Toby Kebbell has had a scattershot career. He’s carved his way through some sword and sandal pics (Prince of Persia and Wrath of the Titans), and played some lower-billed Brits in RockNRolla, War Horse and Control. We suppose, despite the studio’s decision to turn “Doctor Doom” into a nom de plume blogger handle, that Kebbel’s about to break out next year as the masked nemesis in the new Fantastic Four reboot. But, to us, Kebbell did that already by achieving the impossible with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. As Koba, Kebbell stood shoulder to shoulder with Andy Serkis, the master of all performance capture artists, and created a lethal Jekyll-and-Hyde ape.
Prior to meeting with Kebbell, CraveOnline was screened some of the Blu-ray behind the scenes bonus features of how the filmmakers captured the ape community in Dawn (director Matt Reeves described the setting as looking like a weird bondage film full of gray gimps). Kebbell confessed that he thought it’d be a little bit like monkey-see monkey-do.
Related: Andy Serkis interview for Blu-ray release of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Dawn was Kebbell’s first motion-capture performance. He had to attend ape camp. He found muscles he never knew existed. And he’s doing it all again in 2016 as an orc in Duncan Jones’ adaptation of Warcraft. So did Kebbell have any notion that he was stepping down from being an actor to being an ape? No. He was excited for a new challenge. But as he tells us, that was much more challenging than he expected.
Brian Formo is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @BrianEmilFormo.
