QUESTION:What did you think when you wore the Xerxes costume for the first time?
RODRIGO SANTORO:I think the costume in the film is really interesting. It’s sort of like a character in the film, especially for Xerxes, the character I play. I think that all the gold, and the jewelry, it’s part of him. It represents a lot for him. This creature is a self proclaimed god who totally believes to be above everyone and everything on the planet, so it’s this megalomaniac sort of being. And the costume, actually, helped me a lot, but it was a very interesting and different – four and a half hours of makeup, lot of layers of tint, and jewelry and piercings, and all that, very stylized. That’s the Frank Miller vision of this character. QUESTION:The film takes place in a heightened reality. How did you amp up and maintain the energy necessary for that? RODRIGO SANTORO:Right, well, that’s a great question because we’re working with blue walls. Everywhere, it’s a blue screen, so you have to create and to imagine everything around you. We did have the graphic novel to look at and to understand the atmosphere and everything that’s supposed to be around you. But once we’re there, shooting, we just have the blue screen. So, it is a lot of work. You do have to use 100 percent of your imagination, be very concentrated, very focused, in order to maintain that. The makeup process was very interesting for me because since I had, like, four and a half hours, five hours, every day, it was this ritual where I could actually dive in and get into character, and use that time for myself to really concentrate. It’s sort of an ego trip, this character. It’s all about him. So, it was great for me to have that time to actually be with myself in my mind. And then, as you said, to maintain that on set, it’s very hard, because we were shooting overnight, so it was a lot of work. But then, I found it very, very interesting; it was a great training, a great exercise for an actor to learn to have the ability to live in the imagination, the world of the imagination, and just be there.
QUESTION:How did you feel after wrap when you stopped being Xerxes?
RODRIGO SANTORO: This guy was really intense, and sometimes I would go back to the hotel and just give myself a break. It was a lot of transformation, physically, so, it wasn’t my body. It was a little harder to just get back to the hotel, relax, and forget about the character. It was very intense, so he would stay a little bit longer with me. But I managed to at least to sleep well.
QUESTION:How popular are graphic novels in Brazil? Is it just an American phenomenon?
RODRIGO SANTORO:No, it’s not. It is popular – well, many kinds of comic books. We are into comic books. There are all kinds of comic books. I think they probably are more popular, especially this kind, like a graphic novel which is a little bit more sophisticated than those regular comic books. But, yes, we’re into it.