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Slaunch ago, or welcome to, have the picture podcast with me, Roberto Xi'in-Face.

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That's the first time anyone's ever done that, direct to camera.

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Why, where else would you do it?

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Well, I mean, I'll do an intro.

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All right.

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Hale Satan.

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But I get a lot of people quoting lines back at me, like,

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you'd shag your own sister for a slice of cheese.

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I don't have a sister.

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That makes it all the worse.

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You're f***ing perfect.

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I enjoyed the third season of misfits.

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I must confess, I actually never watched seasons 4 and 5.

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Nathan has a sort of love story with this Welsh girl.

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I mean, she's pregnant.

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So Rob's her belly and goes, it's like having a threesome.

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That was on the cutting room floor.

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That was on the cutting room floor.

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Some of my favorite stuff of Klaus is in the second season,

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where he's trying to run away from the mad cult that he's created.

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You know, everyone, I'm a complete fake.

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And I don't believe it.

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Oh, you know, they're too invested in it.

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You see that video?

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John Cena apologising in Fluent Mandarin to the Communist Party.

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In Fluent Perfect Mandarin.

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It's like this is the most confusing thing I've seen all week.

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That was all good tic-toc stuff.

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That was all good shit.

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Especially the bit about the Chinese Communist Party.

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I can video or like, you know, that kind of thing.

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It's like, I'm clueless.

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How long can get away with insulting the Chinese Communist Party before you get cancelled off tic-toc altogether?

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Not too long, I imagine.

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I once worked for the fellow who owns American tic-toc now.

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Oh, really?

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Yeah, and he owns like baseball teams.

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And he's been trying for decades to buy a Hawaiian island.

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Kui.

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But I don't think he's managed to succeed in buying it.

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I think the poor Hawaiians have managed to defend him off for the time being.

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Such a fucking mad oligarchy culture, isn't it?

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We're living in now.

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Yeah.

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And it makes it just by entire countries.

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Yeah.

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And it makes a change if, because normally people like that get their way, don't they?

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So it's, if he's not been able to get by itself in Ireland.

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Because then the people will talk them to fuck off then.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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That's, you know, the second home.

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I've been trying to buy the island of white for the past couple of years.

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But if you've received serious pushback, you know.

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Who's been put, who's been, who would push you back on the island of,

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on the island of white?

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David, David Ike.

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He lives there.

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You should get him on.

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Is that his base of operations?

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That's his base of operations, yeah.

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It's that's another way of saying he lives there.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, he lives in the island of white, David.

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Yeah.

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There's a, there's a big film culture on the island of white, I would say, right?

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Have you ever shot anything?

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No, I've never shot it there, but I did go through the island of white,

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the Mingela Film Festival on the island of white, because Anthony Mingela came from there.

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And his whole family come from there because they're kind of rich ice cream makers

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from the island of white.

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Well, that is from his family originally Italian, I want to say.

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Yeah.

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And they moved over to the UK.

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They must have done, yeah.

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Yeah, we had Jack Davenport, the actor on the pod, you know?

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Oh, yeah.

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I know of him, yeah.

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Yeah, he worked with Mingela on Tanta Mr Ripley,

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with Matt Damon and...

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Yeah, was he in that, yeah?

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Yeah, he's got kind of like a supporting role,

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but he had lots to say about like working with Mingela at the gallery,

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Hoffman and like Matt Damon and so, yeah.

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That's coming out tomorrow, that episode, actually, that's all, all scheduled.

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Jack Davenport, don't velvety, sexy voice.

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Hello.

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Hello.

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That's lovely.

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It's actually not too far off.

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What was he...

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What was he, you know, watched recently, The Morning Show?

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Did you see that?

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No, I didn't.

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It was good.

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It was good.

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I was sort of resisted it for a while.

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It was like, oh, holier than thou, American bullshit.

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Here we go.

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But actually, it was very intelligently written, really well done.

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And, you know, he has a sort of a...

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The part of a...

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Yeah, sort of ex of Jennifer Aniston's character,

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who's kind of constantly picking up her pieces, you know.

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But it was good.

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Yeah, it's worth the watch.

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It's really good.

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I had two hours of him.

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We chatted for a couple hours, and it was just like, his velvety voice.

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I know it was like, what do you mean?

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It was just like two hours of just velvet.

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And the liquid velvet in the years, you know.

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Was it very soothing?

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It was.

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I was like, that didn't actually...

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No, it's up, not because...

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Not because what you're saying was, oh, it's up.

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It's just because his voice was just...

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The ASMR of his voice was just like, sorry, sorry, okay.

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Yeah.

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He just pretends to doors off.

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I've so...

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I've so far...

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Sorry.

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I've so far never dosed off in one of these.

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And so far, I've never had a guest dosed off either.

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So have you ever been to a live event and dosed off in it?

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I actually, I've only...

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No, I haven't actually.

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Really?

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I've never dosed off watching movies at home,

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but I've never gone to something and dosed off.

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I've done that many, many times.

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Why have I done that?

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No one else? Have you ever anyone else done that?

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Yeah, yeah.

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I just feel too guilty about like, if I miss the movie,

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I'm like, oh, shit.

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You know, I've got to have to get back and say,

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be too busy to stop the sleep from overhauling me.

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You know, especially in theater, you know?

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I've fallen asleep in some really good shows.

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Shows I've been enjoying, you know?

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Well, I think theatre, they come down a lot hard.

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I've heard actors, if they notice someone

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in the front rowdosing, they'll just be like,

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oh, fucksake.

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And I like target the guy in the front row.

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They come down hard on it.

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Although I did play in the old Vic,

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and every Wednesday, the blue rinse brigade

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would come in in the bosses for the, for the matinee.

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And half of them would be asleep about 15 minutes into the show,

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you know what I mean?

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And you should have just learned not to take it too personally.

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They're just having an expensive nap.

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It was once, right?

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I was at the RSC.

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I was there, I was going to do some work with Trevor None.

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And he was, he had a show on Volpone.

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So I went along to the show.

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And I was sat up on the kind of mezzanine level.

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And I had a seat and it was an old, old man standing behind me.

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And he was like, oh, I love the theatre.

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And I said, it was, come here and sit down next to me.

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We can cheer this seat, come here.

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And the lights came up, the show started and he went,

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and at the interval everyone broke into applause and he went,

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I just loved the theatre.

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It was just fast asleep for the whole thing, you know.

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I had a similar experience when I went to a gig at the Playdeum, John Cale,

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you know, for the Velvet Underground.

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Love John Cale.

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He's amazing, isn't he?

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He did a gig a couple of years ago there for his, for his latest album,

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at the time his latest album.

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And there was a bloke, it was packed out.

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There was an old bloke about 60 years old,

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sitting behind me, directly behind me.

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And he did the same for E-Fell asleep.

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But I don't know what the play was like, but Cale, you know,

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he's got that avant-garde kind of drone sound

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and he's like playing the violin and all that shit.

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And then like this guy was just completely unfaithful.

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You just slept through the hole, this like roof-shaking gig.

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And then like there was a song where Cale was playing these drones anywhere

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and it was in like these long sort of hand-zimmer kind of notes like,

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like that, and then space and then do.

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And then in the spaces in between show you just hit,

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he would go, you would hear.

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Humbling.

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Humbling for John Cale.

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And I could tell everyone around me,

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they were getting irritated at this guy,

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because they could hear me.

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Yeah, well, yeah.

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And they paid like, having much to see.

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Jamming a little.

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Yeah, and I, well, I just thought it was hilarious,

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because I could hear the energy in the room turning against this one guy behind me.

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And I was just like, this is brilliant.

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Should be refreshed in the lobby after the show with a stick.

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A friend of mine went to see Hamilton

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and her boyfriend had gotten them.

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No, sorry, the director we were doing a film with got her the tickets, right?

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So she went back to New York and she took her boyfriend to Hamilton.

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And they had wanted to see it for ages.

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So they're sat there in the really good seats.

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And behind them, there was this person singing along to all the songs.

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And she was like, fuck, shut up, fuck off.

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Didn't come here to listen to you, you fucking arrogant prick, right?

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And then after a while she was like, I'm going to say something.

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I'm going to turn around, I'm going to say something.

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And then like, the song ended and she was like,

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and it was Paul McCartney.

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She was like, oh, she's like, oh, carry on.

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He loved the show.

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He'd been to three or four or five times.

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Bloody hell.

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They didn't realize he was such a big Hamilton guy.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Wow, wow.

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Musical guy.

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To the point where he could sing along to what every song,

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for a while, he was like, you know, I know you've sold millions of albums,

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Paul, but shut the fuck off.

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You know, it's not your turn.

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People have not paid tickets to come and hear you singing,

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even though it's a lovely thing.

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It's that thing if I think sense of hubris would success

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where you think that every audience is your audience.

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Not that I think he thought that, but, you know,

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that can happen, you know.

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Have you ever done that?

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Well, you've been in a cinema or a theatre

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and like, so one's been just being jabbered on and you've said,

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it's my entire teenage life, you know.

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All we had was an outlet, social outlet of the weekend was this cinema.

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And no fucker would ever shut up during any film.

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So, you know, and we'd like we had to have sort of

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in our local cinema had to have security with big prison torches

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coming in every 10 minutes and flashing them and people to try to get them to

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shut up and then trying to get like getting the ushers

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who were teenagers themselves trying to drag other teenagers out of the cinema

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that were misbehaving.

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It was like a fucking war zone, you know.

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You know, you're just sitting there trying to enjoy your movie.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Did you ever get dragged out?

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Yeah, yeah.

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Got kicked out a few times, yeah.

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I used to work for like kissing in the back row, you know.

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That was heavily discouraged.

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00:10:07.840 --> 00:10:10.080
I've seen plenty of that because I used to work at Cineworld

254
00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:12.880
and they have this thing where instead of flashlights,

255
00:10:12.880 --> 00:10:15.280
the torches like on you go in and check with a torch,

256
00:10:15.280 --> 00:10:16.800
you go in and check with night vision goggles.

257
00:10:17.680 --> 00:10:18.240
In every...

258
00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:19.840
Jesus, that's creepy.

259
00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:21.040
It's creepy and you see...

260
00:10:21.040 --> 00:10:22.640
It's an awful little bill leering at you.

261
00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:24.960
It's watching your film.

262
00:10:24.960 --> 00:10:26.960
I'll be honest, it does feel that sometimes it did feel a bit like

263
00:10:26.960 --> 00:10:28.800
science and lambs because you go in

264
00:10:28.800 --> 00:10:31.600
and like you're checking every single screen like regularly

265
00:10:31.600 --> 00:10:33.840
and you see some shit.

266
00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:34.640
I'll tell you that for a fact.

267
00:10:34.640 --> 00:10:35.840
You see some stuff like...

268
00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:37.920
Like like sexual favors and are...

269
00:10:37.920 --> 00:10:38.960
Big time, like...

270
00:10:38.960 --> 00:10:42.720
It's gone from kissing in the back row to other...

271
00:10:42.720 --> 00:10:44.800
I remember one time, I think it was that

272
00:10:44.880 --> 00:10:47.360
a Russell Crowe movie, the Pope's exorcist.

273
00:10:47.360 --> 00:10:48.640
That's not a sexy movie.

274
00:10:48.640 --> 00:10:49.680
It's not a sexy movie.

275
00:10:49.680 --> 00:10:51.120
It's not an aphrodisiac, is it?

276
00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:53.920
Why should Russell Crowe do an exorcism?

277
00:10:53.920 --> 00:10:55.120
Whoa!

278
00:10:55.120 --> 00:10:56.720
This is really getting me mised.

279
00:10:56.720 --> 00:10:59.760
But well, I mean, it was working for some people

280
00:10:59.760 --> 00:11:01.520
because I went in to check it

281
00:11:01.520 --> 00:11:03.360
and I turned on the goggles, you know.

282
00:11:03.360 --> 00:11:05.040
And literally, this is policy, you have to do this.

283
00:11:05.040 --> 00:11:06.640
I wasn't, you know, I wasn't just able to look

284
00:11:06.640 --> 00:11:08.560
and then at the back row...

285
00:11:08.560 --> 00:11:11.200
At the back row, I see this bloke

286
00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:12.240
and he's got like a...

287
00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:13.040
And it's just like a bloke.

288
00:11:13.040 --> 00:11:15.760
He looks at first place, just like a bloke sitting on his own.

289
00:11:15.760 --> 00:11:17.680
But then he's got a coat over his lap,

290
00:11:17.680 --> 00:11:20.000
which was bobbed up and down, the classic one.

291
00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:22.400
And then I see this and I do it like a double take.

292
00:11:22.400 --> 00:11:23.680
It's like, is that what I think it is?

293
00:11:23.680 --> 00:11:27.200
And then, a second later, he sort of looks to his right

294
00:11:27.200 --> 00:11:28.880
and sees me looking at him.

295
00:11:28.880 --> 00:11:30.320
And through the night vision goggles,

296
00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:32.480
he makes direct eye contact with me,

297
00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:34.160
whilst he's getting sucked off.

298
00:11:34.160 --> 00:11:34.960
I'm a sight...

299
00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:35.840
I'm going to involve you.

300
00:11:35.840 --> 00:11:37.440
I'm going to involve you over.

301
00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:38.160
I was a...

302
00:11:38.160 --> 00:11:40.720
I was an o-willing kind of mish.

303
00:11:40.880 --> 00:11:42.800
But then again, you're getting paid a wage

304
00:11:42.800 --> 00:11:44.080
to sort of, you know,

305
00:11:44.080 --> 00:11:45.600
perv on people in the cinema.

306
00:11:45.600 --> 00:11:47.680
Yeah, it was minimum, but, I mean,

307
00:11:47.680 --> 00:11:50.080
it's better than nothing.

308
00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:52.320
You know, some people do that for free.

309
00:11:52.320 --> 00:11:53.840
Yeah.

310
00:11:53.840 --> 00:11:54.640
Actually, that was it.

311
00:11:54.640 --> 00:11:57.120
Like someone, a colleague of mine, went into check

312
00:11:57.120 --> 00:11:59.440
and she was like, I don't know if I'm seeing what I'm seeing,

313
00:11:59.440 --> 00:12:00.720
but Billy, which you mind checking.

314
00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:03.040
I was like, all right, fine, I went and did it.

315
00:12:03.040 --> 00:12:05.200
I was like, yep, that's exactly what it is.

316
00:12:05.200 --> 00:12:06.560
Let's get management in.

317
00:12:06.560 --> 00:12:07.200
And then...

318
00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:08.080
What do you do then?

319
00:12:08.080 --> 00:12:08.560
Why don't I know?

320
00:12:08.560 --> 00:12:10.320
This is why I wasn't the manager,

321
00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:13.200
because I was like, just jabbed them with a riding crop.

322
00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:14.880
I think they're like that.

323
00:12:14.880 --> 00:12:17.600
The riding crop, it's a riding crop before I might be into that.

324
00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:20.640
With what do they call that thing that they zap cows with?

325
00:12:20.640 --> 00:12:21.440
A cattle prod.

326
00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:22.880
Cattle prod, that's what you need.

327
00:12:24.880 --> 00:12:26.160
I think it was quite another true sieve,

328
00:12:26.160 --> 00:12:28.560
like they sort of tiptoe that the stairs were like,

329
00:12:28.560 --> 00:12:32.320
yeah, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop doing that.

330
00:12:34.640 --> 00:12:38.400
Well, it's the most sort of limperisted kind of, you know,

331
00:12:38.400 --> 00:12:40.320
sort of deterrent, isn't it?

332
00:12:40.320 --> 00:12:43.280
Just stop it, just stop that now.

333
00:12:44.880 --> 00:12:45.440
Yeah.

334
00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:45.920
Yeah.

335
00:12:45.920 --> 00:12:47.120
Are we, are we rolling?

336
00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:47.520
Yeah.

337
00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:48.960
I can go.

338
00:12:48.960 --> 00:12:50.160
That was all good TikTok stuff.

339
00:12:50.160 --> 00:12:51.040
That was all good shit.

340
00:12:51.040 --> 00:12:53.040
Especially the bit about the Chinese Communist Party.

341
00:12:54.880 --> 00:12:56.560
I'm gonna have to do like John Senna

342
00:12:56.560 --> 00:12:58.960
and learn Chinese to apologise, isn't it?

343
00:13:00.160 --> 00:13:01.600
Did you see that video?

344
00:13:01.600 --> 00:13:02.320
No, I didn't.

345
00:13:02.320 --> 00:13:06.000
John Senna, apologising in fluent Mandarin

346
00:13:06.080 --> 00:13:10.480
to the Communist Party about the fact that he'd said about his latest film,

347
00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:14.720
how Taiwan was going to be the first country to see this movie.

348
00:13:15.680 --> 00:13:19.040
And so the Standing Politburo Committee took serious offence,

349
00:13:19.040 --> 00:13:20.480
because they're like, that's not a country.

350
00:13:21.280 --> 00:13:23.120
And if you wanted to be shown in our country,

351
00:13:23.680 --> 00:13:26.880
you're going to have to revoke that statement and apologise.

352
00:13:26.880 --> 00:13:27.680
And he did.

353
00:13:27.680 --> 00:13:30.160
In fluent, perfect Mandarin.

354
00:13:31.440 --> 00:13:35.120
It's like this is the most confusing thing I've seen all week, you know?

355
00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:36.880
Is a man of many skills.

356
00:13:36.880 --> 00:13:38.000
Yeah, he is, yeah.

357
00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:38.880
In fairness to him.

358
00:13:38.880 --> 00:13:42.080
Invisibility, you know, he bends over to the man, you know it.

359
00:13:42.080 --> 00:13:43.360
Chinese Communist Man.

360
00:13:44.800 --> 00:13:46.640
All their muscles and see where it gets you.

361
00:13:46.640 --> 00:13:48.000
Well, they've got a lot of ammunition.

