Actor Terence Stamp filmed scenes for a sequel to the 1990s hit The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert before his death.
Stamp, best known for his roles in Superman, Billy Budd, Far from the Madding Crowd and The Limey, died in August, aged 87.
The Oscar nominee played transgender nightclub performer Bernadette in 1994’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and was set to reprise the part, according to the film’s director, Stephan Elliot.
Deadline reports that the film had a working title of Priscilla Queen of the Desert 2 and that Stamp had “absolutely refused” to return if the sequel was a repeat of the original.
Elliot admits that it took him decades to find a plot for the sequel but once Stamp and the other core cast, including Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce, had agreed to make the film, the Covid pandemic derailed the production.
In addition, Stamp was conscious that he “wasn’t getting any younger” but was adamant that he wasn’t going to be replaced by AI or a “digital clone” of himself.
With this in mind, Elliot got the “blessing of him and his family, Guy, Hugo and the financiers” and “decided to pre-shoot all the Bernadette scenes”.
When it’s time to complete the film, Elliot said that he will use “CGI face replacement” technology to round off Stamp’s performance.
“I’m still trying to work it out, but the tech is there,” he said. “We’d have to get a stand-in actor and Terence would be put onto that actor. I’m going to have to have an actor playing Terence Stamp. I mean, it is scary.”
Elliot added that this was the easiest solution for the film. “We’ve got Terence in the can as Bernadette,” he said. “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.”
The first movie, a commercial and critical hit, follows a transgender woman and two drag queens as they tour the desert plains of southern Australia in an old school bus named Priscilla, performing classic disco hits.
Speaking of the new movie, Elliot said that it’s “very unusual” and about “old age”.
“It’s very touching,” he explained. “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.”
