Colin Farrell: Yeah, you know, I never really realize how to classify the things that I find unique about a script that I may read, that feels like it’s new or fresh. But I certainly knew it was something that I hadn’t done before, I knew it was a very different character and a very different set of circumstances that the character found himself in. That for sure — you kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater — that was one of the reasons why I loved it. It was just such a well-drawn script. Every single character was so well-defined, down to the two Sherman Brothers and how different they were, and yet how similar they were in a certain kind of intellectual aesthetic.
I just loved it, and I loved Travers’ journey. There was a certain lyrical poetry to it, and there was a certain weight and depth of pain to it all as well, but at the same time there was constantly — through the pain and the sickness and the death — there was constantly this light that was trying to get through the clouds, that was there at the start, that was bursting through the clouds on all sides at the start when you meet him first, and you see him like an ideal father. Then bit by bit the cloud cover got more dense and more dense, and the light just couldn’t make it through. I did love the journey of him, yeah.
IGN: He actually reminded me of a different Disney character in a way. It’s kind of like if Peter Pan was forced to finally grow up.
Farrell: Yeah, that’s the trouble, man!
IGN: He wants that kind of escapist life.
Farrell: That’s the trouble. The world of the imagination that is such a profoundly fertile and glorious world to inhabit, which is something that I see in my kids and we see in all kids, it’s something that I don’t think you have to fully say goodbye to. But you have to come to the understanding that can’t live in it all the time, as a grown adult, in this world with what society demands of you. IGN: And it does destroy some people.
Farrell: And it does destroy people, it does, absolutely. It’s a bittersweet thing to have to walk away from, because if you have to walk away from it — and that’s why we don’t have rights of passage now, we don’t have anything that allows — I talk about a man, because I am one — allows a man to realize when he’s leaving a particular period of his life and he’s entering the more mature period, the next stage of his life. We have none of that, so we all bumble fecklessly with the lines being blurred between “Am I a boy, am I a child, am I a teenager, preteen, prepubescent, post-pubescent — what the f—” you know? “Grown man, late teens? When am I supposed to? Is 22 too late to be on the piss? 27, have I missed the boat? Am I supposed to be married?” It’s all very confusing, and that’s a lovely thing as well, because as human beings we have choice. But sometimes that choice is taken to the umpteenth degree and it becomes something that is destructive. I think in Travers’ case, obviously he made the choice to be married and have a family, and he loves his family dearly, and they mean the world to him, but he couldn’t ever find within him the ability to compromise, to do a job that maybe he doesn’t like — like so many people do, by the way — and do that and see somehow, even the ugly privilege maybe, because he doesn’t like his job, but the ugly privilege of being able to provide for his family and <em>then</em> have pastimes of maybe poetry or reading groups, a few drinks at the end of the day. But he couldn’t say goodbye to the party, couldn’t let go of the past.
IGN: At least he was a manager, though. Could have been worse, could have been further down the pecking order.
Farrell: I know, I wonder if he was further down the pecking order, would he have had less responsibility and would he have felt less pressure? If he could have disappeared into the folds of responsibility rather than be the harbinger of responsibility, maybe he would have — I don’t know, who knows?
IGN: I really like the scene, too, where he gets caught by the boss. You’re expecting the boss, right down to how he looks, to give you that, you know? He sees the child in there, and there’s that moment of compassion that not everybody is black and white. You see that this guy’s like, “You’re in charge of my bank!”
Farrell: Absolutely, and it’s a bitter pill to have to swallow when somebody who you’re rallying against, who you claim to loathe in a way, as Travers would, reaches out the olive branch of forgiveness. That’s just such an even worse slap in the face. To say something like, “If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your daughter,” yeah, that’s…
IGN: You probably would have rather been fired at that moment.
Farrell: For sure! Absolutely, absolutely. There’s a bit of that, absolutely. He’s done it before, and you know it’s happened before. The degeneration of this character is something that I think has been experienced before the start of this film.
IGN: He brings it out in his wife, though, too.
Farrell: Yeah, absolutely. The thing about sickness or disease is it doesn’t just affect, of course, the person who’s experiencing it, physically or emotionally or psychologically. It affects those who care about that person, affects the family, and thereby affects the community, and it goes out and out and out. There’s a starting place, and the starting place is with the afflicted, but it doesn’t rest there. So Travers’ inability to step forth and regain some kind of deep, internal composure or understand his emotional life, it’s like a cancer that spreads and really brings down his poor, suffering wife. IGN: Now how much did you know about Mary Poppins and stuff like that?
Farrell: Very little. I certainly didn’t know anything about the film and the abrasiveness that was the creative process in trying to bring it from book to screen. I had no idea it was as volatile an environment as it seemed, 20 years of trying and two weeks of unbridled hell in those rooms at Disney Studios. Richard Sherman will tell you if you speak to him, it was really, really tough.
IGN: They played the tape at the end.
Farrell: You heard it. I mean, even the film kind of sugarcoated with the patina that makes it all feel a little bit like a dream. You’re allowed that distance with humor, otherwise it’d be a different film.
IGN: Right, and playing that tape at the end reminds you, “No, this actually really happened!”
Farrell: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah, “She was bad!”
IGN: She didn’t sound quite as sweet as Emma Thompson.
Farrell: No, I know! No, no, no. Yeah, there is a dragon in those tapes. Saving Mr. Banks opens in limited release December 13 and wide on December 20.