Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in Northern England, Neil Marshall has been working behind the camera on films and television since his feature debut of Dog Soldiers in 2001. He wrote and directed the horror classic The Descent in 2005, which won a BIFA for Best Director, and an Empire award for Best Horror. This was followed by the post-apocalyptic action movie Doomsday for Universal and the historical adventure Centurion. In 2012, Marshall made his debut in the world of high-end television with Game of Thrones S2 Ep9 Blackwater, which was followed by S4 Ep9 The Watchers on the Wall for which he received an Emmy Nomination for Best Director.
Marshall continued to work in the network, cable, and streaming arenas, directing projects such as the pilot episodes of Black Sails for Starz, and Constantine and Timeless for NBC. He also directed episodes of Hannibal for Showtime and Westworld for HBO. In 2017, Neil developed, produced, and directed the Netflix reboot of the classic sci-fi series Lost in Space, which was quickly followed by the feature reboot of Hellboy. In 2020. Marshall returned to indie films and the horror genre with the witch-hunt saga The Reckoning, which opened the Fantasia festival. Marshall’s next movie The Lair, an action-creature feature set in Afghanistan, opened at Frightfest 2022 in London.
Most recently, Marshall has again switched genres for the violent gangster revenge movie Duchess, which was released in the US on August 9th, 2024. The film follows a tough, working-class, petty criminal who morphs into an anti-heroine in the treacherous, murky underworld of diamond smuggling.
Thank you for taking the time for this interview. What drew you to co-write and direct Duchess?
Neil Marshall: The one thing I like to do is action more than anything else. More than horror, action is the thing. I always fancied doing a British action gangster movie.
What challenges did you face in filming the fight scene in the elevator?
Marshall: We had to build a separate little set for that one–in the car park where the shootout takes place. The main challenge was time. We had to finish the entire shootout and elevator fight on the same day. And it was the day I caught Covid, so I was banished to the far corner of the set in a tent, literally with a monitor and a radio, trying to direct it. Although very challenging, it paid off and it was a good fight.
Were there scenes in the script that you were forced to abandon due to time or budget limitations?
Marshall: I arrived on location expecting 32 days to shoot the film. But I was told that I had to slash seven days from the schedule. So I ended up with 22 days to shoot it. But we didn’t cut anything from the script. So we just pounded it out until we got all the way through. We had to reduce action sequences that would normally take three days to just one. That’s never much fun but that’s indie filmmaking. We had to scramble.
I really liked Philip Winchester in Strike Back. Was it his action work in that series that attracted you to cast him as Robert McNaughton?
Marshall: Absolutely, I’ve always been a big fan of Philip because of his work in Strike Back to the point where I wanted to direct that show but never got the chance. I always wanted to work with
Phil and thankfully this film gave me the opportunity. I knew he was adept at weapons handling and action work. What I didn’t realize when I saw Strike Back was that instead of being a British
actor, he was an American with an exceptionally good accent. He came in and was a joy to work with, doing a lot of the action scenes himself.
What did you like about Charlotte Kirk that made you cast her as the Duchess?
Marshall: We originally conceived the project together. We came up with the idea back in 2018. The idea was a female Scarface and it kind of developed from that. We co-wrote the Duchess with
the idea of her playing Scarlett and me directing it.
Did you storyboard most or all of the action scenes?
Marshall: No, I don’t do that. I work very closely with the stunt team. We did some pre-vids, shooting on iPhones to get it together. But the fight sequences were just copied from that to a large degree, particularly the elevator fight.
What film or films inspired you to become a writer/director?
Marshall: One specifically was Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s my number one favorite movie that I saw when I was eleven years old. And I saw a documentary about the making of that film and
how it ended up. Being an action-adventure film fan, I just fell in love with the process of movie-making and I decided then and there that I wanted to make a living making movies.
You’ve been in the film industry for many years. What have you learned about filmmaking that surprised you?
Marshall: I think the biggest thing you learn is that you’ll never know it all. It’s an education for life. You can never know everything because every single thing you do is different. No two scenes are the same and no two scripts are the same. I’ll be learning as long as people let me make movies. That’s the biggest lesson I learned from the whole process. And working with actors is always interesting. They bring their own set of challenges. But they are wonderful and we can’t do without them.
What advice would you give young, aspiring filmmakers eager to break in or just starting out?
Marshall: My advice would be don’t have an ego about it. Treat everyone with respect—everyone on the crew. As the director, you can’t make a movie without the full machine working. As a
leader, you’ve got to lead by example and lead from the top. It’s not a dictatorship but it’s not a democracy, either. You do have to lead from the top and show everyone respect. There are a lot of
people who don’t. I hear that from crews. When you show respect, you’ll get it back and then you’ll get a crew who will work hard for you, not because you scream and shout at them but because you respect them and give them your trust.
Do you find yourself working with the same core group of people?
Marshall. When I can, yes. Because they’re all brilliant at their job and I’d be an idiot not to. You become friends, you’ve worked together before, and you have an established form of communication with them. You know what they’re going to bring to the table.
So what’s next in the pipeline for you?
Marshall: I just finished the script for a project that I would describe as a World War II alien invasion story. We’re now looking for the money to make it. It’s called Invaders.
