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Interview: Hero Fiennes Tiffin on playing 'Young Sherlock' in new Prime Video series
Interview: Hero Fiennes Tiffin on playing 'Young Sherlock' in new Prime Video series
English actor Hero Fiennes Tiffin is starring as Sherlock Holmes in the new Prime Video series “Young Sherlock” now streaming on the platform.
While people know Sherlock Holmes as the brilliant detective of Baker Street, “Young Sherlock” reimagines the origin story of Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved character, focusing on his formative experiences that shaped him.
“Young Sherlock” is directed by Guy Ritchie and created by writer-producer Matthew Parkhill.
It stars Fiennes Tiffin as the young Sherlock Holmes and Dónal Finn as the young James Moriarty. The cast also includes Zine Tseng as Princess Gulun Shou'a, Joseph Fiennes (Hero’s real-life uncle) as Silas Holmes, Natascha McElhone as Cordelia Holmes, Max Irons as Mycroft Holmes, and Colin Firth as Sir Bucephalus Hodge.
In an interview with Manila Bulletin, Fiennes Tiffin talked about how he got the role, his vision on how to play the character of the detective and feeling the pressure.
His acting credits include playing the young Tom Riddle in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” and the “After” film series.
He worked with Ritchie who directed “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”
Audition
Fiennes Tiffin was in Thailand for a vacation when he was asked to audition for “Young Sherlock.”
“Well, I was lucky enough to work with Guy Ritchie in a film called ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ beforehand. And I hopefully, I guess, impressed him enough for him to want to hire me again,” he said.
He revealed, “I was actually on holiday in Thailand and I was asked to audition for the role so you know put the holiday on pause and jumped on a Zoom call and did the audition and I think that was it, that was it they offered me the role shortly later.”
Fiennes Tiffin said he jumped for joy when he learned that he bagged the title role in “Young Sherlock.”
“Probably some sort of stupid, embarrassing jump for joy and then lie on the floor and collect myself. I've always been a huge fan of Sherlock. I've always been a huge fan of Guy. I'd worked with him once in a smaller role, as I mentioned. And yeah, to work with him again as the lead character of a character who I've always been a fan of was, yeah, a dream come true. Jump for joy, I think, was the first thing I did,” he said.
Vision
As “Young Sherlock” is about Sherlock before he became known as a detective, Fiennes Tiffin said he wanted to portray him in an original and fresh way.
“Well, as I mentioned, I've always been a fan and I've digested a lot of Sherlock stories and interpretations. You know, Guy’s work with Robert Downey Jr. and the BBC iPlayer ‘Sherlock” with Benedict Cumberbatch,” he said.
He added, “So I feel like I already had a lot of knowledge of who I wanted the character to be and what I wanted him to be like. So I didn't want to take too much interpretation from anything else after that because we wanted it to be kind of, you know, original and fresh.”
“And the fact we're telling the story of young Sherlock means, you know, he needs to be a bit different from that character so we can map his journey to becoming the Sherlock we all know,” he said.
Manila Bulletin also interviewed Parkhill in which he praised Fiennes Tiffin for playing the role of the young Sherlock with innocence, his incredible ability to recall and for how he looked at the world.
Fiennes Tiffin was flattered by the compliments.
“I'm very flattered. I love Matthew. He should be taking most of the credit for any of the success that this show gets. Yeah, he was our god, if you will, on the job. So, yeah, that's really, really flattering to come from him,” he said.
He added, “I think he was very helpful in kind of bringing that innocence to the role because as I mentioned, you want to make sure that the character isn't the fully developed character that we know and love. So you need to think of things that are appropriate for him to be like and different characteristics for him to have when we meet him at 19 years old.”
“And as much as the word innocent should be taken with a pinch of salt because we meet him in prison, so he's clearly not that innocent. I do think it was important to bring a level of innocence that he has more of in comparison to the Sherlock Holmes, the detective in his later years,” he said.
Pressure
Fiennes Tiffin said he felt the pressure of playing the title role in “Young Sherlock” but he is channeling it for motivation.
“Because I'm a fan, I know that if I wasn't involved and someone else did this, I'd be very ready to criticize them if they got it wrong,” he revealed.
He said, “So, yeah, I think people are entitled to do that. But at the end of the day, just like many jobs, you know, people are going to have their opinions. And it is, yeah, I definitely did feel the pressure, but you have to use it to let it fuel you and motivate you.”
For him, “You just have to work hard and prep right. And, you know, we're surrounded by such an amazing team with Matthew and Guy Ritchie and all these amazing heads of departments and cast members. You quickly manage to lose that fear when you're in such good company.”
Working with Ritchie
Fiennes Tiffin and Ritchie previously worked in “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” Fiennes Tiffin said he loved working with him again in “Young Sherlock.”
“I love it. He's a very unique director in his style. I think the most notable thing he does differently is change dialogue a lot, very, very late. But I understand why. I think it's because when you're sat in a room imagining what everything's gonna look and feel like, it's very hard to be as inspired and have all these ideas that you can have when you see every character in costume and the weather's a certain way,” he explained.
He said, “And that kind of informed these decisions. And I think he always improves the story and the dialogue, but yeah, it comes at a slight cost of being short, short notice. And the difficulty that comes with that is you're often trying to learn three pages of dialogue in 20 minutes and you're sat there thinking, ‘I don't know if my acting is going to be any good.’”
“But Guy always has your back and it always, you know, it always it always ends up kind of feeling like it's been improved. So as much as it's a challenge for the actors, it's always worthwhile,” he said.
Playing the role
“Young Sherlock” is set in 1870s Victorian England and for 28-year-old Fiennes Tiffin, he was fascinated with the set design.
“The only reason I want to say no was because the set design was so incredible. It felt like you were being transported back in time. I mean, you're in like a horse and carriage that is true to the period. It's literally like something that was built back then and someone's kept as an antique or like a, you know, impeccable replica that you'd never noticed,” he said.
He said, “And you're on cobblestone streets that stretch for 100 meters full of, you know, vendors dressed appropriately. And when we're lucky enough to have a budget that we did to create those sets and environments, it's better than any documentary you could watch or museum experience you could do. They really do create the world for you. So yeah, before the job, I think I was maybe a bit conscious and worried about that. But as soon as we got onto these sets, it really does feel like you've gone back in time.”
For him, the most challenging part in portraying young Sherlock was “making sure that we got those similarities and differences between where we meet him now and where we meet him at the start of Arthur Conan Doyle's works correctly and, yeah, making sure that it's not too similar because then there's no point in doing an original story because there's nothing to explore, but not too different that people don't believe that this character is going to become the Sherlock that we know.”
“So, you know, the innocence that Matthew talks about is something that he might lose as we get to the end of our story and he becomes the detective Sherlock Holmes. But his fighting ability, on the other hand, we know is going to improve because when we meet him, he's not very capable, but we know that, yeah, when we meet him at the Arthur Conan Doyle’s works here. So the biggest challenge was mapping out all of these kinds of characteristics and making them not too similar but not too dissimilar,” he said.
On why viewers should watch the series, Fiennes Tiffin said “Young Sherlock” is a fun show and revealed that he wants to do season 2.
“Because it's a good fun show and it has a little bit of everything in terms of genres and themes but it also feels like really enjoyable for people of all ages. I'm really proud of it. I think it's thoroughly entertaining and selfishly I want to do a season 2 so I need as many people to watch it as possible,” he said.
“Young Sherlock” is now available on Prime Video.