362
00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:48.960
I guess they could probably, you know,

363
00:13:48.960 --> 00:13:50.640
you don't want to get on the wrong side of...

364
00:13:50.640 --> 00:13:51.680
That's it, yeah.

365
00:13:51.680 --> 00:13:54.960
Yeah, they've got a big old marketplace on there for Senna.

366
00:13:56.240 --> 00:13:58.720
Well, a big old marketplace for like most movies, just kind of...

367
00:13:58.720 --> 00:14:01.280
I feel like more and more Hollywood is kind of catering more and more to like,

368
00:14:01.280 --> 00:14:03.280
you know, Chinese government Chinese audiences.

369
00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:05.040
Chinese people call that soy sauce.

370
00:14:06.400 --> 00:14:09.280
So when Hollywood movies put a bit of Chinese in there.

371
00:14:10.880 --> 00:14:11.600
Yeah, I don't know.

372
00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:13.120
Oh, there's a bit of soy sauce there.

373
00:14:14.080 --> 00:14:16.160
To appeal to us, you know.

374
00:14:16.160 --> 00:14:17.520
Yeah, I've been in a few of them.

375
00:14:17.520 --> 00:14:18.160
Oh, yeah.

376
00:14:18.160 --> 00:14:18.560
Yeah.

377
00:14:18.560 --> 00:14:20.080
Was the Mortal Engines kind of like that?

378
00:14:20.080 --> 00:14:22.160
Yeah, the Mortal Engines was a bit of that.

379
00:14:22.160 --> 00:14:23.520
Geostorm.

380
00:14:23.520 --> 00:14:24.560
Oh, of course.

381
00:14:24.560 --> 00:14:26.320
The greatest 4DX movie ever made.

382
00:14:26.320 --> 00:14:27.280
Oh, really, yeah.

383
00:14:27.280 --> 00:14:28.400
I heard such good things about that.

384
00:14:28.400 --> 00:14:29.760
I didn't see it as that official.

385
00:14:29.760 --> 00:14:31.200
Well, I heard it was like,

386
00:14:31.200 --> 00:14:33.040
that was the way to see that film was 4DX.

387
00:14:34.080 --> 00:14:37.120
I can't wait in there because I've never actually watched it.

388
00:14:37.120 --> 00:14:37.680
I really?

389
00:14:37.680 --> 00:14:38.400
No, really.

390
00:14:38.400 --> 00:14:39.200
I've never seen it.

391
00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:41.120
You and Gerald Butler, you didn't like...

392
00:14:41.120 --> 00:14:42.880
No, I got on a storm with him.

393
00:14:42.880 --> 00:14:43.840
A Geostorm.

394
00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:44.480
Yeah.

395
00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:47.200
Which didn't even rehearse that.

396
00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:48.240
I mean, come on.

397
00:14:48.240 --> 00:14:48.560
It's good.

398
00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:49.120
It's good stuff.

399
00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:53.760
But I didn't know I just couldn't ever bring myself to sit down and watch it.

400
00:14:53.760 --> 00:14:54.240
Really?

401
00:14:54.240 --> 00:14:54.640
Yeah.

402
00:14:54.640 --> 00:14:55.920
There's some stuff like that.

403
00:14:55.920 --> 00:14:57.120
You just sort of be like,

404
00:14:57.120 --> 00:15:00.400
especially the bigger stuff where maybe your part is more marginal.

405
00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:02.400
You're just like, yeah, whatever you mean.

406
00:15:02.400 --> 00:15:02.880
It's a bit...

407
00:15:02.880 --> 00:15:05.520
I suppose like, you know, some people,

408
00:15:05.520 --> 00:15:07.840
you know, people often ask that question,

409
00:15:07.840 --> 00:15:09.360
do you watch your own stuff?

410
00:15:09.360 --> 00:15:10.320
Do you, you know...

411
00:15:11.520 --> 00:15:13.680
And sometimes, yeah, most of the time, yes.

412
00:15:13.680 --> 00:15:17.600
But then there's also this sense of the art

413
00:15:17.600 --> 00:15:20.640
having gone through several filters of other creativity

414
00:15:20.640 --> 00:15:22.240
by the time it reaches the screen.

415
00:15:22.960 --> 00:15:26.560
So the thing, the idea that you had on the day for the scene, let's say,

416
00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:31.600
has been remixed so many times and kind of gone through the filter

417
00:15:31.600 --> 00:15:34.800
and for the purposes of the editor and the director.

418
00:15:34.800 --> 00:15:37.280
Quite a few different times that what you see

419
00:15:38.720 --> 00:15:43.360
may not resemble what you tried to do on the day, you know.

420
00:15:43.360 --> 00:15:47.600
And that can be kind of demoralizing and jarring if you're not ready for it.

421
00:15:47.600 --> 00:15:49.760
You can kind of put you off watching your own stuff.

422
00:15:50.800 --> 00:15:53.600
And so it's a bit, I suppose I like in it too, you know,

423
00:15:54.560 --> 00:15:57.360
a singer writing a song, producing a song,

424
00:15:57.360 --> 00:16:01.520
and then someone coming along and sampling the song, you know,

425
00:16:01.520 --> 00:16:02.560
and then someone saying,

426
00:16:02.560 --> 00:16:06.320
oh, do you see your work in that person who sampled your work?

427
00:16:06.320 --> 00:16:08.160
And you go, no, not really.

428
00:16:08.160 --> 00:16:10.320
Because that's a whole different song, you know?

429
00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:10.800
Yeah.

430
00:16:10.800 --> 00:16:12.320
So that's what it feels like.

431
00:16:12.320 --> 00:16:14.080
And is that because of like the way the editor

432
00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:16.880
will might take your performance and recut it and re-encly it,

433
00:16:16.880 --> 00:16:19.520
and it's not what you might maybe not quite what you intended?

434
00:16:19.520 --> 00:16:21.920
Yeah, what, whatever kind of

435
00:16:21.920 --> 00:16:27.760
opaqueness of feeling that you imposed upon it when you did it, you know.

436
00:16:27.760 --> 00:16:31.600
It's gone through someone else's vision.

437
00:16:31.600 --> 00:16:33.120
And even like I watched the,

438
00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:40.000
there was a sort of promo thing that they cut together for this new series,

439
00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:43.280
I did called grown-ups, and we were at the rap party and sort of,

440
00:16:43.280 --> 00:16:46.480
you know, G everybody up and go, look at what we made, it's great.

441
00:16:47.120 --> 00:16:52.320
They sort of put together a rough cut, kind of trailer-style thing

442
00:16:52.320 --> 00:16:54.400
of the opening of the series.

443
00:16:54.400 --> 00:17:00.640
And it's a bit with me, and everybody, there's a bit, it's sort of close up bit,

444
00:17:00.640 --> 00:17:04.800
and everybody went, oh, yeah, that bit was good.

445
00:17:04.800 --> 00:17:06.640
And inside I was going, that was shit, me.

446
00:17:07.920 --> 00:17:14.480
Because there had been bits on the day that we'd filmed of the same thing

447
00:17:14.480 --> 00:17:18.960
that I thought were better, and I had a vivid memory of in terms of my performance.

448
00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:25.040
But like, really, by the time you've gone through all of that,

449
00:17:25.040 --> 00:17:29.040
and you've developed all these sort of millions of micro-attachments

450
00:17:29.040 --> 00:17:31.360
to what you think you're building,

451
00:17:32.320 --> 00:17:36.000
and then it all just gets absolutely obliterated for the final thing.

452
00:17:36.880 --> 00:17:43.280
You kind of have to just completely let it go, and that is a sort of a very Buddhist process,

453
00:17:43.280 --> 00:17:51.280
I suppose. But it can result in you feeling like you have no ownership over your screen stuff,

454
00:17:51.280 --> 00:17:52.240
which is a bit sad.

455
00:17:53.280 --> 00:17:56.240
Well, it's in some ways, that's surprising to me to hear,

456
00:17:56.240 --> 00:18:00.720
because your performances over your career have been so, they have so much energy and so much

457
00:18:00.720 --> 00:18:02.080
kind of idiosyncrasy.

458
00:18:02.080 --> 00:18:03.200
Oh, thank you.

459
00:18:03.200 --> 00:18:05.680
Oh, but it's true, like, going back to the early days,

460
00:18:05.680 --> 00:18:08.800
stuff like, you know, Misfits and Red Riding, and then Umbrella Academy,

461
00:18:08.800 --> 00:18:10.880
like, you've got such a fantastic energy on screen.

462
00:18:10.880 --> 00:18:15.280
So, the idea that someone, it's almost like there's no modulation of that,

463
00:18:15.280 --> 00:18:18.320
it's just kind of there on screen and there, it's like, take it or leave it.

464
00:18:19.040 --> 00:18:26.320
And I think in the hands of editors who have a deep love for who they're editing director-wise,

465
00:18:27.200 --> 00:18:34.400
actor-wise, music-wise, you know, you see the, you can see the admiration in the cuts,

466
00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:38.960
you know, and you can see the kind of all the oddness or the most of it left in,

467
00:18:38.960 --> 00:18:40.800
and cherished as much as possible.

468
00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:44.000
So, I think it comes down to the hands of the editor, really.

469
00:18:45.200 --> 00:18:50.080
And then the commissioners, because the commissioners have a huge hand in the edit,

470
00:18:50.080 --> 00:18:53.920
of course, you know, they're going on, and they're kind of leaning on,

471
00:18:54.480 --> 00:18:58.480
especially in the edit, because, you know, yourself, that's where things kind of come together,

472
00:18:58.480 --> 00:19:01.840
because before that you just have a big jumble of stuff,

473
00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:05.200
you know, and then you have to make some sort of story out of it, totally.

474
00:19:05.200 --> 00:19:09.760
I hear a lot of actors, they like to, one of the reasons that actors like to produce

475
00:19:09.760 --> 00:19:13.760
their own work is because it means that they can get in the editing room and have more of a say

476
00:19:13.760 --> 00:19:17.040
in what gets cut and what doesn't. I mean, is that something that you've ever thought about?

477
00:19:17.040 --> 00:19:21.920
Yeah, I think so now, because now that I've gone through the terrible agony of writing a

478
00:19:21.920 --> 00:19:26.960
couple of books, I think I could probably endure the agony of the editing room.

479
00:19:26.960 --> 00:19:33.680
And by agony, I mean, you kind of have to just self-subdivide into two different people.

480
00:19:34.400 --> 00:19:39.760
And one of them is looking at all of the quirks and oddness and kind of lovely

481
00:19:40.320 --> 00:19:43.440
spontaneity that happened on the day, and you're trying to cherish that.

482
00:19:43.440 --> 00:19:48.320
And the other person is standing behind you with his arms folded going,

483
00:19:48.320 --> 00:19:52.800
nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. All of that needs to be serving the story,

484
00:19:53.440 --> 00:19:58.640
the ultimate arc, you know, that's what this is in service, too.

485
00:19:59.120 --> 00:20:03.280
So you kind of, as they say, you know, you write with fire and edit with ice,

486
00:20:03.280 --> 00:20:09.520
or whatever it is. And so after writing books, I think I know how to do that, you know,

487
00:20:09.520 --> 00:20:13.600
so I think I'd be, I wouldn't be a pain in the arts in the editing room, I mean.

488
00:20:14.480 --> 00:20:17.200
Because you kind of have to be able to see the wood for the trees,

489
00:20:17.920 --> 00:20:19.680
have that objective kind of distance.

490
00:20:19.680 --> 00:20:26.160
Yeah, yeah, be in it and be watching yourself being in it at the same time.

491
00:20:26.720 --> 00:20:31.600
Isn't that life in a nutshell? You can say that. I mean, I remember hearing a story about a

492
00:20:31.600 --> 00:20:36.800
director, I think it was Fred Zimmerman who went after he would finish a shoot, he would take

493
00:20:36.800 --> 00:20:42.000
himself off climbing in the Alps before he went to the editor room, basically just to get his head

494
00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:45.760
out of the film that he just made so that when he came back to the edit, he could just look at it

495
00:20:45.760 --> 00:20:51.760
completely. Good idea. Yeah, good idea. Yeah, imagine climbing in the Alps could be quite life

496
00:20:51.760 --> 00:20:56.080
threatening. Yeah, yeah, because it completely meant you just had to be in the zone climbing the

497
00:20:56.080 --> 00:21:00.400
Alps and not losing his life rather than thinking about, oh, did that take, was that take any good,

498
00:21:00.400 --> 00:21:05.440
was that you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's that also that thing that Blur described as

499
00:21:05.440 --> 00:21:12.800
Conflue, where they've gone off and they've done a big thing like a tour, you know, and then they

500
00:21:12.800 --> 00:21:21.920
have to go back and sort of they're having to be a decompression process from sort of furiously

501
00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:29.040
in a kind of carnival circus way, making something to just like gripping the furniture at home.

502
00:21:30.560 --> 00:21:34.400
Yeah. And I'm all right in thinking, because looking back over your career, like, you know,

503
00:21:34.400 --> 00:21:38.400
you've done so much fantastic stuff and then, but when you were a child, I'm all right in thinking

504
00:21:38.400 --> 00:21:43.440
that this journey is an actor, creative, got started when you said to your mum one day, like, I want

505
00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:48.560
to be an actor, was that how it, and she was like, okay, was that how it started? Yeah, yeah, pretty

506
00:21:48.560 --> 00:21:54.160
much. I mean, to give that context though, I also said that I wanted to be a horse rider, I wanted

507
00:21:55.120 --> 00:22:01.280
to be, although she said no to that, because horses were too expensive. I said a lot of things

508
00:22:01.280 --> 00:22:06.800
back in the day. I remember once I was in school, and I got pulled out a class by the principal,

509
00:22:07.520 --> 00:22:12.880
but it was kind of the vibe of, oh, you're definitely not in trouble, what's going on here?

510
00:22:12.880 --> 00:22:16.480
And there was a journalist who'd come to the school to do a kind of piece,

511
00:22:17.600 --> 00:22:22.880
a kind of profile piece on one of the students, and probably because I was a precocious little

512
00:22:22.880 --> 00:22:28.720
fucker, they decided, right, he'll be the one that will do the interview. And so the journalist

513
00:22:28.720 --> 00:22:34.240
asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said a doctor, because I just couldn't

514
00:22:34.240 --> 00:22:40.240
think of anything else to say, you know, and I think it was about 12 or 13 years old. So, you know,

515
00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:47.920
I've changed my mind a lot through my childhood, but no, it was always something in the dramatic

516
00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:53.280
arts. I think it was about 12 or 13, I did a play then, and that was the true, like,

517
00:22:56.960 --> 00:23:03.360
truly religious, in a very real sense experience, you know, for the first time in my life,

518
00:23:03.360 --> 00:23:13.280
revelatory experience of high frequency connection between whatever change I was affecting in the

519
00:23:13.280 --> 00:23:19.200
audience, you know, and adults and making them laugh and everything's like, wow, that's a kick

520
00:23:19.200 --> 00:23:25.440
that was impossible to match, you know. I remember you saying once that, like, your religious experiences

521
00:23:25.440 --> 00:23:32.800
as a kid were performative, but your performative experiences were religious. Yeah, is that how it felt?

522
00:23:32.800 --> 00:23:38.000
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a good, because in the book playing dead, I was trying to figure out a

523
00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:45.280
way of talking about my own life with an angle, you know, not just, oh, and then I had my communion,

524
00:23:45.280 --> 00:23:52.000
you know, just boring as hell. But I was trying to think like, what is the point of me telling these

525
00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:56.880
stories, you know, in terms of the sort of through the lens of meditation and all that,

526
00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:02.880
and I was raised in a very kind of relaxed Catholic way, because by the time I came along,

527
00:24:03.040 --> 00:24:10.240
Ireland had started to do quite well economically, and the 90s were very prosperous and very corrupt,

528
00:24:10.240 --> 00:24:17.200
but prosperous, you know, and so religion was falling away, and at the same time in Ireland,

529
00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:23.520
there were, you know, grown adult men and women standing up on a live talk show audience,

530
00:24:23.520 --> 00:24:28.640
the late late show, in floods of tears talking about how they'd been physically and sexually abused,

531
00:24:28.720 --> 00:24:32.080
so the kind of moral cornerstone of the Catholic church was,

532
00:24:34.320 --> 00:24:39.120
a fucking phone is on airplane mode. They become so intrusive, haven't they?

533
00:24:40.480 --> 00:24:46.000
Our little spying devices in our pockets. Sorry about that. It's all good, man, it's all good.

