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 Mamma Mia! has everything a gay man could want in a film: dancing, singing, ABBA songs. Oh, and Dominic Cooper. The star spoke with Colin Fraser.
Some may remember Dominic Cooper’s firebrand performance when The History Boys toured Australia a few years ago. He reprised his role of top boy Dakin in the 2006 film version. Today however SX have ten minutes of his time thanks to his pivotal role in Mamma Mia!
Some might argue that Meryl Streep is pivotal to the film, or any of her screen-daughter’s potential fathers (Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård). But the simple reality is that without Cooper there’s no Sky, without Sky there’s no wedding and without a wedding, there’s no film. Cooper counts.
The eye-catching Englishman confesses that the whole thing has been hell. Filming on a Greek island with four big stars then touring the world and returning to Sydney. “Yeah, it’s awful. I can’t wait to get back to the monotony of my real life,” he says, eyes twinkling.
“Actually I’m terrified of it all being over. After you’ve had such a terrific experience filming, and then travelling.”
The three-week tour has taken him from London through Paris, Stockholm, Berlin, Sydney and New York.
Cooper’s fledgling career got a boost when he landed The History Boys for Nicholas Hytner. The director’s posting to Britain’s National Theatre also opened doors for Cooper and caught the attention of Phyllida Lloyd who had turned Mamma Mia! into West-End gold. She booked him to play Sophie’s fiancé Sky.
“It was a normal casting and the first question was whether I could sing. I can’t, so I went in not taking myself too seriously. I think that did it”. Next stop, Greece.
So how does an actor with no sense of rhythm or voice cope with a musical?
“One of the things about working with Meryl, Colin, Pierce and Stellan was that I could learn. When you meet them on set you learn very quickly that we’re all in the same boat – none of us had any confidence in our singing or dancing abilities. That look of terror on everyone’s face suggested it”.
‘The Flipper Dance’, in which a chorus line of near-naked men performed in snorkelling flippers, would have to be the most terrifying. Yet film editors can be devious – was Cooper among them?
“I’m going to start saying yes … because that would be much more impressive than me saying I wasn’t.” He coyly admits that although he participated in the sequence, his efforts languish on the cutting room floor. “Dancing is difficult, there’s a lot going on. Stellan learnt quite early that if the camera was on his face to make it look like his legs were doing the right thing, even if they weren’t”.
Next up Cooper stars as Keira Knightley’s lover in the corset drama The Duchess but first he’s off to Melbourne to repeat his performance in the Mamma Mia! press juggernaut. Sigur Ros, Radiohead and Martha Wainwright will keep iPod company along with Markus Zusak’s 600 page tome about Nazi Germany.
“That’s sounding all a bit morbid, like I’m going into depression” he laughed. “I’ve got The Clash, and some eighties music too!”
No ABBA exactly, though he’s probably earned a break.
Mamma Mia! is in cinemas now.
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Gimme, gimme, gimme
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