Mercy over there.

Hi, I'm Tiger y city.

I'm Stephen Merchant, and we're here to break down the scene for my new film, Judge or rabbit.

This is a nice scene.

The genesis of this project was back in 2010 when I read a book called Caging Skies by Christine Linens and told the poignant story of a young boy growing up in Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

He discovers that his mother is hiding a young girl in his attic.

I felt it's very necessary to keep reminding ourselves that the events of World War Two and also basically all wars, some things that need to be avoided at all costs.

And we stopped telling these stories.

There's a danger that will forget the events of World War Two, and there's another deeper danger that were some of those things may repeat themselves.

My initial reaction reading the script was Are here we go, yet another boy and his imaginary Hitler script.

How many of these have I read?

But you know, this one seemed to have a a surprisingly fresh take on that well worn story, and at some point, every tour.

Englishman is asked to play a Nazi in a film, and I was holding out for the big bucks.

Didn't get them with this project I got.

I got paid that we're about to watch a scene in which my character was a Gestapo agent in years enters the home of Jo Jo Rabbit is it?

Is his spooking Sneaky?

Scary.

Could stop away.

Is the big man right there?

Steve A money man Don't wanted to bring something in to disrupt the relationship between Georgia and Elsa.

What did away than to have the home raided by the Gestapo?

Yes, Judge.

Allow me to introduce myself.

I'm cut in Helmand.

Debts off the Falcon.

Hang Gestapo with me, Mullah, her younger have flown in here for May we come in.

Thank you so much.

It's always a challenge making film that has a mixture of comedy and drama, but I test my phones all the time with the audience is going just a just a film and maybe bring the jokes down over here.

Bring something you pay for.

So it's about just testing it again and again until you feel like there's a tonal balance that you know it's not making a lot of these serious, serious subject matter.

It's not formed drama, and you do want that.

You know you want that in a film.

You want tension, you on conflict and you're an audience.

To worry for the characters and to feel like the stakes are pretty high, I wonder, Do they have to highlight that every time they wins a room that seemed like they had to do it all the time?

And it just felt like it was just taken agents for them to do anything.

A group of my 30 of them in turn, we're gonna go do that thing hanging on the thing.

And I feel like it's something that Monty Python would probably would have done if they did a sketch for the Gestapo officers.

And then they get to work.

You go in there and they start tearing the place apart, looking for information.

So this film was shot by me.

Hi Malla, man.

He's a fantastic Romanian cinematographer, and so he's responsible for just how great the film looks coupled with this wonderful production design, I want to show that they had a bit of money, often in these films, it's signals, has a very groom.

And just from doing research, Jimmy, it's time.

It was a very, very colorful place.

The Germans were very into the latest trends and fashions and textiles and designs the facade in Germany of colorful celebration of what they think is moving into the future.

And this bright future when really behind that aside, everything is crumbling and falling.

Hey, hey, Gosh, Good to see you.

Here comes Sam Rockwell.

I basically got a flat tire, so I carried it in Clinton.

Doff waited by.

This thing is really good.

So here he was noticed that they say Heil Hitler, I think is a record maybe 31 times in one minute.

Congratulations.

Is that the right thing to say to you?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Congratulations on the point of having all those Heil Hitlers apart from I think being quite funny.

Moment is also too thio again.

Point out just how ridiculous Nazis work that was so so obsessed with the these rules that they had created for themselves, which I think were rules that that I think quite soon after they created them, the way they invent the stupid thing as what I like to think about Hitler.

See, enoughto adopted that moustache.

He decided he didn't want to be and he was known for it and he couldn't get rid of that.

Of course it Yeah.

Do you think he experimented with other ones?

Prior to that, he perhaps had there been a large plastic handle bar.

Maybe this sort of we could have had it.

Yeah, that and then he would have also he this one time I heard he got a gruesome starts so long it went around the back of his head.

Wound up talk.

And this is all your moustache.

That was always starting all moustache Gordon in Thailand.

And he was very proud of that.

And then also gonna start.

She split it off like that.

Please raise eyebrows.

Yeah, connected in there.

But I understand it was because it was 1/4 in operation every morning when he woke up.

Just tie the end of a bone.

So that's why it's Brady.

Really tiny little one.

But beneath my nostrils, that looks like two very black slugs and quote out of my nose.

You're not really thinking how I usually I d'oh not storyboard.

