Jared Harris Talks Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

Speaking to MTV, Jared Harris - who plays Prof. Moriarty in the upcoming Sherlock Holmes sequel, A Game Of Shadows - talks in detail about his research for the character. He also praises his co-star Robert Downey Jr., saying he has more respect for him after working with him on Game Of Shadows. He also comments on the differences between the two installments, saying that the new film is very different from the first but still has the feel of a Guy Ritchie movie.

Professor Moriarty is a character with great history in the "Sherlock Holmes" universe and beyond. What kind of research and preparation went into getting into the spirit of the character?

Well, I tried to hatch some worldwide domination plots. [Laughs] What's interesting is that when he appears in the Sherlock Holmes books, he doesn't appear very much; he's talked about, but you don't see him very often. I thought a little bit about previous incarnations of him. But there were two things that were tricky about this: that convention of who that character was in the Sherlock Holmes stories, this sort of arch nemesis/supervillain. It's been borrowed so often that you can't just go back and do it the way it was, because it seems like a cliché or something. You're only one bad line away from stumbling into cliché in those sorts of things. So we thought about successful villains in other stories and how they operated.

You've got to enjoy your work, basically, and you need to have the character enjoy their work as well. I understand what you're saying. You can relate to the character, but it's difficult to always turn around and say you like a character as evil as that. But in my mind, the trick I've played with is, that quality in you and in all of us, when we like or dislike someone, there's a judgment and a moral value involved ... so I removed that from the equation. I don't feel that this guy had any sense of morality. He doesn't see things as right or wrong; he sees things as possible or not possible. From that point of view, the character was liberated and free to do anything.

I can't give too much away. It's in keeping with the original version: It's a Guy Ritchie movie, so they haven't suddenly gone back and made a Basil Rathbone "Sherlock Holmes." It's all in keeping with that. But I can't give too much away. Whatever stuff is in the story that they're trying to keep secret until the time comes along, my feeling is it's their secret to blow, and when they feel like blowing it, then I'm free to talk about stuff. That in particular, there are some elements of what you're asking that definitely point to things they've said they'll keep close to their chests until we get closer to [the release date].

Robert, yes. I loved him in the first movie, and I have even more respect for him now. I found him to be very generous and attentive. He wants people around him to do their best work. Sometimes you run into these things where people aren't like that, maybe they're insecure. He's not insecure about talent at all. He wants other people to raise their game. I loved it. I really enjoyed working with him. I can't say enough highly about him. I think he's very special.

I certainly didn't ignore that. There are a couple of ways we talked about how you handle that. But he's a very famous character, an infamous character. The man's name is really well known. But it's interesting, because like I said, he only actually appears in two Sherlock Holmes stories. The rest of the time his reputation is done wonders by Sherlock Holmes; he talks him up a great deal. You kind of want to play on that element. It's similar to ... a monster movie; the real thought of the monster movie is you don't reveal the whole shark until the very end of the story. You want to keep people guessing as much as you can, and not show too much, while throwing in a few red herrings and stuff like that. I have no idea, because I haven't seen it, how much it works. [Laughs] But you are very conscious about all that.

At the same time, it's a very different "Sherlock Holmes" film. It isn't a very traditional Sherlock Holmes story at all. It does maintain a truth to the spirit of the times and very much the idea of what we have of Sherlock Holmes and his stories as filtered through this Victorian ideal of how these people behaved and everything, but those were rough, rough, rough times. I wouldn't be surprised that if you went back in a time machine, you'd find that it's actually much closer to what Guy Ritchie is doing than what the Basil Rathbone ones were doing, where everyone's extremely polite with all their clothes pressed and everyone's clean all of the time. I would imagine that! I remember reading at school that Queen Victoria took a bath once every six months and that was considered outrageous, that she was very clean and she was overdoing it.