Julian Sands Talks ‘A Nasty Piece Of Work,’ Playing Jor-El in ‘Smallville,’ And The Legacy of ‘Warlock’

Julian Sands entered the realm of easily-recognizable British character actors in the mid-1980s, spending the second half of that decade turning up in a decidedly diverse collection of films, including a college sports dramedy (Oxford Blues), two Oscar-winning dramas (The Killing Fields and A Room with a View), a Ken Russell horror film (Gothic), an American horror film (Warlock), and even Cyndi Lauper’s lone cinematic outing as a leading lady (Vibes)…and that only takes us up through 1989! Yes, Sands got around back then, and it only takes a cursory look at his filmography to see that he’s rarely slowed down since.

Most recently, Sands turned up in Hulu’s latest Into the Dark outing, the darkly-comedic thriller, A Nasty Piece of Work, and he was able to spare some time to chat with Decider about the experience, but he also favored us with anecdotes about working on 24 and Smallville, standing in for the Thin White Duke in a Marianne Faithful video, enduring the intensity – and humidity! – while filming Boxing Helena, and how chilly it was during the lake scene in A Room with a View.

DECIDER: Into the Dark: A Nasty Piece of Work is a lot of fun, to say the least. Dark, yes, but definitely fun.

JULIAN SANDS: It’s entertaining, I very much hope. [Laughs.] In its crazy, demented way, it’s somewhat charming.

I’d agree with that. It has an eccentric tone, but it checks a lot of boxes, and “charming” was one of them, at least for me.

Well, then, mission accomplished!

So how did you find your way into this project in the first place? Was it just pitched to you?

Yeah, it was pitched to me, and I’ve liked a certain amount of what Blumhouse have done. I worked with Jason Blum many years ago, on his first film, which was rather a genre film, if one can use that distinction. But I read it, and I thought, “My God, this is…” [Hesitates.] I was expecting something horror, and it was like reading Noel Coward! [Laughs.] Or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It had a theater quality, with its very defined characters and its use of language. It was very appealing. And I loved the baroque, the grotesquery of Essex, the character I played.

As the only Brit in the cast, there were times where it seemed as thought you’d intentionally turned your Britishness up to 11.

Well, I think it was a useful foil. [Laughs.]

Hey, it worked!

Yeah, and I think that’s something the director wanted, otherwise they wouldn’t have asked me. I don’t know, it just seemed appropriate to the character and to the mad, maverick situation he brought the employees into, to kind of go for a bit of Terry-Thomas. [Laughs.]

I like to ask actors about projects early in their career, and as a Monty Python fan, one title that caught my eye was Privates on Parade, starring John Cleese. It’s not a big role, clearly, based on your character’s name: “Climbing Sailor.”

That was literally the very first thing I shot on film, and I had one line. Now, I still appear in the film, but the line was cut. [Laughs.] It was also a demarcation point, because I’d just been doing theater work however I could, and with various friends I was also in the extras union…and you could not be in the extras union if they had any inkling that you might want to be an actor! But with Privates on Parade, I was offered this one line as an actor, but I was also called up to be an extra in the same scene. So it was a great sort of watershed moment: I could leave being an extra behind…even though the line was cut!

It was a great cast in that. Dennis Quilley was wonderful. He was an English theater actor. I always thought I would have… [Hesitates.] Well, I alwayswanteda career in the English theater. But the film thing just sort of opened up, and as an actor, you’re subject to the whims of providence, and you go with whatever flow comes your way, you know? You jump on the bus that stops at your stop! So getting involved with film quite early on in my career was not something I anticipated – or even sought! – but once I had the experience of it, I realized what a fabulous medium it was. The scope, the depth, the breadth of possibilities were thrilling, and I sort of made a choice to stay available to do film work rather than getting tied up in theater contracts…if they had been offered to me! So for maybe 20 years I only worked on film. Although I love doing theater now. But to see a script like Into the Dark, which had this great and powerful theatrical feeling was a delicious and delightful and irresistible gift.

Now, there’s an even earlier credit for you on IMDb, and I question the veracity of it because I haven’t seen it anywhere else, but…did you actually work on a Marianne Faithfull video?

Yeah, I did! Sure, with Derek Jarman, who was a great friend and mentor of mine in the late ’70s, when I was still a student, and in the early ’80s, when I was still finding my way into the London fringe theater. I did a couple of Super 8 films with Derek, but on the Marianne Faithfull “Broken English” video, David Bowie was supposed to show up to play the Devil, and…he didn’t. [Laughs.] I mean, he didn’t show! So Derek said, “Well, listen, Julian, you’re devilish. You can play it!” In fact, I have a mask on, a sort of strange death mask, but the body language is quite Bowie-ish, I think! So, yeah, that was my very first genre moment, I suppose: stepping in for David Bowie!

Being American, Derek Jarman is someone I only know through his music video work. I’m a major Anglophile when it comes to music, so I think it was his videos for The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead where I first discovered his work, and then I went back and found out about his film Jubilee.

