Exclusive: Vinnie Jones On His Hostile Take Over As Scales

By Ian Cullen Jan 22, 2011, 18:12 GMT

But ‘The Cape’ is his first regular role in a television series, and when you talk with him he is obviously very enthusiastic about the part he has to play in the show, and is very keen to point out and discuss Scales big night out in Monday nights ‘Scales On A Train’ as a real high point and ‘a must see’ episode for fans of the villain.

Last weekend as you’ll recall we were lucky enough to chat with Keith David about his role of Max in the new NBC show "The Cape."

This week, we decided to take absolutely no prisoners and caught up with Vinnie Jones, who plays the role of Scales, who is one of the two main villains in the show.

Over his acting career, Vinnie has played a number of villains, and he really came to light in the Guy Ritchie movie "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."  

He hasn’t looked back since.

But ‘The Cape’ is his first regular role in a television series, and when you talk with him he is obviously very enthusiastic about the part he has to play in the show, and is very keen to point out and discuss Scales big night out in Monday nights ‘Scales On A Train’ as a real high point and ‘a must see’ episode for fans of the villain.

Monsters and Critics: Vinnie, I have to start by saying I really enjoy the show, and thought your brief time in the pilot was memorable. So to open up with. How did the role of Scales come about for you and what appealed to you about him?

Vinnie Jones: Well I love comic books you know. I love the whole concept of it. A couple of years back I was trying to produce my own with Howard Chaykin. To do a TV Show or run a movie off it. So I’d been fishing around, and then the office phoned up. Tom Wheeler phoned up and he head hunted me for this part originally for the guest starring role.

So we done the guest role and everything and then they come to me afterwards when they’d got all the testings from all the fans and everything - and they were showing it and I believe Scales came out way up there!  You know! So they had to come back and offer me a regular gig.

Sorry if am a bit hoarse. We didn’t finish work until half past two this morning.

M&C: Brutal schedule!

Vinnie Jones: Yeah, it is a bit.

So that’s how I got into it really. I went down and met them and thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll do the pilot anyway’ because Simon West was directing and I wanted to go down and meet him. So it was good fun and then they came and offered me I think because of the way my character tested a regular role.

M&C: You’ve played a few heavies in movies and television. How do you think Scales pardon the pun ‘measures’ up against the other villains that you’d played over the last few years.

Vinnie Jones: The good thing is. You know it’s like X-Men. He’s in a villains world. He’s in a superhero world whereas I just felt in X-Men we all got swallowed up. There was to many X-Men and Mutants and baddies you know. So I just felt there was to many people. Whereas originally when Matthew Vaughn was going to direct it. My role was more intense. There was a lot more dialogue but they brought more people in so everything got diluted.

M&C: So your hoping with this being a regular TV series. It will allow you to have more scope to explore scales as a bad guy.

Vinnie Jones: Oh Yeah, you’ll see! I mean Monday night it’s all Scales.

Scales comes back after recovering from his monkey wrench round the knee to take over. On monday night it’s all about ‘Scales On a Train.’ So it introduces my character to the show!

M&C: What can you reveal about the episode.

Vinnie Jones: You’ll see Scales being born, you see him as a youngster. He lives his young life in a freak show and he breaks free from the freak show. And then he becomes his own man.

He comes over on the boat. Lands on the docks in Los Angeles and then goes into the crime world. It’s a little bit like Tony Montana in ‘Scarface.’

M&C: That sounds like a full-on proper origin story!

Vinnie Jones: It is yeah. That’s what it is on Monday night. It’s all about Scales. If your a Scales fan you better tune in because this is the one to get to know him. You get to see how bad it was and why he’s such a bad geezer.

M&C: I’ve been reading up about the show a fair bit and I believe that Scales and Chess will eventually have a bit of a confrontation.

Vinnie Jones: Yeah. We’re filming that right now. That’ll be in nine and ten. Episode nine and ten I think that comes. It’s a big confrontation, but you will see it on Monday night as well. That’s the start of it all you know!

