EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Stephan Elliot reveals to Deadline that Terence Stamp, the magnetic British star who died aged 87 in August, spent the final months of his life reprising his role as Bernadette, a transgender nightclub artist, for the sequel to beloved 1994 movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
The actor, who starred in Billy Budd, Far From the Madding Crowd, two Superman movies, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and The Hit, had initially been hesitant about agreeing to a sequel, but says Elliott, the actor was persuaded by a promise that Priscilla Queen of the Desert 2, its working title, would not just be a repeat of the original.
“So I came forward with something that is pretty special and unique,” Elliott tells us. “And that’s when I got him.”
The first movie, about a transgender woman and two drag queens, played by Stamp, Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving, respectively, who set off from Sydney in an old-school bus they dubbed Priscilla to perform to disco golden oldies and ABBA hits in the desert plains of southern Australia, was an enormous hit when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Elliott believes that his cast dressing to the nines in outrageously glamorous frocks and bejeweled Carmen Miranda-style headgear atop their wigs, helped pave the way for the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race to enter the mainstream.
Elliott explains that “we had all agreed on a Priscilla… sequel just before COVID because it took me decades to find a plot and I found it. But then COVID came along, and of course, we all lost ground, but it did give us the time to get the script underway. And as well you know, we have very big heels to fill, and we’ve been pretty much at it ever since.”
At the same time, he adds, “Terence wasn’t getting any younger, and that’s a fact he loved to shove down our throats almost every day.”
We spoke to Elliott back in April 2024, and Deadline broke the news that a sequel was in the works to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but he says now that he did not disclose “that we had been in pre-pre-makeup, hair and concept designs for a very long time.”
Those discussions, Elliott notes, revolved around “what Terence’s character Bernadette was going to look like at 88, it took a lot of trial and error. So the clock clicked on, and then when the AI wars broke out, Terence was indignant that he didn’t want a digital clone of himself playing Bernadette. He wanted the chance to put the character down himself. And I will quote him in this case. He said: ‘Just in case I don’t make the start line.’”
Elliott declares that with Stamp pressing the case “and with the blessing of him and his family, Guy, Hugo and the financiers, I decided to pre-shoot all the Bernadette scenes.”
Australian-born Elliott says of Stamp: “He was 87, turning 88… And I put him through a multi-cam shoot, spread over several grueling sessions. All I can say is, that the old trouper gave it everything he had. He hated putting the wig on again. But at the same time, my God, you could have bottled that smile. I mean, it was brilliant fun, and he really did have the time of his life. But calling ‘that’s a wrap’ on Terence Stamp… are going to be words that will haunt me to the day I die.”
Elliott reveals that he shot scenes with Stamp “in character in a nine camera array of the entire script.”
Following Stamp’s passing, Elliott says that he’s “pretty devastated” and “I’m still teary most days, but at the moment, I just need to down tools for a bit and mourn. I mean, he was such a unique human. He didn’t have a lot of close friends, and I’m still pretty chuffed that he counted me as one of them. We had 32 brilliant years together, and I never missed a chance to hang out and chew the fat. And my God, the stories he told me that I can never put down. I mean, what a life!”
“He was an absolute sweetheart, but he had an aura about himself, and he kept it that way. I mean, he knew I loved him to death… I mean, look at his resume, look at who he worked with. And I look at myself on this list of Fellini and Pasolini, and then I see my name there, and I just go: ‘What is my name doing there?’”
Elliott adds that “right now, I’ve just had to tell everybody to down tools, I really need time to mourn. I need time to work this out. What happens next? Does anybody want to see the film now that he’s passed? I mean, I just don’t know. But I guess with a bit of time, we’re going to find out.”
He shot the Stamp sequences over three studios starting at Pinewood.
Elliott says that it’s not the first time “in film history” that technology has enabled actors performances to be introduced into a film after they’ve died, to live on. “I mean, look at Ollie Reed. Ollie Reed died in the middle of shooting Gladiator,” he notes, referring to how Ridley Scott and his creatives enabled Oliver Reed to appear, as it were, in Gladiator, following the actor’s death from a heart attack in 1999. “There’s a weird history. I mean, even if you look at Carrie Fisher, who basically was put into Star Wars [The Rise of Skywalker], but they were kind of all after the fact. This is a really weird one in that it’s before the fact.”
He adds: “They call it CGI face replacement. It’s a tech that’s been around for years, but basically we’re going to have to, I don’t know. I’m still trying to work it out, but the tech is there. We basically, we’d have to get a stand-in actor and Terence would be put onto that actor. Sci-fi films have been doing it for years, but in this instance, I’m going to have to have an actor playing Terence Stamp.
“” mean, it is scary. We’re all scared, of course.”
The script is very unusual, Elliott suggests. “Not what people expect… I’ve made a very, very unusual film, and it is about old age. It’s very touching. I wrote a lot of what I went through with Terence over the last couple of years. I wrote into the script of what it’s like to get old and to be either gay, trans—I mean, it’s a subject that’s never been explored.”
