Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement had to 'let go' of Time Bandits legacy for sequel

Watch: Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and the Time Bandits cast discuss the Apple TV+ show

It's never easy to recreate a beloved film or TV show for a new generation, but Time Bandits co-creators Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement knew that to make their Apple TV+ follow up work they had to free themselves from the expectations of the 1980s classic.

The 1981 original is one of Terry Gilliam's best loved films, the family adventure follows a young boy named Kevin as he travels through time with a group of loveable thieves. Waititi, Clement and Iain Morris' take on the story starts out much the same but there are differences, the Time Bandits are not played by dwarves as they are in the original for example.

Waititi admits to Yahoo UK that making a Time Bandits sequel "wasn't really a thing [he] had ever thought about" before Paramount and Apple TV+ approached him and Clement about making it.

"The source material is so great and so iconic," Waititi reflects. "And something that we both grew up on and loved, and it was not necessarily an opportunity to just completely copy it or recreate it exactly the same, but just to take that inspiration and that seed, and make our own version of it.

"I think that's what adaptations should be, you gotta be able to let go of the original thing and flourish and fly."

"We both love the movie," Clement says. "We thought, 'oh, it's gonna be like we're making the movie' but of course it wasn't, we're we're making our own thing." To which Waititi quips: "There were 10 episodes, it was almost like making that movie four times."

Read More: Whatever Happened To Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits Sequel?

Joining them along for the ride was Friends icon Lisa Kudrow, who plays the Time Bandits leader Penelope, and Kal-El Tuck as Kevin — the history-loving kid taken on the adventure of a lifetime.

Kudrow tells Yahoo UK how "there was no way" she was going to say no to the project when it was brought to her because she loved the original.

"I had seen it long ago when it first came out and so I watched it again and thought, oh, how fantastic that Taika and Jemaine are doing this as a series and it can be more fleshed out and acted, [because] I had questions [about] the first one and then where would it go? I just thought that was thrilling.

"And then I read their scripts and that's what I thought it would be, but there was no way I wasn't going to be part of this."

Tuck, for his part, hadn't seen the original because it came out long before he was born: "I didn't watch it, but my dad did when he was really young and it was really weird to be in a a thing that basically my dad used to watch."

Even if he hadn't seen the film, though, it also allowed him to make the role of Kevin unique: "I didn't watch it because I wanted my Kevin to be his own Kevin, not just an adaptation of the old one."

Kudrow's character Penelope is a little full of herself but she means well, and that's something that the actor found most amusing about playing her: "There's nothing funnier than someone being just stupidly arrogant based on no talent, that's really funny to me. I was looking forward to being that person."

For Tuck it was a particularly joyful experience because he was a fan of Kudrow before: "I've watched Friends like everyone else, and it's amazing to work with someone on a TV show that you admire. It's amazing to watch something and then work with that person, it's an other-worldly experience."

Waititi and Clement were delighted by the cast they were able to put together for the family series, with the Thor: Ragnarok director saying: "Everything hinges on the Kevin character because it's his story and his journey, and everyone else around him complements that character."

"Kal-El loves acting," Clement says. "Really it's what he wants to do, even at the end of shooting and I was like, 'what would you like to do when you grow up?' And he's like, 'acting'. But he's really good at it, he nails the jokes like a pro, like he's been doing it all his life."

Waititi goes on: "Then Lisa, the leader of the Time Bandits in the original was male and we wanted to change that. I loved the idea of working with Lisa, I've been wanting to work with Lisa for years... she was so great to work with."

Kudrow's experience in the industry was particularly helpful for the other cast members, Clement adds, because she was able to help them with anything they needed or wanted assistance with: "Some of the actors hadn't done comedy before, or they're not as experienced —the kids, for instance— and she was very supportive to [everyone]."

The longtime collaborators were unable to meet Terry Gilliam ahead of making the series, despite him acting as executive producer. The closest they got was being close to the Monty Python star years before — for Clement this was at a screening of Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs in 2018, and for Waititi this was when he stayed in accommodation in Prague to film Jojo Rabbit that Gilliam had just vacated.

Waititi jokes: "If I could go back in time I'd want to go back to just before I move to Prague and go to that apartment and then talk to him about making Time Bandits, finally get to meet him."

Read more: Terry Gilliam on Never Compromising in Hollywood: “You Don’t F**k With the Stories” (The Hollywood Reporter)

"We did want to meet him and we had questions for him but eventually we were like 'we've already made it now'," Clement adds.

Making the series was a "daunting honour", Waititi says, with Celement adding: "We were so excited that we might get to make something that we didn't realise it was daunting, really, until we saw the first giant set built and tried to put it together and make sure it's —hopefully— something like the movie."

Time Bandits premieres on Wednesday, 24 July with its first two episodes on Apple TV+.

This article originally appeared on Yahoo TV UK at https://uk.news.yahoo.com/time-bandits-taika-waititi-jemaine-clement-apple-083036735.html