Shadow and Bone: Ben Barnes breaks down the Darkling’s kissing technique

Netflix’s adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone series debuted last weekend, and it’s been a hit. Fans have been particularly taken with Ben Barnes depiction of General Kirigan, a powerful member of the Ravkan military and a Grisha with the ability to control shadows. He also happens to be (SPOILERS incoming) the Darkling, a centuries old black heretic who created the Shadow Fold, a dark slash of monster-infested landscape that divides the country of Ravka in two.

So he’s a bad guy…but there’s also a sympathetic side to him. It’s part of what makes the character so interesting. “I think that he is an ambiguous character and he’s a mysterious character,” Ben Barnes told Decider. “My aim was to keep him ambiguous and mysterious, and to keep some of that sort of gray territory between the dark and the light that he navigates. I was drawn to playing a character that is sort of the most powerful character in the universe. I think that is appealing to people to watch the watch dynamics of status between characters and scenes. But he’s also a somewhat problematic character because he does end up sort of abusing that power for his own agenda.”

"I need to find the war in him. In the way that the Shadow Fold is this dark, shadowy thing, which has these sort of bristling lightning, acts of light through it, I want him to be the human version of that. I think that when you’re intrigued by someone, then you’re kind of drawn into them, but it is something that is problematic to me and I understand that. But there’s sort of this reclamation of it: I choose to engage with someone who is problematic knowing that they are. I’m able to assert my independence and say that."

Ooh, the Darkling as the human embodiment of the Shadow Fold. I like that. Ben Barnes is getting metaphorical on us, and he wasn’t done: “We have to go through the Fold not around it,” Barnes mused. “You have to go through in order to find the peace and to find where you feel like you belong. That goes for all the characters, but it does go for him as well. He hasn’t found peace in himself in a very long time. To be able to imagine this man has been alive [for so long]…we know how many loves he must have lost. We know we know what he must have sacrificed to maintain his belief in his ideology. I think that goes some way to help you understand the mystery and enigma that he is, even if it leaves you on the other side of being able to forgive him.”

Ben Barnes breaks down the Darkling-Alina kissing scenes

We see the Darkling do some nasty things in the first season of the show, but Barnes had the hardest time with how his character treats Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), the main character. “[T]he worst thing he does in the whole season to me is find out about that she loves irises from Mal (Archie Renaux) and then he immediately gives her those flowers. It makes me feel sick to watch him do that because I like playing characters that don’t lie. He can manipulate, but lying is something makes me feel sick in general.”

"So I think that that is the moment which is the most sickening to me. Which is strange because he slices people’s heads off and stuff. [The iris ruse is] just disgusting and it made me want to boo myself. So my job here is to give as much of the real me as I possibly can."

Barnes also talked pretty extensively about how he handled the characters kissing scenes. Was Kirigan manipulating her? Was it genuine? Was it a bit of both? Naturally, Barnes wanted to keep things ambiguous.

“We added the fact that Alina is the one that kisses Kirigan,” he said. “She makes that move. Whether he drew her into wanting to do that or not with his loneliness and his power and all that stuff… Baghra (Zoe Wannamaker) says, ‘Did he give you a little glimpse of the boy inside?’ And so I wanted to make sure that was there, but also, you know, I wanted to bring something of myself to the warmth of it. I actually wanted the moment before [Baghra says that about him] to be the sweetest moment. So they kiss. Then I walked up out of the frame that was on Jessie and then just walked back in to give her another little kiss.”

"He just wants to and you know that’s not a manipulative part. There’s something about the organic-ness of that just came from my idea of wanting to do it. That makes it real. Hopefully you experience it as not part of the manipulation… like the irises! I did that because it says I have to in the script. You see what I mean? When I was watching it, I did feel myself in the episode kind of going, “I don’t want to play him anymore. I want to play somebody you root for!”"

So that part was sincere, but when the Darkling is involved, it’s impossible to get away from the manipulative element. For instance, Barnes also talked about how his character used the height difference between him and Alina to his advantage. “One of my favorite moments actually in the series is where Jessie kisses him. I knew the next line was, ‘Not many people take me by surprise.’ I thought that was such a sweet thing to say,” he explained. “Very much like how the moment in which you find out he’s ‘not what he seems,’ I wanted to put the sweetest moment before that. If I’m going to have a sweet moment, like, ‘Not many people surprise me’ — which is a very kind of sweet, endearing moment — I was like, ‘Between the kiss and that line, there needs to be something a bit threatening.'”

"So if you notice, I blocked the scene so I sat down on the desk. When I’m sitting down at a desk, we’re the same height and she kisses me. And then before I say that line, I stand up. Yeah. Then I’m like a foot taller than her. I’m looking down at her and it’s like, oh, what’s he gonna say now? Then he says this sweet thing. So that’s how I was able to sort of build the mystery of him."

We’re still waiting to hear whether Shadow and Bone gets a second season, although the signs are good. Hopefully we’ll get more of Barnes’ take on the Darkling sooner or later.

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