“I don’t want to be on stage”: Vitaly Khayev about leaving the theater, about age roles and the series “Former”

- When you just started working on the first season of The Forces, did you expect them to become such a large-scale project?

- Of course not.

Everything has changed dramatically, the series itself has become more free.

In general, it is very difficult to predict whether this or that project will collect a large box office, whether the audience will like it.

Sometimes it seems that in some project there is nothing special, but he suddenly "shot".

It's hard to calculate.

- What new should fans of the series expect?

- New characters may appear - and they will.

New plot twists.

But I'm not going to talk about them - that's the point to make the viewer interesting to watch.

- In the second season of "The Exes" there were quite a few explicit scenes in which you also had to participate.

How do you feel about filming in such episodes?

- The second season was filmed more openly than the first.

When I saw the script, I was sweating.

At my age, such scenes are rarely obtained, but here there were a lot of them.

Of course, there was discomfort.

I have not been involved in such scenes before.

And then - yes, I was worried ...

It seemed to me that it depends on the organization of the filming.

If you, as an artist, feel good on the set, then, in fact, it is not that difficult.

Usually there are no big monologues in bed to learn.

As the operator says, you just need to lie down correctly.

The main thing is to choose a pose!

Much depends on the environment on site.

Some girls even came to bed scenes with their husbands.

Everyone feels differently.

For some reason I was worried.

Where already, I'm not a young boy!

When I looked like Romeo, they didn’t take me for this, but now, now, I have to take the rap for the past.

- Did you manage to cope with the discomfort, to fulfill all the tasks assigned to you?

- It worked, yes.

Gritting your teeth, putting your hands where ordered, pronounce the text.

I was a little complex about this, but then everything became fine.

It just depends on the site, on the partner.

When humor, trust appears, everything goes away.

So bed scenes are not the most difficult scenes in movies.

- Now, of course, you have tremendous experience, but at the beginning of your career did you have to overcome fear and embarrassment?

- Experience - experience.

But on the first day you still worry, worry.

Artists are very dependent on what they do.

I cannot say that the excitement is completely gone.

Especially when you meet a new group, a new director, new people.

Filming in a project - how to live a small life.

Somewhere good, somewhere not very good. 

- What details of the image of your character in The Past were fundamentally important to you?

- My hero was the only villain, the main negative character of the whole action.

The main thing for me was to make it clear that he still loves his daughter, young wife, and previous wife.

I wanted it not to be a one-sided game: he hates everyone, he is bad.

Why is he bad?

This person is what he is - tough, corrupt.

But I wanted the viewer to feel that love for children, for a family, past, new, is still the main thing for him.

• Shot from the TV series "Former"

• © kinopoisk.ru

- Do your children watch the series?

- They watch what they want, including my work.

The elder also decided to work in the cinema, oddly enough.

He graduated from the Higher School of Economics and went to work as a site administrator.

He is trying to understand how cinema works, so he went to the most rough work.

- And in what direction does he plan to develop - to become an actor, director?

- No, I'm not going to become an actor.

He was interested in cinema rather from the point of view of creation, production.

He said: "I want to go to work in the cinema, on the set."

I asked: "Do you want to sit in the office?"

- "No, I want to see how it is done from the site, from the arrival of cars, all this huge machinery."

It's the same every day the whole plant comes.

A huge number of people are involved.

All this turned out to be very interesting to him.

- You have more than once decided on bold creative experiments: you played in black comedies, appeared on the stage of the theater naked.

What was the most difficult and memorable experience for you?

- At the Theater of Nations there was a play called "Killer Joe".

I played Joe.

At the direction of the director, I had to jump out onto the stage completely naked.

Moreover, it lasted literally three to four seconds.

And before that, the scene with Julia Peresild was played, and she was completely naked on the stage for five minutes.

There were such notes - I remembered them for the rest of my life: "Grandmothers in the locker room give out binoculars to see Khaev's farm."

Several performances passed, and someone wrote: "This is complete nonsense, they tie up something, this does not happen."

Then the oldest theater worker, the head of the troupe, turned to me, her name was Marina Yuzefovna ... She came up to me and said: “Vitaly, this is my first time at the premiere, after which everyone is discussing the artist's genitals.

Please, I beg you, put on your underpants.

Yavor (Gyrdev, director -

RT

) has left, nothing will change. "

It really was.

In Russia, he has been releasing this performance for a long time.

He doesn't care, he is a westerner, he staged performances in Bulgaria, in European theaters.

If their people are used to nudity - both male and female - then in our country they are still not used to it.

Even when I myself watch something and see "naked" on the stage, I think that it is wrong.

If women are even more aesthetic, they are created by God more beautifully, more round, then when men undress, even with beautiful bodies, I myself am unpleasant to look at it.

The viewer feels the same.

So I put on my underpants, then started running out even in my pants.

Indeed, the performance did not lose anything from this.

Here's a story.

- You often play real characters.

Last year alone, three similar projects came out with your participation: "Grozny" (Alexei Basmanov, oprichny voivode), "Streltsov" (coach Viktor Maslov) and "Kalashnikov" (Major General Kurbatkin).

Tell us how you prepare for these roles.

Are you striving to study all available sources and create an image as close to reality as possible? 

- Of course, when you play such characters in large-scale projects, you study references, read historical material.

If we talk about Ilya Uchitel's “Streltsov”, I read a lot about how the players treated Maslov.