534
00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:54.960
But what's the saying about some? Yeah, all of that kind of created this sort of interesting,

535
00:24:54.960 --> 00:25:01.760
perfect storm of religionlessness, you know, super fast secularization of Ireland, you know,

536
00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:07.200
and so we were still plotting through the initiations of Catholic sort of life,

537
00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:14.960
baptism, communion, confirmation, and it would all just felt like this weird,

538
00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:21.200
meaningless field trip, you know, this sort of like a chronic boredom in the church,

539
00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:26.000
say all in the passion of the holy lamb and the eucharistic reflection, you're like,

540
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:30.480
what the fuck does any of this mean? You know, it might supposed to be getting something out of this,

541
00:25:31.120 --> 00:25:35.840
you know, so I was always really confused by religion, so I'm kind of going, I really liked the kind of

542
00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:45.120
the convergence of large amounts of people, and that group being quiet together, that really

543
00:25:45.120 --> 00:25:49.680
kind of interest me kind of watching people being quiet, because, you know, every other space

544
00:25:50.480 --> 00:25:54.720
in my world growing up, people were always chattering at 90 miles an hour, you know,

545
00:25:54.720 --> 00:25:58.960
to me, if it was down the pub or down the sports pitch or wherever else, it was just incredibly

546
00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:06.320
social vocal space where everybody was nattering on. So there was something really intriguing about

547
00:26:06.320 --> 00:26:12.400
the church where people would just sit and kind of bow their heads together as a group, you know,

548
00:26:12.400 --> 00:26:16.720
you're thinking, that's interesting. And then, you know, it was interesting to watch religion change

549
00:26:16.800 --> 00:26:21.680
from that, I mean, it is still that in Ireland, but less so, more in the rural places,

550
00:26:22.640 --> 00:26:28.480
but now you have this kind of privatization of religion where it's a very personal question,

551
00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:33.680
isn't it, as somebody, you know, what do you believe, you know, or what's your relationship to God,

552
00:26:34.320 --> 00:26:41.520
everybody like, well, that's my private personal business. It's like, wow, that is like the

553
00:26:41.520 --> 00:26:48.640
complete opposite of what religion was, you know, what gathered, it was about gathering,

554
00:26:48.640 --> 00:26:55.120
you know, it was about community, it was about sharing something, you know. So I hold that

555
00:26:55.120 --> 00:27:01.760
on a great suspicion, that idea that somehow religion has been privatized, not in a money way,

556
00:27:01.760 --> 00:27:10.480
but, well, to some degree, but anyway, I veer off piece, so the religious experiences of my

557
00:27:10.480 --> 00:27:17.040
childhood were performative because the Catholic Church have all these kind of hoops that they make

558
00:27:17.040 --> 00:27:22.160
you jump through in the form of initiation ceremonies, and also just regular mass where you,

559
00:27:22.880 --> 00:27:27.520
you know, you get up on the pews and then you stand, sit down, then you get down your knees,

560
00:27:27.520 --> 00:27:33.280
and then you repeat what the priest tells you to repeat, and then you do the hoki-koki up the aisle,

561
00:27:33.280 --> 00:27:37.840
and then you turn around, and that's what it's like, you know, you do all the stuff, and it's sort of,

562
00:27:37.840 --> 00:27:43.600
I think this very little religion left in it, and there's a lot of compliance in it, you know.

563
00:27:45.440 --> 00:27:51.920
And then, yeah, then suddenly on stage, you know, audience participation, and telling jokes,

564
00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:59.600
and making people laugh, you know, watching a group, a room full of people, just erupt together

565
00:28:00.320 --> 00:28:08.640
all, you know, across the emotional spectrum, laughter, and, you know, sort of sorrow and joy,

566
00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:15.280
and everything, it's just thinking, this is religion, this is what it is, this is what the point

567
00:28:15.280 --> 00:28:22.320
of it is, is a high intense connectivity, you know, is that more of this, so I love doing theatre

568
00:28:22.320 --> 00:28:28.240
for that, you know, I love doing theatre, as close as I can get to Panto without having to do Panto,

569
00:28:28.320 --> 00:28:32.320
the happier I am. Have you ever done Panto, am I just...

570
00:28:32.320 --> 00:28:39.760
Only in the form of, well, that first player did ever, which was, which was called Oliver with a twist,

571
00:28:40.560 --> 00:28:46.160
which was basically Panto, and which was just a school play, but then a couple of years ago,

572
00:28:46.160 --> 00:28:51.760
we did with Neil and I on stage, and that was basically Panto. I mean, there was musical

573
00:28:51.840 --> 00:28:57.280
interludes, the audience were shouting and roaring, they were all drinking, you know, there's

574
00:28:57.280 --> 00:29:02.320
certain lines you'd say, we want the finest wines known to humanity, we want them here,

575
00:29:02.320 --> 00:29:07.760
and we want them now, and you just hear in the audience, just, just, just, just, just,

576
00:29:08.880 --> 00:29:14.720
just cans opening it like, it was just brilliant, it was like, that was the level of audience

577
00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:21.120
participation, it was just wonderful, because again, in London particularly,

578
00:29:23.840 --> 00:29:28.720
theatre can get a little bit like Protestant mass, you know, everybody sits very,

579
00:29:30.480 --> 00:29:38.000
you know, basins, very quiet, they like church mice, and it's not proper to utter a sound,

580
00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:46.160
you know, you sort of think, you know, church, theatre and church, they influence one another,

581
00:29:46.160 --> 00:29:51.520
I think, you know, they're essentially the same, you know, when you take away the names and the

582
00:29:52.320 --> 00:29:58.160
symbols and the promo, you know, essentially, it's human beings trying to achieve the same

583
00:29:58.160 --> 00:30:06.720
sense of coherence, you know, so, anyway, in the age of secularization, you know, people just turn

584
00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:11.920
to the theatre darling, you know, it certainly do. It's interesting to hear all that because,

585
00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:16.160
like, your description of church and religion might you say, it's like, there's so much performance

586
00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:20.560
in it, but it's very, it's all performing in the name of sort of authenticity and God, but it's

587
00:30:20.560 --> 00:30:25.360
actually, to you, it sounds like it felt very inauthentic, whereas the actual out and out performing

588
00:30:25.360 --> 00:30:31.440
on stage, that, that was where authenticity was. Yes, yes, because authenticity, I think, is

589
00:30:31.440 --> 00:30:39.280
another word far, the coherence, you can all feel as a group, you know, you suddenly get the

590
00:30:39.280 --> 00:30:47.040
sense within yourself that everybody is communicating in a way that doesn't require language or any

591
00:30:47.040 --> 00:30:52.720
kind of symbol, you know, we're all surfing on the same radio frequency now, you know, and there's

592
00:30:52.720 --> 00:30:59.120
this awesome momentum, and that is, I think it's the same in sport, you know, it's the same in

593
00:30:59.200 --> 00:31:03.280
any kind of group activity, people are looking for that feeling, you know, at the kind of

594
00:31:03.280 --> 00:31:10.240
championship final or, or at a play or panto or whatever it is, you know, concert. It's essentially,

595
00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:18.000
I see now at this stage of my life, I see those things all essentially as the same pursuit, you know,

596
00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:24.480
music festivals, people are kind of going on a pilgrimage to get in alignment with each other,

597
00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:29.120
you know, at least for a while, and then they'll kind of fall away from each other again,

598
00:31:29.920 --> 00:31:39.280
and go back to work, you know, and, yeah, this is, you know, there are, there are sort of things

599
00:31:39.280 --> 00:31:44.400
that are endemic in our, in the human condition, and one of them is pilgrimage, and I think

600
00:31:45.120 --> 00:31:50.800
church is pilgrimage, theater is pilgrimage, concert, music festival is pilgrimage, big time,

601
00:31:51.520 --> 00:31:59.280
everybody goes out into a field and sort of changes bodily and mentally, often, after face on drugs,

602
00:31:59.280 --> 00:32:05.200
not always, you know, it's not always, yeah, change of condition, sleep, and in a tent, you know,

603
00:32:05.200 --> 00:32:11.520
these are challenging things, you know, but they're all thrown into the challenge together, you know,

604
00:32:12.320 --> 00:32:16.560
and that's pilgrimage, and it's outside of their comfort zone as well, it's like when you go to the

605
00:32:16.560 --> 00:32:20.400
cinema or to the theatre, you're stepping out of your home and you're going out, and even though,

606
00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:23.280
even if you're just going to the cinema, you know, you don't know what might happen, the film could

607
00:32:23.280 --> 00:32:27.840
be great, could be bad, you're experiencing it ideally with a big lot load of people all sort of

608
00:32:27.840 --> 00:32:31.600
reacting at the same time, there is something kind of very precious and kind of sacred, I think,

609
00:32:31.600 --> 00:32:38.880
about that, and if you look at the hero's journey of the heroes at home, everything is fine, the

610
00:32:38.880 --> 00:32:44.720
Hobbit, the Harry Potter, you know, he was upset in his foster home, wasn't he? But basically, you

611
00:32:44.880 --> 00:32:51.360
know, there's a sense of domesticity and stability, Luke Skywalker, Neo from The Matrix,

612
00:32:51.360 --> 00:32:59.920
all basically the same story, where they all have to leave home and go out into the scary

613
00:33:00.480 --> 00:33:07.600
hinterlands, and that's the same thing as we all do every day, you know, it's a sort of,

614
00:33:08.560 --> 00:33:14.480
it's a kind of, what do you call it, a kind of beach sheet for everyday life, you know, blown up

615
00:33:14.480 --> 00:33:20.800
to epic proportions, you know, even I was talking to my, well, she's my cousin's wife,

616
00:33:20.800 --> 00:33:26.800
she's more like my sister-in-law, and she was saying about having trouble with people at work,

617
00:33:26.800 --> 00:33:30.720
you know, and that thing of being at home and having to kind of steal herself emotionally,

618
00:33:31.360 --> 00:33:35.520
and then ruminating on what's going to happen, is there going to be an altercation when I see

619
00:33:35.600 --> 00:33:40.480
these people and all that, you know, and I was like, that's the hero's journey, you know,

620
00:33:40.480 --> 00:33:47.120
you're at home, and then you've to go into a cave and slay a dragon, you know, within yourself,

621
00:33:47.120 --> 00:33:52.160
the Pied Piper of Hamlin, it's like, we tell the same story over and over and over and over

622
00:33:52.160 --> 00:33:58.240
and over again to help us cope with daily life, you know. And they say that your intellect is your

623
00:33:58.240 --> 00:34:02.160
sword, like classically, and like you shouldn't leave home about your sword in those situations,

624
00:34:02.160 --> 00:34:07.600
let your home about your mind and your heart and soul really, to face those kind of challenges.

625
00:34:07.600 --> 00:34:14.160
Have you got challenges? Totally true, but intellect, I think, has to include a sense of agency

626
00:34:14.160 --> 00:34:20.720
over that fizzing confrontation that one can get when they're in a fight or in an argument where,

627
00:34:21.600 --> 00:34:26.080
you know, if you're not experienced in the ways of emotional intelligence, you know,

628
00:34:26.080 --> 00:34:30.080
because you've tapped your temple there, but if you're not experienced in that intelligence,

629
00:34:30.080 --> 00:34:34.720
you can completely lose the ability to speak, can't you? We've all been there, you know, and so

630
00:34:35.440 --> 00:34:42.880
sometimes in Western ideas, we forget about how important it is to be emotionally and kind of

631
00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:49.920
got and heart intelligent as well as sort of which I think comes about by taking the kind of

632
00:34:49.920 --> 00:34:56.000
laser point of focus and putting it inside our own bodies and kind of giving that value as well

633
00:34:56.240 --> 00:34:59.920
as like, oh, that external thing, that book, that degree, that, you know, those things are

634
00:34:59.920 --> 00:35:04.000
making me going to make me feel different inside, you know, but they ultimately won't,

635
00:35:05.120 --> 00:35:12.080
but they will, you know, they certainly will temporarily, but yeah, you know, it's true,

636
00:35:12.080 --> 00:35:17.280
you know, the sword I think is made up of the three brains, you know? Definitely.

637
00:35:17.280 --> 00:35:21.760
I remember Dustin Hoffman saying once when he was doing Tutsi, when he was playing, you know,

638
00:35:21.760 --> 00:35:26.480
that the Tutsi herself on screen and getting into character as a woman, and he noticed that

639
00:35:26.480 --> 00:35:30.320
something that women do that men don't do is they do, and for anyone, the listeners, you know,

640
00:35:30.320 --> 00:35:34.960
but watch it on YouTube, you can see what I'm doing. They do this, women do this a lot,

641
00:35:34.960 --> 00:35:38.720
but men don't really do that, and he said there was something so sort of spiritual and human about

642
00:35:38.720 --> 00:35:43.280
doing this, and I think that really relates to what you're saying up to me, like, it's the heart,

643
00:35:43.280 --> 00:35:47.920
it's what's inside, not just up here in the head. Yeah, because I think women have the right

644
00:35:47.920 --> 00:35:53.440
way around. I think they're far more innately. They're the woman in the room nodding, like, finally,

645
00:35:54.400 --> 00:36:01.040
a man acknowledges this from an innate perspective. There's this, I think, a woman has a sense,

646
00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:08.480
typically is a far superior sense of knowing what's going on with a person, you know, just by

647
00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:15.520
encountering them physically, you know? Then I think a lot of men know far more about what they

648
00:36:15.520 --> 00:36:20.720
think than what they feel, you know? And on the meditation journey, that was something that was

649
00:36:20.720 --> 00:36:28.800
a sort of an interesting development in me that I sort of developed a far greater sensitivity to

650
00:36:28.800 --> 00:36:34.400
that sort of feminine trait in the human character, to be like, oh god, I just had to sort of

651
00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:39.680
steal myself to other people's emotional energy more, you know? Because it was like,

652
00:36:39.680 --> 00:36:48.480
Jesus, you know, that person has a lot going on and they may not even be consciously aware of it,

653
00:36:48.480 --> 00:36:56.560
you know? But it's just vibrating through their biochemistry, you know? And that was annoying,

654
00:36:56.560 --> 00:37:02.560
it was tough, because then you kind of sort of build a sort of fortress. I've spoken to other women,

655
00:37:02.560 --> 00:37:10.000
they call it like my cape or my veil or, you know, walking through the world. It's interesting,

656
00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.160
yeah? Yeah. And that sort of heroes journey that we were talking about there, like, kind of even

657
00:37:14.160 --> 00:37:18.000
just as simple as getting up in the morning and going outside. I mean, how do you think,

658
00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:22.000
did you ever sort of think of your acting journey in those terms? Because it has been a journey,

659
00:37:22.000 --> 00:37:26.800
like, you know, going from Ireland and sort of doing theatre and small screen roles and then going

660
00:37:26.800 --> 00:37:31.680
up to bigger things, like red riding. I remember you say that red riding was like the thing that

661
00:37:31.680 --> 00:37:35.920
kind of changed things for you, career wise. Yeah, yeah, it did. And it's funny, you know,

662
00:37:37.040 --> 00:37:42.240
I was in the middle of doing a different film in Northern Ireland called Cherry Bomb and then

663
00:37:42.240 --> 00:37:48.720
got the script for red riding trilogy through and read them. And fairness, it was filming all day

664
00:37:48.720 --> 00:37:54.240
and read them in the evenings, kind of half knackered and couldn't make head nor tail of what was

665
00:37:54.240 --> 00:37:58.720
going on. And we're back to my agents and was like, I don't know what the fuck, I don't even know

666
00:37:58.800 --> 00:38:03.840
what this is about when I've read it. It's like, what, and they're like, no seriously, seriously,

667
00:38:03.840 --> 00:38:10.800
wow, trust us. It's really good. It's really good. That's okay. And then just sort of came up with

668
00:38:10.800 --> 00:38:16.560
something on the day and they really liked it. But, you know, I did, I would go through fierce

669
00:38:16.560 --> 00:38:22.080
bouts of anticipatory anxiety going into auditions, which is fairly typical, I think, for actors.

670
00:38:22.080 --> 00:38:27.840
And it's accumulative as well. It's more you're an actor, you're more like this terrible dragon

671
00:38:27.840 --> 00:38:31.520
rears itself up in you, you know, and you have to figure out ways of dealing with it.

672
00:38:32.800 --> 00:38:38.720
And but other than that, I was quite sort of coxure and fearless at that hour of my life, you know.

673
00:38:39.520 --> 00:38:44.960
It was less, there was less fear about leaving home, but there was no fear about like moving to

674
00:38:44.960 --> 00:38:50.720
London, there was no fear about doing anything, really. It was just sort of that kind of

675
00:38:51.600 --> 00:38:58.880
annoying accumulative anxiety in anticipation of doing an audition, you know. So you'd be in the

676
00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:04.960
toilets, like taking toilet roll and wiping your armpits, so you didn't have sweats and then

677
00:39:04.960 --> 00:39:10.000
going in there and going, hello, hello, hello, how's everybody today? I'm absolutely wonderful.

678
00:39:10.880 --> 00:39:16.080
You know, having to perform even before you start, you know, before the cameras rolling.

679
00:39:16.080 --> 00:39:20.080
Often that was the harder performance, yeah, which you'd know your lines, you know, you just

680
00:39:20.080 --> 00:39:28.080
needed to get your sort of social animal steady, you know. And like there's a bit in that play in

681
00:39:28.080 --> 00:39:36.080
dead about, I realized about auditioning that because my first audition was this highly adrenalized

682
00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:41.040
transcendent experience for me, I was 14 years old, so it was very formative, you know.

683
00:39:41.040 --> 00:39:48.320
And I realized that later on in life, through self-reflection that me auditioning, I wasn't the kind

684
00:39:48.320 --> 00:39:56.320
of pay dirt, wasn't necessarily even getting the job, it was just recreating that adrenalized

685
00:39:56.320 --> 00:40:03.200
transcendent, non-self experience again in the audition room, you know, where the self is so

686
00:40:03.200 --> 00:40:09.840
apparent, you know, where it's double-hard to be yourself. And by that I mean not really have

687
00:40:09.840 --> 00:40:16.560
a self, you know, or a referential self in that moment so that you can kind of act unencumbered

688
00:40:16.560 --> 00:40:24.000
and be unencumbered. So yes, so I was kind of like, if I'd reached that point in audition,

689
00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:27.520
I didn't get the job, I sort of didn't care, I was happy and content, you know.

690
00:40:28.560 --> 00:40:33.680
So it was just, it was an interesting thing, so I think a lot of us have formative experiences

691
00:40:33.680 --> 00:40:39.440
in our youth and then we unconsciously pursue those things as adults even if we don't know them.

692
00:40:39.840 --> 00:40:44.800
That we're doing that, you know, kind of chasing them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we're not careful,

693
00:40:44.800 --> 00:40:52.560
we can be chasing for the rest of our lives, chasing is not, it's not ideal, like, because it's

694
00:40:52.560 --> 00:41:00.800
again, it's in the pursuit of something external, always, for a lot of lead-up misery.

