Andy Serkis Describes His LUTHER: THE FALLEN SUN Villain - "I Don't Think I've Come Across Anything Quite As Dark for a Long Time"

The movie Luther: The Fallen Sun, based on the awesome BBC crime drama Luther, is almost here! We going to see Idris Elba back as the title character, detective chief inspector John Luther, imprisoned after nearly solving a case of a string of cyber serial murders. The movie picks up where the five-season British series left off. Plagued by his failure to apprehend the real villain, Luther feels obliged to make tough choices behind bars.

The movie will welcome back the character DSU Martin Schenk, played by actor Dermot Crowley, as well as newcomers to the cast, which include Cynthia Erivo (Bad Times at the El Royale, Harriet) and Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes), and in a recent interview with Total Film (via GamesRadar), Serkis sat down to spill the beans about his villainous character, killer millionaire David Robey.

"When I first read the script, I almost wanted to throw it in the bin and have a shower. I don’t think I’ve come across anything quite as dark for a long time. And I thought: ‘In fact, do I really actually at this point in the world and time and my life, want to go down this particular rabbit hole of something that’s so hard to fathom in humanity?'"

Robey has tangled with Luther before and been ignored. Now he uses tech as surveillance, discovering secrets that enable him to manipulate others. Luther creator Neil Cross, admitted in the same interview that all his monsters are what he’s personally afraid of. He explained:

"Robey really just comes from this tension between morality and ethics. True morality is the kind of behavior that you exhibit when you know that nobody is watching. But we’ve ceded lots of that private behavior to the semi-private forum of the internet. The things of which we are ashamed, the things we think that we’re ashamed of thinking, people that would have lived isolated lives but possibly never expressing their desires or their anxieties – or their interests, shall we say? – they find communities. I’m terrified by the idea that somebody, in fact, is watching.

But however broad our canvas is, it’s always going to be this very particular sense that the monster could be coming for you next. In a weirdly Freudian fashion, I’ve made up a modern, Arthurian knight-errant who can come along and slay these dragons for me."

I can’t wait to see how this final Luther story plays out. I think I should go back and binge the series again in preparation. The Luther series is streaming on Hulu, and the film will drop on Netflix this March.