“This is how you tell a human story: by putting our hero into extraordinary corners out of which he has to fight.” And so it stands to reason that a conversation with actors Sir Ben Kingsley and Avan Jogia should be as significant as the tale they are bringing to the small screen. Sitting down with the stars of the Spike miniseries, Tut—debuting on Sunday, July 19—was like receiving a crash course in acting. It also came with its share of life lessons, compliments of Sir Ben: “’Avuncular’ means of uncle-ness. It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it?” From finding the humanity in such mythical characters, to their mutual admiration for their source material and one another, the Oscar®-winning actor and rising star pulled back the proverbial curtain on the remarkable story behind the story of Tut.
Vanity Fair Agenda: So let’s dig right in: why do you think the story of a 3,000-year-old pharaoh will be compelling viewing for a modern audience?
Sir Ben Kingsley: First of all, [they’ll be] very attracted by and drawn towards the extraordinary dynasty that ruled Egypt for a very long time. The tablet—with respect to the tablet in your pocket or wherever you keep it—will be obsolete in three months. [The Ancient Egyptians’s] tablets were carved in stone, and they lasted for thousands of years. That is very compelling.
Avan Jogia: What makes it relatable, too, is that it’s a story of someone growing up, it’s a family drama, it’s a political drama, and it’s an action movie. I think it satisfies a lot; it’s intelligent in its delivery and it still has fun action moments. I think that’s why people [will] gravitate towards this; it is equal parts entertainment and gravitas. And it has such heart.
SBK: What’s also fascinating is that … everything has changed and nothing has changed. The rivalries—the opposition between military, clergy, and government—can clash horribly, as we are seeing now present tense, and we saw then thousands of years before Christ. Audiences will look at it and think: “Oh, well, that’s not us … Oh, my goodness, yes, it is.” Of course, the jealousy, the rivalry, the quest for power, the machinations, the back-stabbing that went on then, driven by ambition, is still alive now because ambition is in our DNA.
So it’s not hard to draw parallels between this story and the current state of our society.
SBK: [David Von Ancken and Michael Vickerman] were very compelled to tell a story that’s completely recognizable to us. Human beings rather pompously think that they have evolved; but actually, there’s very little change between what they were doing and how they were living in terms of the internal drives: loyalty, disloyalty, brotherhood, sisterhood, parenthood, the mentor, the adviser, the rival, the lover.
AJ: There are a lot of forces at work and a lot of special interests, and that furthers the political-drama element of the show. You have the military, those who want global conquest and to make Egypt the last thing [standing] by consolidating as much power and land as [possible].
SBK: Switch on your TV now—they’re all there. They wear suits and they wear dresses and they wear other garb; but they’re all there. And the way that you can exploit the vulnerability, the human side—the revolutionary side, if you like—of the young king [in Tut] is to surround him by the pushes and pulls. If you just filmed him sitting on his throne for six hours, you’d learn nothing.
What was it that drew you to these particular roles and this project?
AJ: I make a lot of fear-based decisions when it comes to something [that] interests me. If I’m scared of something, it usually means I should do it.
SBK: I have played victims under the most unbelievable circumstances; men who are cornered by history in the most horrible way. And the only way that you can find those roles remotely empowering is that you’re playing a man of a great soul who survived hell. But on the other side of that scale, to play men who are hugely narcissistic, grandiose, ambitious, empowered; covered in the accoutrements of their power—chambers, artwork, clothes, lifestyle, servants—that is very, very different. [With Ay], I was fascinated to explore someone who is more powerful, more manipulative, more Machiavellian, more all-pleasing and all-pragmatic and all-dodging than I would ever be in my entire life. To get inside the skin of that power is very interesting for me philosophically, intellectually, and dramatically.
AJ: I was excited to play something on such a grand scale, between the grandeur of the language and that of the set and the costumes. And all the action, as well. I’d never done any of that and so I was excited to try my hand at it.