695
00:41:02.160 --> 00:41:07.680
An angst. Yeah. And a lot of energy as well. Yeah. So like you're expanding a lot of energy on

696
00:41:07.680 --> 00:41:12.240
something which, you know, might not be the right direction. Yeah. You know, you're just like,

697
00:41:12.240 --> 00:41:19.040
that's what your kid wants. That's not necessarily what you want, you know. And the sort of, and

698
00:41:21.760 --> 00:41:28.160
I don't know, like, it's definitely objectively true that human beings these days remain

699
00:41:29.200 --> 00:41:35.280
less mature until they're biologically older. Maybe I've said that in a roundabout way, but I just

700
00:41:35.280 --> 00:41:41.200
mean, you know, people don't get married and people don't have kids until much later in life now

701
00:41:41.200 --> 00:41:46.000
compared to our parents' generation, certainly grandparents' generation. There was a sense of

702
00:41:46.000 --> 00:41:54.320
growing up fast. And that didn't mean emotionally that meant work, family, children, you know, now,

703
00:41:55.120 --> 00:42:01.440
because that's just the way it is. And because I suppose economic stability, we live in a time where

704
00:42:01.440 --> 00:42:08.400
we can devote so much of our energy to, like, things that we like, you know. And that's good,

705
00:42:08.400 --> 00:42:16.880
but it also arrests us in terms of maturation. And so we end up kind of dressing like we, a lot of

706
00:42:16.880 --> 00:42:22.800
us dressing like we did when we were teenagers and, you know, still wearing the superheroes on our

707
00:42:22.800 --> 00:42:30.720
tops that we liked when we were children. You know, and I think there's something wrong with that,

708
00:42:30.720 --> 00:42:36.880
you know, because your child is a valid part of yourself. But when you've grown up, when you've

709
00:42:36.880 --> 00:42:43.040
hit puberty and moved on, you have to become the master of your child and not the other way around,

710
00:42:43.040 --> 00:42:47.120
you know. And there's such a huge marketing machine in the world, especially in our business,

711
00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:54.960
for targeting that child within, you know, that sort of mirrors you in nostalgia.

712
00:42:55.840 --> 00:43:02.240
And that's not healthy. It's just not healthy, you know. It is sort of, it just arrests people

713
00:43:02.240 --> 00:43:06.640
emotionally, I think. I agree. And do you think there's like a sweet spot in the middle there?

714
00:43:06.640 --> 00:43:09.920
Because as you say, once you take away that sort of entrenched societal,

715
00:43:10.560 --> 00:43:16.160
it enforced notion of responsibilities of like, yeah, marriage, children, work,

716
00:43:16.160 --> 00:43:20.400
their own parents and grandparents had to deal with. And now that's kind of dissolved away.

717
00:43:20.400 --> 00:43:24.240
And now we're kind of, it's kind of a bit more like, do what they're willed, I guess, in some ways.

718
00:43:24.240 --> 00:43:28.400
In terms of you can pursue, you don't have to, you can grow up at your own pace. Do you think

719
00:43:28.400 --> 00:43:32.080
there's a sweet spot in the middle there where, because I agree, too much the way is there's

720
00:43:32.080 --> 00:43:38.400
a kind of arrested quality. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, with enough leisure and when things are

721
00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:45.040
easy, it can corrode the sense of will, you know, sense and determination. So the sweet spot has

722
00:43:45.040 --> 00:43:53.440
to include reintroducing intention going, actually, no, I want this and I'm going to work for it.

723
00:43:53.440 --> 00:43:59.760
And, you know, it's just, you know, the age old thing, you know, if it's to do with having children

724
00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:07.040
or it's to do with, but I think, you know, when things are really good, it just breeds complacency

725
00:44:07.040 --> 00:44:12.320
in people. And people get used to their situation very easy, don't they? Yeah, human beings are

726
00:44:12.320 --> 00:44:17.280
incredible adapters. Even if their situation isn't good, you know, they'd be like, well, you know,

727
00:44:17.280 --> 00:44:22.960
this is life, you know, absolutely. And not hope for change, but the sweet spot is the

728
00:44:24.080 --> 00:44:30.960
flying the flag for change and making things, I think, whatever better or more peaceful or,

729
00:44:31.920 --> 00:44:37.600
you know, whatever it is, following one's back, whatever that is, you know, and perhaps

730
00:44:37.600 --> 00:44:44.320
shutting this down more, you know, because this can be the death, I think, of what one truly

731
00:44:44.320 --> 00:44:50.960
is being led towards, you know, like I moved to the countryside a few years ago and I just,

732
00:44:50.960 --> 00:44:55.600
because I think through meditation, everything, there was just this deep, very, very deep

733
00:44:55.600 --> 00:45:00.720
voice that felt other in me coming up through going move to the country,

734
00:45:02.240 --> 00:45:09.440
be out and away out of the industrialized world and get, learn how to live in the countryside,

735
00:45:09.440 --> 00:45:14.080
where there are birds singing and there are trees swaying in the wind and there are bees and

736
00:45:14.080 --> 00:45:20.800
insects and all sorts around and you can kind of, you can nourish that world and I went, okay,

737
00:45:20.800 --> 00:45:29.680
now I have to go and nourish nature, you know, and actually very proudly thrilled because two days

738
00:45:29.680 --> 00:45:39.760
ago, after a much prep, me and a couple of pals planted 130 trees on my land. Wow, and like,

739
00:45:39.760 --> 00:45:46.160
we've got like, I've got 150 more sitting there ready to go, which is knackered, it was like

740
00:45:46.640 --> 00:45:53.680
seven o'clock in the evening still planting trees, like I'm falling asleep on my feet,

741
00:45:53.680 --> 00:46:01.920
my God, the profound satisfaction of planting all those beautiful trees and thinking, wow, they're

742
00:46:01.920 --> 00:46:08.400
going to be there for hundreds of years probably, you know, hopefully, if I have anything to do with it.

743
00:46:09.440 --> 00:46:12.320
Sounds like quite a lot, if you're planting like hundreds of trees, it sounds like quite a good

744
00:46:12.320 --> 00:46:17.200
spread, you've got that. Yeah, there's of land and about two and a half acres. What do you know?

745
00:46:17.200 --> 00:46:21.600
Yeah, not bad, because I want to say, because have you been recently doing up kind of renovating as

746
00:46:21.600 --> 00:46:26.800
well, kind of the house and the house and the land as well? Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, whipping it

747
00:46:26.800 --> 00:46:31.360
all into shape, you know, nice, yeah. And how far away are you from the kind of industrialised

748
00:46:31.360 --> 00:46:38.080
kind of centres, are you pretty far removed? About, well, you know, I've a town that's 10 minutes

749
00:46:38.080 --> 00:46:44.880
drive away, which is, you know, it's a fairly sizable town. It's not that big like, but it has

750
00:46:44.880 --> 00:46:52.640
everything you need. And then I've got a city about an hour and 15 away in the car if I'm driving

751
00:46:52.640 --> 00:46:58.640
illegally. And do you find the, yeah, being outside of those centres, you find peacefulness in that?

752
00:46:58.640 --> 00:47:06.640
Yeah, oh, I mean, oh, just a piece that's sort of characterised by

753
00:47:08.560 --> 00:47:14.320
absolutely jumping for joy, you know, pluttering around my land with a wheelbarrow.

754
00:47:15.520 --> 00:47:22.400
Just, it's just the happiest, it's just like a piece of paradise on earth, really and truly, you know?

755
00:47:22.560 --> 00:47:28.320
Yeah, really truly. So is it kind of the quiet domestic life kind of beckoning, do you think?

756
00:47:28.320 --> 00:47:34.960
Like, yeah, yeah, you know, I don't think I could go full animal husbandry because that requires

757
00:47:34.960 --> 00:47:41.680
being there on the daily, getting up a dawn, you know, to sort of tend to chickens and goats and

758
00:47:42.720 --> 00:47:49.200
cows and donkeys and whatever else, but I don't think I could do that. I still love travel too much,

759
00:47:49.200 --> 00:47:54.080
I mean, I still love going to London for the weekend and going to see a few mad things and

760
00:47:54.080 --> 00:48:00.240
catching up with friends and, you know, I've got this, I've got this wish now to go and do a really

761
00:48:00.240 --> 00:48:05.760
tough expedition style thing somewhere. I don't know where that is, but I think possibly in a desert

762
00:48:05.760 --> 00:48:12.240
or in a jungle, you know? So I've got this mad appetite to go and experience the world, yeah,

763
00:48:12.240 --> 00:48:18.080
yeah. So you kind of got that balance down of kind of maybe the quiet life and the adventure.

764
00:48:18.080 --> 00:48:26.080
Yeah, yeah, because it's taken two and a half years just to get sort of not even average good

765
00:48:26.080 --> 00:48:30.960
at living in the country, you know? And my part of the country is very wet, like it can be very

766
00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:38.480
relentless. And so you have to learn how to exist, I suppose, you know, and not have all your

767
00:48:38.480 --> 00:48:44.960
stuff get destroyed, you know? And my God, there are many things that can destroy your prize

768
00:48:44.960 --> 00:48:57.840
possessions, don't where I live. Myce, rats, mold, damp. Jesus Christ, you know. But it is, you know,

769
00:48:57.840 --> 00:49:02.800
so you just do all these things have to become second-aid. And also, sir, I have to learn how to kind

770
00:49:02.800 --> 00:49:08.800
of be kind of all right at making things as well, you know? And fixing things, you know, because

771
00:49:08.800 --> 00:49:14.640
you're hard to be broke waiting for trades, people in that to show up. Weeks you'd be waiting for,

772
00:49:14.640 --> 00:49:19.840
you know, and not that I can do electricianing or I can't, you know, can't do plumbing or any of that.

773
00:49:19.840 --> 00:49:25.440
But I'll have a goal now, you know? I'll have a proper goal. Whereas, you know, when I first moved

774
00:49:25.440 --> 00:49:30.880
to the country, I had total baby brain where I was just in awe of everything. It's like, oh my God,

775
00:49:30.880 --> 00:49:35.520
that's a rock wall. It's probably been there for over a hundred years. And I'm like, knock it.

776
00:49:36.640 --> 00:49:42.960
Knock it. It's in the way. You know, I've sort of got things the right way around now, not like,

777
00:49:43.520 --> 00:49:50.640
not giving life to dead things, you know, in the sacrifice of actual life, you know.

778
00:49:52.880 --> 00:50:00.480
So yeah, you know, it's interesting kind of being confronted by the part of your brain that

779
00:50:00.480 --> 00:50:05.520
are utterly undeveloped, you know? Yeah. So you're saying in a kind of a zombie apocalypse,

780
00:50:05.520 --> 00:50:10.080
you're building up those areas which would help you survive in the post-apocalypse. Oh yes.

781
00:50:10.960 --> 00:50:15.200
Absolutely. Big time. I think I could handle the zombies now.

782
00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:23.120
What would be your one? You have one tool slash weapon, let's say. What's your reckon?

783
00:50:23.120 --> 00:50:26.320
Oh, I mean, my brain immediately went baseball bat over the nail for it.

784
00:50:27.040 --> 00:50:33.360
But that's good weapon, but it's not really good tool, you know? Yeah, I mean, it'd be all right for

785
00:50:33.440 --> 00:50:39.040
minor digging, you know, sort of, you could, you could, you could put, you could potting, you know,

786
00:50:39.040 --> 00:50:43.600
you could put little useful little holes on the ground with it, but yeah, you wouldn't do much digging

787
00:50:43.600 --> 00:50:47.280
with it. No, you can maybe like, you could bore some holes and, you know, if you were hanging a

788
00:50:47.280 --> 00:50:52.240
picture, maybe, but like, you know, be a bit, you know, a bit destructive. You tricky, yeah. I'm

789
00:50:52.240 --> 00:50:58.400
always torn between like an axe or a shovel. That's good. Yeah, because you could have a good

790
00:50:58.400 --> 00:51:05.360
sharp edge and you could get some good digging done, you know. So that's all you need, really,

791
00:51:05.360 --> 00:51:09.840
is beheading zombies and planting plants, you know, and so your two main bases covered.

792
00:51:09.840 --> 00:51:13.360
Well, it worked, ensure that they're in the baseball, they're cricket bat and spade.

793
00:51:13.920 --> 00:51:17.680
And? And spade. It's a shovel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

794
00:51:17.680 --> 00:51:22.960
Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen that. Yeah, it was, it's anniversary yesterday, actually.

795
00:51:23.040 --> 00:51:28.240
Oh, really? Yeah, it's about 20 seconds. I want to say, yeah, 20 seconds. Oh, yes,

796
00:51:28.240 --> 00:51:33.760
when it came out, yeah. Did they ever make a shot at the dead too? No, like Hot Fuzz and World's End

797
00:51:33.760 --> 00:51:38.400
were kind of two sort of sequels, but not to end, not direct sequels. What are the, the

798
00:51:38.400 --> 00:51:44.320
Carnet O' Trillity? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard Eddie Marzan on your podcast talking about World's End.

799
00:51:44.320 --> 00:51:51.360
Yeah. Oh, Marzan. He's one of the best. He is a kind of, you know, talk about church and

800
00:51:51.360 --> 00:51:59.040
theatre and the likeness. He has a sort of wholeness listening to him, you know, because he sort

801
00:51:59.040 --> 00:52:05.760
of sees past the things that you know are seen as divisions by other people, you know, he's just

802
00:52:05.760 --> 00:52:10.240
just totally centered, isn't he? Certainly centered. And also, I'm very honest and true for,

803
00:52:10.240 --> 00:52:17.040
and you know, no bullshit in his performances or in just in himself, but he's very true.

804
00:52:17.120 --> 00:52:21.520
Yeah, he's a very pragmatic sort of person. He said that nice thing about acting where he's like

805
00:52:22.240 --> 00:52:28.480
see people kind of, you know, having sort of minor meltdowns on set or, or, or, you know,

806
00:52:29.600 --> 00:52:33.840
want to be actors and there's, oh, I could never do it. And it's just that they just,

807
00:52:33.840 --> 00:52:40.240
they have the idea of acting down completely wrong. They just think it's something else entirely.

808
00:52:41.200 --> 00:52:49.440
You're like, yeah, I feel that too, you know. But there you go, Eddie Marzan. Let's not

809
00:52:49.440 --> 00:52:53.840
nick all of Marzan's wisdom, put it on this because you subscribers have already heard that episode,

810
00:52:53.840 --> 00:53:01.920
so just be raking over Marzan's grave premature. Well, I'll go back to your career. I mean,

811
00:53:01.920 --> 00:53:06.080
so the first thing I would have seen you in, so sort of not too long after Red Riding would

812
00:53:06.080 --> 00:53:12.960
have been misfits, which I guess fits. Yes, I know, which was such a huge, huge show at the time.

813
00:53:12.960 --> 00:53:16.400
I mean, like, I mean, I went back and looked at it in the run up to this chat and it's still,

814
00:53:16.400 --> 00:53:20.480
for me, still holds up, right? You know, you're in your performance and the rest of the cast,

815
00:53:20.480 --> 00:53:25.280
like you are and Antonio and Lauren, like, it's such an incredible piece of work. I mean,

816
00:53:25.280 --> 00:53:28.800
talking about auditions, what you were saying earlier, like, do you remember, like, how you landed

817
00:53:28.800 --> 00:53:34.160
that role? Do you remember how that, what that process was like? Yeah, I came into the auditions

818
00:53:34.240 --> 00:53:39.440
quite late, I think. I'm not sure why that was. It was just probably a timing thing.

819
00:53:41.280 --> 00:53:46.400
And so I came in at the point where they were mixing and matching actors for the various roles.

820
00:53:46.400 --> 00:53:54.080
You know, so it was two rounds of that. The first round, you know, the last round, there was maybe

821
00:53:54.080 --> 00:53:59.680
five or six actors per role that we were in and we were all kind of milling about. And we're all

822
00:53:59.680 --> 00:54:07.600
sort of in between the ages of 19 and 25, you know, so we're all like, oh, oh, you, you, you,

823
00:54:07.600 --> 00:54:13.760
you know. And I remember the infernis to young me is credit. I sort of looked around the room and

824
00:54:13.760 --> 00:54:19.200
I could hear all these actors like socializing at 150 miles an hour, you know, me and going, oh,

825
00:54:19.200 --> 00:54:24.480
yeah, you know, I did this about that. And I was like, Rob, you could either have the chats to

826
00:54:24.560 --> 00:54:29.840
people now or you could come up with five funny things to say if there's any improv to be done

827
00:54:29.840 --> 00:54:34.880
in the room. So I did, I was like, I've got superpowers and whatever, you know, and I did that. I was like,

828
00:54:34.880 --> 00:54:40.560
no, that's basically funny. And then and just sat there for a bit and came up with some stuff and

829
00:54:40.560 --> 00:54:48.000
then got to got to use a fair bit of that in the room. And I was like, delighted with myself.

830
00:54:48.960 --> 00:54:57.840
And then, yeah, that was it really. I came away kind of thinking, I think I probably got that,

831
00:54:57.840 --> 00:55:02.880
you know, and it was just because they thought, oh, he's really good off the cuff, you know.

832
00:55:03.520 --> 00:55:08.640
So I thought, you know, while everybody else was chatting and bolstering in the green room,

833
00:55:08.640 --> 00:55:18.560
you know. So, yeah, so I was, it was pretty, it was pretty quick, really, the auditioning process.

834
00:55:18.560 --> 00:55:24.880
It was within a couple of weeks and then into the show. But then, you know, to the credit of the

835
00:55:24.880 --> 00:55:31.440
production of Miss Fitz, they threw us all together in a rehearsal space for like two weeks before

836
00:55:31.440 --> 00:55:37.360
we filmed anything. And by day two, we were all thickest teams, you know. And day three or four,

837
00:55:37.360 --> 00:55:43.280
then they put us on a mini-boss and made us go out to some like military obstacle course out

838
00:55:43.280 --> 00:55:49.680
near Gatwick, right? And we were sat, we sat in a mini-boss and I was like, I'm not going to do it.

