{"id":228303,"date":"2021-04-16T02:31:24","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T23:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/ben-barnes-on-playing-the-darkling-in-shadow-and-bone\/"},"modified":"2021-04-16T02:31:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T23:31:24","slug":"ben-barnes-on-playing-the-darkling-in-shadow-and-bone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/ben-barnes-on-playing-the-darkling-in-shadow-and-bone\/","title":{"rendered":"#Ben Barnes on playing ‘The Darkling’ in ‘Shadow and Bone’"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Ben Barnes on playing ‘The Darkling’ in ‘Shadow and Bone’<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

Ben Barnes knows his way around whimsical worlds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The British actor has been to Narnia (the \u201cChronicles of Narnia\u201d movies<\/a>), the Marvel universe (Netflix\u2019s \u201cThe Punisher\u201d) and dystopian theme<\/a> parks (HBO\u2019s \u201cWestworld\u201d).<\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s at the center of Netflix\u2019s new epic, \u201cShadow and Bone,\u201d the fantasy series based on a series of bestselling novels<\/a> by Leigh Bardugo.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was such a big fan of fantasy. I find it quite irresistible,\u201d Barnes, 39, told The Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had studied children\u2019s literature at university and had been writing about \u2018His Dark Materials\u2019 and \u2018The Hobbit\u2019 and all that kind of stuff, but I hadn\u2019t heard of these [books] until I got sent the script.\u201d<\/p>\n

Premiering Friday (April 23), \u201cShadow and Bone\u201d is set in the war-torn land of Ravka (think a fictional version of Imperial Russia with magic involved). It follows orphan girl Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) as she discovers that she has powers that could save the world from a monster-filled shadowy, often fatal region known as The Fold. Soon, she draws the attention of the enigmatic General<\/a> Kirigan (Barnes), who\u2019s also known as Aleksander or The Darkling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Jessie
Jessie Mei Li as Alina (left) and Ben Barnes as General Kirigan aka The Darkling (right) in \u201cShadow and Bone.\u201d <\/figcaption>
DAVID APPLEBY\/NETFLIX<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere was some chatter even a few years before the show \u2014 Leigh Bardugo had supported the idea of me playing that character. I sort of felt a bit kismet that I was supposed to do it, in some way,\u201d said Barnes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kirigan, who\u2019s a powerful army leader, brings Alina to Ravka\u2019s palace to hone her skills while the two develop a close bond.<\/p>\n

\"Ben
Ben Barnes as The Darkling (left) and Jessie Mei Li as Alina (right) as she discovers her powers. <\/figcaption>
COURTESY OF NETFLIX<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cKirigan feels that he knows who he is and where he belongs and what he\u2019s trying to achieve,\u201d said Barnes. \u201cBut then Alina comes into his life and I feel, personally, like she sparks something in him that\u2019s this kernel of hope and love. She certainly raises the question, \u2018What kind of man do I want to be and what\u2019s important to me?\u2019 even though he feels he\u2019s answered those questions a long time ago. So to me, that\u2019s what makes him interesting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Ben
General Kirigan, aka The Darkling (Ben Barnes, right) brings Alina (Jessie Mei Li, left) to the palace in \u201cShadow and Bone.\u201d <\/figcaption>
DAVID APPLEBY\/NETFLIX<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, his dramatic aesthetic \u2014 with an all-black wardrobe \u2014 presented an unexpected performance challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s an awful lot of things that go into building a character like this; costuming was a huge part of it,\u201d said Barnes. \u201cI certainly had to change my gym routine just to be able to wear the cloak for 12 hours a day, because it was so heavy. It helps with the physicality, to ground you down onto the earth and make you feel powerful. So that was certainly a physical issue \u2014\u00a0 trying to do swooping arm movements in the world\u2019s heaviest cloak!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ben
Ben Barnes in his cloak in \u201cShadow and Bone.\u201d <\/figcaption>
DAVID APPLEBY\/NETFLIX<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the show, Kirigan is willing to get ruthless to accomplish his goals, which puts him in line with many of the morally grey characters that Barnes is known for, such as troubled jerk Logan Delos (\u201cWestworld\u201d), gangster Billy Russo (\u201cThe Punisher\u201d series, 2017-2019) and Dorian Gray (the 2009 movie \u201cThe Picture of Dorian Gray\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cI like stories about hope, and I think that finding the hope even in the antagonist of the story is an important part of it,\u201d he said. \u201cCharacters that exist in the shadows of life \u2014 that\u2019s not where I prefer to live, I like to live in the sunshine if I can \u2014\u00a0 but it does interest me to make the kind of TV that asks questions and lets people answer them for themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the capacity of fantasy to be able to explore themes in this kind of allegorical way. You can talk about politics, racial identity, abuse of power and consent. Faith. And overarching for me [in \u2018Shadow and Bone\u2019] is that it\u2019s a story of identity and where we feel like we belong \u2014 and where we feel at peace.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Ben Barnes on playing ‘The Darkling’ in ‘Shadow and Bone’” Ben Barnes knows his way around whimsical worlds.\u00a0 The British actor has been to Narnia (the \u201cChronicles of Narnia\u201d movies), the Marvel universe (Netflix\u2019s \u201cThe Punisher\u201d) and dystopian theme parks (HBO\u2019s \u201cWestworld\u201d). Now, he\u2019s at the center of Netflix\u2019s new epic, \u201cShadow and Bone,\u201d the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/04\/ben-barnes-shadow-and-bone-05-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[102131,102292,1377,40393,5081,1373,87753],"class_list":["post-228303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-4-15-21","tag-ben-barnes","tag-netflix","tag-netflix-originals","tag-tv-shows","tag-what-to-watch","tag-whats-new-on-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}