Though American actor William Fichtner was long believed to be playing the role of Shredder in the Michael Bay produced reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tohoru Masamune was revealed to be playing the true Shredder with the film’s release. Allied with William Fichtner’s Eric Sacks, Shredder plots the destruction of New York City and proves to be a huge problem for the heroes in a half shell. His performance as Shredder is one of the points of the movie that have been universally praised by fans.
I had the chance to talk to Masamune, who seems like a very nice person despite his intimidating performance. Read on to hear what he has to say about Michael Bay’s involvement in the flick, meeting expectations of fanboys, and his own confusion about his role in the movie…
You’ve played many roles in TV shows and films along the lines of “Yakuza Commander”. Do you just feel comfortable playing villain-type characters?
Its really funny, when I started out, what was it, Heracles? I’m a pretty goofy guy, but I was just really playing a villain, I remember getting offended because everyone came up saying, “you play a good villain!” I don’t know what that is, maybe its because I have a lot of strong, intense males in my family growing up, and I don’t know if it was growing up in Canada and having that come into my street personality. I guess that’s where it comes from. Or the fact that deep down I’m pretty hardcore. [laughs] Even just starting out, me baby faced, that’s where it often went, and now here I am playing Shredder. [laughs] Its interesting. You might notice from my resume that I’m one of those actors that just loves working and acting, jumping from character to character. This other indie movie I’m working on… I get the script, and the script says “socially awkward office drone”. [laughs] But yeah, that’s really in my wheelhouse, the “bad guy”. I love really intense movies, so it’s often not that I even necessarily have to act like that, but I’ll go in that direction anyway. Its my thing, I’m a nice guy in real life, so I am surprised the way it went since its so different from my street personality. I ain’t complaining.
I saw one early credit in your resume that I have to ask about… you were apparently the only person credited as a voice actor in the Wu Tang Clan video game on PlayStation. Who wasn’t in the band, that is.
Hahaha! That’s right, I do remember that.
Did you get to work with the band in studio?
That was sort of your typical video game gig. You go into a booth… here you are usually doing a number of characters, and its all on the fly, you go through real quick. Its funny you bring it up because it’s a pretty old memory. Its one of those things where you get the gig, that whole video game world… you go in and audition, you might even forget you even auditioned, then they’ll call you and tell you they need you in this. You show up at the studio, and you knock it out. It’s a lot of different charaters, different dialects, different energies. You show up and “bam bam bam”… sort of like grunge! [laughs] They’ll just hand you a picture of a character and say “this is who you’re playing” and you create a voice based on that. You record so many different ways of getting hit… that’s pretty much what it was. I don’t remember too much of it, but it was fun!
Moving on to TMNT… everyone was under the impression that William Fichtner was going to play Shredder, but that ended up not being the case. You consider yourself the film’s best kept secret?
It’s a funny thing, I was definitely told that I couldn’t talk about the role until the film’s release. It was kind of an interesting experience. It was one of those things that I kind of liked, in a sense, because I was offered the role after Fichtner was announced. I thought he was playing it and I was confused myself. For all I know they were working three different version of exactly where they were going to go with the character. I just kind of came in as an actor, and of course, if you’re offered Shredder, you’re not going to question it. [laughs] I just went in and did my thing. The first thing I shot was with Bill [Fichtner], and it didn’t feel strange at all. I didn’t know what was going on, but at the same time I’m here to be Shredder! Bill was great, it was just amazing working with him, that was master class acting, just working with him. It didn’t feel weird or anything, what was actually happening I don’t know, and he told me that when he was offered the role they didn’t tell him who it was, they did tell him his character had a name and that it wouldn’t be “Foot Soldier Number 3”. For me it was a slow reveal about who I’d actually be playing. I went in, it seems like nothings unusual, they say “you can’t tell anybody”, I say “that’s fine.” I thought, when the trailer came out last month with the Shredder reveal, people thought “maybe its not Bill”, there was a rumor at that point, “okay, you can talk then”. But [the filmmakers] thought “lets keep going”. I thought maybe it was a marketing thing. I’m relieved to be able to open my mouth now.
Everyone likes to call Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a Michael Bay film even though he is only credited as producer, with Jonathan Liebsman directing and several others writing the screenplay. Just how involved did Bay get in the film, from your perspective?
I was almost entirely with Jonathan, a lot of Michael Bay films are definitely directed from above… there’s times where we’re about to film and I’d think we’re all ready, and then suddenly someone says, “Oh no no, Michael Bay says we have to redo something!” But as far as direct involvement, again this is just me, I can’t speak for anyone else involved in the film, when I think of the team I worked with… certainly I say Jonathan, the production crew, a few hands-on producers that were around, the writers were always there… I personally did not see Michael Bay a lot, except for the occasional “this isn’t working”. Not a major thing, often a technical thing. Record at a higher bit rate, or something. He was never telling me to play my character differently. What was going on when I wasn’t there, I have no idea. As far as the real creative process goes, it was all Jonathan and the rest of those people, different camera people. It was fun. I take Michael Bay’s stamp down on the movie, thank God, you can’t create that kind of movie without him. However, I personally see it as Jonathan’s movie.
Being Shredder’s suit was all CGI, did you have to do any motion capture?
I did not. The deal there was that there was a few scenes when I’m not in the armor, that was me. Zero CGI, old school CGI smoke and mirrors. That’s what that was. Once I’m in the suits, it’s me fighting, and I can fight a little bit but not like that. [laughs] I can’t hurtle across rooftops. It’s
pretty awesome. It was a little more of an animation gig, if that makes sense.
Since your media blackout ended you’ve seemed vocal about how you were happy to land a role in the TMNT franchise as a fan. Any other big franchises you’d love to be a part of?
You know, I tend to like dark movies. Like Sin City! That would a pretty badass movie to be a part of. I remember driving around seeing those billboards thinking that’d be pretty cool.
Gotta get a piece of that Star Wars pie that everyone’s going for.
If I got a call from those guys… yeah, I might faint. I really enjoy these franchise movies… its weird because there’s a certain responsibility because of expectations surrounding a character, which is very hard for an actor because he or she can’t be held to expectations… they just need to be the character entrusted to them, they embody them, and it needs to come from them 100%. It’s very tricky. The bar is really high, and you can’t promise it. Not that I would. I don’t even mind if the fans have a problem with it. It’s like the stages of grief. The reason they get upset is because they just really care about the characters, and it kind of moves me on that note. It’s amazing. People, grown adults, still really caring about what happens with this. Its actually nice. It’s a little tough sometimes, without a doubt. But that’s one thing I really like about these franchise films!