839
00:55:49.680 --> 00:55:53.680
I'm just not going to do it. I don't have the right clothes, you know, they say we're supposed to

840
00:55:53.680 --> 00:55:59.840
bring like jumpsuits and whatever. I don't have a jumpsuit. And then they were like, we have,

841
00:55:59.840 --> 00:56:04.240
we have jumpsuits for you. Don't worry about that. And you're like, oh, yeah, but like, we're all kind

842
00:56:04.240 --> 00:56:08.720
of on the bus going like, what were you? Why is this? And then so we were like at the starting

843
00:56:08.720 --> 00:56:13.680
line of this obstacle course. They were like, right, three, two, one, go. And it was like waiting

844
00:56:13.680 --> 00:56:19.520
through mud, under barbed wire, jumping over stuff. And there's these military guys shouting and

845
00:56:19.520 --> 00:56:26.160
roaring at us in camels, right? And blowing whistles at us. And by the end of it, we were like,

846
00:56:26.160 --> 00:56:31.200
looks like we've been through World War Two, you know? The last of us were kind of staggering

847
00:56:31.200 --> 00:56:36.240
over the finish line. We were like, come on, come on, you could do it again. We were like crying

848
00:56:36.240 --> 00:56:42.000
and sweating, covered in muck. And it was just really clever of them, you know, to kind of really

849
00:56:42.000 --> 00:56:48.480
bond us as a group. And I think a lot of that showed up on the screen, you know, because I,

850
00:56:48.480 --> 00:56:52.480
you know, going back to that kind of emotional sensitivity thing, sometimes you watch films and

851
00:56:52.480 --> 00:56:59.360
television, you go, none of these actors are remotely comfortable, you know? They're saying

852
00:56:59.360 --> 00:57:03.680
they're lines, they're doing their thing. But they've never been in the room before, you know?

853
00:57:03.680 --> 00:57:08.560
And you can tell a hundred fucking yards away. And you just think, do you think we can't tell?

854
00:57:09.600 --> 00:57:16.160
Like, you know, you've created this whole world. But at the center of it, you have a bunch of

855
00:57:16.160 --> 00:57:21.280
people who have no idea who, you know, they've never, they don't know each other, you know?

856
00:57:21.280 --> 00:57:28.800
And bigger the things are, the less rehearsal they dedicate to the thing, which is

857
00:57:28.800 --> 00:57:36.080
completely topsy to bizarre, in my opinion, you know? Because they think, I think is, you know,

858
00:57:36.080 --> 00:57:41.360
scheduling and, you know, the Hollywood system and they're getting the, you know, the most

859
00:57:41.360 --> 00:57:47.360
in-demand actors to come in and they just expect to come in and do your thing and be prepared,

860
00:57:47.360 --> 00:57:54.080
you know? And if you get the good actor that everyone likes, on screen, saying their lines,

861
00:57:54.080 --> 00:57:59.440
I mean, that's the value in it. And you go, well, no, I mean, it's about the connectivity,

862
00:57:59.440 --> 00:58:05.760
it's a, we all exist in relativity, don't we? We exist in the spaces between each other, you know?

863
00:58:06.640 --> 00:58:11.520
And so I just find that baffling and imagine how much better films and tell you would be,

864
00:58:11.520 --> 00:58:19.600
if they just gave that a bit more credence and a bit more weight. I complain about that in my book

865
00:58:19.600 --> 00:58:24.800
as well. Well, I think you're absolutely right, like even just going back and watching that first

866
00:58:24.800 --> 00:58:29.440
episode. So I don't know what order you guys would have shot it in, but like from the first scene,

867
00:58:29.440 --> 00:58:34.000
you just feel that, that connectivity, that, as you say, that kind of relativity, the chemistry

868
00:58:34.000 --> 00:58:39.840
between the, you know, the whole, the group of you is just immediately apparent. And like I say,

869
00:58:39.840 --> 00:58:44.080
like, you know, and like, and each of those parts is perfectly cast like yourself and then you

870
00:58:44.160 --> 00:58:48.640
earn and then, you know, Lauren, like everyone is just at the top of their game, out straight out the

871
00:58:48.640 --> 00:58:52.400
game. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what are your memories of working with those guys? I mean, because it seems

872
00:58:52.400 --> 00:58:57.680
like you guys, as you say, were really close. Yeah, we were really, really close, yeah. It's really,

873
00:58:57.680 --> 00:59:03.280
really fun memories, really, really fun memories. And unsaid, you know, they let us, they were

874
00:59:03.280 --> 00:59:10.240
completely permissive in terms of just letting us dick around, delay filming, wander off, you know,

875
00:59:10.240 --> 00:59:16.960
practical joke each other, taking the piss, but they just were just, just highly encouraging

876
00:59:16.960 --> 00:59:22.480
of all that, because they just wanted all that kind of, you know, that silliness and sort of

877
00:59:23.120 --> 00:59:27.840
immaturity and defiance, you know, all those things that sort of characterize those

878
00:59:28.640 --> 00:59:32.720
people at that hour of their lives, they wanted all that on camera. So there was never a moment

879
00:59:32.720 --> 00:59:37.840
of like, right now, listen, let's be professional, you know, never any of that, you know. So it was

880
00:59:37.840 --> 00:59:43.840
just a playground. It was absolute playground to work on. It was just, yeah, it was just,

881
00:59:43.840 --> 00:59:47.840
it was just really, really wonderful. It was hard work, you know, it was really hard work. We were,

882
00:59:47.840 --> 00:59:53.200
we were just, we lived and breathed it for months on end, you know, it was tough, but

883
00:59:54.560 --> 01:00:00.560
it was very, very surreal, you know, we finished the show and then we watched the first episode of

884
01:00:00.560 --> 01:00:07.440
it on television. And then like the following week or week after that, we won the BAFTA for

885
01:00:07.440 --> 01:00:12.880
best series, you know. And you got nominated as well, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And Lauren Sarkar and

886
01:00:14.160 --> 01:00:20.080
it was just all very like, Jesus Christ, this is just, you know, because you're at an age where you're

887
01:00:20.080 --> 01:00:24.800
just endlessly regenerative. So you just think, well, this has happened pretty easy, you know,

888
01:00:25.360 --> 01:00:30.560
you look back, you're like, no, we worked really hard on it, you know. So it was just lovely,

889
01:00:30.560 --> 01:00:35.760
yeah, it was really just, you know, of course we were going out then like lunatics of the weekend

890
01:00:35.760 --> 01:00:42.880
and like just partying like mad and just, yeah, it was just, it was a magical, magical time,

891
01:00:42.880 --> 01:00:48.080
really magical. And I was living in Covent Garden, can you believe? In a flat,

892
01:00:48.080 --> 01:00:53.520
in Covent Garden, well, making misfits. In this really nice flat, it's almost managed to land

893
01:00:53.920 --> 01:01:02.240
this very, very nice flat, lost the security deposit, of course, because the rap party ended up

894
01:01:02.240 --> 01:01:10.800
in the flat afterwards. And then for some reason, in a fit of drunken spontaneity, Iuan punched one

895
01:01:10.800 --> 01:01:18.400
of the windows and broke it. Oh my god. And broke all the, it was four floors up. So broke all the glass

896
01:01:18.400 --> 01:01:23.280
outwards into the alleyway outside, which is where you come out downstairs and walk out, right?

897
01:01:24.160 --> 01:01:30.640
And then the land lady, who was a, who was an eccentric woman, she was a bit sort of

898
01:01:30.640 --> 01:01:38.080
flappy and can worry some, she said, well, what happened to the window? And I went, oh, you're never

899
01:01:38.080 --> 01:01:46.560
a guest, right? I said, you never guess. I was sitting, I was sitting in the bedroom and all

900
01:01:46.560 --> 01:01:53.280
of a sudden I heard a big bang on the window. And I came in and all the glass was broken inside

901
01:01:53.280 --> 01:02:01.200
and there was like feathers and blood. A bird's pigeon just come flying out of nowhere,

902
01:02:01.760 --> 01:02:07.280
smashed the glass, would you believe it? And then she came back and went, well, that's obviously not

903
01:02:07.280 --> 01:02:16.080
true. Because there was glass found in the alleyway. And then she sent, right? She sent a big

904
01:02:16.080 --> 01:02:20.960
long letter with, you know, she took the money out to repair the window. And there was a very,

905
01:02:20.960 --> 01:02:26.240
very, very tiny bit of money left in the form of a check. And she sent the letter in the check

906
01:02:26.240 --> 01:02:33.040
to the production company of misfits, not to me, with the complaint letter saying how bad my

907
01:02:33.040 --> 01:02:39.120
behavior had been. It's like, fuck you, you fucking bitch. You know what I mean? Trying to

908
01:02:39.120 --> 01:02:44.720
fucking character assassinate me like, but they just got the letter. It was laughing at and go,

909
01:02:45.920 --> 01:02:50.720
I don't know why she sent this to us, but I remember one quote from it going,

910
01:02:51.440 --> 01:02:56.400
Russell Crowe-esque behavior. I was quite proud of that. But that was all, that was the only

911
01:02:56.400 --> 01:03:00.240
damage we caused. You know, that was the only thing. Everything else was very responsible.

912
01:03:00.240 --> 01:03:04.880
Yeah. But yeah, it didn't throw the fridge out the window. You said something interesting

913
01:03:04.880 --> 01:03:10.000
earlier, which was like when you were that age, you felt kind of, kind of fearless. You felt like

914
01:03:10.000 --> 01:03:14.880
you were kind of maybe almost bulletproof, like going into auditions and getting interacting.

915
01:03:14.880 --> 01:03:19.440
And I was running about that because the, you know, playing Nathan, who obviously his power is

916
01:03:19.440 --> 01:03:24.400
his immortality, you know, his central qualities, his kind of fearlessness and his kind of

917
01:03:24.400 --> 01:03:29.040
youthful kind of sense of just like, you know, of I'm immortal. This is who I am.

918
01:03:29.040 --> 01:03:33.680
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think there was any crossover at the time between you and Nathan?

919
01:03:33.680 --> 01:03:37.120
Do you think like you kind of fed into the character and how it was developed?

920
01:03:37.120 --> 01:03:44.320
Yeah, you know, I was, years later in reflection made me go, God, I used to know a lot about

921
01:03:44.320 --> 01:03:50.160
kind of my own opinions, but not a lot about what I felt about things, you know. And I think,

922
01:03:50.160 --> 01:03:57.120
you know, a good casting director, good filmmakers and that can see that in an actor, you know,

923
01:03:57.120 --> 01:04:03.040
see that quality. I'll be like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, that person has the germ

924
01:04:03.760 --> 01:04:10.000
of what we want for this character, you know, without having to, without speaking a word, you know,

925
01:04:10.000 --> 01:04:15.760
they somehow embody things, you know. And so, yeah, I kind of, I think I kind of swaggered

926
01:04:15.760 --> 01:04:21.520
around with the kind of cock sureness that lent itself to Nathan, yeah, because I know you've got a

927
01:04:21.520 --> 01:04:25.440
great improvisational energy as well. I mean, even looking at something like umbrella academy,

928
01:04:25.440 --> 01:04:31.040
that line of, like, you know, my father's, I'll give him a call, but he's playing chess with tennis

929
01:04:31.040 --> 01:04:35.760
of Hitler. So that was improvised, I want to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those lines. So you've

930
01:04:35.760 --> 01:04:41.440
clearly have a good sort of vibe and knack for just coming out with great improv nuggets, I guess.

931
01:04:41.920 --> 01:04:50.720
There was one on misfits. It was the Christmas one where, like Nathan has a sort of love story with

932
01:04:50.720 --> 01:04:57.280
this Welsh girl and she's pregnant by someone else. She's heavily pregnant. And we have this sex

933
01:04:57.280 --> 01:05:06.240
scene that happens in the locker room. And Nathan was kind of doing her from behind, right?

934
01:05:06.560 --> 01:05:12.160
And he's sort of rubs her belly and goes, it's like having a threesome.

935
01:05:14.880 --> 01:05:21.840
And they all laugh, they're like, no, we can't, we couldn't, we can possibly. It's just far

936
01:05:21.840 --> 01:05:28.880
to disgusting and indecent. So that didn't end up, Nathan was on the cutting room floor.

937
01:05:28.880 --> 01:05:37.200
On the cutting room floor, those fools. But yeah, we're always thrown stuff in, you know.

938
01:05:37.200 --> 01:05:40.880
I remember they get on mortal engines. The producers came to me and they're like,

939
01:05:40.880 --> 01:05:44.400
they're, everyone's really lively while we're getting and everything, but they're a little bit

940
01:05:44.400 --> 01:05:53.120
concerned about how much improv you're doing. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, the script goes through

941
01:05:53.120 --> 01:05:57.520
a lot of approvals and, you know, we kind of have to sort of stick to what we've come up with.

942
01:05:57.600 --> 01:06:04.800
And I was like, okay, all right, you know. Anyway, there you go. I think it's sort of a film set

943
01:06:06.080 --> 01:06:13.440
or any sort of set that sort of curbs spontaneity, I think, is not a great idea, you know.

944
01:06:14.080 --> 01:06:17.760
There was a good one actually, well, we're on it. There was a good one on the film Moonwalkers,

945
01:06:17.760 --> 01:06:24.400
I don't know if you saw that, where my character has taken mushrooms before filming a fake moon

946
01:06:24.400 --> 01:06:29.680
landing, right, where he's, where he's Neil Armstrong, yeah, I was playing Neil Armstrong.

947
01:06:30.400 --> 01:06:35.440
And it's taken all these mushrooms, right? And we're about to go on, we're in our spacesuits.

948
01:06:36.560 --> 01:06:41.360
And Rupert Grint, I tell him, I was like, I'm not after taking learn of mushrooms.

949
01:06:42.080 --> 01:06:46.480
And he's like, why have you done that, mate? It's not a time for me. Like, I was like, I know,

950
01:06:46.480 --> 01:06:50.800
I can hear what you're saying, but right now, my penis is whispering to me,

951
01:06:51.440 --> 01:06:55.920
and it's telling me that my parents are cousins, but I don't think they are.

952
01:06:58.560 --> 01:07:00.320
So that was a good moment.

953
01:07:00.320 --> 01:07:03.440
Hmm, where's that line in with the Dexter Fletcher has in that episode of Misfits?

954
01:07:03.440 --> 01:07:07.280
Yeah, because he plays your dad and he says, because you come out like, you know, I'm really

955
01:07:07.280 --> 01:07:10.800
tall and you're freakishly short. And then he goes like, where'd you get this stuff? And he goes like,

956
01:07:10.800 --> 01:07:15.440
I don't know, it just comes out. And that's how it is.

957
01:07:16.400 --> 01:07:20.080
God, you had to be years, years since I've watched Misfits.

958
01:07:21.120 --> 01:07:24.320
You know, maybe I've become a little bit too suspicious of memory lane.

959
01:07:24.320 --> 01:07:27.120
Maybe I should allow myself a little look.

960
01:07:27.840 --> 01:07:31.360
Well, as I say, I think it still holds up. And some of the, like you were saying,

961
01:07:31.360 --> 01:07:35.200
with about that scene with, you know, sort of Nathan's girlfriend in the Christmas special,

962
01:07:35.200 --> 01:07:40.400
like, Nathan out of all the characters, if I like, he had the most extreme behavior,

963
01:07:40.400 --> 01:07:45.280
like, he had the most out there stuff usually happened because of, or,

964
01:07:45.280 --> 01:07:49.440
you know, because of Nathan or to Nathan. And like, like, stuff like, you know, like,

965
01:07:49.440 --> 01:07:53.440
the scene of you and Roof, the odd lady and the first series, Shaggy, the odd lady.

966
01:07:53.440 --> 01:07:56.960
And then like, shitting the rabbit out of your ass in the, in the, in the biggest pit.

967
01:07:56.960 --> 01:08:00.320
Like, it's mental. Yeah, did you ever like, bulk it any of that? When you read the script,

968
01:08:00.320 --> 01:08:06.240
you're like, all of it. Yeah. All the constant bulking. But at the same time,

969
01:08:06.240 --> 01:08:09.440
you're kind of pinching yourself going, this is just, I can't believe I get to do this

970
01:08:09.440 --> 01:08:17.600
magic on telly. This is just wonderful. And I suppose approaching it with such relish

971
01:08:17.600 --> 01:08:26.000
and with a, a, a dollop of gratitude meant kind of bringing that kind of youthful fearlessness

972
01:08:26.000 --> 01:08:31.920
to it. You know, I remember once actually it was a nice moment where there was a sort of slow,

973
01:08:31.920 --> 01:08:38.480
slow motion sequence of Nathan putting sun cream on himself. It was me like,

974
01:08:39.360 --> 01:08:44.800
trying to impress Kelly in that. And we're like, you're loving it. It's like it looks skinny,

975
01:08:44.800 --> 01:08:53.680
spindly, pencil-y, little twats. And I think Daniel Kaluuya put out a tweak on my god,

976
01:08:54.320 --> 01:08:58.960
Robert Sheeran is fearless or something. And it's like, oh, you know, this is funny,

977
01:08:58.960 --> 01:09:04.960
because it didn't really occur to me, generally, that would, that would put the shits of all the

978
01:09:04.960 --> 01:09:13.200
people. I think because the environment was just so, it was very, very nurturing and permissive.

979
01:09:13.200 --> 01:09:19.520
And it just meant, you know, just meant we, we had the license to do anything. We really did.

980
01:09:19.520 --> 01:09:23.840
Yeah, that freedom to kind of fail in that kind of, and just, and to try, just try things.

981
01:09:23.840 --> 01:09:28.320
The more we failed, the more they left. It was just, it was a win-win.

