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DISTRICT 9
FLASHBACK
ALIEN NATION
Blomkamp’s story of aliens invading
Johannesburg may be a work of fiction but the
political inspiration behind his dazzling debut
is deeply rooted in fact.
“The preparation for the role was my
life experience in South Africa,” reveals
Copley, discussing his years living alongside
apartheid. “When I was in high school my
best friend was a young black guy and I
would go into Soweto when technically I
wasn’t supposed to be there. I’d be the white
guy in the township so I had a lot of personal,
emotional experiences around the complexities
and humanity and also the tribalism that
everybody has on the surface as well.
“There are times where you were very proud
of the miracle of South Africa and then there
were things that you’d see the government
doing that were very unpleasant and hard to
face. It’s conflicting and agonising so I was
able to bring a lot of that to the role of Wikus.”homework to ensure Wikus’ transformation
from human to alien was as authentic as
possible. “All Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh
had seen me do at that point was Wikus in the
first act of the movie: the fun, bumbling Wikus.
He then has to go through this huge drama and
be in agonising pain and I didn’t even know if
I could do that. I had never cried on camera- ever,” he laughs. “I was very technical about
us not shooting in sequence so I built a graph
and put numerical values on things like how sick
Wikus was and how angry he was. I basically
plotted the intensity of various emotions because
he gets sick but as he becomes more alien, he
starts to get stronger. I found that extremely
helpful. It was the confidence Neill had in me
too, which honestly I’m so grateful for, because
he saw something in me that even I hadn’t seen.”
Blomkamp and Copley set up production
in Cape Town’s authentic Townships, further
blurring the line between real and fake. It
was a task that came with plenty of visual
benefits – alongside a few challenging and
not exactly hygienic negatives. “We chose to
shoot in the real environments and it really
made a difference,” reasons Copley. “We were
shooting in Cape Town and managed to get
some government housing for the people in the
shacks, which was a cool thing that we were
able to do for the local community. We were
able to buy people’s shacks and use the real
things that they had been living in.”
However when the cameras started rolling,
Copley wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.
“I remember the scene where Wikus goes
underground into a hole,” he says, recalling
a sequence where the military are closing in.
“We dug it in a shack and because we were
on a landfill, there were layers of actual trash
when I climbed into it,” he grins. “It was so old
that it had petrified, so it didn’t stink – but I was
basically inside a landfill of trash.”
As production progressed, Copley became
Copley had to
dig deep.The social satire
holds up.