In new thriller Beast, Elba plays Dr. Nate Samuels, who alongside his two daughters Norah (Leah Jeffries) and Meredith (Iyana Halley) travels to South Africa to spend time at a game reserve managed by an old family friend (Sharlto Copley).
Both daughters are frustrated at how distant their father was following their mother’s death, but soon the family have a bigger problem to face when a lion that has avoided being killed by poachers shows up, is eager to kill any human in its path as revenge.
One of the biggest struggles for Elba, as he explained to Zavvi, wasn’t trying to make fighting a CGI lion look believable, but instead making this character’s fight for survival feel real.
“This character is definitely not an action hero, he's just a guy that's in a really terrible situation and that was appealing to me.
"It was exciting to step into a character who doesn’t have any of the typical action hero tropes – he's vulnerable not just in the fight with the lion, but also in his relationship with his children.
“The biggest challenge was figuring out how this man would fight, let alone fight a lion!
"This is a normal guy who can’t fight: there was a scene that required me to punch the lion and it was a struggle working out how this guy would act when thrown into that situation.
"I haven't done a movie where I am imagining and fighting with something that is not really there in such close proximity. I fought in other movies with swords and weapons against things that aren't there, but this was a physical being literally ripping me apart!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xg3PSS8vK0
“On set, I was constantly asking myself 'how fearful can you be when you've got a guy in a gray suit and a big, floppy head trying to beat you and you're pretending it's a lion?' - it was the biggest skill I had to learn doing this movie."
Read the full interview in the September 2022 edition of The Lowdown here.Beast is released in UK cinemas on 26th August.
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