982
01:09:29.520 --> 01:09:32.880
And do you have a favorite kind of, like, I see, or like, line of Nathan,

983
01:09:32.880 --> 01:09:36.400
something that you're kind of a quirk that you got to do that you was like, oh, that was,

984
01:09:36.400 --> 01:09:39.760
I was particularly pleased with that. There was a line where he said,

985
01:09:42.640 --> 01:09:45.360
he's talking about, I can't remember what character he's talking about,

986
01:09:45.360 --> 01:09:49.840
where he'd had this one night stand with this girl, you know. And they're like, oh,

987
01:09:49.840 --> 01:09:54.960
no, that's terrible. He fucking, she, she knows you. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I mean,

988
01:09:54.960 --> 01:09:59.840
we had this great night. I mean, everything was going really well. And then I tripled myself.

989
01:10:00.880 --> 01:10:07.040
And he goes, was that, was that mean? He was tripping myself. You know, where you come,

990
01:10:07.040 --> 01:10:17.120
you can shit yourself all at once. It's just like, it's just the most, like, immature,

991
01:10:17.120 --> 01:10:22.240
pure island nonsense. It was just great, you know, but there was an art to it, you know. Yeah.

992
01:10:23.440 --> 01:10:26.640
But I get a lot of people, quote in lines, back at me, like, the,

993
01:10:28.160 --> 01:10:31.840
you'd, what was it? You'd shag your own sister for a slice of cheese.

994
01:10:32.880 --> 01:10:37.840
We literally were quite in that one in the office this, yesterday, this morning. Yeah.

995
01:10:37.840 --> 01:10:43.120
Yeah, that's great, isn't it? So I don't have a sister. It's like, that makes it all the worse.

996
01:10:43.120 --> 01:10:50.320
You fucking purpose. Yeah. It felt like a show that you could kind of get away with anything,

997
01:10:50.320 --> 01:10:54.160
really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, looking back on it, the way it was made and the way,

998
01:10:54.160 --> 01:10:58.240
like you say, it was quite a sort of that environment of rehearsal and then the cast being so perfectly

999
01:10:58.240 --> 01:11:02.320
put together. And then, and just the way TV was made, then, like, you know, the way it kind of,

1000
01:11:02.320 --> 01:11:05.680
it's very compressed, like it doesn't stop moving. It's just full to the point. Yeah.

1001
01:11:05.680 --> 01:11:10.960
It had a real spiciness immediately. Totally. Yeah. I mean, if you think it was made today,

1002
01:11:10.960 --> 01:11:14.000
do you think it would be different? Do you think it could be made today? Like that?

1003
01:11:14.800 --> 01:11:22.960
Yeah. I think so. Yeah. You know, I think we, you know, despite all the age of political correctness,

1004
01:11:23.680 --> 01:11:30.560
I don't think, you know, mad irreverence has gone anywhere. You know, I think as long as it's

1005
01:11:30.560 --> 01:11:35.440
funny or it's attempting to be funny, then it's worthwhile, you know. Never had people's expense,

1006
01:11:35.440 --> 01:11:42.080
of course. So I think, yeah, absolutely, it could be made. You know, you know, I think like,

1007
01:11:44.080 --> 01:11:48.560
there's been a huge adjustment in television and films, more television, really,

1008
01:11:48.560 --> 01:11:54.960
you know, because you've got sort of these broadcasters that are public service broadcasters,

1009
01:11:54.960 --> 01:12:00.880
but also privately-run broadcasters, you know, who all have feel a sense of responsibility

1010
01:12:00.960 --> 01:12:07.440
to represent, you know. And that means sort of telling stories of people who are not,

1011
01:12:07.440 --> 01:12:13.440
I suppose, gender typical, or they're not part of the majority race, whatever else.

1012
01:12:14.320 --> 01:12:19.040
And that's very, very worthy stuff. It's great that that's happened. You've seen stories

1013
01:12:19.040 --> 01:12:25.200
you've never seen before, but I think sometimes with that stuff, the writing can get overly cautious.

1014
01:12:26.000 --> 01:12:31.440
And when writing is aware of its audience, it just becomes really shit, I think, really mediocre

1015
01:12:31.440 --> 01:12:37.120
and beige. And so as long as whoever was writing the modern day misfits wasn't worried about

1016
01:12:37.120 --> 01:12:43.040
offending their audience, then it would be great, you know. Yeah. And then when it came to decision

1017
01:12:43.040 --> 01:12:48.160
to leave the show, I mean, what was your thinking behind that? Was it just a sense of like,

1018
01:12:48.160 --> 01:12:53.280
I want to, I've done my time, I want to try something. Yeah, basically that, you know, I was so,

1019
01:12:53.280 --> 01:13:01.040
I was so sort of flighty, it was only 20 in 21 when we made the show. And it was a very sort of like,

1020
01:13:01.760 --> 01:13:08.240
I was hungry, I wanted to try lots of different things. And I had a real appetite for a variation.

1021
01:13:08.720 --> 01:13:15.120
And I had a real sort of a suspicion of being typecast, you know. And when I, when people turned

1022
01:13:15.120 --> 01:13:18.960
around to me, we were like, I can't believe you would have left. I was like, what do you mean?

1023
01:13:19.600 --> 01:13:25.360
Of course, I was going to leave, you know, I was only contracted for two series, you know,

1024
01:13:25.360 --> 01:13:30.000
but they were like, yeah, but it's just successful in that. You're like, well, so will the next thing

1025
01:13:30.000 --> 01:13:36.560
be, you know what I mean? And I kind of, you know, it was out of a sense of professional ignorance

1026
01:13:36.560 --> 01:13:42.000
definitely, you know. I mean, if I had my time again, I don't know if I would have, if I had known

1027
01:13:42.960 --> 01:13:53.200
at what I know now, you know, would I have left, I don't know, but I, yeah, I remember being

1028
01:13:53.200 --> 01:14:01.200
really sort of gobsmacked by people's reaction to me leaving. But ultimately, I was glad I left,

1029
01:14:01.200 --> 01:14:05.040
you know. It seemed to some like almost a sense of heartbreak like, oh my god, I can't believe

1030
01:14:05.040 --> 01:14:10.960
they've gone. Yeah, yeah, which I guess must be quite strange being the actor behind that character,

1031
01:14:10.960 --> 01:14:18.000
like, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was nice sort of, but I think, you know, of course,

1032
01:14:18.000 --> 01:14:23.840
it's great to, especially with a show that you've helped to create kind of thing, you know,

1033
01:14:23.840 --> 01:14:29.760
your part of the DNA of it, to kind of be with it for the length of it. But in the case of

1034
01:14:29.760 --> 01:14:36.560
misfits, and this is the case with many TV shows, the writing got delegated after season two,

1035
01:14:36.560 --> 01:14:42.240
you know, quite substantially. I don't know how much the Howard Overman, who's the creator,

1036
01:14:42.240 --> 01:14:49.520
had written the first two seasons. And he had been developed very, very well by the producers and

1037
01:14:49.520 --> 01:14:57.520
fairness, you know. And then they got sort of staff writers in, you know, who were young and trendy

1038
01:14:57.520 --> 01:15:04.800
to kind of write the show. And I think when that happens, sometimes a show is at risk of becoming

1039
01:15:04.800 --> 01:15:12.240
a kind of pastiche of itself, you know, becoming a bit self-aware, you know. It's not just when

1040
01:15:12.240 --> 01:15:17.120
it's not just one person's vision. Yeah, yeah, it's people going, oh, you know, what you know,

1041
01:15:17.120 --> 01:15:24.400
it's very misfits is this, you know, sort of something of the kind of originality can get lost.

1042
01:15:24.400 --> 01:15:31.280
And I think, to be honest, you know, I enjoyed the third season of misfits. I must confess,

1043
01:15:31.280 --> 01:15:37.600
this is a mad thing, but I actually never watched seasons four and five. It's not terrible to say,

1044
01:15:37.600 --> 01:15:42.960
it's just, you know, I just kind of never got round to it, you know. I'm sure it's brilliant,

1045
01:15:42.960 --> 01:15:48.160
you know, a lot of people love the show right to the end. And it's not like I stopped loving the

1046
01:15:48.160 --> 01:15:56.880
show. It's just like I kind of, you know, I just sort of just, you know, but, you know, of the bit

1047
01:15:57.200 --> 01:16:01.200
of three, I thought I thought all the acting was fantastic, but some of the writing had gone a

1048
01:16:01.200 --> 01:16:08.880
bit pastiche, yeah. So I just was, you know, it kind of made me go, wow, I didn't see that coming

1049
01:16:08.880 --> 01:16:16.720
at the time, but how could I, you know, but in a way, it made me glad that I did leave when I did,

1050
01:16:16.720 --> 01:16:22.160
you know, maybe you almost became a bit too extravagant like some of the concepts like the zombies

1051
01:16:22.720 --> 01:16:29.040
and lots of sort of quite big job elements kind of came in. Dr. Who, you know, where there's kind of

1052
01:16:29.040 --> 01:16:34.640
gimmicky bad guys every week. I mean, that wasn't what the show was when it first began.

1053
01:16:35.440 --> 01:16:43.440
It's like what sort of curious superpowers or villainous powers can we invent, you know,

1054
01:16:44.160 --> 01:16:50.480
for it to kind of, to become the adversity for the heroes, you know,

1055
01:16:52.240 --> 01:16:57.200
and like, you know, it's hard to write many series of television. It's really, really hard to keep

1056
01:16:57.200 --> 01:17:05.360
it going, I think, you know, but it's, especially, you know, there's so many forces at play,

1057
01:17:05.360 --> 01:17:12.080
you know, when something starts making money and you know, it starts, you know, that has a huge

1058
01:17:12.080 --> 01:17:18.800
can have a big corrosive effect on the material going forward, you know, because then there's this

1059
01:17:18.800 --> 01:17:26.720
pressure to not fuck up the thing that everybody loves, you know. What did you find that on?

1060
01:17:26.720 --> 01:17:31.920
Because obviously, the projects you've worked on have been some of those big, you know,

1061
01:17:31.920 --> 01:17:35.760
series, things like misfits, but also, of course, umbrella academy, a huge series. I mean,

1062
01:17:35.760 --> 01:17:40.240
did you find what you were saying there about the kind of pressure of a show, the size of that?

1063
01:17:40.240 --> 01:17:45.200
Did you find that on umbrella academy as well? Yeah, well, there was a sense of pressure

1064
01:17:46.080 --> 01:17:50.800
when we went back to shoot the second series of umbrella academy, because the first series,

1065
01:17:50.800 --> 01:17:54.720
we were all ignorant and it was a bit like the first series of misfits, actually.

1066
01:17:55.360 --> 01:18:00.960
Now, we're all just flouncing around and, you know, nobody really knew what the show was going

1067
01:18:00.960 --> 01:18:06.720
to be yet, you know, I mean, people didn't, the people who were making the show, the directors,

1068
01:18:06.720 --> 01:18:15.280
Steve, Overlord, producer, head showrunner, you know, of course, they had a never-kid,

1069
01:18:16.160 --> 01:18:20.960
instrumental person, the cinematographer, throughout the four seasons of umbrella,

1070
01:18:21.600 --> 01:18:27.040
he was the person who kind of conceived of the look and the feel. And, you know, same with

1071
01:18:27.040 --> 01:18:32.560
misfits, actually, both misfits and umbrella academy had a really, really distinctive look and a feel,

1072
01:18:33.440 --> 01:18:39.040
that kind of odored the world from the real world, you know, sort of just heightened it in ways

1073
01:18:39.040 --> 01:18:44.320
to do with color and shadow and camera angle and both were very, very distinctive, you know.

1074
01:18:45.920 --> 01:18:50.560
And so those guys were in a room going, right? You know, they knew the show they were making,

1075
01:18:50.560 --> 01:18:56.960
but we, the actors kind of, you know, didn't ultimately couldn't conceive of the world before

1076
01:18:56.960 --> 01:19:02.400
the world is presented to us in the final edit, you know. And so there was a great sort of

1077
01:19:02.400 --> 01:19:08.960
unknowing, which was freeing in the first series. And it's not like suddenly it became very

1078
01:19:08.960 --> 01:19:13.760
difficult to play that same character in the second season, not at all. In fact, some of my

1079
01:19:13.760 --> 01:19:18.960
favorite stuff of Klaus, the character I play, is in the second season, where he's trying to run

1080
01:19:18.960 --> 01:19:24.640
away from this mad cult that he's created. Yeah, then he's like, you know, everyone, I'm a complete

1081
01:19:24.640 --> 01:19:33.360
fake. And everything I said is kind of borrowed and made up. So anyway, listen, you should all just

1082
01:19:33.360 --> 01:19:41.680
go home now. And I don't believe it. Yeah, they're like, oh, they're too invested in it. And I

1083
01:19:41.680 --> 01:19:47.360
really, really loved all that stuff. So like, I don't think the material suffered, but the atmosphere

1084
01:19:47.360 --> 01:19:55.920
on set tightened up, definitely, because there was more budget. There was more to lose, you know,

1085
01:19:55.920 --> 01:20:01.040
because we had this big show and the first season was so successful. So there was a bit of an

1086
01:20:01.040 --> 01:20:06.560
atmosphere of, you know, crew members tiptoeing around you, you know, with the energy of, please

1087
01:20:06.560 --> 01:20:10.480
don't get me fired, please don't get me fired, please don't get me fired, you know. And he's like,

1088
01:20:10.800 --> 01:20:18.720
and I just hadn't really fully experienced that before. And I recoiled from that, you know, I was like,

1089
01:20:19.520 --> 01:20:26.640
you know, I just, I went into myself a little bit more in the second series, didn't, couldn't quite

1090
01:20:26.640 --> 01:20:32.480
figure out how to let myself fully enjoy the filming of the second series. On set, I mean,

1091
01:20:32.480 --> 01:20:38.400
off set, I was having an absolute ball in summer in Toronto of 2019.

1092
01:20:40.160 --> 01:20:46.720
It's just magic, like the summers they have are just paradise, you know. So yeah, basically,

1093
01:20:46.720 --> 01:20:51.280
there was this suddenly, there was this atmosphere of, right, we have this thing and we can't

1094
01:20:51.280 --> 01:20:58.560
fuck it up, you know. So that was it. And like it, you know, season three and four, I think,

1095
01:20:58.560 --> 01:21:05.040
me personally was about finding peace with that environment, you know. And I think, you know,

1096
01:21:05.040 --> 01:21:11.120
that environment sort of came in waves, you know, there was times when it was ultra intense. And then

1097
01:21:11.120 --> 01:21:18.160
series three of umbrella, which we shot in beginning the winter of 2021, like the height of

1098
01:21:18.160 --> 01:21:25.920
lockdown, you know, excuse me, was intense in another way because there was like loads of extra

1099
01:21:25.920 --> 01:21:32.720
actors on set, television making in Canada had been classed as a vital service, you know,

1100
01:21:33.840 --> 01:21:39.680
as if, you know. But it meant that we were all working and there was loads of TV and film being

1101
01:21:39.680 --> 01:21:46.080
made in Toronto, like arguably more than ever, you know, in the middle of the Covid. But like the

1102
01:21:46.080 --> 01:21:52.720
laws were just utterly insane, you know, all of the ways that you had to behave yourself. And then

1103
01:21:52.720 --> 01:21:58.720
I think, you know, the Covid brought out a lot of like social Nazism, you know. And that was the

1104
01:21:58.720 --> 01:22:02.960
thing that made me the most allergic people going around wagging their fingers at everybody.

1105
01:22:05.680 --> 01:22:11.840
And so there was a lot of that kind of strain, but that kind of eased off as well as the series

1106
01:22:11.840 --> 01:22:17.040
went on. And then series four, I was just like, you know, I was just like little Buddha wandering

1107
01:22:17.200 --> 01:22:22.880
around going, I don't care if this actor is bitching and moaning about something. It's like it's

1108
01:22:22.880 --> 01:22:30.400
just water off a duck's back, you know. So it's, it taught me a kind of a, a different kind of

1109
01:22:30.400 --> 01:22:37.680
fortuity over time, making umbrella, because in making big stuff in America, in the Americas,

1110
01:22:37.760 --> 01:22:48.000
say broadly, is far more hierarchical. You know, everybody knows their place a bit more,

1111
01:22:48.000 --> 01:22:53.840
it's a bit like the military or something, you know. And people like, you know, the word on set is

1112
01:22:53.840 --> 01:22:58.240
and now in Ireland as well, like because Ireland has a lot of studios now and they've big stuff

1113
01:22:58.240 --> 01:23:04.240
coming in and they just shot that show Wednesday there again. You know, there are few friends of

1114
01:23:04.240 --> 01:23:09.920
minor crew members and set builders and everything and they are told, under no certain circumstances,

1115
01:23:09.920 --> 01:23:14.800
to do not speak to the actors. Really? Don't look at them, don't speak to them, you know.

1116
01:23:14.800 --> 01:23:22.480
And you're like, that is so fucking, that's such an American imposition, you know, being

1117
01:23:24.320 --> 01:23:31.680
being printed upon a culture where you don't need to do that. You don't, like in Ireland, it's

1118
01:23:31.680 --> 01:23:39.200
far, far, far less hierarchical. Yeah. And it was interesting because I just shot a TV series

1119
01:23:39.200 --> 01:23:46.080
for Netflix and it's a full, almost entire Irish cast, it's about an Irish family in South Dublin

1120
01:23:47.040 --> 01:23:54.320
based on a book by Marion Keys. And it was, it was a very, very different experience.

