DAVID THEWLIS Q&A for THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS

QUESTION: What do you look for in a script?
DAVID THEWLIS: What I have learned to look for over the years now is 
a good story. That’s what brought me to this one [The Boy In The 
Striped Pajamas] because it was the best script that I had read for 
some time. It was like reading a good novel; I kept turning the 
pages, encouraged by what I had read. Obviously I also look for a 
character that is going to be a challenge to me. I try not to do 
things that I have done before, or do something that will be too easy 
or that I can already see the way that I will do it and I’m bored 
before I begin the film. So I like to scare myself a bit and 
think …well, I’m not sure that I can do this, or that I am the 
right person to do it, or if by casting me they are making a good 
decision. So I usually look for things that I think will challenge me.

QUESTION: How do you become involved in the filming of The Boy In The 
Striped Pajamas?
DAVID THEWLIS: There is no real story…I got sent the script, via my 
agent. She read t and really recommended it to me. She said you 
should read this one quickly, it’s very, very good and there is a lot 
of interest in you and Mark Herman (director) wants you to do it. I 
read it, it was a no-brainer – I said yes, and absolutely I’d like to 
do it. I was in Los Angeles at the time and the same day I rang back 
and said that if they were interested in me I would certainly do it. 
Then when I heard about the rest of the cast…Vera Farmiga, Rupert 
Friend and David Hayman. I knew David Hayman (Pavel) since I was at 
drama college. Her is an admirable guy, a great guy in many, many ways.

QUESTION: Had you been aware of the book?
DAVID THEWLIS: I was unaware of the book, I’m afraid. I had never 
heard of it. I had been working out of England for a long time – In 
Eastern Europe and Spain and Portugal and the USA. I am such a big 
reader that I am sure that I would have known about it if I had been 
in the country. So my first experience was the script, which is 
rather unusual because I was not sent it in hard copy, I was sent it 
in a PDF file, so I actually read it on a computer because I did not 
have a printer with me where I was. So when I got to the end, I kept 
pressing the key because I thought that you couldn’t just finish 
there. It is even more brutal on the written page than it is on the 
screen. So it ended on the computer and then…and roll credits! I 
thought, what does it mean…roll credits…you can’t just end the 
film like that. But of course you can end the film like that and it 
is one of its great, great strengths. It is very hard to talk about 
this film without discussing the ending because the ending is what 
everyone talks about and the many people who have bought the book 
will know the ending. Even though it is slightly different in the 
book, but not very much different from the film.

QUESTION: So once you knew that you were going to do this film, did 
you go and get a copy of John Boyne’s book?
DAVID THEWLIS: Yes, I did. As I remember I think that I was able to 
get hold of it in the States. So I read it straight away. There is a 
difference between the book and the film. Firstly [in the book] the 
parents are not as prominent and from the beginning I think that the 
father comes over as being a little bit more intimidating. But there 
was something in the film script that suggested that he could be 
played gentler at the very beginning. That was not to fool the 
audience in any way, but just to have a gentle progression into the 
madness. One of the great themes of the film is the relationship 
between father and son. Not just Bruno and my character but 
Lieutenant Kotler and his father and Shmuel and his father and my 
character and his father. So it is exploring that on many levels. So 
I thought it was more interesting to show my character as a loving 
father – as indeed such people no doubt were. No matter what they 
were, I am sure that even Goebbels loved his children, even though he 
poisoned his own children at the end of the war. I have no doubt that 
he experienced love and affection for them. You could say I suppose 
that he killed them out of love for his children…either because he 
did not want them to exist in a Germany without National Socialism or 
that he didn’t want them to face the recriminations of being the 
children of Goebbels. The point is that Nazis loved their children; 
we can’t say that they didn’t.

QUESTION: Did you have any reservations about playing this character 
in The Boy In The Striped Pajamas?
DAVID THEWLIS: Not at all, no. I thought it was very challenging to 
get into the mindset of such a person. There have been such great, 
wonderful actors who have played Hitler. I was in fact approached 
myself years ago to play Hitler. I would not shrink from that because 
as an actor it is fascinating to try and find the man behind the 
monster. You can’t just put on a funny moustache and learn all the 
gestures and say that’s Hitler. You have to think about what they 
were thinking about and be quite brave with yourself and contemplate 
the darkness within them and look at the darkness within you. Some 
people have mentioned the British accents that are used by the 
cast…but what if it were set in Britain? There were Fascists here. 
So it is not impossible that it could happen here. It is not 
exclusively a German thing. It could happen anywhere in the world, 
with the right sequence of circumstances. I just immersed myself in 
the period. At the time I knew everything about that period of 
history. It was not something that I had read a great deal about 
before. Obviously we are all aware of it, but I read every book and 
watched every documentary. I did not read anything else at the time. 
I did not read anything that was contemporary or look at any 
newspapers or indeed watch any television. I just basically had a 
Nazi education. After a while that kind of gets to you.

