Tom Hanks on his desire to play the Shakespearean villain in ‘Elvis’
Tom Hanks is typically known across his filmography for playing the good guy, so when he was cast as the ‘villain’ in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis alongside Austin Butler, watching Hollywood eyes questioned just how he would portray Presley’s manipulative manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
However, the interesting thing about Parker and the fact that it was Hanks who played him is that we, as the audience, are unsure of his intentions throughout much of the film. It was equally likely that Elvis did not know the real motive behind Parker taking him on in the first place.
Hanks saw some Shakespearean quality in the relationship between Elvis and Parker, as he told Entertainment Weekly of meeting with Luhrmann to discuss the project: “We ended up talking for well over an hour. And I told Baz, ‘But you’re describing Falstaff and Hal,’ and Baz said, ‘Exactly, except with millions of dollars thrown into it.'”
The characters that Hanks speaks of are from the famous Bard’s plays Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Hanks had recently portrayed John Falstaff in a theatre production in Los Angeles. Luhrmann also saw the similarity between Parker/Elvis and Falstaff/Hal. “If Shakespeare was looking to take on a historical character now, you couldn’t go past the idea of the Colonel and Elvis,” he said.
“The Colonel is like Falstaff with a chainsaw,” Lurhmann added. “Because Shakespearean villains are never just a bad guy. Colonel Tom Parker absolutely did diabolical things. But he also did extraordinarily genius things. So everything is a paradox and a coin flip. That’s what makes him so delicious.”
Indeed, that Shakespearean nuance is certainly present in the character of Parker, which makes Hanks’ casting make all the more sense. Casting a typical ‘good guy’ in a ‘bad guy’ role helps the audience to question their motives whilst simultaneously sympathising with them somewhat.
Big praise in that respect came from Hanks’ co-star Austin Butler, who said: “You can see Colonel Parker as despicable, but when it’s Tom, he’s such an incredible actor, that he can justify everything, and he’s not playing a bad guy in his mind.”
Butler added: “He’s so justified that it made me have to double down and question, ‘Wait, maybe he’s right in this moment. You seem right.’ That was amazing because you still see the twinkle in his eyes.” Butler is right, as Hanks portrayed Parker with expertise no doubt refined whilst playing the famous aforementioned Shakespearean character on the stage.
