Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales keeps to the code of all the movies in the genre. The captains are looking for something and find something unexpected along the way. This time, instead of it being Captain Jack that finds something unexpected it’s Barbossa. This could possibly be considered a spoiler, but I’m going to say it anyway.

Pirates of the Caribbean comes to theaters tomorrow May 26th. Oh wait, everyone knows that.

We had the opportunity to delve into Barbossa’s sensitive side during our interview with the actor Geoffrey Rush.

How did it feel to take on a different Barbossa?

First What was Barbossa like in the beginning?

Well, it’s sort of something that happened over the first four films, you know. I think in the first one he — before I actually entered into the story, he was described rather fearfully by the two pirates that are now my assistants. [CHUCKLES] He’s spat out from the mouth of hell.

Which is, to me that was the key line, I thought, well, whenever I enter into this story, if I didn’t — if you don’t see that then he’s a liar [CHUCKLES], you know. So, he was pretty much the dark villain of the piece. And, you know, he had to break the curse. I think it was a great twist of the story that we were actually having to put all of the treasure back to reverse the curse, which I think I then enjoyed having all my senses back for about 30 seconds. Then I got shot.

Barbossa Compared to Black Beard

You know, the real black beard used to have fuse wire burning in his beard that when people saw him they thought he was the devil, you know. So, that would go from ship to ship from port to port. So, you’d send out, you know — and I said, yeah, but, well, with Barbossa I wanna make him very arrogant and very pompous and very superior and maybe a bit slightly self-diluted about how bright he actually is.

Influence of a costume

Penny Rose, the Costume Designer, gave me this great kind of flamboyant outfit like a glam rock star

About Coming Back To Life in Pirates 2

Tia Dalma needs you to get all the global pirates together to break the curse of the cheese hunter. It’ll become a big part of the story. So, I sort of became like a politician. I was the guy getting the global pirate G20 meeting. And that was fun to play, because he loves — he’s a control freak and he loves thinking he’s the most powerful person on the planet. And then I worked for the king. I liked that in Pirates 4. And I said, you know, I really insist that I have a very elaborate wig [CHUCKLES] and lovely makeup and a beauty spot.

A New Costume, A Wooden Leg and did he know the secret?

Costume

And Penny Rose offered me a costume, and I said this is great. He wouldn’t care if he mixed checks with strikes. [CHUCKLES] And what else does he spent his money on, you know. I love the fact that the wooden leg — I said this is a great way to show how ridiculously wealthy he is. It’s a bit like Saddam Hussein having gold everywhere on the bathroom taps and probably shaped like fish or something [CHUCKLES], you know, ridiculous. And then the extra bit where they brought in a sort of deep secret from even before the first film started that there was something that Jack and Barbossa knew about.

 

Secret

And I don’t know. I probably needed to go through therapy to un-repress that memory but he had obviously blocked it out, but I looked back at all the other films and just looked at it in the light of if that secret had been there, it’ll all still make sense, you know. The obsession for, you know, the grandeur of his own persona is someone masking this guilty secret that he has. And I think — ’cause you can’t talk about this. This is all a surprise —

Wooden Leg

I went down that path and talked to a prosthetician who specializes with amputees. You know what I mean. And the engineering they do now — if you see people that have a leg from the knee down, it’s molded beautifully in titanium or whatever. And I saw something the other day with — they’ve now got a machine where the feet kind of ripple [SOUNDS LIKE: Jeremy].

 

Go see the movie because I have another interview with Geoffrey Rush where he dishes on Johnny Depp and it has more spoilers in it!