Jude Law, John Malkovich and Paolo Sorrentino on ‘The New Pope’

Los Angeles — The 2016 TV series “The Young Pope” was so successful that Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino decided to do a continuation or sequel for its second season.

Filmed in Italy and set in the world of the modern papacy, the upcoming drama series brings back Jude Law, 46, who reprises his role as the fictional Pope Pius XIII. John Malkovich, 65, joins him as John Brannox who eventually becomes the titular Pope, Pope John Paul III.

The three talk about their new upcoming show, their philosophies in life, among other things. Below are excerpts from our conversations with them:

Jude Law

All photos courtesy of Janet Susan R. Nepales/HFPA

How was it getting back into the role as the Pope?

It was interesting going back to a part. It was such a happy experience the first, although in truth we made it, thinking it was finished and in its entirety. Then Paolo came up with another idea. 

It felt like it needed something extraordinary to take the character even further, because it felt like such a thorough examination the first season that he was covered and complex, but you had a good understanding by the end. He had been on a really interesting journey.

So there were lots of new conflicts and new dynamics to the character and the story that made it a challenge still, but more specifically, when you work with somebody that long and then you go back to have another experience — I trust Paolo anyway because I loved his work so much. I knew he had impeccable taste. I loved his vision and his use of wit. 

But to do it a second time, you develop an unspoken language and it means that you achieve things quicker, and you are also more daring.

The whole opening sequence, he came up with it and we were laughing about this dream fantasy moment on the beach. I wouldn’t have really done that with a lot of other directors, but I knew that he was somebody who could pull it off and it would be balanced in all the right ways, with humor and the sense of a dream quality.

Are you a man of faith? Do you have a philosophy in life?

Yeah, I would say that I am someone of faith. I never stop to think about it other than a personal journey. So to describe it publicly is both odd. It’s not something that I ever put my finger on. All I can say is that I have a faith in the natural order, nature being the most powerful force on the planet. And that ultimately, it will outlive us all. 

If there’s a personal journey, then it’s to do with coming to terms with that, finding peace in that, improving yourself as a human being, finding peace in yourself, working out what it is that doesn’t give you peace and learning to overcome those issues. That’s the challenge and that’s why life is and should be changeable.

How did you react when Paolo asked you to play the part the first time?

I always have this list of people I want to work with, and he was very much at the top of that list at this particular time. I’d just seen “The Great Beauty” and I was hoping that I would have a chance to work with him.

Out of the blue, I get this letter asking, can you come to London and meet me, and he has this idea. So, it never arrived in written form — it was Paolo describing this character for me with cigarettes and the Cherry Coke Zero. I could see it. I thought this man is absolutely going to be able to pull this off. He is going to tonally and with respect, carry this off. 

I was intrigued by the character. I loved the idea of this man of faith who reaches if you like the top job, suddenly has a conflict of belief and also the contradictions of the character.  He’s one of those directors in my mind who you step out of your comfort zone for because he’s so brilliant. He could have gotten me to play anything really and I would have done it.

John Malkovich

In you opinion, do you think it would it be possible that one day, we'd have a moral authority that would be similar to your Pope or even the Pope represented by Jude Law?

I would say that moral authority is only given. It can be given but it can’t be earned in a way. So very few people have it and so very few people merit it. 

Even some of the ones who have had it, have big character flaws. But people have to not look for God on earth. As Beckett said, “You are on earth. There’s no cure for that.” But moral authority is the greatest achievement, the rarest gift and the thing most often needed and most often lacking now and in history.

Do you consider yourself as a fragile man?

Not very. Everyone is fragile. We’re basically fragile. We are not fragile to the extent that we have been asked or been required to suffer. So, people are basically, let’s say okay. They have genetic tendencies or cultural tendencies and there are personality traits here so basically what we suffer, changes us.

So, if you don’t suffer a lot, then you get to say you are not fragile. But you only really haven’t suffered not because you are not fragile, but because you are fortunate and lucky. 

So everybody’s fragile, but I don’t think I’m overly so.  I’m not very easily offended. I’m not very easily hurt or angered. But usually, I don’t really have any occasion to be.

Have you always thought like that?

No, I had a terrible temper when I was young.

Why do you think you lost your temper?

From expression, meaning my job requires a decent reserve of anger often. When you’re allowed an outlet and that outlet is not only not harmful to you, it’s actually required and desired and even rewarded — I don’t think self-expression can be overestimated; it's a gift, the opportunity, the blessing, to express yourself, which most people don’t really have ever. 

Certainly, they’re not rewarded for it and even so much encouraged to do it — maybe in church, maybe in analysis or therapy, but otherwise nobody really wants to hear it.

Have you ever worked with people who thought they knew everything and would not allow you to express your idea or opinion because they think they knew better than you?

Not that many. Some, but usually when people do that, it means they are very, very unsure of themselves, very insecure. And it can, and it does sometimes come out as arrogance.  But it really isn’t.

It’s actually the inverse of arrogance. It’s fear.  So, what you would prefer to do is put those people at ease so you can help them do what it is they would like to do. But people who are very insecure are conversely not very easily put at ease. They sometimes can have a hard time having a congenial relationship.

So what drives you crazy these days?

It’s the same thing since I was a small child: The insistence of other people to tell yet other people how they should be. How they should live, how they should think, what they should feel, how they should vote, how they should dress, behave, instead of just concentrating on I like this, okay. That drove me nuts when I was two years old and it hasn’t changed and I’m 65.  And it won’t change, it’ll always be the same.

Paolo Sorrentino

Have you ever met the Pope and do you plan to show Season Two to the Vatican?

I haven’t met the Pope. No, it’s not easy to meet the Pope. And no, I didn’t need to show to the Vatican because I know that after the first season, as soon as the first season was released, they were already eager to see that. And I know that everybody follows that show, even the Vatican, because of what it speaks about.

If you had an opportunity to meet the Pope, what would you say to him?

I don’t know. I am not very interested in the reactions of people because I am afraid of reactions. I am afraid that they can say you are crazy, you are stupid, you don’t understand us. So, I prefer to keep a distance from that. 

But I was active because in the first season, there were some scenes where the Pope used the globe, spinning the globe before firing. And I talked to someone who works in the Vatican and he told me that now from the series, it’s an additive of the communards to say, when they want to push somebody out, they say let’s spin the Globe. So little satisfactions of this work.

Talk about casting John Malkovich.

He’s at Bedford. I wrote the character of the Pope without having in my mind precisely an actor, but when I met John Malkovich, we spent one night together, and I decided to change the character following the real John Malkovich.

I was very impressed by the irony and the dandy style of John Malkovich. He is very wise but at the same time he is distant. He can be a warm if he wants to. He’s very serious and then there are some moments when he is very deliberately silly.  I thought okay, this is good for the characters, so I will write the character based on the real John Malkovich.  And of course, he’s a great character.

And the way he speaks as well.

Yeah.  That was easy to do because he’s very slow and it was good for the character.  He is very iconic. He has a movie which in the title is John Malkovich, and an icon in order to play the Pope is good. It’s good to combine the two elements together.  He knows Rome because his wife is Italian, yes. — LA, GMA News