1121
01:23:54.320 --> 01:23:59.440
It's just like, you know, just everyone having the crack, taking the piss out of each other,

1122
01:23:59.440 --> 01:24:05.680
you know, every, you know, there was just far more, far more equanimity, I'd say. More egalitarian,

1123
01:24:05.680 --> 01:24:09.920
kind of. Yeah, but, yeah, it was more equal. Yeah, yeah, whereas, you know, you're, you're

1124
01:24:09.920 --> 01:24:16.160
factioned off a bit more into your, into your departments in North America. That's the way it

1125
01:24:16.160 --> 01:24:21.920
works for them. I think that comes with money, you know, because the symptom of money is ego,

1126
01:24:22.640 --> 01:24:28.960
you know, and ego wants to claim the latter, you know, ambition. And then the ambition wants to

1127
01:24:28.960 --> 01:24:34.720
represent itself by, oh, I need a bigger trailer. Yeah. Yeah. And so that start becomes endemic

1128
01:24:34.720 --> 01:24:41.840
then into the system where they just assume that you're selfish and ambitious and that manifests

1129
01:24:41.840 --> 01:24:48.320
itself as wanting to be alone all day, even when you're with other people, you know. It's a

1130
01:24:48.320 --> 01:24:53.680
weird one, you know, I love being with people, you know, but I'm from a smaller place with far

1131
01:24:53.680 --> 01:25:01.760
less population density and far less guns, you know, and far less kind of manifest destiny, you know,

1132
01:25:01.760 --> 01:25:09.040
far less kind of self-servingness built into the DNA of their culture, you know. So it's sort of

1133
01:25:10.000 --> 01:25:17.760
appaft. Yeah. To be honest, that's why it was so nice to get to do a Netflix thing with a

1134
01:25:17.760 --> 01:25:24.960
Netflix wage in Ireland, right? You didn't have to travel to, you know, else much much better. Yeah.

1135
01:25:24.960 --> 01:25:31.360
You didn't have to travel to fucking raging wild west Trump o'clock, you know, to go and do my job,

1136
01:25:32.160 --> 01:25:35.600
you know, and I think the show we did, it's called grown ups. I think it's brilliant. I've seen

1137
01:25:35.600 --> 01:25:43.280
chunks of it. And the first half of it was directed by Gryff James Griffiths, who just directed

1138
01:25:43.280 --> 01:25:50.800
that ballad of Wallace Island. Oh, great. Should have him, actually. He's a beautiful character

1139
01:25:50.800 --> 01:26:00.160
film. So he has this really just beautifully sensitive and kind eye and spirit, you know.

1140
01:26:00.160 --> 01:26:03.960
And it's sort of, you know, the show is about these people who are all emotionally fucked

1141
01:26:03.960 --> 01:26:09.280
in their own special ways. But what I think what's different about it, you know, compared

1142
01:26:09.280 --> 01:26:16.840
to other shows that are about the rarefied rich of the world is that the gaze of the camera

1143
01:26:16.840 --> 01:26:25.160
say is all about compassion, you know. It's about like you feel like the guard of, you

1144
01:26:25.160 --> 01:26:30.560
know, the gaze, the watcher of this show really loves these characters despite what they

1145
01:26:30.560 --> 01:26:35.400
do, you know. And I really, and that was all the writing as well, it was in the writing

1146
01:26:35.400 --> 01:26:42.560
by Sam Strauss, who's an absolutely stunning screenwriter who wrote that show apple cider

1147
01:26:42.560 --> 01:26:47.920
vinegar and she's done many other things, you know. That kind of what you said there

1148
01:26:47.920 --> 01:26:52.440
about that kind of yuck feeling of like of all of that kind of bullshit that goes on

1149
01:26:52.440 --> 01:26:56.880
on like a big set and the kind of not be it. The crew members not being encouraged, not

1150
01:26:56.880 --> 01:27:00.960
to speak to the actors. Yeah, yeah. On Ollum Breller Academy then, was that like, did

1151
01:27:00.960 --> 01:27:04.320
the other cast members feel the same way that you did? Like, because, again, like, you

1152
01:27:04.320 --> 01:27:07.120
know, we must say, like, that's another great cast that you've worked with Elliot Page

1153
01:27:07.120 --> 01:27:11.080
and Tom Hopper. Like, did you all feel that what you just described there about that feeling

1154
01:27:11.080 --> 01:27:15.160
a bit like, oh, we can't put this up? It's a day feel the same way. I don't know. I

1155
01:27:15.160 --> 01:27:20.880
mean, I don't know if I could speak for them on that, you know. I'm not sure to be honest,

1156
01:27:20.880 --> 01:27:27.440
you know. I really don't know if they felt that as sensitively as I did. I'm not sure,

1157
01:27:27.440 --> 01:27:34.120
you know. I know that, for example, Tom Hopper had done a big, big, big show American thing,

1158
01:27:34.120 --> 01:27:38.760
black sales for years. I think they did, like, four or five seasons of that. So, you

1159
01:27:38.760 --> 01:27:44.680
know, he was, you know, well-inducted into that sort of culture of thing. Again, I don't

1160
01:27:44.680 --> 01:27:50.960
know, black sales was like that, never spent a day on that set. And, yeah, I mean, I

1161
01:27:50.960 --> 01:27:54.920
couldn't tell you, you know, I mean, you don't know. But it's interesting to hear that

1162
01:27:54.920 --> 01:27:59.720
because about your, sort of, that set feeling kind of, by sounds of it, kind of a bit

1163
01:27:59.720 --> 01:28:04.240
uncomfortable, a bit eggshell, turning on eggshells. Quite formal, you know. Yeah, quite

1164
01:28:04.240 --> 01:28:13.240
formal. And it was funny, you know, coming on to grownups and noticing a certain feeling

1165
01:28:13.240 --> 01:28:18.440
in my body, a certain formal feeling, you know, that was dare-automatic since some

1166
01:28:18.440 --> 01:28:26.040
relatives bringing it on and going, I don't need this. This doesn't serve me here, you

1167
01:28:26.040 --> 01:28:30.760
know. Yeah, get rid of this feeling. Just get rid of this formality, you know, that I'm

1168
01:28:30.760 --> 01:28:38.560
imposing on a very, very informal set, you know. And so, I managed to kind of clear that

1169
01:28:38.560 --> 01:28:43.320
away, which is nice. Because everyone on a film set, you know, I remember something

1170
01:28:43.320 --> 01:28:47.480
that Tom Cruise once said about his films, it was just, you know, like, if someone comes

1171
01:28:47.480 --> 01:28:50.520
up to him and says, oh, you know, I'm going to help you make your movie. He's like, no,

1172
01:28:50.520 --> 01:28:53.640
don't say that. It's our movie, you know, everyone, even if whether you're a focus

1173
01:28:53.640 --> 01:28:57.760
puller or a lead actor or a director, everyone is making everyone's part of the process.

1174
01:28:57.760 --> 01:29:02.560
Yeah. Everyone's important. They are, you know, especially, you know, the focus puller

1175
01:29:02.560 --> 01:29:11.200
and like anyone who's like turning the gears of that thing, that's where it's made,

1176
01:29:11.200 --> 01:29:16.400
you know, we get all the, we get pushed to the fore, the actors and go, oh, well, I tell

1177
01:29:16.400 --> 01:29:22.600
you the story that happened on set, you know, as sort of half sort of doing the pretending

1178
01:29:22.600 --> 01:29:27.920
in the show and then half doing the PR, you know. But really, that's, we're just scapegoat

1179
01:29:28.000 --> 01:29:35.080
so that the people who do all the real work in film and television, you know, can remain,

1180
01:29:35.080 --> 01:29:41.920
I suppose, where they want to be, which is around the camera. That's where I think

1181
01:29:41.920 --> 01:29:48.240
60 to 70% of the artistry of the job is done, you know.

1182
01:29:48.240 --> 01:29:53.240
Would you ever go work behind the camera yourself? Would you ever be tempted to pick up a camera

1183
01:29:53.240 --> 01:29:59.720
and direct or... Yeah, maybe, yeah, yeah, possibly. There's a thing I wrote recently, I thought,

1184
01:30:01.960 --> 01:30:07.960
if I had a very, very good kind of experienced cinematographer, in fact, I have a cinematographer

1185
01:30:07.960 --> 01:30:13.160
in my head who I worked with once and it's like, I just, he works really fast, you know,

1186
01:30:13.160 --> 01:30:18.760
a lot of handheld. And I was like, I think, yeah, I could direct something, you know, because the

1187
01:30:18.760 --> 01:30:25.800
thing I wrote was very like, very actory, of course, you know. But I'm doing, you know, I'm writing

1188
01:30:25.800 --> 01:30:29.160
a lot of things now, I'm trying to get things off the ground like everybody else, you know.

1189
01:30:29.960 --> 01:30:36.840
I've written a few films and... But yeah, that one thing, I think, I could well,

1190
01:30:38.920 --> 01:30:43.000
I could well step into those shoes, maybe, you know, it's the first time I've ever thought that.

1191
01:30:43.960 --> 01:30:49.080
And is it like a short film or a feature or... It's a feature film at the moment, you know.

1192
01:30:49.080 --> 01:30:54.360
But the way independent film market is I'm thinking, maybe this could just be a series of YouTube clips,

1193
01:30:55.400 --> 01:31:01.640
just make the same thing and just chop it into, you know, 50 clips and go, there you go, YouTube, you

1194
01:31:01.640 --> 01:31:06.360
know, here's a bunch of shorts for you. Who cares, you know, it's all the same, you know,

1195
01:31:06.440 --> 01:31:12.600
people are getting, you know, just go and then tell them at the start, watch these in a row

1196
01:31:14.280 --> 01:31:21.800
and then you'll have the film, you know, because things have changed now and I think in a way

1197
01:31:21.800 --> 01:31:30.360
films are dying, you know. How do you mean? Well, if you look at how we used to watch things in

1198
01:31:30.360 --> 01:31:37.880
terms of screen entertainment, it was at home or in the cinema, you know, or at a film festival or

1199
01:31:37.880 --> 01:31:46.680
whatever. But now it's all internet, you know, obviously at home and like the algorithmic,

1200
01:31:46.680 --> 01:31:56.600
the platforms have engineered people in such a way and engineered the content makers in such a way

1201
01:31:57.240 --> 01:32:05.960
to kind of bend their users around to maximizing them in terms of profitability and I think

1202
01:32:06.760 --> 01:32:14.680
what that means is they've absolutely sabotaged people's ability to focus, you know.

1203
01:32:14.680 --> 01:32:20.600
My friend makes content for the internet, he's a podcaster and does all the videos for YouTube

1204
01:32:20.760 --> 01:32:26.440
and does that stuff and he said like algorithmically they're just being pushed into shorter and

1205
01:32:26.440 --> 01:32:34.920
shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter bursts of thing. You know, it's just true. You know,

1206
01:32:34.920 --> 01:32:41.400
and you know, as you see things like ADHD and anxiety mental disorders and things in the young

1207
01:32:41.400 --> 01:32:46.520
absolutely skyrocketing through the roof and you're just like maybe this has something to do with

1208
01:32:46.520 --> 01:32:52.280
impulse control and perhaps our impulse control has been utterly sabotaged by the fact that the

1209
01:32:52.280 --> 01:33:00.200
content we watch changes like world subject matter, you go from a cuddly kitten to a war zone in 12

1210
01:33:00.200 --> 01:33:10.600
seconds, you know, it's just it's just utterly head melting and then you kind of take that like

1211
01:33:11.560 --> 01:33:18.680
over stimulation of of of information and stuff and be like, and then go back to your normal

1212
01:33:18.680 --> 01:33:23.800
life and then you you worry about the fact that, you know, you put the bread in the toaster and

1213
01:33:23.800 --> 01:33:29.400
then you forgot that you were making toast, you know, and then you go, oh my god, I have ADHD,

1214
01:33:30.280 --> 01:33:37.480
I need ADHD medication. You're like, no, you don't, you've just you've just your impulse control

1215
01:33:38.120 --> 01:33:45.080
has been sabotaged by extremely well-paid, extremely well-educated marketing people, you know,

1216
01:33:45.080 --> 01:33:55.880
who are good at engineering your attention on screen on screens. And like, you know, it's it's an

1217
01:33:55.880 --> 01:34:02.440
interesting time now where you see these platforms, you know, law enforcement in America went in

1218
01:34:02.440 --> 01:34:07.800
and did sting operations and were able to drag out loads of emails, loads of correspondence that

1219
01:34:07.800 --> 01:34:14.840
prove that these platforms knowingly were causing harm to children, you know, and now they've just

1220
01:34:14.840 --> 01:34:20.120
paid out hundreds of millions of dollars with thousands of more lawsuits coming down the pipe and

1221
01:34:20.120 --> 01:34:27.960
I'm like, fucking good, good because they have run ragged with young people's minds, you know,

1222
01:34:27.960 --> 01:34:35.160
it's just so addictive, you know, it's like on another scale to what we, if what it used to be,

1223
01:34:35.160 --> 01:34:42.840
you know, and so that's, I think, why films are dying, because it's just too absorbing,

1224
01:34:42.840 --> 01:34:49.960
you know, just they've, like, unlocked, you know, the work of WB Skinner, his name is WB Skinner,

1225
01:34:50.440 --> 01:34:59.400
uh, operant conditioning was his thing, you know, about engineering people's free will, like they

1226
01:34:59.400 --> 01:35:06.200
took that and fucking ran with it, you know, that him and the work of Daniel Kaneman and Amos

1227
01:35:06.200 --> 01:35:13.160
Tversky from Israel who were able to look at sort of, um, behavior in large numbers, you know,

1228
01:35:13.160 --> 01:35:19.720
and how to predict it and how to manipulate it, you know, it's just like they just took all that

1229
01:35:19.720 --> 01:35:26.840
and just worked it into this data extraction model that is, it's, it's been very meddlesome,

1230
01:35:26.840 --> 01:35:31.640
I think, to the human condition, you know, so these lawsuits hopefully will try to, um,

1231
01:35:33.720 --> 01:35:40.200
try to address, you know, the core issues of what causes all the damage, and unfortunately,

1232
01:35:40.200 --> 01:35:45.400
I don't know if you can put the genie back in the bottle in terms of how quickly the videos

1233
01:35:45.400 --> 01:35:51.640
come at you and how quickly they change, you know, like, I, you know, maybe it's because I was born

1234
01:35:51.640 --> 01:35:58.520
before, like, the hyper super duper ADHD internet, but, you know, when you watch a film or you watch

1235
01:35:58.520 --> 01:36:05.560
a piece of art on Netflix or whatever, and then as soon as the credits is on, they're, they're asking

1236
01:36:05.560 --> 01:36:11.240
you to review it, and then like five seconds later, they're, they're showing you something else,

1237
01:36:11.240 --> 01:36:16.520
you go like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, you are massively

1238
01:36:16.520 --> 01:36:21.480
undermining the thing that you paid tens of millions of dollars to make. Absolutely. You know,

1239
01:36:21.480 --> 01:36:28.360
you have to let the complexity of a good piece of art settle, you know, from the conscious thoughts

1240
01:36:28.360 --> 01:36:33.880
down into the unconscious, into through the heart, through the gut, you know, you have to sit with

1241
01:36:33.880 --> 01:36:40.600
something, for at least, I don't know, a while, like, I don't know, an hour or two hours, a night,

1242
01:36:40.600 --> 01:36:47.960
a few days, you know, but if you, if you bombard people with, oh, you've watched that, you'll

1243
01:36:47.960 --> 01:36:54.600
like this, watch this, and people are kind of sort of beaten into submission by these, these,

1244
01:36:54.600 --> 01:37:01.400
these designs, you know, which are incredibly bullish and anxious, you know, like skip the credits,

1245
01:37:01.400 --> 01:37:06.840
you're like, what, you're gonna, like, it's the credits is a beautiful thing, it's part of the

1246
01:37:06.840 --> 01:37:12.600
pleasure of watching a piece of screen art, because not only are you letting the kind of names

1247
01:37:12.600 --> 01:37:18.200
of the human beings that made the thing, Netflix didn't make the thing, they hired people to make

1248
01:37:18.200 --> 01:37:25.560
the thing, you know, they hired artists like us who ran around with cameras, and then they go,

1249
01:37:25.880 --> 01:37:33.000
doom, it's Netflix, you're like, no, it's not, these are other people who don't work for Netflix,

1250
01:37:33.000 --> 01:37:37.640
who are commissioned by Netflix, you know, and in fairness, Netflix has creative input,

1251
01:37:38.280 --> 01:37:42.120
and often it's very good, like on grown ups and stuff, they were telling me about the notes

1252
01:37:42.920 --> 01:37:50.680
that came down, which actually did improve the show, but my point is that as you watch the credits,

1253
01:37:50.680 --> 01:37:55.960
and they kind of wash over you, you also have this kind of black screen, you know, you have a kind

1254
01:37:55.960 --> 01:38:03.320
of a sudden respite from what you've just been shown. Yeah, you're taking out of one state,

1255
01:38:03.320 --> 01:38:08.520
and now you're into another more certain state. And it's like, you know, don't, don't

1256
01:38:08.520 --> 01:38:14.840
cut your nose off to spite your face streaming platforms. You know, you're cheapening the thing

1257
01:38:14.840 --> 01:38:21.880
you're paying more and more money to make. You know, and it's just, you know, Ron Pearlman,

1258
01:38:21.880 --> 01:38:26.760
who's a friend of mine, who I love very much, and he's just made, he's just start an independent film

1259
01:38:26.760 --> 01:38:33.800
studio, which, you know, fair play to him. I mean, it's a, it's an uphill struggle, I tell you,

1260
01:38:34.600 --> 01:38:39.560
but he was doing one of these lovely kind of meandering Instagram lives, and he was, he's just

1261
01:38:39.560 --> 01:38:46.360
talking away, and he just goes, you know, streamers are where movies go to die.

