Claes Bang and Nick Hamm on Making ‘William Tell’ a Bloody European Epic

British director Nick Hamm (Driven, White Lines) went epic for his latest feature, William Tell, a retelling of the story of the 14-century Swiss crossbowman who, legend has it, united the canons of Switzerland to drive out the tyrannical Austrian army and liberate his nation.

These days, Tell is mainly remembered for a single scene: When the Austrian tyrants force him to test his marksmanship by shooting an apple from his own son’s head. That scene is at the center of Friedrich Schiller’s famous, 18th-century play William Tell, which Hamm adapted for his feature, adding a heavy dose of Braveheart and Game of Thrones-level action (minus the dragons).

Danish star Claes Bang (The Square, Bad Sisters) plays Tell in an ensemble cast that includes Golshifteh Farahani (Paterson), Connor Swindells (Sex Education), Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid) Rafe Spall (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), Emily Beecham (Little Joe), Oscar nominee Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes), and Oscar winner Ben Kingsley (Gandhi).

William Tell has its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival next week. Beta Cinema, handling international sales, has already pre-sold the movie across Europe, including to Altitude for the U.K. and Ireland, and Square One for German-speaking Europe following the film’s first press and industry screening at TIFF on Thursday. WME Independent is selling domestic rights.

Claes Bang and Nick Hamm spoke to THR on how they made European action epic outside the Hollywood system.

Why William Tell – why did you want to tell this story?

Nick Hamm A couple of reasons actually. First, this is a great European legend that has never been properly told in any form, apart from a play by Schiller written in the early 19th century. We don’t have that many legends in Europe that have not already been seen through Hollywood eyes. Robin Hood has been made and remade thousands of times. There’s not that much difference in the dilemma faced by Robin Hood and William Tell. Tell also bands together a group of people, and ultimately unites his country, in the defense of liberty against fascism.

This is a legend that goes back in time in European culture, and it represents the idea of liberty against autocracy and against authoritarianism. The Schiller text particularly speaks about the ideas of liberty and personal freedom in a world in which those values are threatened. It’s a story that’s been handed down over hundreds of years and used by different political movements at different political times to advertise their own agendas. But it’s never been celebrated or, I suppose, exploited cinematically.

The central scene of the film, the scene where the father is asked to shoot an apple off his child’s head, is often depicted as something bucolic or romantic, this guy with a feather in his hat, leaning against a tree, casually shooting an arrow. But, actually, it’s about a father being asked to publicly execute his own child. That scene, written by Schiller in the early 19th century, is probably one of the greatest scenes written in European drama. It’s a scene ripe for cinematic exploitation.

Our story sort of undulates between these huge set-piece sequences, and dealing with the moral dilemma of a man who hates violence and war and who knows where this violence will lead. At the center is a complicated moral dilemma, and around that is a fantastic piece of entertainment.

Claes, what did you know about William Tell before starting this project?

Claes Bang I, of course, knew this legend of this guy, that he shot an apple from his son’s head. But, if I’m honest, I had no idea what the story was about. At one point, I think I thought he was some sort of traveling showman, shooting apples off heads for money. It’s horrible to admit this. Please don’t tell anybody. It was only when I started to investigate it more, and spoke with Nick about it, that I began to see how this is a real existential story about the worst dilemma you could face as a parent. The idea that you either as a as a parent, that you can either take you can accept that this force takes over your country and your life. Or you can shoot an apple from your son’s head, risking killing him.

You’ve played a lot of creeps in your career, from the smarmy art curator in The Square to the abusive husband in Bad Sisters and the epic villains in Robert Eggers’ The Northman. How does it feel to play a heroic figure for once?

Bang It was absolutely something I needed. I’ve played a lot of really nasty bad ones so it was nice to take on something very heroic, and very cool. But what is cool is our William Tell is also very conflicted. He’s a reluctant warrior. He has come out of the crusades and is traumatized by war. He doesn’t want to return to violence. It’s only when he is pushed too far, when this greater power, Austria, which was the biggest power in Europe at the time, tries to take over this country, that he decides he has to fight, to save his family, his village, his country. That was the foundation of these cantons coming together to become Switzerland.

There’s a parallel, obviously, to Braveheart, with the English trying to take over Scotland and William Wallace fighting back. But at the core of our story is that scene with the apple, where Tell is forced by this greater power, to risk his own son’s life. He had to make this mad choice: Refuse and his family is killed. Accept and you may execute your own child. It shows the whole bloody insanity of war.

Nick, this isn’t your father’s William Tell. The violence, in particular, is extremely graphic and bloody. Why did you choose to tell the story this way?

Hamm Series like Game of Thrones really established a bedrock for how these stories can be depicted. Our film doesn’t have fantasy elements, but there’s a similarity with the political intrigue, the warring factions, and so on. There have been some amazing movies and amazing TV shows in this genre, so if you’re going to compete in this genre, you better be bloody good, and you better use the visual tools to lift you above the normal. With the violence, we were very particular and very incisive. There isn’t a lot of violence, we aren’t making a slasher movie, but when we show it, we are very graphic, very brutal, to show the consequences.

But at the core, we knew we had to be entertaining. We’re fighting, at the moment, for the very existence of cinema, for the whole idea that people can go into one room together and have a shared experience. That experience has to be entertaining. So I took the Schiller play, which was written in 1804 and is literally like an opera, I got it translated from the German, and broke it down, using some of the characters, inventing new ones, but often keeping the Schiller dialog, because often that was the best way to have the characters express these complex ideas. And guess who loves that kind of language? Young people, the 20-year-olds, they relate to that language.

This is a full-blown action movie, Claes, your first since Northman. How much training was required to play the role?

Bang It’s funny because when I read the script, I was drawn in by the existential questions in this character. He knows that war only brings death and misery. He doesn’t want to fight. There’s a scene where he says to three friends sitting with him at a table, telling them: If we go to war, it will only bring misery. All three of those people are dead at the end of the movie. So it is the question of what is the breaking point for a man like this, what is the point when you are pushed too far when you go into this sort of insanity of war?

Then I let my wife read the script and she said: ‘This a huge action movie!’ I honestly didn’t notice! But she was right. It was a lot, a lot of running up and down the Alps, a lot of crossbow training, and a lot of riding on bloody horses. There was a lot with the crossbow because the technicality of the weapon is very particular. With a bow, you span it, and release it, because you can’t hold it for very long. With a crossbow, you can span it and move around, you can be a bit more of a sniper, and move almost in stealth mode.

Hamm It was the first weapon in the history of humankind where you could cock it and wait.

How did you manage to tell this story on such an epic scale with a European-level budget?

Hamm That’s a great question, mate. We put our money into the actors and the set pieces, into the details on screen. If you look at the costumes, they’re extraordinary. They’re all handmade. Every detail of this movie is particular, is bespoke. We made this film in Italy with real movie artisans and craftsmen, people believe in the power of cinema. There was a professionalism and a level of belief that Europeans could make these movies for ourselves, for our own audiences. They can be complicated. They can be entertaining. We can borrow from Hollywood and we’re not fighting Hollywood in any sense, but the idea was: We can make these epic stories in our own way, on our own terms, if you give us these resources.

So countries like Italy, which have strong tax incentives and a tradition of this craftsmanship, combined with these acting talents from across Europe — Claes is Danish, Golshifteh is Iranian, Connor is English, they come from all over —but they have a common language of cinema and a common belief that we can make these big movies in Europe and not just be relegated to making movies about two people sitting across the dining room table wondering about the meaning of life.