Jared Harris Talks Moriarty in SHERLOCK HOLMES 2

Jared Harris Talks Moriarty in SHERLOCK HOLMES 2: "





Having wowed me in the criminally short-lived THE RICHES and then again in MAD MEN and THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, I was pretty excited when Jared Harris was cast as Moriarty in SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS. Though knowing that Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. would be back with more fantastic buddy chemistry (they are the current heirs to Riggs and Murtaugh, in my opinion) was reason enough to celebrate, knowing they will face such a worthy adversary makes it all the sweeter.



Recently, Jared Harris sat down with Collider where he briefly discussed his take on Holmes’ arch-nemesis. He said:

“You want to craft your own version but you also need to be in the same genre of film as everybody else, and you wanna stay true to, as they have with the series, to the spirit of Sherlock Holmes whilst making the character into sort of a, it’s like a superhero movie, it’s slightly in that genre of films, he doesn’t have any superpowers except he’s got a super intellect.



Going back to what you were asking about with Moriarty and with playing villains in general, and about the interface with plot and exposition and stuff like that—don’t tell them anything! Iago is one of the great villains of all time, there is no explanation for why he does what he does. None. People are fascinated by evil because it’s mysterious and it doesn’t seem to have a rational behind it, and the second you say that Hannibal Lecter was abducted as a child and he had to eat his sister or something like that, it becomes immediately mundane. The character becomes mundane. Don’t explain. That’s what’s fascinating about it.”

His last comments bring to mind two of cinema’s great recent villains, the Joker (THE DARK KNIGHT) and Anton Chigurh (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN). The Joker was certainly an unexplained force of nature. Though he told variations of his back story, where exactly he came from remains a mystery. Chigurh did have a very clear sets of rules/morals (or lack thereof), but his origins were also left mysterious, adding to the terror of his actions.



Collider also asked Harris whether his Moriarty recognizes himself as a villain, to which the actor replied:

“ I think that for me—and this is again my rational, it’s never explained in the story and I don’t really think it needs to be—but for me, the character’s amoral. He’s moved beyond the concept of there being a heaven and a hell and a God and a devil, and there being good and evil, he doesn’t believe in it. And if you don’t’ believe in that moral construct, then everyone is free to do whatever they want. He sees that whole approach to viewing the world and everything around them as being a childish construct. He doesn’t believe in the whole idea of there being good and evil, so he couldn’t conceive himself as being either good or evil. He’s just doing what’s good for him. It’s like asking, if you’re a fish, how could a fish conceive of space? You swim in the water that you swim in or the atmosphere that you’re in. For him it just doesn’t exist. The whole idea doesn’t exist.”


Again, this sounds like a very promising mindset for an effective antagonist to have; one that should make him all the scarier and more formidable when SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS drops December 16th, 2011.

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