Since his directorial debut Dog Soldiers (2002), British filmmaker Neil Marshall has established himself as one of the most powerful genre filmmakers working in the realm of horror and action, and he’s continued to prove that fact with his latest films, which have all starred Charlotte Kirk: the Middle Ages horror thriller The Reckoning (2020), the creature feature action film The Lair (2022), now with his latest, the high octane and very visceral gangster picture Duchess, which is out this week from Saban. In this interview, Marshall discusses his working relationship with Kirk, his inspirations for Duchess, and his upcoming movie Compulsion, an erotic thriller starring Kirk.
I feel like Duchess is My Fair Lady with a gun. It’s your Pygmalion with a twist. Say something about building the last several of your movies around Charlotte and her persona or the persona that you guys have been working towards creating.
That’s, um … that’s probably the best description I’ve heard so far. My Fair Lady with guns. Because it is. It follows that concept, the Pygmalion idea. That would make Phillip Winchester the professor or whatever. That’s a good take on it. We first came up with the concept back in 2018 over sushi in London somewhere and we were talking about some ideas. We had this idea: What about a female Scarface? What would that be like? That generated story ideas and it just sort of evolved from there. We didn’t think of the My Fair Lady concept, but I get it: It’s there. We had a first draft idea about drug cartels in Mexico and stuff like that. But we’d seen all that stuff before. What could we do differently? We ripped all that stuff out and came up with the idea of the diamond trade in Africa. From my point of view, it was an excuse to go back to South Africa to make something because I love it there. But we went to Tarifa instead. Filming it there made sense. It just kind of evolved from there. I did the physical writing and we bounced ideas back and forth, back and forth, and we did it several years later.
Forgive me if this sounds trite, but I feel like up to this point that Charlotte has very much been your muse, and that this movie is very much a love letter to her and to her physicality and her abilities as an actress. It’s the culmination of your work with her, and it’s clearly the best of the three that have come out so far. I can finally say that I can actually see who Charlotte is a little bit for the first time with this movie. You guys tapped into that.
Yes. Scarlett the character is an East-End girl, and that’s where Charlotte grew up. We were conscious of that. In The Reckoning, she’s obviously not the peasant girl she plays, and so yes, this plays very much closer to home. She fits into that world better, but obviously with the physicality she had to learn to box and all the fight sequences were very well rehearsed. Shooting guns and all that stuff was very new to her. She put her heart and soul into it.
One thing that I’ve always appreciated about your work since the beginning – and I’ve been there since the beginning – is that each one of your movies takes a nucleus of an idea or a concept and it’s all unique. It’s not like you’re making another werewolf movie or another apocalyptic film or another medieval siege film. I love that each one of your movies has your stamp and you conquer the genre completely on the first try. You can build a franchise from each one of your movies. Say something about your love for genre itself and how you’re able to set your brand on all these genres you’ve done.
I think because I did some horror films to start, then a post-apocalyptic film, I did a Roman movie, a witch movie, a war film, and now a gangster movie … I try to think about my favorite things about the genre. What do I want to put in my gangster movie? With Duchess I wanted it to feel like a 60s / ’70s movie. I love that vibe of films. British movies like The Italian Job or The Long Good Friday, all that kind of stuff. Obviously influenced a little by Tarantino. I wanted the score to sound a little bit like Schifrin or Roy Budd. I wanted to put all these pieces together and see how it worked all together. I always want to do an amalgamation of everything I like in a genre, I suppose. It’s fun to explore those concepts.
What other genres or subgenres haven’t you done yet that are percolating in your burner?
I’ve got a few projects on the go. A couple of them are straight up action films. I think what I always do is action. It’s what I love. One thing I’ve got is a revenge film. I’d like to do something like an Asian movie or a Hong Kong action movie, and bring that to the UK. Something like that. Wouldn’t that be an interesting blend? Another thing I’ve got is sort of a fantasy action movie. Those kinds of things. I just did an erotic thriller. I might be doing a sci-fi thriller. I might be doing a war movie. I might be doing any number of projects at the same time.
