By Rob Alarcon in New York City

Best known for adding his voice and likeness to Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Andy Serkis reunites with Peter Jackson for his latest masterpiece, "King Kong," opening in theaters December 16th. Jackson and Serkis once again utilize the same groundbreaking motion capture technology from "Lord of the Rings" in order to bring the king of all apes to life. Serkis can also be seen in his human form as Lumpy the Cook, in service aboard the tramp steamer Venture, bound for Skull Island. "King Kong" also stars Jack Black, Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody.

Below, Rob talks to Andy in a one-on-one chat about adding character and emotion to Kong.

Q: What challenges did you face bringing Kong to life that were different from Gollum?

ANDY: The hugest challenge, I suppose, was with Gollum there was a vast amount of dialogue to describe his psychological state. He talks a lot to other people and to himself, so we get to know him through the way he speaks. With Kong, it’s all about behavior and internalized emotions, plus the whole range of technical ramifications that went with it.

With Gollum, I was able to be shot on set, in and amongst Sean Astin and Elijah Wood because we were all the same scale. Of course, working with Naomi, I had to be raised up on ladders, and cranes, and so on. That was a challenge. Having said that, we actually overcame that pretty quickly and formed a real bond and an intimacy. So that was the on set performance. Then, of course, when it came to the motion capture, which was immediately after principal photography, this time we used facial motion capture, as opposed to Gollum. My performance was filmed on 35 millimeter and then the animators copied my expression. With this, it was facial motion capture, so I had 132 markers stuck to my and that was driving Kong’s face. Most of it, though, was proportionality, because, you know, Kong’s arms a lot longer than his legs. With Gollum, it was proportional. Every single set on the motion capture stage had to be built on two levels so I could walk on my knuckles and have my feet on the ground and then they shrunk my legs on the CG Kong puppet. It was like learning this weird dance before even being able to do gorilla behavior or even think about the character. I was operating on three levels for each scene we did.

Q: How long was your learning curve and did it take a lot of trial and error?

ANDY: Oh yeah. Over the course of principal photography we R&D’d a lot of stuff and it took time. Eventually, we got it to a state so that when principal photography ended, we were up and running.

Q: I’m sure you had an idea in your head about the way things were supposed to look. Were you happy with the way Kong came out on the screen?

ANDY: Actually, on this, I had less of an idea than with Gollum because the dialogue led the way so much. A lot of it was driven by Naomi and our relationship and allowing things to happen in the moment and keeping those moments truthful. Then, when I came to do motion capture on my own, I was directed by Philipa Boyens and Fran Walsh and Christian Rivers. The luxury of working on the motion capture stage is that you can experiment and I would say that we all went into it saying we don’t know how we’re going to do this, to bring Kong to life. Different people had different opinions in terms of his personality, but really it was about experimenting with how close to human emotion and how gorilla-fied it would be. We would always play the scenes across the spectrum, seven or eight different ways for each take.

Q: Did you ever get to the point where you were doing these actions subconsciously, or were you always very conscious of how it was going to come out.

ANDY: I think it got to a point where it was pretty natural. Once I got into character, I was just doing things. On the motion capture stage, I had small TV screens with Naomi’s close ups from the scenes that we shot together. I always had that to play off, so I always had her there to link it in. Also, we used Barbie Dolls as well for the more physical stuff so I could at least sense the scale when he’s being protective of her and when he’s charging down the street with her.

Q: You seem to be the go to guy for bringing CGI characters to life. How do you feel about that?

ANDY: People have said that to me, but it’s the second character I’ve played. The more I think about, it’s sort of fairly normal an, actually, in terms of acting I don’t think, “Oh well there’s conventional acting and then there’s CG acting.” The only difference is you’re not wearing a costume. In terms of an actor, performing a role, there’s no difference between approaching any other conventional role on the screen and approaching a CG character. It’s all about embodying that character and finding a way to express the emotions of that character.

Q: So you saw no difference between doing Kong and doing Lumpy?

ANDY: No. He has a physicality and a way of behaving which is built up around his experiences of life and what he is, and Kong the same. I think that’s why Peter wanted an actor to play Kong and make decisions for Kong and not have a committee decision about what this gorilla might do. He has a personality and that has to be helmed and emotionally guided through the arc of the story and obviously to reciprocate the relationship with Anne.

Q: Was it interesting for you to play to characters in the same movie on different sides of the conflict?

ANDY: Lumpy was fun to do and it was nice to get out of the motion capture stage every now and then.

Q: Why did you decide to take on this project?

ANDY: I wasn’t going to turn down Peter Jackson. People did laugh at me when I said this was what I was going to be doing. They could somehow get their heads around Gollum because of the dialogue, but with this it was a lot more abstract. I’m glad that we did Gollum first because otherwise I think people would have a hell of a time understanding how my performance comes through into the final manifestation.

Q: So you drew a lot off of Gollum, obviously...

ANDY: Well with the technical stuff, it was a given, but there were these whole [other] issues going on.

Q: The boundaries between traditional acting and what we’re seeing with CG now are really becoming blurred. Do you think a character like Kong should be considered for best actor or best supporting actor awards?

ANDY: I don’t know whether it should be a separate category because from an acting point of view, its pure acting. From a visual effects point of view, they have their own thing. I suppose it all comes down to this gray area of what is enhancement of an actor’s performance. Actors’ performances are enhanced in many different ways. There’s costume, makeup, lights, choice of shop, slow motion, music, prosthetic makeup, whatever. People wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with Mickey Rourke playing Marv in "Sin City," although he’s totally unrecognizable, but for some reason, people have a problem with CG because it’s just a computer that’s created this character. I suppose the thing is that it’s not going to go away, it’s only going to be used more.

"King Kong" opens in theaters December 14th.