Elliott says that for over a decade, Weaving and Pearce had been making jokes about wanting to do a sequel, however, Stamp hadn’t wanted to be part of it. “He just absolutely refused,” the director recalls.
“I had to come to him with a plot that is a really good one. And when I came to [Stamp], he looked at me and said, ‘Okay, I didn’t see that one coming.’ So I brought him something. I brought him a complete original. And at that point, he said, ‘Right, that’s the promise. I’ll do this because you’re going in a different direction. But at the same time, I will never let you just repeat yourself.’ None of us want that. And Guy doesn’t want that either, and Hugo either. So I came forward with something that is pretty special and unique,” Elliott explains. “And that’s when I got him.”
The conversation begged all manner of questions. I ask Elliott if Stamp was in full hair and make-up and costumed as Bernadette?
“Yes, he was in full costume as Bernadette,” Elliott confirms.
Elliott says that Stamp “joked all the time, ‘You’re running out of time, kids. You’re running out of time.’ And so he threw himself into it. I mean, he absolutely gave it his all.
“It was tough dialogue for him, but he gave it everything,” Elliott explains during the call Sunday from his home in Portugal.
“It’s a game changer. It’s kind of weird. So we’re facing a whole brand new world here. Terence said, ‘I want a chance to do this myself.’ So we gave him the chance.”
Elliott and his collaborators, as noted earlier, are taking a break to enable them to think through how to proceed. I peppered him with questions about how the Stamp footage could be introduced into the sequel.
“Look, I think the easiest way is for all of us, which is what it is. We’ve got Terence in the can as Bernadette. It’s what we do technically with this point, as I said from this point about how we make it work. But we’re not the first film in history to go through this.
“And I’ve just said to financiers, everybody right now, and I said, ‘I just need some air. We’ll figure it out.’ So basically, he exists as Bernadette, and we’ve just got to work out how to make it work. And the question is, as I said earlier, does anyone want to see this film? And part of me thinks that they would. Now that he’s put the effort in, and basically he gave the last months of his life to this. I think people want to see it. It’s a tough one… It’s a real tough one.”
Elliott says that both Weaving and Pearce gave their blessing ahead of discussions between the filmmaker and Stamp. “I said, ‘Guys, I can’t do this because it’s going to cost a fortune, and I can’t do this without your blessing, without your support.’ And both of them did.”
Costume designer Tim Chappel (Miss Congeniality), who shared the 1995 Oscar for Best Costume Design with Lizzy Gardiner (Hacksaw Ridge), created new costumes for Stamp. Elliott signed up makeup designer Rick Findlater (Lord of the Rings, King Kong, The Hobbit) to create Stamp’s Bernadette. Makeup artist Sarah Jane Wai O’Flynn worked alongside Findlater.
While acknowledging that Priscilla Queen of the Desert 2 will travel further afield than Australia and venture overseas, Elliott refuses to reveal more. “I can’t tell you, Baz. I mean, on top of that one, even the boys were saying, ‘Do you want to release some of the footage?’ And I said, ‘Of Terence’s stuff?’ And I said, ‘It’s the plot. We’ll just give the whole plot away.’ I mean, the beauty of what we’re trying to do is outdo ourselves on the first film, and I just can’t give the plug away.”
I ask him to clarify when principal photography might start. “When I can work out the mechanics of how this is going to work,” he responds.
By Elliott’s reckoning, the hope is that filming could start next year. “The boys have got their own schedules. They want to do it. We’re going to have to reconfigure some of it because we have to deal with the simple fact that we’ve lost him. So we’re going to have to do some reconfiguring and it’s just going to take us a little bit of time to work it out. But I think we can get underway next year.”
The work with Stamp on Priscilla Queen of the Desert 2 started, Elliott tells us, in 2024, “and we stretched into this year for the big shoot and the dialogue,” essentially shooting on and off over several months.
“So. it’ll be technical, but on top of that one. it will be him. He’s in the film. It is him. He’s in costume. He’s doing his own dialogue,” Elliott confirms.
“Come on,” Elliott argues. “You look at all the sci-fi epics you ever see, all those people have basically ended up acting on green screens, talking to tennis balls, we’re not doing that.”
Our conversation, as we recall our interactions with Stamp over the years, is a heartbreaking one, but then we’re also excited in a strange way at the possibility of seeing Terence Stamp up there on a big screen one more time.
Elliott nods. “Now, he didn’t want a funeral, there’s been a lot of talk recently about funerals, and he didn’t want a funeral. He wanted a final curtain.
“So we did everything in our power to make it happen… And by God, we’re giving it to him.”
The post Breaking Baz: Terence Stamp Pre-Shot ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert 2’ Scenes Months Before He Died, Filmmaker Stephan Elliott Says Actor Had “Time Of His Life” appeared first on Deadline.