Well,Jubileewas certainly howIfound him, because I was sharing an apartment in London with one of the actors who was in Jubilee, and he said, “You’d really like Derek.” And I did! His film-making has become more and more resonant – it’s so beautiful and powerful – in the years since his death that it’s taken on a deserved iconic status. There’s a big retrospective of his his artwork – his paintings and his films – in Dublin at the moment, which will then go to Manchester in April of the new year. He’s not so known in L.A. He’s known better in New York. I don’t know where you’re based.

I’m actually in Virginia.

Oh! Well, I don’t know whether Derek’s big in Virginia. Probably not. [Laughs.] But his aesthetics… You know, he used to work with Ken Russell as a designer on a couple of films. That was one of his big film jobs. He was a designer on The Devils and Savage Messiah. And then I worked with Ken Russell on Gothic. So I’m very happy about the connection between Derek and Ken. And Derek and Marianne Faithfull and David Bowie…and me. [Laughs.] That worked out!

Actually, I was going to ask you about working with Ken Russell anyway. How was that experience? Depending on who you ask, he’s certainly got a bit of a reputation, but there those who’ve loved the experience.

Yeah, I loved working with Ken, knowing it wasn’t going to be an easy ride. You know, he could be quite volatile, and he was very quick to express his displeasure. But I thought he was a great genius, really. The energy and the imagination Ken had, and his volition to get his films made… Although towards the end it was very difficult for him to get his films made. But he was such an individual and had such a unique vision and sensibility. He did everything on the set and was so involved in every aspect of film-making beyond just operating the camera. He was a real artist, you know?

He’s generally thought of as sort of this brute, with this bruising, in-your-face imagery, but some of it is sensitive and beautiful, and I think that comes through from what he really wanted to do as a young person, which was to be a ballet dancer. So even when his work is at its most aggressive, there is a sensitivity and a beauty and a feeling which reflects the kind of powerful muscularity of ballet as well as its extraordinary grace.

Given that The CW is in the midst of doing their big superhero crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths, it’s only appropriate to ask you what it was like to play Jor-El on Smallville.

Right! Well, I was very honored to play Jor-El, because he’d only been played before, I think, by Marlon Brando. I liked Smallville. I found it very touching. I mean, it’s a domestic story about people growing up. Again, I didn’t seek to play Jor-El, I was just asked if I would play him, but it was a great privilege and a very dignified TV piece, I thought. As an actor, people quite often do ask you, “What do you want to play?” But I really have no idea. [Laughs.] I respond to other people’s ideas about who I should play.

When they come in as offers or suggestions, it becomes very apparent what is appropriate and what makes sense, because when you agree to do a role, it sort of feels as if it was meant to be, that it was preordained, that there was an absolute sort of inevitability about it, even though it may appear to be random at the time it comes through the letter box! [Laughs.] That was a long ramble, but I was trying to say that, as an actor, I don’t have any idea of what’s right for me or what I’m right to do, but when it comes, you know it, and it’s like meeting an old friend.

What are your recollections about Oxford Blues, a film which has been described as “like Top Gun, but for rowing”?

Gosh, you have been doing your homework. I don’t think anybody’s asked me about Oxford Blues. [Laughs.] I loved Oxford Blues! You know, of course, that Rob Lowe was absolutely at his peak of teen appeal when we did it. I liked Rob. I haven’t seen him much since, but…what I can you is that I did my own rowing! Other people’s? Stunt doubles. But it was based on A Yank at Oxford, and… That must’ve been, what, 1983?

Well, it was released in ’84, but you probably filmed it in ’83.

I think so. Goodness gracious. [Laughs.] But I loved doing that film. It wasn’t typical. It was fun, it was good writing with good banter, and it was great recreation!

But that was in 1983, and as we come up on 2020, I feel the same enthusiasm – more, possibly! – and curiosity and excitement at the prospect of going to work on whatever’s next, wherever’s next. Because it’s a tremendous adventure. But one’s career is a tremendous adventure. And even though I’m at an age where a lot of my friends in what I call the straight world, who have professional jobs, are thinking about their retirement, I have never been more excited about the work still to be done, and I look forward to it with both enthusiasm and humility. Because it’s still amazing to me that the phone rings or the email comes in from people I respect with projects that are interesting or are being shot somewhere exotic for which I shall be rewarded. It’s a great thing.

Going a bit less retro, how was the experience of being on 24?

Well, 24 was – like the other high-octane shows – incredibly disciplined insofar as their production team. And Kiefer, who led it. Incredibly disciplined, very professional, and gifted filmmakers. And they got a performance which was real…vérité, I suppose you’d call it. [Laughs.] I loved my season of the show. Season 5, I believe it was. And by then it could’ve easily become a little cheesy, a little lazy, but it didn’t. I’d watched the previous seasons, so going to the studio where it was filmed, I’m walking onto the set of CTU, that sort of extraordinary office that the agents use as base, and it was like walking onto the starship Enterprise. It’s such an iconic atmosphere.

It occurs to me that you’re the fifth person I’ve talked to from Boxing Helena: I’ve interviewed (writer/director) Jennifer Lynch, and then I interviewed Bill Paxton, Sherilyn Fenn, and Kurtwood Smith.

Ah, I like Kurtwood!