QUESTION: How were you with your nearest and dearest during that period?
DAVID THEWLIS: Most of the time that I was doing that I was in 
Budapest and I wasn’t with the family. I had started researching it 
when I was at home with the family…starting to read things and 
understand it…so I was with Anna and the family there. But when I 
went to Budapest that was when I started thinking about it a lot…to 
the point of going to the gym every day, to feel like a soldier, to 
feel strong and to have like a military regime. Even if we had a 5 am 
call, I would be in the gym at 4 am. And I was eating in a very 
disciplined manner, I was not drinking, I was trying to live a very 
strict like. Spartan. Which was good and worked and when I had 
reading time I was reading all this material. Having said all that, 
making the film was not a grim time because it so happened that it 
involved a rather nice bunch of people. There was just a nice 
chemistry…the children who play Bruno and Shmuel were wonderful. 
Asa Butterfield [Bruno] and Amber Beattie who plays Gretel were 
hysterical when they were together, they cracked me up and Vera 
[Farmiga] is a big laugher and Rupert is the same. So we did not have 
a grim time making this film, indeed sometimes we had a very nice 
time and I do not feel guilty about that, it is, after all, a film.

QUESTION: Did you also want to do a film like The Boy In The Striped 
Pyjamas because you are now a parent?
DAVID THEWLIS: I think that I still would have done the film if I had 
not been a parent, but it did bring it home to me, especially in 
those final scenes. Really I suppose then you tap into the thought of 
what if something happened to your own child. When I was doing all 
this research I was having a lot of bad dreams – I had dreams about 
my daughter being taken away from me. That happened several times, 
until I stopped it all. I stopped all the research after a while. I 
decided that I knew how to play the character and the research was 
not too healthy for my head. No-one should be watching [documentaries 
of the Nazis] all the time…night after night. I had watched some 
footage that is not really shown on TV any more because it is too 
horrific. I thought it was getting a bit perverse to keep watching, 
even though I was trying to de-sensitized myself. This man used to go 
and watch experiments to watch how the prisoners died – looking 
through the peep-hole – and then have lunch with his family. He would 
kiss his children and then throw children into the gas chamber. It is 
hard to imagine that. So I suppose I was trying to de-sensitized 
myself and think about how this was possible and it was because it 
happened to an enormous amount of people.

QUESTION: What was the emotional impact when you watched The Boy In 
The Striped Pyjamas?
DAVID THEWLIS: I had never watched a film that I was in when I cried 
while watching. But I have seen this film four times now and I have 
cried every time. As they are running through the woods you know that 
what is about to happen is inevitable. Jack and Asa are amazing and 
so by that point in the film you are totally in love with them. I 
challenge anyone not to be moved by the end of this film. I watched 
it in Los Angeles with my agent and I thought she hated it because, 
at the end, she just got up and left. We were supposed to go for 
lunch. But I discovered it was her favorite film of the year and she 
left because she just couldn’t say anything, she was so emotional.

QUESTION: Surely the film has educational potential?
DAVID THEWLIS: I think it is perfect for education. It is something 
that should be watched and then talked about with parents or 
teachers. As I understand the book is already in the curriculum. If 
it is distressed to children, well it IS distressed, and they should 
learn about it.

QUESTION: How is your own writing coming on?
DAVID THEWLIS: God, I have another novel in the works and a 
collection of short stories. I find there is lots of time to write. 
If I am in a hotel on my own while my family is in Los Angeles then I 
write. On the film set I find time too. Working with words also makes 
me read more and I make a big effort not to watch TV.

QUESTION: Are you planning to write a script?
DAVID THEWLIS: I am working on a script as well. Barry Sonnenfeld 
read my book, liked it, and asked me to write a script with him. That 
is happening slowly. The script is set in the States.

QUESTION: Since you live in the USA what do you miss from home?
DAVID THEWLIS: Not too much. America is still a novelty.

QUESTION: Are you a fan of DVD?
DAVID THEWLIS: Yeah, absolutely! I watch a lot of movies on DVD. I 
have been watching a lot of old films like Sunset Boulevard. That is 
partly to do with what I am writing because it concerns old Hollywood.