he does just that and in fact wins them over. There's a great scene & I think it's a great scene & when he first comes across them gambling. They're gambling on how long one of the characters can hold a live rat onto his face. That's where all the characters come together for the first time, I think.

We also did a wonderful sequence in the second film where a Spanish ship has been sent into the middle of the British fleet in Gibraltar to basically set it on fire. And Hornblower effectively rescues the fleet from disaster, which is a combination of live action, models, special effects, and electronic effects put on in post-production by computer. It all comes together in an action sequence, which I think, is phenomenal. Those are two quite different things that at the end of it I went, "Yes, we've got it."

A&E: Do you think it's a good "guy" film?

AB: I think it's a good everybody film. Why do I say that? We've got a young man who's rather good looking & I'm told by all the female members of the unit that he's sexy, and interesting. So I don't think it's one for the young ladies to switch off. So we've got a sexy young man, we've got action-adventure for the guys, we've got emotional stories which I hope will pull the women in, and we've got stuff that appeals to the young and to the old. I wouldn't like to say this is just for one group of people, but I think perhaps guys if you weren't normally going to switch on to watch a drama on A&E, this is a drama you should give a go to because it's a bit different than what you'd normally expect.