M&C: What are your thoughts on the relationship between Chess and Scales in terms of their arrangement as it were?

Vinnie Jones: Well we need each other. It will become apparent to the fans that we do need each other. I want to get up in the ranks you know! You’ll see. I push him into a corner so he has to offer me the role of Godfather of Palm City. That’s where I want to get.

You’ll see me become the Godfather of Palm City. Of the underworld. Chess will say, ‘This is what the media and the mayer. This is what I’ve got to clean up! You can have all the rest of it.’ And I go, ‘Ooh really!’ He doesn’t realise that he might of given me a bit to much.

M&C: How have you found the make-up when compared to your experience on X-Men.

Vinnie Jones: There’s nine pieces to this. Nine pieces for the neck and face, but really eleven with the hands.

So it was really a real grind and a bind, but now I go in and we do like an hour. An hour and a half where they apply the prosthetic’s and then they like powder it down so its not so sticky.

Then we have a break. You know ten minutes a cup of tea. Get my strength back from a cup of PG Tips and then I go back in and then we paint it all. It’s airbrushed and its hand painted by two of the make - up guys, and that process is about 3 hours.

It’s like today. I mean I. We finished at Two Thirty this morning. I’ve got to be on set in an hour for make-up, which will be 12 O’Clock and I’m due on set at 4 O’Clock. So I have to get in four hours before am due on set.

M&C: When I did theatre work the stage make-up was no where near as brutal as that.

Vinnie Jones: No it’s not, actually yesterday was the first time I fell asleep in my chair while they were glueing me on [We both laugh]

M&C: I know that in another life you were a big football star here in the UK, and am sure that as a kid that would have been a big deal for you, but touching on your like of comics. I’m just wondering what comic books you were into back then if any, and what was your favorite.

Vinnie Jones: My favorite comic book was Roy Of The Rovers. That was the comic in soccer magazine. So Roy Of The Rovers was my main one. But I’d say my main superhero was Superman. He was my guy.

I think the film where Zod and his people come back to take on Superman. I think you might see something like that in The Cape as well. I might be doing an uprising. You might see me being the Zod of Palm City.

M&C: I also liked Superman II with General Zod. I regard it as the best of those films.

Vinnie Jones: Yeah it was for me. I think Zod really brought in the main villains of Superman. You know what I mean.

M&C: I also saw you in Chuck, which was a fun episode. Now other than you having a recurring villainous role on The Cape, how has working on The Cape compared to working on Chuck?

Vinnie Jones: I’m part of the family with The Cape! Whereas I was a guest star on Chuck. You know everybody’s very nice! Your there for a week. You’re in and out!  But the hardest thing is I’d liked to have stayed longer. You know what I mean.

M&C: Yes, I’d liked to have seen more of that character. I quite liked him.

Vinnie Jones: I think they were thinking about it. I think that once they’d sort of done it with my character they went, ‘Ooh that worked!’ Maybe they didn’t realise that it was my character that worked and not all these guest stars they keep bringing in.

M&C: I read a news item recently about you scaring the catering staff on The Cape. Is there any truth to this, and if so what exactly were you doing to scare all these poor unsuspecting people?

Vinnie Jones: We’ve got some brilliant Chefs on the show. It’s a family of Mexican people and the mum I went up and got some breakfast off her and had a chat with her and she’s ‘Oh Mr. Vinnie, Mr Vinnie I need the photo, I need the photo.’ So we had a photo with her and everything.

I went into make-up and I done all the make-up and we filmed and came to lunch. I came up to her! I had a hoodie on. So I came up to her and she could hear me talking and she come up and said, ‘Ooh thank you Mr. Vinnie,’ and I turned round and had my Scales face on. She jumped about 50 foot up in the air. [Laughs]

And I blamed it on her food. I blamed it on her food in the morning. It was so funny, she took it so to heart for a little while. She just couldn’t understand it and I said come on touch it and she was like, ‘Oh no I can’t, I can’t touch it.’

Ian, we got her to touch it and she was screaming. It was a real fun moment. Everybody was laughing.