Oh, he’s great. So I obviously know how the film was received, but how was the experience of actually making it?

Well, very intense. Relentlessly so, because we filmed in one house in the suburbs of Atlanta, it was hot and humid, and the house itself was quite a significant character in the film…much like the house became a key element in A Nasty Piece of Work! But it was Sherilyn at her most beautiful, and she was very focused on the role. Jen Lynch was young but so smart, so sharp, and so attuned, because she’d written the piece. It was a wonderful few weeks working on what I would call… Well, it was a fairy tale in some ways. It was a love story, a romance, and something that I think is more resonant and relevant today – and seemingly more appreciated today – than when it was released.

I think when it was released, the actual film was so discredited by the court case, which was to do with Kim Basinger having been cast in Sherilyn’s role. I think Ed Harris was going to play my role! But then she left the project because… I think she signed with a new agency, and they wouldn’t have collected commission, so they said, “Dump that and do this,” which she did. But then the producers of the film weren’t happy that they weren’t going to be compensated, and it dragged on and on and got very bugsy in the courts and in the press, and I think it put a real shadow over the film. There was a lot of hostility. I know that Kim’s lawyers really disparaged the film, and it got caught up in the popular view of the film. It was very unfortunate for Jennifer in particular. I think she and Sherilyn felt the hostility worse than I did. But people still come up to me who’ve found it for the first time and find it very compelling and very moving. And I felt that way about it as well.

When it comes to your profile in the U.S., it seems like it’s kind of a tossup as far as which one raised it the most: A Room with a View and, well, Warlock, oddly enough.

[Laughs.] Yeah, it depends on the demographic…and, of course, like any demographic, there’s a crossover! Well, prior to Warlock, I’d been working in Poland (on Wherever You Are), and it was winter, and the Communists were still in power, so the thought of doing a film in California, in Hollywood, was very appealing. And I’d liked the script. I thought it was very entertaining, and there was substance to the script by David Twohy. And I’d also been told that Sean Connery was going to be playing the witch hunter, Redferne, and he was pretty cool. So I thought, “Yeah, it’d be fun to do this!” And, of course, Sean Connery didn’t do it, but Richard E. Grant did, who’s not too shabby. In fact, I’d say he was excellent! And he was a very good foil for me. It was in the days before digital and CGI, so all the effects had to be sort of devised practically. But that film made an impact. I’m surprised by people who come up to me who had to have been 5 or 6 years old when it came out, saying that their mum or their dad took them to see it. And it’s, like, “What were they thinking?!” [Laughs.] But for me it was like a Shakespearean experience. The warlock himself was a classical, whimsical stage villain in a rich, nuanced way. His use of language, his smile, his movement, his random wickedness… It was a great treat to play.

It was also the polar opposite of young George Emerson in A Room with a View, this free-spirited young man looking to make sense of the world, looking for love, looking to try and resolve his demons through poetry. It was a real coming-of-age story, actually, both for the character and – to some extent – for me, too. I knew that when we made that film, the producers – not Ismail Merchant, but another one – tried to cancel it, like, two days before. They said, “We can’t do this, nobody will ever see it.” And I think they said, “We’re going to cancel it unless you offer the George Emerson role to John Travolta!”

I’d like to apologize for having just burst out laughing.

Well, I’m very much a fan of John Travolta, but – for no personal reasons – I just don’t think he would’ve been right. [Laughs.] Anyway, Ismail went ahead making the film and, of course, it still plays to great response, just as it did when we made it.

Did you need to take a shot of liquid courage before doing your big scene in the altogether?

Oh, at the lake? No, but I have to say that, while it looks appealing in the film, it was very overcast and cold, and all we wanted to get in, get on with it, and try to move around a bit to get warm! [Laughs.] But it was such a joy to work with Simon Callow as the Rev. Beebe and the young man who played Freddy Honeychurch, Rupert Graves!

You know, one of the reasons that film was such a success – and continues to be, in its way – is because of the absolute perfection of the casting in every role. I don’t think Celestia Fox, the casting director, has ever put together a more complimentary and incredible ensemble. I mean, Denholm Elliott, Judi Dench… Everyone is wonderful. But I love that scene, and for some people, it’s the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen in cinema, and that’s very gratifying. [Laughs.]

Lastly, how much fun did you have doing voicework for Jackie Chan Adventures? Because every line sounds like you’re having a ball.

Well, it was a lot of fun to do Jackie Chan Adventures, but it was even more fun to work with Jackie Chan on The Medallion! I’m a great admirer of Jackie Chan. I’ve never worked with someone who’s had the same level of charisma, charm, and star quality when meeting with his public. There was a Jackie Chan convention while we were filming, and he did a performance for them, sort of a cabaret, and it was extraordinary. It’s no surprise that he’s this huge, huge global superstar. You know, with these various projects that we’ve discussed, you get an idea of the diversity of my life through work and it’s very gratifying to still be doing that work.

Will Harris (@NonStopPop) has a longstanding history of doing long-form interviews with random pop culture figures for the A.V. Club, Vulture, and a variety of other outlets, including Variety. He’s currently working on a book with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (And don’t call him Shirley.)

Stream A Nasty Piece of Work on Hulu