Helena Bonham Carter Apes Interview

[Wednesday, March 14th, 2001]
Fandom.com interviewed Helena Bonham Carter, who plays the role of Princess Ari, the main sympathetic chimp in 'The Planet of the Apes':

Question: Can you tell us about your character?

Carter: My character. Well, she’s basically a human rights activist, who’s a chimp. And she’s sort of an upper-class chimp, and a princess, but they demoted me, I don’t know why. They wooed me with the idea that "She’s a princess, she’s got all these courtiers and she’s very powerful and smart," and then it all vanished and suddenly I just became an upper-class chimp. I didn’t have a crown, nothing, no courtiers. But I’m just this upper, this human rights activist who’s disgusted with the state of affairs on the planet vis a vis how humans are treated, and I strongly believe that humans are sort of savages and slaves, but I believe that they have a potential – that they have souls and they can be taught to live with us as equals. And I see in Mark’s character, who’s this human who has come from a different planet, I don’t know that – when I actually meet him I feel a potential...and a sense that he likes me has a rebellious quality. Actually that we can change and help make change, as he promises, the situation.


Question: Do you like being a chimp?

Carter: I’m happy being a chimp, as it were, but it would be great to have… Things that I feel like they got the edge of us, it’s like having the four hands. I mean how useful it would be to have, you know, feet that are kind of like… And also their sense of smell and again their sort of aliveness and being, you know, in the present. I hope by the end of this film - not that I’ve managed to incorporate all that into my performance anyway – but I hope by the end I’ll be able to focus and I’ll just be patient, and maybe I’ll be able to bring what I had to acquire for this into my daily living. (laughs)


Questions: Actors are supposed to be in the moment.

Carter: They’re meant to. So it’s sort of kind of… I went to drama school for four weeks. (laughs)

Check out the site for the full interview.

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