I wanted to catch character.

There were many interesting details.

He was called "dad".

Football players obeyed him unquestioningly.

He was very tough, but afterwards he could go out for a drink with his players.

He was a real "dad" for them.

Such details help a lot - you understand in which direction to work on the image.

• Actor Vitaly Khaev

• RIA News

• © Vladimir Trefilov

- How to achieve a balance between historical accuracy and individual acting vision, style?

- I dont know.

Each artist has his own kitchen.

Of course, all this happens in tandem with the director, but, perhaps, the script is the head of everything.

There is a lot in it.

You can bring some of your own things into it, but this is already creative work.

It is written: "Cut off the head."

How to achieve historical accuracy?

You stand and "chop off" your head.

It seems to me that everyone has their own logic, everyone feels differently.

In tandem with the director, you get what you see in the end.

The audience has to judge how it turned out.

I have jobs that I really don't like.

But when I talk with friends, with the audience, I understand that people really like them.

It is very difficult to calculate audience success or failure.

The cinema has changed a lot.

I started working with Alexander Naumovich Mitta, Mikhail Mikhailovich Kozakov.

Andrey Proshkin invested a lot in me as an artist.

Now is a completely different time, different approaches to cinema.

And in general, life has changed.

- Is there something in your work, to which your attitude has changed over time?

Maybe before something seemed incredibly difficult, but now it is easy?

- I didn't like big monologues, huge text scenes.

It used to be hard for me to keep them in my head.

And now I even like it.

I began to cope - apparently, my memory got used to it ...

Sometimes I feel like I could handle everything.

But every time it seems to me that I have already seen everything on the set, the world presents something new.

Even standing on your head.

Literally.

- Is there something that you previously liked in the profession, but now causes rejection?

- Before, I really didn't like addiction.

In the sense that the acting profession is very dependent on the circumstances.

From the director and other actors.

The theater is a big family in which you serve.

Then I realized that in the movies you are still an individual.

It's a totally different feeling.

I just know my territory.

When they say: "Camera, motor, start," I am completely free.

The further, the more I like cinema.

And I left the theater.

- Could it be that you will return there someday?

- May be.

I probably outplayed in the theater.

I worked in the theater for a very long time and gave him a lot.

Now they ask me: “Why don't you want to return?

Maybe you will take up the performance? "

When I feel that this is mine, when I want to return, then I will return.

Of course, everyone says to me: “You’re out of your mind, it’s not accepted by artists”.

Everyone lives in theater, they love it.

This is how I lived.

But then everything changed for me.

This is my personal feeling - I don't want to be on stage.

I like cinema.

I started filming more, filming began to take a lot of my time and energy ... Every day I went from St. Petersburg to Moscow on the same train in the first car.

The girls met me and said: “Vitaly Evgenievich, we haven't changed your bed, don't worry.

Sit down, everything is yours. "

This went on for weeks - to run, fly, suffer.

Terrible hassle.

It is very difficult to combine cinema and theater.

And that's not even the point - if there was a serious desire, then it could be combined.

But I have lost the desire to work on stage, I do not want to.

I ate.

- Is there any person from the sphere of politics or art that you would especially like to play?

- No.

It is related to age.

I have not grown up to some roles in the theater, in the cinema.

Because I don't feel my age yet.

I just recently moved into the category of fathers, mentors.

Everything happens with a delay for me - I grow up very slowly.

I feel very young.

And then, we choose from what we offer.

Well, for example, I want to play King Lear.

And who will give it?

• Actor Vitaly Khaev

• RIA News

• © Kirill Kallinikov

- You often play the role of fathers.

As far as I know, for women actresses this is a turning point in their careers, when they are called for the role of the main characters (more or less young), and then they begin to trust the images of mothers.

Does it matter to a man?

- I did not feel any discomfort.

Now, with age, there are more characters that I am interested in.

They are smarter, more experienced, and I like them more ... It seems to me (perhaps it is not so) that the older a man gets, the stronger he becomes - like cognac.

We must take care of ourselves and then reap the laurels.

- Every year with your participation, several films and TV series are released.

How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your business?

What projects did you have to suspend, what did you manage to continue working on? 

- When all this was just beginning, then, of course, everything stopped, the work stopped.

But, starting from June, as an actor, I worked very hard.

In the winter I took a long vacation, and I am still working on the same project.

I cannot say that I personally had a very serious downtime.

Masks and sanitizers just appeared on the site.

At first it seemed inconvenient, then everyone quickly got used to it, and practically continued to work in the same way ... 

I had a project with a director unknown to me.

He always wore a mask and a cap for the first week.

When a week later he came up to me without a mask, I didn't even recognize him, because I hadn't seen his face during the week of filming.

Only by voice. 

- In connection with the pandemic, did you have an idea to participate in screenlife projects?

Some actors filmed something at home ...

- No, I had enough projects not to participate in this.

I was once offered: "We will not even enter your house, a helicopter will rise to your window, and you will speak to the street from the window."

I don't like this option.

Maybe for some it was a way out.

I'm not interested (to make a movie. -

RT

), sitting in the same room - it's somehow strange.

Nowadays, the fashion of auditioning, getting to know the director, doing it by video has gone.

I think this is complete nonsense - how can you get to know a person from a video?

You must feel his energy, hear him speak.

In the video, you put on a clean shirt, shave, and immediately a good boy.

It's all different.

It seems to me that live communication will never be replaced by video.