Doug Jones Talks Hellboy II

01 December 2008

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Doug Jones is best known as the man behind many of director Guillermo Del Toro's weird and wonderful creations including Abe Sapien in Hellboy and the Faun in Pan's Labyrinth.

This year sees him return to the character of Abe in Hellboy II: The Golden Army so I caught up with him to take about the bigger Hellboy, his relationship with Del Toro and what lies ahead.

You are returning to the character of Abe in Hellboy II: The Golden Army can you tell me a little bit about the film?

Well sure the luxury that we have with this movie, being a sequel, is that all the character were defined and set up and the relationships put into place in the first film so we got to hit the ground running in the second film as a life in progress already: you get to see Hellboy and Liz in their marital relationship and you get to see Abe take over the intellectual pat of the team after the death of Professor in the first film and we get to see Jeffrey Tambor�s character Agent Manning as the crazy uncle in our family, the one none of us really like but we have to tolerate him, so that�s up and running.

This time the B.P.R.D, who deal with the paranormal, we have an elf Prince Nuada, played by Luke Goss, is our nemesis bad guy who arises to reclaim the elf dominance over the world and it�s our job to stop this from happening and keep the humans safe from this renegade elf. But what complicates this, of course, is the elf prince has a twin sister Princess Nuala, played by the lovely Anna Walton, the beautiful and talented Anna Walton I might add and seeing as she is my love interest I get to talk about her all I want.

I loved working with her and I love that part of my story and with Abe I got to explore so much more of this character in this film because Guillermo wrote so much more for him this time. There are expanded family relationships, that crazy family that I was talking about, much more on screen buddy time with Hellboy and much more brother sister time with Liz Sherman and now there�s a love interest which elevated Abe into the leading man category and it takes a director like Guillermo Del Toro to do that with a fish man mutant doesn�t it?

But all those moments on screen were absolutely charming between the princess and Abe it struck such a chord with me dipping back into my adolescence and all those puppy love crushes when you don�t know what that is and here is Abe experiencing love for the first time, he has been such an intellectual with real prowess in that area and now his emotions are awakened and his heart is beating like it has never done before and he doesn�t know what is going on which might compromise his intellect.

Well that sort of leads me into my next question what did you think when you read the script for the first time did Abe�s love story come as a surprise to you as it does to the audience?

Yeah it did, it�s funny because long before I got the script Guillermo said to me in a casual conversation �the fans are going to hate me for what I�m going to do to Abe�, and I thought oh no what does he mean is Abe going to meet a horrible death? What does this mean?

But I think it was the love and what happens to that love and the emotional journey that you go on I think that�s what he meant and Abe also feels that his loyalty to the B.P.R.D is compromised by this puppy love that he has so that had a lot to do with the fans. And what else I thought when I saw the script was seeing Abe Sapien on almost every page of the film I thought �oh this is bigger this is way bigger� there was a lot more responsibility for me as an actor this time and in addition to that Guillermo wanted me to play The Angel of Death and the small part called The Chamberlain I realised that I wasn�t going to have a whole lot of days off, which I didn�t.

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