Alex Casey talks to Jemaine Clement, executive producer, writer and star of Apple TV+’s Time Bandits reboot, about bringing the beloved fantasy film home.
Jemaine Clement was just seven years old when he mooched along to Masterton’s Regent 3 Cinemas to watch Terry Gilliam’s 1981 time travel adventure film Time Bandits on the big screen. “Back then it was only the Regent 1,” he chuckles over Zoom from his guitar-laden den somewhere in Wellington, “but it was so magical.”
As the credits rolled, Clement recalled his seven-year-old horizon broadening well beyond the bucolic farmlands of the Wairarapa. “It was so imaginative, it was so dark and so scary, and a lot of those things I hadn’t seen before.” He came out of the Regent wishing to be Kevin, the kid who joins a troupe of time travelling thieves through his wardrobe.
Now, over four decades later, Clement got his wish as one of the writers, executive producers and stars of Apple TV+’s Time Bandits reboot, alongside longtime collaborator Taika Waititi. “This was basically a really long way of me getting to travel through time and be Kevin.” Could he have ever imagined such a full circle moment as a seven-year-old? “No, no, of course not,” he laughed.
“Although occasionally when we’re noticing what we’re doing in our lives and careers, Taika [Waititi] will say to me, who would have thought? And then he goes, ‘actually, we would have thought… but us, and only us, and no one else’.”
Shoulder-tapped to join the production by Waititi, Clement admitted his first instinct was that also held by the die-hard Time Bandits fans he’s seen in the social media comments. “Occasionally people are saying ‘THIS SHOULDN’T BE REMADE’ – I probably would have thought that too, but I also just really wanted to do it.”
The writing process began in lockdown, with people travelling through time and space themselves from England, Australia, the UK and the US. To “break up the monotony” and explore as many potential historical eras as possible, the writers were joined by historians to give mini-lectures on everything from the Ice Age to Mayan civilization.
“That was always the most interesting part,” said Clement. “We’d all get to ask questions, but they all know you are just looking for the stupidest thing that happened in that era.”
Appearing in the series himself as the sinister villain Pure Evil, Clement said he was also able to channel the more frustrating parts of the writing process into the character. “I don’t know how many hundreds of days I spent in the writers’ room on this show, but I only spent three days on set acting,” he explained.
“Everyone doesn’t see that other part of the job, and that’s really frustrating, so I really relate to that being a frustrated villain in that room.”
Some episodes of Time Bandits were filmed in Clement’s old stomping ground in the Wairarapa, which has become home to flashy folk such as dirtbike enthusiast James Cameron and Peter Jackson. “It was a big surprise that Hollywood was moving to the Wairarapa back then,” said Clement.
“I remember my friends complaining that they couldn’t get anything built because everyone was working on Peter Jackson’s house.”
Although the decision to film in the region wasn’t made by Clement, he remembered how excited he felt as a teenager whenever any kind of filming came to the Wairarapa. In Time Bandits, a homestead outside of Featherston stands in for Georgian England, and when a Stonehenge story emerged, Clement pitched Carterton’s replica Stonehenge Aotearoa.
“It was the first thing I thought of when we wrote it.” he laughed. “I was like ‘we have one, we have a Stonehenge’.” Just like Jackson and Cameron moving in, Stonehenge Aotearoa came after Clement had left the region, so he had never actually visited himself. The art department did go on a recce to the unique Wairarapa tourist attraction, but it sadly “wasn’t practical”.
Still, hope remains for one of the region’s strangest structures. “Who knows,” Clement said. “Maybe if we get a season two we might use it.”