B.L. Well Noah, I have to tell you that you are absolutely brilliant in this movie.
N.T. Thank you.

B.L. I guess I have to ask you first off, when you found out that you were going to play a young Hitler, what was your immediate reaction to that?
N.T. It was very strange and there was a kind of selfish actor motivation of this is the kind of a role that will come along maybe once in your life. But, you don’t want it to be like, "Oh great, I get to play Hitler!" I had to do a lot of soul searching and I wouldn’t want to play Hitler just for the sake of playing Hitler.

B.L. What intrigued you about the story?
N.T. It was a fantastically intelligent script and I think it’s sort of a worthwhile tale. I think that once you become afraid to tell stories because they are taboo subjects or whatever, they become more dangerous when they are buried away in a box. In a way you can’t have enough cautionary tales about someone like Hitler and it’s as relevant today as any time. There is always a danger that a figure like Hitler does become a sort of dusty historical footnote. I think to a generation of kids now he’s almost become that in a way. So every 10 or 20 years I think that there will be an exploration of Hitler and of the Holocaust by different filmmakers and different writers and that’s a healthy thing.

B.L. Did you find that you had to go to anybody to help you make the decision about taking the role?
N.T. I talked about it with my girlfriend mainly, because ultimately it was a decision that I was going to have to make and it’s a sort of thing where you don’t want to discuss it with your agent and your manager because they will have reasons for you doing it or not doing it based on sensible career things and that could go either way.

B.L. Did it take you a long time to decide whether or not to take the part?
N.T. Not really… It had to be something I could do and live with in terms of it being a risky topic and it was a risky approach to it because it’s almost ambiguous, my portrayal of him at a certain stage. You know how he ultimately ends up and I wanted to confuse the audience a bit. I wanted to have him going to the shops, very mundane things to show that great evil doesn’t come announcing itself in a black cape and fangs. It would be a lot simpler if it did, but I felt secure enough in that the script was so well written and intelligent and thought provoking.

B.L. Was there anything that was really difficult for you to do?
N.T. In a way, the final speeches at the end: he is the full-blown vile maniacal embodiment of evil. That sort of allowed me to play around with the lead-up or the arc of the character.

B.L. The scariest thing about the whole film is that you do see him as a human being. It’s frightening because we could be walking down the street today and you don’t really know who is walking next to you and he/she could be the next, whoever.
N.T. Well, absolutely they could. That’s sort of to me some of the moral elements of the fable — don’t underestimate the potential damage that some kind of obscure, ranting, inept character can do. It’s quite extraordinary when you read early accounts of him and just to look at him physically I’m sure if you had met him at the time he would be the last person on your list you would think would gain any power. You would think this guy couldn’t get his shoes tied, let alone take over the world.

B.L. And it is something that is unfortunately happening in every generation, right up to today.
N.T These figures continue to pop up all over the world, whether they are white power groups in America or Front Nationale in France or the BNP in Britain and a lot of the figures in them are quite similar characters, kind of inept people and you still get that thing where the intelligentsia dismiss these people as, well you know they send a bad message, but don’t worry about it. The target group of the victim is whoever is most easily projected as the enemy to the masses.

B.L. Take me back to when you first saw yourself in full makeup dressed like Hitler. How did you feel? Did it frighten you at all?
N.T. Not really. There was a strange thing where once or twice I would see myself in the mirror in the makeup, or with the hairstyle but unfortunately I seem to share some similar facial structure. The scariest part was doing the speeches at the end of the film and it's just a very simple thing of mass hysteria and there is an energy generated much like the same way rock stars come onstage and go, "Hey everybody" (claps hands) and a million people do that. There’s an energy that goes backwards and forwards and for a moment I sort of lost myself, thinking that’s scary because I’m getting into it. Not what is being said, but the feeling of exciting a crowd is a very intoxicating feeling. Like having a room full of people just wrapped on your every word and you’re manipulating them.