We pretty much thought all our Christmases, birthdays and winning lottery numbers had come in at once when we got the amazing news that MKP would be meeting up with the one and only Johnny Depp! After much hysterical screaming we headed off to a swanky London hotel to meet Johnny, his Sweeney Todd co-stars (Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman) and the film’s director (and Johnny’s bezzie mate) Tim Burton, to talk blood, gore and show tunes!
Johnny, you once said there is always something of you in every role you play – what part of you is in Sweeney?
I do believe that you have to bring some degree of truth from yourself to the role and I’ll admit it here, I have shaved a grown man before. I have done it but it wasn’t Tim [Burton].
Did he survive?
He is alive, yeah, he’s walking around to this day.
Johnny and Tim, you’ve worked together many times, do you still surprise each other, creatively?
TB: Of course, seeing Johnny sing… I’ve never seen that in the many years that we’ve worked together. So yeah, there’s always something new. A journalist in America told us that we’d been working together for ten decades, so we’re a lot older than we look. We actually knew each other before the invention of cinema, so we have quite a good, long relationship.
JD: The weird thing is I believed her.
It’s a pretty gory film in parts- what was the blood you made for the film really like?
TB: The blood, as everybody here can attest to – especially Alan [Rickman} – is our own special recipe, very sticky, very sweet and it burns your eyes.
AR: And gets into your underpants.
TB: I know it took you a couple of weeks to get it out of your underwear. But it’s our own secret recipe.
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