Andrzej Grabowski: Up to a point I hated the Kiepski

It started with a meeting in Wrocław with Okił Khamidov, a director of Tajik origin, a guy who graduated from a Moscow film school, who did not know then that for the next seven years he would be in charge of a film crew of over three hundred episodes of Kiepski. Practically in the dark and without any casting, he accepted me as the future - note - Ludwik Kiepski. We shook hands, I got an envelope with the scripts for the first three episodes and we arranged to record in a few days.*

When I read the script of the first episode after returning to Krakow, I felt a little sick. But well, I always tell myself in such situations that I play different roles because it's my profession, not a hobby. Little money, but still. Besides, I was convinced that a series like this could not catch on and would certainly disappear from the air before it appeared - that's all there will be.

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According to the agreement, after a few days I went to Lower Silesia. The producers asked me to bring old family photos with me to the filming, which would enrich the set design. Unfortunately, I'm not the type of hamster to archive my past and the pictures don't stick to me at all. I don't do it myself, and when I do, I give it to someone. However, I dug up a portrait from Zofia Kossak-Szczucka's play entitled The expected guest, on whom I look like my grandfather. I'm parted in the middle, a serious mustache, and an ornamented tie under a white collar - a nineteenth-century manufactory owner as if painted. This portrait hangs in the Kiepskis' living room to this day.

On the first day on the set, I stood next to my "ancestor" and thought: I wonder what my grandfather's name would be? And it occurred to me that his name might be Ferdynand Kiepski! Why not? And why shouldn't my name be Ferdinand - only Louis? What kind of name is that, Louis? And Ferdynand Kiepski - that means something! There was, after all, Archduke Ferdinand I and a dog invented by Ludwik Kern who really wanted to become a man - Ferdynand the Magnificent.

To this day, I remember with fondness the opening credits of the animated series based on Kern's book - it was read by Edward Dziewoński.

Andrzej Grabowski as Ferdek Kiepski on the set of the series 'The World According to the Kiepskis' (photo: Dominik Dziecinny / Agencja Gazeta)

(...)

I remember walking with Darek Gnatowski, or Bacon in the series, through the Wrocław market square after the first shooting.

- You'll see, Andrzej, in a few months we'll be accosted here.

- What are you crazy?

- You'll see.

Meanwhile, the day after the broadcast of the third, pilot episode of Kiepskie Polsat, without hesitation, ordered the next ten, and during their implementation, an order for another thirty appeared. Later, we shot dozens of episodes of the series every year. Actors quit theaters and devoted their professional lives only to this series.

At one point, its viewership reached 8 million viewers. In 2001, Tomek Kurzewski, the creator of the ATM brand and a man with a head for business, moved the production to a newly built film studio in Bielany Wrocławskie. The layout of the Kiepski family's apartment in the new place has been precisely reproduced, including wallpapers, door frames, furniture, carpets and all trinkets. "The late grandfather Ferdinand" hung in exactly the same place. A trained eye will find only one difference between the tenement house in Podwale and the studio - it is the width of the corridor. In the studio, it was extended, which greatly facilitated the work of operators. Today, ATM has several film studios in Poland. In one of them, at Wał Miedzeszyński in Warsaw, we record subsequent editions of Dancing with the Stars.

After a few months, Darek's prophecy came true, and the curse began for me. It used to happen that when I came to a city to play my cabaret show, there were literally welcoming committees - in honor of Ferdek, of course!

I remember how in Łódź, after the performance, I had to run away from the stage escorted by security. I sneaked into a room where the gentlemen hid me for a good half an hour. I sat alone on a stool in the semi-darkness and only felt sorry for the Beatles and the Stones. People kept knocking and had no intention of leaving. Finally someone pulled my car to the back door, gave me the keys and said, "Run!" I ran into the shoots, but the cheering crowd rushed after me. I just waved goodbye to them, jumped like Bruce Willis in Die Hard into the car and drove away. Two desperate fans clung to the doorknobs. Some madness! I really started to get scared. Fortunately, they didn't break the door handles, but I felt stupid, because I saw in the mirrors how they fell off - a completely new phenomenon for me, strange and incomprehensible.

Andrzej Grabowski during the media rehearsal for the play 'Career of Artur Ui' (photo: Adrianna Bochenek / Agencja Gazeta)

Another time, in Gorlice, after my performance, a well-known band - the star of the evening - entered the stage and I had to drive my car when leaving the party almost on stage. When the crowd saw me, the band completely lost its importance. The public flocked around my car, just to touch the bodywork - as if it would bring good fortune for the years to come. I felt almost like the pope. But luckily it passes. New stars displace old ones much faster than old ones would expect. Nowadays, I hear less and less often behind my back: "You, Ferdek! Shit! Let's go to the brewery!".

Up to a point I hated the Kiepskis, because I was still not convinced that the viewers perceive our series as we would like. That is, for them to notice this over-stupidity emerging from stupidity, which is only a means of expression here, and not the peak of our wit. The proof of this misunderstanding was the terrible and unfair reaction of my environment to The World According to the Kiepskis. I remember a phone call from Iza Cywińska.

