Angus Macfadyen Revisits Scottish Hero 25 Years Later

It’s not often that an actor has the opportunity to revisit a character he played a quarter century ago. For Angus Macfadyen, whose breakthrough role was playing a nobleman/warrior in league with Mel Gibson’s William Wallace hero in the Oscar winning historic epic Braveheart, it was a golden opportunity to flesh out a historic Scottish figure integral to Scotland’s independence from England with Robert the Bruce.

Audiences are reintroduced to Robert the Bruce at the low point of his long war against the relentless British. He and his brave band and loyal fighters have fought and lost battle after battle against the numerous and better-equipped foes. They are demoralized and defeated, though some still want to soldier on. Seeing no alternative, Robert the Bruce releases his brave warriors from service, and in a selfless act to try and protect them from slaughter at the hands of the advancing English army, he decides to go into the wilderness on his own. While some of his men remain loyal to Robert the Bruce and his cause, others are tempted by a sizable bounty of 50 gold pieces on their former leader’s head. Not a bad reward by 1306 standards.

Robert the Bruce also faces the wrath of soldiers in league with rival clan leader John Comyn (played by Jared Harris), whom he defeats in a brutal battle to the death inside a church, after Comyn reneges on a deal in which Robert the Bruce is to be named the rightful Scottish king.

After miraculously escaping his pursuers, Robert the Bruce takes refuge in a cave, where, as legend has it, he watches a spider as she repeatedly tries and fails to weave a web, but ultimately succeeds. The exiled and severely injured king is inspired by the creature’s tenacity. Discovered by peasant children, Robert the Bruce is brought back to their isolated mountaintop home where he is nursed by back to health by the children’s widowed guardian, Morag (Anna Hutchison), whose husband was killed fighting alongside Robert the Bruce. Though momentarily safe, Robert the Bruce remains aware that he is still a wanted man, and staying with this helpful family puts their lives in mortal danger. Nevertheless, Morag and her charges are committed to defending their king, despite the odds against them.

Speaking via Zoom from home where he is in self-isolation, the ruggedly distinguished actor (also known for his recurring role as a vengeful father in the Saw franchise) spoke about his longstanding connection with the legendary Scottish folk hero and king and how his journey to bring the continuation of the story depicted in Braveheart echoed, in some ways, to the emotional travails the Scottish leader faced himself 700 years ago. April 6, 2020 marked the 700^th anniversary of the Scottish Fight for Independence and the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath. The epic drama, initially slated to arrive in theaters to coincide with this historic anniversary, is now slated to arrive on Digital platforms and VOD Friday April 24.

Though highly cinematic, with incredible vistas of the cold and majestic Scottish Highlands (actually, it was mostly filmed in Montana, owing to filmmaker Richard Gray’s schedule), Robert the Bruce tells an intimate story of a revolutionary hero’s journey from defeat to redemption.

Angela Dawson: Though this isn’t a sequel to Braveheart, it does pick up, historically, where Braveheart left off. You’d been working on the script with your co-writer Eric Belgau for some time. When did you decide to write it and tell this story from Robert the Bruce’s perspective?

Angus Macfadyen: It took a long time. I was asking around if anyone wanted to tell the story of what happened [after William Wallace]. I’d say, “It’s an incredible story,” but nobody really wanted to make it, so I went ahead with my friend Eric and we’d discuss it. Eventually, we sat down for six or seven weeks and wrote up a first draft. We then honed it for the next four years into the script it is. We started out with a big, historical epic and ended up making it this tight little story about this family. We chose this more intimate story about these four Scotspeople who are thrust into this extraordinary situation. That was in 2010, and then it took another seven years to get the money to actually make the film. So, all in all, it took about 14 years to get this thing done, which is about twice as long as it took Robert the Bruce to actually gain independence for Scotland.

Dawson: You’ve played this character before, so you already did your homework about Robert the Bruce. When you played him in Braveheart were there ideas that came to you then?

Macfadyen: It was more like I had this character following me around like a ghost. I couldn’t shake him. It wouldn’t go away. I felt compelled, in a way, even though I couldn’t get any interest, to write [the screenplay]. The journey of Robert the Bruce became my journey because the moral of that story—as every schoolchild is taught in Scotland—is he went into this cave and watched a spider trying to spin its web and it kept failing several times, and then it finally succeeded. So, the moral of that story comes down to, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That, literally, became my story in my attempt to make this film. I too went into a cave of despair and gave up from time to time. But in 2017, a situation arose in which I was working with this actress, Anna Hutchison, in a film [Purge of Kingdoms, a Game of Thrones-type parody], and told her about my screenplay. I told her she’d be really great at Morag [the peasant woman who nurses the wounded Robert the Bruce to health and pledges her family’s commitment to his cause]. She read it and liked it, and then asked me if I had the financing. I said no. And then she said she knew someone who could finance the film. So, she sent him the screenplay and within three months we were actually making the film.

