“A lot of things that adult actors are trying to achieve, kids just bring with them”: Franz Rogowski on Bird

There is something otherworldly about Andrea Arnold’s Bird, and it’s Franz Rogowski. As free spirit Bird, he hops, skips, spins his way into town – we’re in Kent, just down the road from where Arnold grew up – and into the life of young Bailey (newcomer Nykiya Adams). Bailey is wary but fascinated by this strange man; his accent is unfamiliar, his thick knitted jumpers and knee-length skirt are folksy in an indeterminate way, and he has a penchant for perching on the roof of a tower block visible from her window. 

Embodying a character so out of place and out of step is a tightrope act that for Rogowski involved embedding Bird in the film’s grounded, grubby style without losing his sense of ethereality. But Rogowski, an arthouse star whose career has included collaborations with Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec and Terrence Malick was clearly prepared for the challenge. Over a video call, he explains what drew him to Andrea Arnold’s work, and recalls his experiences of working with a younger cast.

Thomas Flew: How did you become involved in Bird, and what made you want to become involved?

Franz Rogowski: I love Andrea [Arnold]’s work. She is a person that has always been truthful to her own fantasies and her desires and I find her work very personal and universal at the same time. Where others fall for some kind of poverty porn, she really knows this background and she has been surrounded by these people. She is one of them. I think she is entitled to collect these colours and paint these paintings.

I didn’t have a script. [Andrea and I] met in a little restaurant, and she told me all kinds of very weird dreams and fantasies that she had as a kid, and after two hours of conversation I knew that she had seen a naked man with a huge penis standing on a skyscraper, and there was a girl looking at him. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I knew this was the kind of artist I wanted to work with.

Between then and the start of the shoot, what were you asked to do to prepare?

I was left alone. I could always call her – I had her number – but I felt like I should probably not. She told me to listen to a playlist of 20 tracks that she prepared, called Bird. I think it’s not private, it’s on Spotify on Andrea’s account. These were 20 ethereal, almost esoteric songs. And there were a bunch of photos showing a lonely, naked, pretty man floating above corn fields, hanging around in trees, swimming in water. These were the only materials that I was given. The potential in this preparation process was definitely in the unknown, and not in trying to control this undefined space.

I remember arriving in the UK on the ferry, and I left the ferry in a van, which I slept in for the two months of shooting. I think the playlist had arrived the night before, and I would listen to a beautiful Brian Eno song and other very beautiful contemporary compositions, more landscapes of sounds than songs. The sun rose and I had no idea what this [film] was going to be. I felt: “Okay, this is the place [Andrea] wants me to be: curious and alert, but not ‘on alert’, just ready to experience a journey with her.”

Shooting was chronological, so we were able to experience the story from the start, to take it one step at a time and somehow make each step better. The way [Andrea] works is you all get on set, you get dressed, you have your preparation process, but then somehow it feels like two, three hours of nothingness take away your preparation. [There’s] just a very long process of hanging around in time and space, where no-one knows what it is actually about, what we are waiting for, what we are doing.

We were also surrounded by neighbourhoods, and we were trying to fit in. There was no machinery, no cranes, no big trucks. Andrea would sit in a meadow, and if the scene was of two girls crossing a meadow, then we would just sit around and play with them for hours, until they got a little tired, and then they would cross the meadow. That was the process more or less.

How did Andrea work with you on your performance during the shoot? 

She was very British, I guess. Very kind, very polite, but she also found her ways to guide me. Sometimes we would repeat things, and go in different directions, but most of the time it felt half-improvised, structured by lines that were written but very open to the moment and what would happen in the moment. 

Also, the focus wasn’t really on me. I was somehow accompanying the lead in the story and I was also accompanying Andrea on her story, and was somehow trying to be this Bird person on- and off-set. I felt like I was kind of a weird but good spirit accompanying this process, and then eventually I would find myself in front of the camera, but it wouldn’t really make much of a difference.

Nykiya Adams, the lead, is a nonprofessional child actor, and lots of your scenes are with children. How did that affect your performance?

It depends on the individual [child]. I think you’ll find children that are already destroyed by overly ambitious parents, or school. It doesn’t take too many years to structure a child and to turn them into a little machine. In general, I think kids are very open, and a lot of things that adult actors are trying to achieve they just bring with them: the openness, the capacity to change your mind in a split-second and to be open to the moment. It’s more inspirational and interesting, rather than distracting, to work with kids. 

In our case, these kids were like little balls of energy. They would never stop exploring the set and the world around them – but once we wanted to shoot they would often get tired, and then they wouldn’t want to do it. But when you let them go, then all of a sudden they have a lot of energy [again], and then they do beautiful things, and you follow them with the camera, and all of a sudden they get annoyed. So it’s a very delicate process, but it feels good, and I think that’s what Andrea is known for. You get very interesting, half-documentary [footage].

You’ve spoken in the past about your frustration with the various child actor laws in the UK. Was there a contrast between those regulations and the intentions on-set?

I don’t know much about the rules and laws in the UK, but in general I can see a rise of fear when it comes to making mistakes. Mistakes in terms of intimacy and mistakes in terms of working with children, minors. In general, it’s a good thing, but there’s also quite a lot of hypocrisy involved – when you have chicken for lunch and then you can’t kill a little worm when you shoot a fishing scene. The same goes for these child actors. They have heard all of the swear words in the world, but then you can’t say a single one on set because it would ‘traumatise’ them.

Every kid had their own coach, so you have Andrea, a person that has proven her art for decades, and all she wants to achieve is some kind of authenticity and a safe space where people could open up and experience something for real, but then you are surrounded by intimacy coaches… If an intimacy coordinator has to call you to see if you’re okay with a hug, then I think there’s something wrong with the way we approach intimacy in general.

In certain areas it’s very important. In general it’s very good that we have another kind of awareness these days, and that there is also a shift in terms of power structures, and an actor has a say, and they have their coaches and coordinators and therefore they are not alone on set and pressured into things that they will later regret. I think that’s a very good thing, but what you can’t deny, what you can’t avoid, is this undefined space where people have to explore something and take a little risk, and experience something that makes them feel something. It’s not all prepared and very highly controlled, safe-space acting. I have been violated in my feelings and personal intimacy so many times, but I think it’s part of the process.

I know that I’m a man, I’m a white man, I have all kinds of privileges, and it doesn’t necessarily entitle me to speak for people that need more protection, but for myself I can say that I don’t find the intimacy coach world that I’m sometimes surrounded by very inspiring. I accept the fact that acting is also the art of surrendering, that there is a power play but you also all depend on each other. For example, with sex scenes, of course you don’t feel totally aroused, because it’s not your private life, and then the sex scene takes forever, and that is a very awkward feeling. But that is also your profession as an actor. So I think I would just like to feel a little less fear, and a little more trust in each other.