- Andrew! God damn what shit are you playing! What are you doing?

- Iza, I'm just an actor. Give me an ambitious role, I'd love to play it. You know me.

- Being an actor obliges you to something, and here.

- Iza, have you watched the entire episode of Kiepski?

- Where! I'm not even going to. I watched three minutes. Enough forever.

- Then maybe try to watch it, maybe you'll get into it?

I think you need to see a few episodes to understand that this stupidity is not accidental there. This is a series for the ambitious and the unambitious. For some, balls are enough because of the four-letter kick, others see in it absurd irony and a mirror in which the features of Poles are clearly reflected.

(...)

In 2005, when the series has over two hundred episodes to its credit and still achieves great ratings, the person responsible for Polsat's schedule is replaced by the late Waldemar Dziki and decides to remove the Kiepskis from the air, because they are not very ambitious. After a year's break, when only reruns of the series were regularly broadcast on the air, it turned out that, according to Ferdek's theory, "trade laws are illegal"

Andrzej Grabowski in 2012 (photo: Albert Zawada / Agencja Gazeta)

- ATM was commissioned to produce forty new episodes. Meanwhile, Polsat, wanting to find out who actually watches the Kiepskis, commissioned market research. It turned out that quite a large audience are people with higher education. I was very happy and my attitude towards the Kiepskis began to change. Maybe it's like Skiba once told me - people from the lower social class don't want to see pathologies and are ashamed of what they have every day. They prefer shows like Dynasty or The Bold and the Bold because they want fairy tales about palaces, rich people and their love problems. They want to see her crying miserable, sitting on millions, and he cheating on her with a maid or some other slave. And Ferdek, however, has his national honor. If he is offended, he says: "Mr. Paździoch, you are a scumbag, you are a slob, you know it well!".

After a few years, even Iza Cywińska, while on vacation somewhere, watched a few episodes of Kiepski and told me that it was a fantastic series, better than the cinema of moral anxiety.

(...)

We never record the scenes of individual episodes chronologically, we do it with objects. When we go into the kitchen, we turn all the kitchen scenes, and then we move to the room, the hallway, etc. I could easily remember the context of all the situations when we were supposed to produce the first three episodes. Now I have seventeen scenes to record in the kitchen, and when I eat black pudding for the sixth time, although it is tasty, I can't look at it anymore, and the director shouts: "Andrzej, eat it with gusto!" Besides, I also have to remember if I am annoyed, cheerful, or maybe scared - all this is extremely exhausting.

Mentally, a person flies away. For this, you have to completely open up, hide your shame and stop making a fool of yourself by pretending that you are not a fool. I watched sitcoms where the actor played a fool, but kept "winking" at the viewer that he was just pretending, after all, he is normally very intelligent. It can't be like this - people will quickly realize that something is wrong. Fortunately, I don't study the text. I read to myself in front of the stage and I play. Only in new films do I have to learn a little - although not always either.

An actor on the stage of the Puppet Theater in Wrocław during the 'Pan Tadeusz Live' festival (photo: Maciej Świerczyński / Agencja Gazeta)

It's much easier for me in Kiepski, because Ferdek's ungrammatical language, twisting words was also invented by me. I created a character that already plays itself. However, it took several years of work. And sometimes I meet with comments that making such a funny series is pure pleasure. "You're fine! You'll fool around a bit, you'll drink beer, you'll eat those bowels. Eat not to die!" - amused Internet users write.

In general, I have the impression that those who know me only from the TV series The World According to the Kiepskis think that I live at Ćwiartki 3/4 Street in Wrocław, am unemployed and drink vodka or breweries all the time. When they see me behind the wheel, they wonder why I'm driving a car drunk - such a mix-up. Of course, I can somehow tame it in my head and think of it as a compliment. If they say about an actor that he is a real character and not an actor, it means that he played perfectly.

Recently, we've been shooting the series in shorter series than we used to, five, six days at the most, but there's still something going on in my head that affects many people in this industry. All day, however, I rotate on the set, dozens of people around me work so that I can play the best: "Mr. Andrzej, welcome, let's fix the makeup." "Put a pillow under his back." "Andrew, maybe this, that." And finally they drive me to the hotel. And I'm alone. Silence. Don't know what to do. Then the depressive thoughts come. What's all this for? After all, I live in some delusional world, and the real one is terrible. I'm in some hotel, I spend most of my life in hotels! I'm sick of it. Tomorrow I have to get up again and play all these scenes. And on the one hand I'm happy, I would like to get up and get out of this room, but on the other - I want to rest from everything. I need to rest. Maybe I'll read something, but how to read when I have Ferdek's voice in my head all the time? Sometimes I go down to the restaurant. Sometimes someone will come and talk you into doing something.

*Excerpts from the book "I am like a butterfly" by Andrzej Grabowski, Paweł Łęczuk and Jakub Jabłonka

BOOK AVAILABLE IN EBOOK OR PAPER

The book 'I am like a butterfly' by Andrzej Grabowski, Paweł Łęczuk and Jakub Jabłonka (photo: Press materials)