1262
01:38:49.240 --> 01:38:54.440
I was like, I agree. Well, they don't even get to die there. They can't, they get, they land on

1263
01:38:54.440 --> 01:38:58.280
a streaming service. They kind of get, for buried, and then they, they might even just get deleted

1264
01:38:58.280 --> 01:39:03.400
and just lost forever. Yeah, they get buried alive and never allowed to die. Yeah, which is what,

1265
01:39:03.560 --> 01:39:12.520
you've been there as an agent. Yeah, indeed, I have, but, you know, it's a tricky, it's a complex

1266
01:39:12.520 --> 01:39:17.400
chat, isn't it? Because in the one hand, there's an enormous amount of work, you know, there's an

1267
01:39:17.400 --> 01:39:26.440
enormous amount of stuff getting made, and somehow the cost of that has been that, that lovely religious

1268
01:39:26.440 --> 01:39:32.200
coherence that we were talking about earlier on, where we all come together outside of our homes,

1269
01:39:33.000 --> 01:39:38.920
to watch a piece of art. That's kind of been, that's been hugely,

1270
01:39:40.840 --> 01:39:45.960
I don't know, decimated, you know? Yeah. And you know, you never know, there could be an upswing

1271
01:39:45.960 --> 01:39:52.120
again. I think there's been a lot of unexpected upswings in terms of community gatherings,

1272
01:39:52.120 --> 01:39:58.760
you know, as a result of all this text screen, societal domination, you know, there's been sort of

1273
01:39:58.760 --> 01:40:05.160
ways that, particularly younger people are trying to rediscover what they know they need

1274
01:40:05.160 --> 01:40:12.280
innately, which is each other, not each other on a screen, you know, that's just a terribly,

1275
01:40:12.280 --> 01:40:16.680
terribly, terribly weak and bleak substitute, you know, the real thing, you know.

1276
01:40:18.520 --> 01:40:24.440
You know, you can't smell someone's B.O. through Facebook, right? That's the point. You smell

1277
01:40:24.440 --> 01:40:29.560
something else on Facebook, something maybe more rancid, but like child sex trafficking before

1278
01:40:29.560 --> 01:40:37.960
you smell. Proven, proven, not just me saying that, the U.S. Courts of Law, Zuckerberg, you officially

1279
01:40:37.960 --> 01:40:41.320
are a child sex trafficker. Thanks very much for Instagram.

1280
01:40:43.640 --> 01:40:47.640
Yeah, but that, something that I'd like to, because we should have alluded to over the course of

1281
01:40:47.640 --> 01:40:52.840
this chat, which you've touched on, is your meditation, because for you like then, but

1282
01:40:53.160 --> 01:41:00.360
go segue, segue, but stick with me, because, because hang on, because, but what you

1283
01:41:00.360 --> 01:41:04.920
spectacular presenters, no, no, but what you were sitting there, because what you were saying about

1284
01:41:04.920 --> 01:41:10.920
like that dopamine rush of like, of instant graphication, instant communication with digital world,

1285
01:41:11.480 --> 01:41:15.880
like how do you, how do you keep that arms length? Is meditation kind of part of your process

1286
01:41:15.880 --> 01:41:20.920
when you keep them length? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because meditation came round where I was just

1287
01:41:21.000 --> 01:41:28.440
constantly sort of feeding the impulse, you know, the impulse of restlessness to work,

1288
01:41:28.440 --> 01:41:31.720
and if I wasn't working, I'm like, what's going on? Are we going out? We go for dinner,

1289
01:41:31.720 --> 01:41:37.400
we go for a few drinks, you know, sort of just sort of constantly looking for a form of soothing

1290
01:41:37.400 --> 01:41:48.680
or sedation to try to satiate the kind of beast that is, you know, just basically a form of

1291
01:41:48.680 --> 01:41:56.520
appetite, and you know, unfortunately, like the Buddhist adage, you know, feeding the impulse,

1292
01:41:56.520 --> 01:42:04.760
be it libido, be it, you know, just inability to be alone is like drinking saltwater, you know,

1293
01:42:04.760 --> 01:42:10.360
the more you drink the thirstier you get, so the worse the appetite becomes, you know, and the

1294
01:42:10.360 --> 01:42:16.760
the less and less you have the agency over and above the impulse, you know, and by impulse I mean

1295
01:42:17.560 --> 01:42:22.120
a physical compelling physical sensation that comes through you that makes you want to get up and

1296
01:42:22.120 --> 01:42:28.520
do something, you know, and that's the thing that the phones have locked in on, really, really

1297
01:42:28.520 --> 01:42:33.720
powerfully, you know, because it's like the pigeon in a box that's been given seed, you know,

1298
01:42:33.720 --> 01:42:37.800
it picks the thing, it gets the seed, picks the thing, it gets the seed, it's like that, but with

1299
01:42:37.880 --> 01:42:44.760
brain dopamine, you know, so I was alone in, it was doing a film, I was alone in Oregon,

1300
01:42:44.760 --> 01:42:51.880
Portland, Oregon, shooting night, and then we were, we were all snowed in with this big storm hit

1301
01:42:51.880 --> 01:42:57.160
Portland, and we all had to stay at home for like two, three days, and I was just buying myself,

1302
01:42:57.160 --> 01:43:04.200
like climbing the walls, just didn't know what to do, so I can't, I just, you know, it's just

1303
01:43:04.200 --> 01:43:09.640
suddenly, you know, it was kind of, it was funny, it was ironic because it was a form of pilgrimage,

1304
01:43:09.640 --> 01:43:16.760
but it was at home, you know, but by home I mean a very functional mod can't air be and be, you know,

1305
01:43:18.360 --> 01:43:23.560
and it just, it just struck me as really awful and tragic and despairing the fact that I couldn't

1306
01:43:23.560 --> 01:43:28.760
be alone with myself, it's like what does that even mean, you know, what does that mean that I just

1307
01:43:28.840 --> 01:43:38.600
can't be, how can I expect to be happy or, you know, content or bring a sense of joy to someone else

1308
01:43:38.600 --> 01:43:47.960
in a marriage, if I myself am utterly out of control of how I respond to impulses that happen

1309
01:43:47.960 --> 01:43:53.880
within, you know, and people try to other meditation and associated with Eastern religion or some

1310
01:43:53.880 --> 01:44:01.560
bullshit, but it's about input, you know, it's about like one's relationship with one's body

1311
01:44:01.560 --> 01:44:09.800
mind, you know, so anyway I started stubbornly meditating from that point and about six to 12

1312
01:44:09.800 --> 01:44:15.560
months in of like just failing desperately and being constantly swept away on the torrent of,

1313
01:44:16.440 --> 01:44:26.920
of like unwanted thoughts, certainly there was a sort of, you know, a break, a kind of a break in

1314
01:44:26.920 --> 01:44:35.000
the waves, you know, in the kind of the smashing, certainly disparate to sort of dispersed and I was

1315
01:44:35.000 --> 01:44:42.120
left, just sort of kind of at an inkling, a sort of a just beyond like it's see and feel the

1316
01:44:42.120 --> 01:44:50.280
quiet coming, you know, and then at a certain point around 2018, especially during umbrella one

1317
01:44:50.280 --> 01:44:56.520
actually, I was meditating by the new time, I was meditating loads and loads and loads, I couldn't

1318
01:44:56.520 --> 01:45:03.880
get enough of it, you know, because what had changed was that impulse, that swept away, that oh,

1319
01:45:03.880 --> 01:45:09.800
you know, saying egoic and competitive and demeaning things about myself and other people inside

1320
01:45:09.800 --> 01:45:15.960
my head, I had suddenly disassociated my sense of self from that thing and suddenly was looking at

1321
01:45:15.960 --> 01:45:23.480
that thing like a sort of a defunct Windows 93 operating system that was an idiot inside me,

1322
01:45:23.480 --> 01:45:28.920
like I was like this thing is an idiot, he's such a moron, why did I ever allow him to cause me so

1323
01:45:28.920 --> 01:45:35.080
much distress, you know, but it took time to kind of disentangle from that like that, that, you know,

1324
01:45:35.800 --> 01:45:43.080
talking monkey, you know, that's again Buddhism call it, and so then I was feeling like wow,

1325
01:45:43.080 --> 01:45:48.280
you know, if I can do that, what else can I do, and I started reaching deeper and deeper platforms

1326
01:45:48.280 --> 01:45:57.400
of my consciousness, where I was having these like brilliant 3D vivid fucking 8K hallucinations

1327
01:45:57.400 --> 01:46:03.640
with my eyes closed, you know, like the experiences of reality that I couldn't ever have conceived

1328
01:46:03.640 --> 01:46:09.080
out before, and then I thought that was the finish line, you know, but then I was like no,

1329
01:46:09.080 --> 01:46:15.000
I'm not going to get swept away on the hallucination stage, I'm going to keep going and going and

1330
01:46:15.000 --> 01:46:20.200
going and then you know, and then my button, then I get to a stage where my physical body would

1331
01:46:20.200 --> 01:46:26.120
start sort of dissipating and disappearing like a mist, you know, and realize that I was completely

1332
01:46:26.200 --> 01:46:33.560
non-physical, in essence, you know, so at that point I had disentangled myself a sense of self

1333
01:46:33.560 --> 01:46:40.280
from my idiot mind, from my body, experientially, you know, not like theoretically,

1334
01:46:41.880 --> 01:46:50.840
and then I had an out of body experience one day where I ceased to even be like my mind or my

1335
01:46:51.480 --> 01:46:57.960
not so much of my thoughts are conceptual and over there, but like even the thing watching the

1336
01:46:57.960 --> 01:47:05.880
thoughts disappeared, you know, I was like, and I just became everything for I don't know how long

1337
01:47:05.880 --> 01:47:13.400
it's in the book anyway, but it's just like it was one of the probably the most profound personal

1338
01:47:14.360 --> 01:47:20.760
experience of my whole life and I realized, wow, I am a kind of temporary, you know, physical

1339
01:47:20.760 --> 01:47:27.400
on this frequency manifestation of the creator or God or whatever you call this highly

1340
01:47:27.400 --> 01:47:32.680
specialized, highly organized, highly adaptive, highly intelligent system that we all are,

1341
01:47:33.320 --> 01:47:38.360
kind of just manifesting itself physically from the perspective of a human being, you know.

1342
01:47:39.320 --> 01:47:43.560
In TM, they call it the unified field, transcendental meditation, they call that the unified

1343
01:47:43.560 --> 01:47:49.400
field, the kind of collective unconsciousness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that was just like, wow,

1344
01:47:49.400 --> 01:47:57.960
I don't, you know, death is an illusion, life is an illusion, and suddenly, you know, beyond the fact

1345
01:47:57.960 --> 01:48:07.400
this, you know, when my inner life became something that I was working hard to avoid all day,

1346
01:48:07.400 --> 01:48:11.960
when it changed from that into something that I yearned to to commune with,

1347
01:48:12.840 --> 01:48:19.800
suddenly like the safety net beneath life appeared, and it's just like, wow, I have this blissful

1348
01:48:20.600 --> 01:48:31.000
sort of nurturing like fucking prana, shakti, like highway of sensational physical love that

1349
01:48:31.000 --> 01:48:37.800
flows through me whenever I want, you know. It just, you could just go on about it in words,

1350
01:48:37.800 --> 01:48:43.160
in millions and millions in different ways forever, but it just completely, it just upgraded my life,

1351
01:48:43.160 --> 01:48:48.840
you know, in a way that I could have never conceived of before I began, I began just thinking,

1352
01:48:48.840 --> 01:48:55.800
I just want to be able to sit still, but actually what happened was I sort of started a little bit

1353
01:48:55.800 --> 01:49:03.800
down the road of understanding the true nature of life, you know. It's like, amazing,

1354
01:49:03.800 --> 01:49:09.960
that's religion. Yeah, and do you think it's, it affects, it affects your acting, like in a positive

1355
01:49:09.960 --> 01:49:16.120
way as well, like your creativity? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, because, you know, if you're stumped,

1356
01:49:16.840 --> 01:49:21.960
and if you think, oh, I don't know, it's all right about this thing, just sit there for 15 minutes,

1357
01:49:21.960 --> 01:49:30.280
you know, and loads of ideas that are brilliant and kind of, that connect up things that are in

1358
01:49:30.280 --> 01:49:36.520
different areas of your subconscious, somehow, you know, find each other and become a larger idea,

1359
01:49:36.520 --> 01:49:41.960
that all happens in meditation, like Eddie Marzan was saying, you know, he's, and also anticipatory

1360
01:49:41.960 --> 01:49:48.280
anxiety, unfortunately I've discovered that that is something that doesn't really go away with

1361
01:49:48.280 --> 01:49:53.640
experience, you know, every new job that kind of comes back, you know, and it's kind of dragon

1362
01:49:53.640 --> 01:49:59.640
that has to be slayed, and it can be quite exhausting. But again, meditation can completely sort of

1363
01:50:00.920 --> 01:50:08.040
dissipate that and sort of take the fangs out of that. So it just helps in a myriad of different

1364
01:50:08.040 --> 01:50:15.400
ways, you know, in sort of all these different ways. And also, like, I did a play a couple of years

1365
01:50:15.400 --> 01:50:21.640
ago, brilliant new Irish play called Reunion, is it a playwright called Marco Roe, who's just

1366
01:50:21.640 --> 01:50:27.880
world class writer alive today. I've just was like, I'm going to meditate for this entire play,

1367
01:50:27.880 --> 01:50:33.400
you know, I'm going to just meditate through the whole play, and it just became this nice challenge

1368
01:50:33.400 --> 01:50:40.040
that I would do. And it was just, it was just wonderful, like, realizing that once, you know, once

1369
01:50:40.040 --> 01:50:45.080
you know how to do something, obviously, once something is in the back brain, actually just don't do

1370
01:50:45.880 --> 01:50:51.320
and then it does itself, and you can have your attention somewhere else entirely, as it does

1371
01:50:51.320 --> 01:50:58.200
its own thing. And it was just again, that was just sort of kind of an amazing breakthrough,

1372
01:50:58.200 --> 01:51:04.520
it's like, wow, it upgraded me as an actor because, you know, you see actors who know the thing,

1373
01:51:04.520 --> 01:51:08.520
but they're trying to do the thing on top of knowing it, you know, and they're just doing,

1374
01:51:08.520 --> 01:51:13.880
there's too much, too much happening. They're overcompensating for the sense that they don't think

1375
01:51:13.880 --> 01:51:17.720
they know it, you know, they just need to let it happen. They just let it, yeah, exactly,

1376
01:51:17.720 --> 01:51:23.960
just sort of surrender. So meditation, another word for meditation, could be utter surrender,

1377
01:51:23.960 --> 01:51:34.680
you know, physically, mentally, you know, and breath wise and just let everything just let it all

1378
01:51:34.680 --> 01:51:40.280
go, you know, and then you'll notice how quickly certain physical parts of you and certain

1379
01:51:40.280 --> 01:51:44.680
mental parts of you want to stay stuck, you know, and they go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

1380
01:51:44.680 --> 01:51:51.320
because I make up a really important piece of the pie chart of your identity as things currently are,

1381
01:51:51.880 --> 01:51:59.560
but then the more they're just not, no, I refuse, just let go of, eventually they give up the ghost,

1382
01:51:59.560 --> 01:52:06.280
and also I think a lot of thinking, like the body, you know, if you're in pain, you know,

1383
01:52:06.360 --> 01:52:11.560
that's an alarm bell from your body going, pay attention to me. I think when thoughts are going,

1384
01:52:11.560 --> 01:52:17.400
oh, and one is ruminating, that's just really your mind going, please pay attention to me.

1385
01:52:17.400 --> 01:52:26.600
Don't take a drug to sedate me. Don't, you know, don't, whatever, don't run away from me,

1386
01:52:27.640 --> 01:52:35.640
be with me, you know, and tell me that you're my boss, because again, like a recalcent from

1387
01:52:35.640 --> 01:52:44.280
dog, we have this little yapper in our heads, and like a dog who thinks it's the boss of its

1388
01:52:44.280 --> 01:52:50.840
owner, it's anxious, it's unhappy, you know, it doesn't play well with others, and we have that

1389
01:52:50.840 --> 01:52:56.200
animal instinct in our minds, you know, and I think these days it's far too fashionable to

1390
01:52:56.280 --> 01:53:04.680
identify as it, and to be medicated for it. Yeah, we need to avoid that. Yeah, I think that's

1391
01:53:04.680 --> 01:53:09.560
a lovely note to end on, Robert. I mean, this has been an absolute blast. I mean,

1392
01:53:09.560 --> 01:53:14.200
it's been lovely chat. Yeah, that has. I mean, I guess one last quick question, I mean,

1393
01:53:14.200 --> 01:53:17.400
because like, it's wide UTM, so it's when you talk about meditation, it's just fascinating,

1394
01:53:17.400 --> 01:53:21.000
it's nice, you know, and because it's such an interesting field, and all obviously all the work

1395
01:53:21.000 --> 01:53:24.600
that you've done as well, that you've taken us through, I mean, if you could do anything now,

1396
01:53:24.600 --> 01:53:28.360
like as an actor, as a creator, what would you, if you could do anything, what do you,

1397
01:53:28.360 --> 01:53:33.000
what would you want to do, do you think? Yes. I think I would make one of the independent films

1398
01:53:33.000 --> 01:53:38.760
I've written, you know, I'd love to get a film I've made that I've written, that would be an

1399
01:53:38.760 --> 01:53:45.320
absolute dream come true, you know, be a beautiful milestone. Yeah, so cross your fingers for a

1400
01:53:45.320 --> 01:53:52.120
sayer prayer to whatever God's you worship, or God's plural if you're a filthy pagan.

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And on that note, and on that note, Hail Satan.

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Hey everyone, thanks so much for listening to my chat with Robert Sheehan,

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who remember to like and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode,

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and stay tuned for more exciting, interfusing guests coming soon on half the picture.