Actually, I think I probably story about this one because there's so many people.

But then I got bored of drawing so many people in there any time.

The rectangle is that why later in the movie there's just much fewer people because I don't like drawing.

You decided there was only two people in everything.

So did a sentencing.

No, no, we were just Heil Hitler in the boy.

And then I have hitting yourself.

And then, of course, Heil Hitler ring pretty Finkel.

And now we're in the midst off a routine inspection.

We're talking about Sam's.

I hear he's got a dead.

I owe our other things, like last night.

It's a dead.

Oh, shoot!

Spread this.

That's quite nice.

There's not too little pink dots on Elfi.

I'm gonna make him.

But more perk it up.

I think you caught in keeping with his character is a wonderful insight into the filmmaking process.

Back to Sam's I we had to find a reason for him not to be forced to the front to the front lines to be fighting, you know?

Well, maybe he's missing a leg.

There's a good, good reason to not have to go in front or I'm out.

I still don't trust that trick least behind your back.

Looks real and so just missing an eye.

And that's the story behind that.

I know to see what happens to these dots before my press play again.

Oh, now it's just on the wall.

You've highlighted my and what brings you here, Captain?

We were just passing by and we wake up some work.

There's a good example of me using my height for comic effect.

Classic dominant.

Stare down your very well known for looking down with those piercing.

But you just don't believe it is important to me.

And they seem that again, despite the fact we were.

Please pay attention.

This is important for young filmmakers.

It was important to me that this character's both kind of buffoonish but was quite intimidating.

I think it was more just about this sort of style of delivery being conversational cause I think it is a dangerous and because I was worried there's gonna be a typical Gestapo scene.

But what's really disarming in what's what makes your character even creepier?

The fact that he's sort of casual in my mind these men who were in the Gestapo were often quite petty bureaucrats who probably were no turkey, well respected people.

They have bean, perhaps bank managers or accountants.

Nothing wrong with that managers, and I was not suggesting they're all there.

But I'm just saying these were probably just regular people that suddenly got given this station, and they have the power of life and death over people.

They weren't actually doing any of the interesting themselves.

They were just sort of allowing it to occur.

And that makes them all them or despicable and all the more apart, because they're sort of weak, pathetic people.

But they've got this little badge that gives them enormous power.

Exactly.

If you recall in this scene I was already a CZ, I'm freakishly tall and taller than everybody who's ever worked with me on.

Do you start in on a box to make me even taller actually stood on a box there.

Sam's here because we spend all the money when you work with Sam Rockwell years on the left here, you see in many of the shots in the film, it's just from this angle on him.

10 Bucks 106 106 bucks.

$6 for that here.

Oh, you know how it is every day we take a call.

Hello?

Is that the Gestapo?

I believe there's a Communist hiding behind my fridge.

We go around investigated just some old so not far off.

So part of the job.

I think it fits into a long tradition off movies that have used humor to Satya Rise Hitler that date back until the into into the forties itself, when Hitler was still in power, whether it be Chaplin's The great Dictator to be a lot to be Ernest Lubitsch film obviously famously Mel Brooks in the sixties, It seems strange to me that 80 years later we're feeling ever so worried and that suddenly this subject can't be mocked.

And again the subject.

You know, the nonsense of Hitler's ideology and the kind of absurdity off those beliefs which one assumes you poke holes in them.

We'll begin to question, they kind of fall apart in your hands, and that's I think, what you dramatize with the little boy you know.

Soon as he starts to question his beliefs, because there's finally someone that makes him do it, he realizes that they're sort of built on sand.

And the idea that you can sort of mark that as a theme or tear That part seems weird to me.

She offends me.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm 1/5 year.

I've offended.

You know, I know I'm offended by people that think we can make films about this subject.

What irks me?

Yeah.

I love the word.

What ex me is.

People say that comedy is not its It is not an effective tool where it's not something to be taken seriously as an at form.

And it's one of the most powerful tools that we have to fight against oppression and bigotry and intolerance.

And again, as you say, to poke holes in to make fun off.

You know, these these belief systems and these people who promote hate.

Yeah, people like us, we're working comedy.

It's as though we're constantly being accused that were not serious.

You can't deal with this subject as you won't treat it seriously, but we're two of the most serious people I know.

I'm sitting very serious.

You could tell from the tone of my voice underwear that you're scaring me.

Think serious people doesn't want See, that's how I get serious.