Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan are remembered for their collaboration on the Dark Knight Trilogy. But at the same time, the duo had released another movie together, The Prestige. The movie was based on the story of two magicians (or we should say three), who can go to any lengths to outdo one another.
Playing the lead role, both Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman were trained by magicians as Christopher Nolan wanted the portrayal to look as real as possible. But just as shared by Bale’s Borden in the movie, a magician never shares the secret behind his tricks, the magicians who trained the stars, did not really teach them much.
Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman did not get to learn magic
The Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman starrer is a tale of ambition, intrigue, and revenge. After losing his wife in an accident, Jackman’s Angier is hooked on destroying Borden, the one he blames for her death. Both magicians set on a journey to outdo one another but Angier faces a roadblock as he cannot decode Borden’s special trick “The Transported Man”. A similar dilemma was faced by the two leads as they were trained to act like magicians by two real-life magicians but they never revealed the secrets behind their tricks.
Ricky Jay and Michael Weber were brought in by Christopher Nolan to teach the actors to act like real magicians. Though the two trained them in the mannerisms of the magicians as required by the script, the two never taught them any real tricks. Christian Bale stated in an interview with Empire,
“We didn’t learn as much as you’d think. In fact, I couldn’t show you anything. It was very frustrating.”
Hugh Jackman also added to the comment saying,
“They basically taught us exactly whatever we needed to pull off the shot, and nothing else.”
The duo did try to convince one of the magicians, Ricky Jay, to teach them something but to no avail. And it was even more unfortunate for the Batman actor as the Wolverine actor managed to learn a few tricks. He shared,
“Ricky couldn’t be there for the last week of shooting and I needed to do a trick, a very small thing where I produce a flower from my hand. And this young guy came and helped me out, and he was actually an aspiring actor and magic was just a part-time thing, so he was perfect. He told me whatever I wanted to know! So now I do have a few tricks -– I can make a little ball disappear in my hand!”
This revelation must’ve further frustrated Bale as despite proving to be a better magician in the movie, it was Jackman who actually got to learn some tricks.
Christian Bale begged Christopher Nolan to cast him in the movie
The Prestige came out in between, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, so Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan were already teamed up for the trilogy. While working on the first movie, Bale found out about the other script that Nolan was working on and managed to get his hands on it. After reading it, he was convinced that he could “nail” the role of Borden, which he did, but the director wasn’t so sure.
Talking about how he convinced the director to give him a chance, he shared
“Chris didn’t actually come to me with this. I actually read the script and I called him up and said, ‘I want in. I like Borden. I can really nail this character.’ You know, the question was could he see me as anything other than Bruce Wayne? And he said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ [Borden] just was the one I was fascinated with throughout.”
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Further talking about the character (or characters) that he played in the movie, he stated,
“The fact that he relies upon secrecy not only for his livelihood but for his very life […] It was his first love regardless of other relationships, the secrecy was paramount and his obsession is absolutely necessary to achieve the level of skill that he does. There were so many mysteries surrounding this one character that he was immediately the one I wanted to play.”
It all turned out for the best as both the lead actors did a great job in playing eccentric magicians so involved in destroying one another, that they ended up ruining everything else special in their lives.
The Prestige is streaming on Max.
Source: Empire
