“Pirates of the Caribbean” Star Brenton Thwaites Tells Us About Hanging With Johnny Depp and Getting Scared by Geoffrey Rush

Imagine hanging out with Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush and Javier Bardem, having the experience filmed, and then sitting on the footage for two years.

Brenton Thwaites lived this very-specific hypothetical situation.

The 27-year-old Aussie (one of many graduates from the school of Home and Away) has scored a breakout role in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which was filmed on the Gold Coast in 2015 and 2016.

But a series of controversial delays (perhaps tied to Depp's behind the scenes dramas), not to mention the generally complicated and time-consuming process that goes into CGI, means the film is yet to see the light of day. In the time since production started, Thwaites met his girlfriend and had a daughter.

But still, waiting for the world to see his work in Pirates has come with its own stresses.

“It’s the worst, mate,” he told Student Edge.

“It takes too long. I mean, you want people to see it as soon as you’ve wrapped.

"In that time, I’ve changed so much. I worked on a number of movies; I’ve lived all over the world. And so, it’s kind of a nostalgic experience even talking about the movie.”

In the fifth Pirates film, directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, Thwaites plays Henry Turner, a young sailor who witnesses the supernatural return of pirate-hunting Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) and teams up with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) for swashbuckling and such.

You better believe Geoffrey Rush’s bejewelled Captain Barbossa is back too; a prospect that delighted and terrified Thwaites, whose strongest memory of the franchise’s first film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, involved Rush’s spooky entrance.

“I remember getting scared by Geoffrey Rush,” he recalled.

“When he turned into a skeleton in the moonlight, just feeling like, ‘Oh God, that looks so amazing and real and fantastic.' Of course, we look at that nowadays and it’s the worst CGI we’ve seen in cinema, but back in 2001, it was very real looking and amazing.”

On set, Thwaites confirmed that Rush was “a pretty intimidating presence.”

“Barbossa has so many things going on: he’s got the hair, he’s got the face full of makeup, he’s got jingles and jangles hanging off his body, guns, swords. So, just to look at him is like, ‘Wow, I just need ten minutes to scan up and down and see what’s going on here.’”

He also had compliments for his other big name co-stars.

“Johnny seems to find a new way—every take, every scene—of finding a laugh somewhere,” he said.

“That kind of brings a lightness to the set.”

As for Javier Bardem, he just had to keep from fanboy-ing out and quoting Skyfall and No Country for Old Men back to the Oscar winner.

“‘Hey Javier, remember when you did this? Because I’ve seen it,’” he joked.

The gravity of his famous company—and the franchise he’s now a part of—is not lost on Thwaites. If Dead Men Tell No Tales follows in the footsteps of the previous instalments, it could become one of the biggest films of all time.

“You can’t really prepare for it,” he noted.

“Because what if it doesn’t happen? You just gotta wait to see what happens, as with anything in this biz. Who knows?”

While he waits, he’s going to watch Home and Away, a show he insists he still keeps any eye on.

“I’ve still got a couple of friends on there, so I’m always excited to see who’s cheating on who and who’s surfing with who.”

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is now in cinemas.

Photo: Disney