M&C: A favorite scene of mine from the pilot episode is where Rollo whacks you with a monkey wrench and says, ‘Say hello to Dorothy’ in reference to your yellow brick road gag.  Because I really enjoyed that brief exchange between you and Rollo.

Vinnie Jones: Yeah, where I laugh at him and say, ‘The yellow brick road is that way!’ We made that up on the day actually.

M&C: I wet myself laughing at that. I thought that was funny.

Vinnie Jones: Yeah, he made that up on the day. We just thought because we stood there in the dark and he’s saying, “Your Scales are you!’ and I’d go, ‘Yeah lets get at it.’ We just put a little bit of dialogue in there which everybody thought was funny. So it stayed in there, which was cool.

Yeah, it was quite hard going to the golf club after that episode. Being beaten up by Martin [Klebba] you know.

M&C: Does Scales get to dish out some payback on Rollo?

Vinnie Jones: Oh yeah, Oh yeah. You’ll see Monday night. He gets in a bit more and that’s the final straw. The final Straw. So you’ll see it in one of the other episodes. He gets completely whipped by Scales and the Cape does on Monday Night.

M&C: Obviously having seen you on Big Brother last year. You can be a bit of a practical joker, and like to have a bit of a laugh. What are the rest of the cast on The Cape like, and who would you say is the biggest practical joker on set?

Vinnie Jones: It’s probably me at the moment. I still think we’re in early stages because with everybody. I mean we’ve had. I think yesterday I had something like eight or ten pages of dialogue in one scene and about five pages in another. It’s a lot of dialogue whatever way you look at it. It takes a lot of concentration and a lot of preparing. You know you can’t just look at stuff walk in and nail it off the page. So a lot of us are still sort of crawling along and not walking or running yet. You know what I mean.

But the main practical ongoing joke at the moment is David Lyons he’s got a rank Jeep. It looks about ten years old. Its never had a wash, its filthy. One of the windows is hanging out of it and one of the girls says, ‘God you’d think Dave being a lead in an NBC TV Show would get his window repaired on the canvas top on his wrangler.’ So everyday I just put signs on it saying, ‘STAY AWAY THIS VEHICLE WILL BE TOWED!’ or ‘THIS VEHICLE IS ONLY FOR STUNTS!’

Then the other day I put about four trash cans in it. Filled it up with trash. Put cones on it and yesterday I put cones and a hoover on the bonnet. And he comes up and says, ‘Oh, had some fun with my jeep again.’ I’ve never confirmed that it’s me. He doesn’t know.

So that’s the ongoing one at the moment and I’m just waiting for a couple of the other cast members to join in. You know it be funny if I come out and somebody else has done something. It will probably be Rollo (Martin Klebba). Me and Rollo are the practical jokers.

M&C: Just thought of a sign for you to hang, ‘THIS JEEP SHOULD BE ON THE AMC SET FOR “THE WALKING DEAD!”’

Vinnie Jones: Yeah, I’ll say your on the wrong set. I’ll say that to him today. I’ve got a big scene with him today. I’ll say, ‘Your on the wrong set mate!’ [Laughs]

M&C: Other than The Cape, which is obviously taking up a fair bit of your time right now. Are there any other movies or projects you can talk about that fans should look out for.

Vinnie Jones: Yeah, I’ve got a gangster movie coming out on March 11 called ‘Kill The Irishman’ It’s a story about Danny Green. A true story about Danny Green in Cleveland. He was an Irishman. He took on the Mafia and brought down the Mafia in Cleveland.

And that’s Christopher Walken, Ray Stevenson, myself, Val Kilmer, Vincent D'Onofrio, Linda Cardellini. So its a big cast you know. Jonathan Hensleigh directed.

But it’s a little bit of a jewel in the crown. I think they’re going to let it out you know. It’s not going to be a massive release. I think it will be sort of like ‘Lock, Stock’ was with a limited release to see how it goes.

But It’s something am very proud of. It’s a super, super story and the way it’s shot. You know the character’s in it are fantastic. It’s a super, super little movie.