Franz Rogowski Explains Bird’s ‘Fantasy of a Naked Man Standing on a Skyscraper’

Andrea Arnold’s latest film, Bird, which premiered in competition at Cannes this week, is another poetic drama about a complicated young woman coming of age on the fringes of society. This time, our protagonist is Bailey, a 12-year-old girl (newcomer Nykiya Adams) who lives with her distracted father (a boisterous, karaoke-loving Barry Keoghan), her soon-to-be stepmom Kayleigh (Frankie Box) and her adorable toddler, and her half-brother Hunter (Jason Buda), who’s part of a local teen vigilante justice gang in North Kent. Bailey is constantly surrounded by people but alone and misunderstood; she’s angry and unsure of where she fits into her family or society at large.

Enter Bird, a mysterious stranger who appears out of nowhere, twirling in a field in a sweater and a long pleated skirt. He dances calmly in front of Bailey’s phone camera, which she’s pulled out defensively to film him should he try to pull anything creepy. He doesn’t. He’s just saying hello. Played by Franz Rogowski with a sweetness, gentleness, and otherworldly strangeness, he’s hard to place, both for Bailey and those around her. Who is this person? Why does he live on the roof of a local apartment complex? Why does he stand sentinel, naked, on the roof each night? Is he a sort of guardian angel figure for Bailey, or is there more to him than meets the eye? Regardless, the unlikely pair begin to trust each other, and Bird steps in to help Bailey take care of her younger siblings who live across town with her mother (Jasmine Jobson) and eventually navigate an increasingly violent familial situation.

A few days after the film’s Cannes premiere, I sat down at a hotel with Rogowski, who was emanating equally kind, calming energy in a flowy silk shirt. We talked about creating this dreamlike character with Arnold, going to nude spas in Berlin, what it’s like to feel himself becoming increasingly famous, and his karaoke song of choice.

Andrea said that this was the hardest film she ever made. Did it feel hard for you?
For me it was easy. But that’s because she takes all the weight on her own shoulders. And makes sure the actors can live within this world that she’s created. She feels responsible for everybody. Therefore it accumulates an amount of pressure that we can’t even imagine.

What did that look like from your perspective?
She created a space in which we could just explore those houses, those meadows, those trees. We didn’t have to prepare beforehand. She gave us the lines a day or two before we’d shoot the scene. We weren’t exposed to the entire story, neither to the arc that she wanted to create nor to the peaks or turning points. All we’d know would be the themes that we’d play. We wouldn’t even know where the others were coming from. For example, I’m accompanying Bailey on her journey and I often didn’t know where she’d come from. Andrea would just tell me she was suffering or had a hard day.

But Andrea knew why and she’d know if a scene wasn’t working. She’d prepared the film for so long. Even though she created all the freedom for us she had a lot of images in her mind as to what she wanted to achieve. And once she started working with humans, it’s a bit like painting with colors that change their own color all the time. They’re not what you thought they would be and maybe the story also evolved. I guess that’s why.

What, if anything, did she tell you about your character beforehand?
The first thing she did was, her producer was texting me that she’d like to meet. I was like, “Oh yeah, of course. I would love to meet her. I’m shooting a movie in four weeks, otherwise I’m free.” And he said, “Okay, she’ll be in Zurich tonight.” [Laughs.] All of a sudden, I was eating a bowl of rice with her in Zurich. She told me that she had this fantasy of a naked man standing  on a skyscraper. He has a huge penis, half-erected. And he’s looking at a girl. And he’s some kind of Mary Poppins figure accompanying and comforting this girl. I was like, “Oh, wow. Okay, I’m in.”

She gave me her number and said I could always call her when I had a question, but it was obvious to me she wanted me to just trust her, to be a part of what she wanted to explore. It wasn’t about preparing or memorizing but surrendering to the moment. The days of shooting would often be us getting together, we’d hang out in time and space, drink coffee, eat. Often there would be kids involved, and they would decide when to start shooting. Andrea would never tell them what to do. She’d rather sacrifice an entire day of shooting for a moment of truth when the kids would do their own thing. That set the tone for the two month shooting that we had. There were no trucks on set, no huge cranes. Nothing that would intimidate the working-class neighborhood. We wanted to blend in and be a part of our surroundings. That’s only possible when you take time and are willing to relate, not to go and conquer places and take the bits and pieces you need and then leave.

The physicality of Bird, his clothes — did you develop those by yourself?No, they brought me some clothes, and I was like, “Oh no, I look like a pervert!” But then it turned out to be the perfect costume. They wanted me to be a loner and a stranger and an outsider, and this costume has no attachments to the cultural references that we usually want to have, or what we want to wear, if we want to belong to a certain group of people. At least I want to belong to people I think are interesting and I choose the clothes I think represent those people. And that brown skirt was definitely not one of them. But it worked out. And the sandals, too.

A little different than the costumes in Passages.
Yes. Very!

