ARMITAGE HUX, SALLOW-skinned General of the First Order, is the closest thing going to a human sneer. Contempt simmers beneath his every look and Empire is feeling the full effect as we put questions to an unusually frosty Domhnall Gleeson. It’s quickly becoming awkward until, halfway through a question about First Order politics, the penny finally drops.
“I’ve made an absolute balls of this!” he breaks in, looking sheepish. “I’m really sorry, dude, I thought we were here to talk about Goodbye Christopher Robin. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to ask about Winnie The Pooh.”
And like that Hux melts away, replaced by a far more affable Gleeson, now all too happy to discuss the character Empire felt like we just encountered first-hand.
“My fascination with Hux was creating one of those characters a child would hate,” he explains. “They’d want bad stuff to happen to that guy because he seems like a dick. Now, you can’t play the character as a dick all the time – that would be a mistake. But I definitely wanted a kid watching it to say, ‘I want that guy to get hurt!’ There’s a real joy to playing that out.”
Hux’s meticulous officer is the buttoned-down Yin to Kylo Ren’s live-wire Yang – the Rabbit to Ren’s Tigger, if you will. And now, with the First Order’s most expensive toy a smouldering wreck, Hux has been recalled for the mother of all bollockings from Supreme Leader Snoke.
“Because of what happened in the first film, he’s been pushed to a place where his position is in real jeopardy, and people make really bad decisions when they get desperate,” Gleeson says. “Hux and Kylo Ren are vying for power and for Snoke’s attention. They’re both contenders for the throne and Hux is hoping Ren explodes, so that he can take up the mantle. He knows it will be a battle otherwise, one he may very well lose.”
dispatches from the dumpster 