HN Entertainment’s Nicholas Whitcomb was recently able to interview actor Ben Rigby and speak to him about his experience working with director Ridley Scott on Alien: Covenant.
Also, Ben has a role in James Mangold’s Ford vs Ferarri, his feature film follow up to Logan.
Here is a synopsis for the 20th Century Fox racing film starring Christian Bale, Matt Damon, Jon Bernthal, Josh Lucas, Caitriona Balfe, and JJ Field.
The true story of visionary American car designer Carroll Shelby (Damon) and the fearless British driver Ken Miles (Bale). Together the two men battled corporate interference, the laws of physics, and their own personal demons to build a revolutionary race car for Ford Motor Company, in a longshot attempt to unseat the dominating race cars of Enzo Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France in 1966.
HN: I believe you worked with James Mangold on his new Ford vs Ferrari movie.
RIGBY: I did, that was epic I mean that film is going to be so cool.
HN: Can you talk about your character? I think you play Bruce McLaren in that.
RIGBY: “I do, this story is widely accessible anyway, so there aren’t spoilers unless you don’t know much about cars. I think it’ll be a really great film for everyone. I play Bruce McLaren, who was a very very talented engineer and driver from New Zealand.”
“So I auditioned for a bunch of roles and they came back and said: ‘New Zealand accent?’ and I was like: ‘Yeah, my dad is from New Zealand’.”
“I have a few scenes with Christian Bale which is great and I got to drive or sit in some of those [old] cars, replicas of those cars which was epic and the stunts in that are very very incredible. From what I saw it will be a very brilliant film it’ll be huge like [20th Century Fox] put a lot of money into that, I think it’ll be a spectacle.”
HN: Can you talk about working with Christian Bale? He’s known to be a very intense actor on set and gets really into character.
RIGBY: “Oh, he’s just lovely, my experience with him is that he’s great.”
HN: Did actors like yourself get to do a lot of driving in the film?
RIGBY: “I didn’t because I think they’d have a lawsuit on their hands [laughs]. I don’t think I would have been allowed to drive that car. I just got to sit in it practically, and then the stunt drivers did the rest.”
HN: With a character like Bruce McLaren, do you find it tougher to play someone from real-life versus someone that is fictional?
RIGBY: “That’s a good question. I’ve never really done that before, it was fun, I just looked at lots of interviews with him and just saw how his face moved, he’s kind of squinty and he looked a lot older than he was. He was thirty like I’m thirty, I was like: ‘Wow, I guess if we put my hair like this and do this I kinda look like him’.”
“Right place, right time [on landing the role].”
“It was really fascinating getting info on someone that I didn’t really know about before, which is my favorite part of acting, you get to learn new vocabulary and learn about new parts of history in the world. That was really the fun part of it, researching McLaren and the era, along with the legacy he kind of left on the automotive industry.”
“James Mangold is such a great director and it’s such a huge cast. It’ll be spectacular.”
20th Century Fox has set the release date for Ford vs Ferrari on November 15th, where you can see Ben Rigby play Bruce McLaren.