Those scenes where you stand on the roof naked are so fascinating and never explained. What was it like to film those, and how do you interpret those moments?
I think he’s there for her, guarding and protecting her, but on the other hand, he’s also an extension of her and her journey. Bird is not a story about a bird that finally flies toward the bright future. It’s also to do with your own spirit animal. It can be a bird, but it can be a naked man on a skyscraper. Or it can be a snake. In Germany, we love to go to the saunas. Everybody is naked in the saunas. It’s a very liberating and democratic and unifying experience. When we’re naked we all look more or less the same. Incredible how many of the features that set us apart from each other are gone all of a sudden. One is a bit rounder, one is a bit more lean, but we look more or less the same. This tension between nature and culture is probably at the core of storytelling and the human condition, and why we’re here. Monkeys watching monkey stories on the big screen!

Do you go to Vabali in Berlin? That’s one of my favorite nude saunas I’ve ever been to.
Yeah, I’ve been there many times. Yeah, it’s great. I have to go again. I might go next week.

When I’m in town I go for a whole day. Sometimes two.
That’s important. You want to eat at least two of the burgers there.

What kind of teenager were you? Did you have a Bird, or the opposite?
Sometimes it’s people who do things to you that don’t necessarily feel good that help you grow.  I started out as a contemporary dancer and performer in theater. There were inspirational encounters, but also power structures that were not very helpful. Directors that would make you feel small and manipulate you, or want to have sex with you, and if you don’t then your part gets significantly smaller.

It’s very hard to overcome your life as a theater performer and start working in the film industry. You wonder how to get to know those people from another universe. But I learned a lot from those people who tried to make me feel small, to overcome those limitations, and I learned from friends on the stage in terms of movement and acting. And I still do — every project comes with one or two encounters that change the course of your life. You don’t need much. Sometimes just a conversation, a look, a dinner, or another thing.

What was that moment while making this film for you?
For me it was living on the campsite and talking to the campers who live in Gravesend. The level of poverty in Gravesend was pretty shocking to me. The struggle people go through. My neighbor on the campsite was a highly intelligent man who was living in a huge American truck, and was a mechanic and a cancer survivor who told me all kinds of incredible stories about how he’d survived laying in the woods on cocaine, wondering how to get treatment. You only get treatment if you have family, which he didn’t, so he asked a friend to pretend to be his brother. So he was high on cocaine trying to get chemo, doing drugs in the hospital. He survived it all and he’s now clean. He told me that my brakes were actually close to collapsing and that I had some other serious issues on my car. We went to a parking lot on a Sunday afternoon and he worked on my car for six hours. And while doing that he was listening to a documentary about Hitler and Mussolini. It was so absurd. A wonderful person I’d never have met in my bubble in Berlin. I’ll never forget him.

How do these interactions with these people in your early theater work affect the way you  now work with people younger than you on set?
I felt like my character was in between childhood and adulthood. I was floating between those realities. It was interesting to me because I could be a part of these real scenes, but at the same time, Andrea wasn’t sure if I was really in that scene or if I was just accompanying Bailey as kind of an inner voice, like an extension of her, to empower her or give her agency when she has none. Therefore, I felt very free. We could play with the kids and build sandcastles on the beach. But I could also turn into a monster. That’s an interesting range to play with.

In an interview last year, you said you rarely get starstruck but instead “you feel sorry for” the idea of a famous person. How is your relationship to fame shifting now that you’re getting increasingly famous?
I would never feel pity for someone. Maybe I said something stupid! [Laughs.] I think what I’ve seen is that the more famous people become, the more effort they have to put into defending what is precious and important for a healthy person to survive: privacy and intimate relationships and the kind of honesty that most people take for granted. Once you become a public figure, sometimes it’s hard to tell whether people really like you or want to be around you or want a piece of you.

I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of directors who write their own films and keep it real and surround themselves with people interested in films that reach beyond blockbuster cinema. I think what protects me personally is my family, the way I was brought up. I come from a region in Germany called Swabia, and they’re very stubborn. They don’t believe in the surface, but in things underneath the surface. That’s why they’re very scared of scratches on the car surface. They’re very greedy and angry, but when you get to know them, they’re kind.

Do you see yourself staying in Berlin? Will you do more Hollywood or bigger-profile films?
Sure. All I need is an interesting part and an interesting movie. It’s not like I decided, I’m going to be international. It’s just the way it is. The most interesting projects in the last few years have been in countries other than Germany. Every country comes with a new language, which is also a bit exhausting. I wonder. I’m a bit lost. For now, I’m in Berlin, but I might also move. Who knows.

My last question for you is — there’s a lot of karaoke in this film. What’s your go-to karaoke?
“Chandelier.”

Wow. Can you hit those high belts?
I can’t. I’m very shy. But I did it for Michael Haneke’s Happy End. 

I forgot about that scene!
I definitely can’t hit those notes. But the worse you sing, the more fun it is to do.