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I left Doctor Who, because I could not get along with the senior people. I left, because of politics. I did not see eye-to-eye, with them. I didn't agree with the way things were being run. I didn't like the culture that had grown up, around the series. So, I left. I felt, over a principle. I thought to remain, which would have made me a lot of money and given me huge visibility, the price I would have had to pay, was to eat a lot of shit. I'm not being funny about that. I didn't want to do that and, it comes to the art of it, in a way. I feel that if you run your career and-we are vulnerable as actors and, we are constantly humiliating ourselves auditioning. But, if you allow that to go on, on a grand scale. You will loose, whatever it is about you and, it will be present in your work.
If you allow your desire to be successful and visible and financially secure. If you allow that, to make you throw shades on your parents, on your upbringing, then you're knackered. You've got to keep something back, for yourself. Because, it'll be present in your work. A purity or an idealism is essential, or, you'll become-you've got to have standards, no matter how hard work that is. So, it makes it hard road, really. You know. It's easy to find a job, when you've got no morals, you've got nothing to be compromised you can go 'yeah, yeah. That doesn't matter. That director can bully that prop man and, I won't say anything about it'. But, then when that director comes to you and says 'I think you should play it like this'. You've surely got to go 'How can I respect you, when you behave like that?'
So, that's why I left. My face didn't fit and, I'm sure they were glad to see the back of me. The important thing is that I succeeded. It was a great part. I loved playing him. I loved connecting with that audience. Because I've always acted for adults and the suddenly, your acting for children. Who are far more tasteful, they will not be bullshitted. It's either good, or it's bad. They don't schmooze at after show parties, with cocktails"
"[I decided to leave] well before we finished series two. There's a strange kind of a theme of... There's a few articles I've seen on the internet or whatever about how I've left Misfits to go off and do films and that's all so bulls**t, that's complete nonsense. I left Misfits to go off and do other stuff, completely unspecific. I just left because a rolling stone gathers no moss, as they say, and I just wanted to p*ss off and do other things, you know? It's nice that the show's successful but it doesn't mean complete blind and unadmonished loyalty -- 'If something is very successful you should stick to it like a barnacle!' That's definitely not my thinking." Continue reading...
I think I'm bound to silence! I'm not sure what I can say. Well, Morgana has entirely changed in the year away. She's been out of Camelot, and she's probably been hunted and had to hide who she is. So to go from being such a privileged woman to being a hunted fugitive is going to change her. It's going to make her harder, stronger and more committed. A year has also passed with everyone knowing that she is magical, so that's also going to have changed how everybody else views her and how she views herself. I'm quite lucky. I'm probably completely biased, but I always say that I have the best character in the show. From season to season, I think she's changed the most, and this season is no different. I know that everybody will be shocked by what she does in the first two episodes, and how she looks. It's a complete new image for her. Very cool! Continue reading...
To be honest, the first time I met Aidan. I knew he was somebody we’d only be borrowing from movie stardom. In the U.S. you’ll contract actors for seven seasons -- we don’t have the finances to do that. So every time we start a new series, we have to renegotiate with the actors and see whom we have left. Sure enough, Peter Jackson came along and saw Aidan and whisked him away to New Zealand. The thing is, I was kind of preparing myself for that on series 2 when I wrote the sequence where he kills all those people on the train. I always knew that would ultimately be the reason for the character’s exit, whether it happened at the end of series 3 or 33. Continue reading...
"[The show] will have to change for a third series because they will have finished their community service. It's a difficult one, because they commissioned it as a Christmas special and they said they wanted it stand-alone, but in reality the transmission date will be a week after the end of the second series. So to the audience, no mater how it's marketed, they will be thinking it's just an episode seven.
"So it does feel different to the other episodes but you can't ignore that everyone will have been watching the week before. I suppose what it does, is it provides a link between the second series and the third series, where it sort of gives a hint of the direction we might head in for a third season, with their personal situations, while not ignoring what's happened in series two." Continue reading...
"I'm aware that it's a bit of a poison chalice. What I did was take the character, Dirk Gently, and his detection method, and write a new story. It has elements from the book, obviously, in it, but it's kind of a different story. Because if you've ever read the book, the story in there isn't really adaptable for TV. Especially not on the budget we've been made to do it on, because it involves an alien planet and all sorts of weird and wacky ideas." Continue reading...What do you think? Personally, I can't help feeling anxious because Overman's most recent series, BBC2's Vexed, has been a crushing disappointment and makes me suspect he's not naturally adept at writing mysteries. So hearing that Dirk Gently won't follow the plot of any of the novels, but instead pay homage to certain elements while carving out its own unique path, has me slightly worried. I understand why Overman's decided to do this (not least for budgetary reasons), but is he the man for the job?
"DirecTV wants us to do the show that we've been doing. If anything, they want us to push what we've been doing even further. They're encouraging us to be as bold as possible, which is something we strive for anyway. There have been no discussions about altering the show in any fundamental way." Continue reading...One thing that amused me about the interview is hearing that Zelman and Kessler are excited by the fact The 101 Network don't have breaks for advertising. Here in the UK, Damages has always been shown on the advert-less BBC1, so it slipped my mind that US audiences have been putting up with commercial breaks.
"It's a new model for the future, of BBC Worldwide actually becoming a production partner and making stuff for themselves. Their big thing in America is Dancing With The Stars, which is the American Strictly Come Dancing. They sell that format all over the world, but they actually make that for American television and it's hugely successful, more successful than Strictly is -- this year it overtook American Idol for the first time ever. So that's part of building up a production base here, of taking British ideas -- and new ideas -- and making them on a worldwide scale. It's a really good ambition, I think, and it's going to have to be the case more and more. If you look at things like Dickens adaptations and Cranford, they haven’t been able to afford themselves for decades -- they're all made with money from Boston and stuff like that. Co-partner funding has been the future for decades now." Continue reading...