When you were doing pilots and episodic TV … you did that for quite a few years, a foray into TV … I was hoping that you’d come back and do features again, and I’m so glad you’re back … but while you were doing the episodic stuff were you able to experiment a little bit with your style and your craft? It’s so difficult when some filmmakers get stuck there and it becomes like a graveyard for great filmmakers who never come back to doing films. Talk a little bit about your time working on TV and some of the shows you were involved with.
Well, I mean, I got to genre hop when I was doing that. The best thing about that was that I could maybe do four projects and jump between pirates and sci-fi, and then do something like Hannibal. I jumped all over the place. In some cases, like on Game of Thrones, they very much wanted you to bring your directorial ideas to the table within the context of that world. With Hannibal, there were some certain, strict rules that you needed to follow like the camera can’t move too fast. It had to move at Hannibal’s speed. I was always told, “No fast tracking moves.” But, if you’ve got any crazy artistic ideas for visuals, tell us. We’ll see if they work. I threw all kinds of ideas at them, and they said “Great, let’s do that.” Red strings and dragon wings, let’s do projection things coming out of people’s heads. Let the pretentious artist come out. With each job, if it was Westworld or Constantine, I got to bring something to the table. I got to explore different things as a director and just tried to shoot things a different way and tried to challenge myself, absolutely. I didn’t just want to shoot it the same way I’ve done it before. Every scene is different anyway, so you have to come up with new ways to shoot it anyway. The worst thing is you’ve got two people sitting at a table, talking. Trying to shoot that differently isn’t easy. It boils down to the performances and different ways to tell it. Trying not to get in the way of style. Let the story tell it.
Back to Duchess: It’s everything it should be, and even a little bit more. It’s sexier than I thought it was going to be, it’s gorier than I thought it was going to be. It’s a double cheeseburger with the extra large fries.
Great!
Say something about maximizing what you had to work with because I realize it’s not a huge budget film.
I wanted it to be an exhilarating experience. I wanted it to be fun. I wanted to go over the top with certain things. I wasn’t trying to tell some great, realistic story. It’s meant to be escapist fun. I wanted to get the one-liners in there. I wanted the violence … I put my heart and soul into that kind of stuff. The violence is really gnarly, but if you take it to a certain level it can be really fun. These characters are larger than life, so the violence should be larger than life, within that world. It’s fun and games, right?
I have no idea if you continue to make movies with Charlotte or not, but you do have another one coming out soon called Compulsion. I said to her yesterday that if you guys do make more, it feels like you can do anything with her: You could send her to space, or make her Lady James Bond, or whatever.
What I will say is that the next one is the last one. It’s time to set her free out into the world. It’s time for her to start starring in other people’s movies. There was the opportunity to make an erotic thriller with her, which is a combined genre film. It’s part erotic thriller, part giallo slasher movie. It’s something I always wanted to do, to mix those genres and throw it all together, make something fresh that I’ve not seen before. We made four films, and they’re all very different. I’m curious to hear what you think of it.
Last question: What movies have you seen lately that you’re excited about?
Well, I saw Deadpool & Wolverine. I had a great time with that. Very funny. I haven’t laughed so much in a long time. I went to see Furiosa twice on the big screen. Loved it. It’s an interesting companion piece to Fury Road. I don’t think it’s as good as Fury Road, but while watching it I was reminded of Fury Road, which is a good thing. It had some show stopping sequences in it. Fury Road is a tough act to follow. The only thing that annoys me about it is that because it hasn’t done so well, we’re not going to get the final Max movie. It kills me. I wish someone would just go in with Mel Gibson and make a super low budget apocalyptic Mad Max movie, but unfortunately I don’t think George would allow that!
Duchess available on Digital and On-Demand on August 9th from Saban.