Dawson: What’s surprising is that you filmed a lot of this in Montana in the winter. How was that?

Macfadyen: Absolutely brutal. It was the hardest shoot I’d ever done. I actually thought we weren’t going to be able to make the film after two days because we could only film for eight hours a day, because the sun would be gone. Mostly, we couldn’t get to the location on Day 1 and Day 2, because the mountain we were shooting on literally disappeared in front of our eyes, and we had to turn around and go back. This happened several times. I was thinking I finally got here, finally got the money together and it’s going to collapse before me in the first week. But we muddled through and kept at it. We didn’t have running water or heat so we just used the outdoors for our bathroom. We were living like medieval monks. So, it was the maddest time, but also the most fun I’ve ever had on location. We’d hit the bar at the end of the day just to warm up and have a good laugh.

Dawson: When you were writing the screenplay, did you contact your Braveheart star/director Mel Gibson?

Macfadyen: No. We haven’t stayed in touch.

Dawson: Was he aware you were making a film delving back into this time period of history?

Macfadyen: I have no idea.

Dawson: There are a number of universal themes in this: freedom, fighting for what you believe in, loyalty and, as you said, tenacity.  While very significant now, did you also feel that way back when you were writing or filming this?

Macfadyen: I wanted to build the suspense to where it reaches this climax where this family who brought this stranger into their home risk their lives. There’s this foreboding sense of doom because when the snow melts, these [bounty hunters] are going to come for him. You have this wounded man and three children and a woman, who are going to have to defend themselves. It’s kind of a High Noon-type sense of foreboding, which it all builds to. The film is really about the film where these children have lost their fathers to wars in which they fought for William Wallace or Robert the Bruce. So, in essence, it’s anti-war film; it’s about the consequences of violence.

Dawson: When your co-star, Anna Hutchison, came on board this project, was her role expanded from what you initially had in the script?

Macfadyen: It wasn’t expanded; it was pretty much there on the page. It was mostly going to be about this family and Robert the Bruce takes a backseat through a lot of it. There were segments that we lost in the film that I wish were there. When he was lying in the bed, he has a hallucination of still being in the cave and having a feast with the man whose throat he slit, John Comyn [Jared Harris]. That was cut, which I wish we still had in the film. Maybe we’ll include it in an extended cut later on.

Dawson: Speaking of the fight sequence with Jared Harris, how did he come on board and what was it like filming that brutal confrontation scene with him?

Macfadyen: He’s a friend of mine so I asked him to come up to Montana and join us for a few days of filming and these two old lads had at it in that church.

Dawson: Did you have much time to rehearse that scene together?

Macfadyen: We didn’t have a lot of time for that because we were just getting through by the seat of our pants. When you are working with these limited budgets, you have the actors coming up just the day before [filming]. So, you’re relying on the fact that they have some experience in this, that they have good hand-eye coordination. For example, in the final sequence, we never had a chance for everybody to rehearse it before we shot it on location. It was a pretty dangerous sequence because of the snow, which was packed down and really slippery, and we’re swinging swords and axes. I was pleased that nobody got hurt.

Dawson: What did your director, Richard Gray, an Australian, bring to the film?

Macfadyen: One of the things that we agreed on was to try to balance the emotion of the story with a bit of humor, so that it didn’t become too one-note. Australians are great at humor and Richard has a great wicked sense of humor. He also is a big Braveheart fan so when we first met, he was telling me how much that film had affected his life. He was almost weeping while we were meeting, so I thought, “This is the guy that really ought to do this because you need someone who understands the emotion of it.”

Dawson: Coming back to this character after 25 years, later, how has Robert the Bruce changed? Does it parallel your own growth as an actor and as a person?

Macfadyen: Yeah, sure. Twenty-five years have gone by. There was some youthful arrogance in my character in the first film. He’s had that beaten out of him. He’s a much more mature man at this point. So, it was nice to be able to play that. A man gets all that stupidity and arrogance beaten out of him and something else enters him. Something more pensive and thoughtful, more humane—qualities that allow him to become a far more heroic man and a figure of myth that remains today in our imaginations, even though his bones have turned to dust.

Dawson: What’s the status of the projects you completed prior to the pandemic, or were scheduled to begin?

Macfadyen: Henry IV is out now. It’s an entirely African-American cast, except me. I play Falstaff. That was a lot of fun doing that. I have another Shakespearean film that I adapted and directed, called Macbeth Unhinged. It’s in post-production, and I’m hoping to get it out this year.

Dawson: Hopefully, those can be shown in theaters at some point.

Macfadyen: I know. I was so glad that Robert the Bruce was shown at Edinburgh [film festival] last year and the Scottish cinemas last summer. I was glad, at least, for the Scots to see in theaters.