2nd June 2020

Bradley James Interview Transcript 3/3

Michelle D&C Supporting Material, Destiny & Chicken 1 Comment

We are hoping to make this interview more accessible for anyone who’s native language isn’t English, by providing a transcript. This will be vastly improved if you listen to the actual Podcast Interview with Bradley James, while reading.

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Go back to Part 2

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I’ve been lucky with those (character deaths) because I’ve felt that the moments they’ve happened there’s been such a spectacle made of the deaths of those characters that it’s nice to know that they meant something, judging by the moments in which they have found themselves being unfortunately killed off… So I’ve been happy to tell those stories because they’ve justified the moment of death in the character’s story.

Peak drama, isn’t it? A good death. That’s what you want, really…

 Yeah, but I’m not sure you want to be doing it every single project, which is a streak I’m heading towards…

I mean, I won’t give any spoilers but anyone who has read The Liberator will know the fate of my next character.

Yeah. I was very unhappy when you died in iZombie.

Well, that was only ever going to be a short run. Originally I got told it was going to be one episode.

I was wondering whether it was extended because of feedback.

Well, I… where was I? I was somewhere I needed to get out of, and I got this call saying ‘There’s this show, it’s filming in Vancouver, you’ll be there for a few weeks, and you can get away.’ And there was some personal stuff going on and I was like ‘I’ll do it! Let’s get out of here’ and I get on a plane and I get up to Vancouver and I read the script, which ends with a kind of ‘Oh, maybe this is my next boyfriend…’ or something like that. And I was thinking ‘Well, that’s not going to work very well, because…’

No one’s told me.

No one’s told me. And I think essentially they were just making sure that I could say the right lines at the right time and hit my marks before they went ‘okay, we’re going to stretch this out’. But by the time they had made that decision, I think Damien was on the cards. So there was only so much I could… I mean, I don’t know. I think that was probably the limit of their desire for me to be on the show anyway.

But, I suppose I didn’t quite expect the reaction I got from it. People were very complimentary… and very kind… about… Lowell!

Oh well done! I could not remember his name!

They had lots of kind words to say about Lowell and yeah, it came about at the perfect time, and as I was up in Vancouver doing that, my agent nudged Damien towards me. She’d sent me four scripts at once, and then a few days later she gave me an email saying ‘I appreciate you’re busy, but make sure you read this one.’ And I did, and the rest is history.

And did you have that click moment?

I’ve had that three times in my life, where I’ve picked up the script and I’ve gone ‘This is mine!’

One of them is Damien. One of them is Felix Sparks, who’s the character in The Liberator, and the other one is King Arthur. And despite all the nerves about every man and his dog going in for auditions and what have you – and I fully appreciate this might be hindsight hubris of being able to say it now – but I’ve had it three times where I’ve gone ‘I’m getting this part!’

And it’s not out of me being like ‘I’m getting this part because I’m so good’, it’s me picking up this script and instantly connecting to it, and going ‘I know exactly what I’m gonna do when I go in that room, I know exactly the story they’re trying to tell, and I know exactly the story I want to tell.’

I can’t explain it, but it’s been there three times, and thankfully it’s worked out all of those three times.

It would have been really sad if you’d said ‘Three times! One of them was Arthur. One of them was – -‘ sorry, what was The Liberator character name?

Felix Sparks!

Felix, not Simon. I’m so bad with names, it’s insane! But yeah, and then ‘The third one, I didn’t get…’, That would have been really sad.

Yeah, thankfully that hasn’t been the case! I wish I could manifest that feeling for other jobs but I can’t. As I say, it’s happened three times. Maybe something akin to, in real life terms, falling in love with a character. And you can only fall in love so many times. Maybe that’s what’s happened from an actor perspective. I’ve fallen in love at first sight with those three characters.

So, for our listeners, just to do the promo bit: When is The Liberator out, and where can they see it?

Fingers cross, with all that’s going on right now, we’re still on schedule, roughly speaking… Let’s just say vaguely that it’ll be out hopefully before the end of the year, and not quote me on that… obviously, here we say that, but if there’s an announcement made and it goes ‘In 2021….’ I’ll be…

It’s been the longest post production period of anything I’ve worked on. When you see it, you’ll understand why, but with any luck… I’m so excited for an audience to see it because it’s a story that you don’t really get many opportunities to see, about certain people from certain walks of life, and their involvement in the Second World War, and their stories that we haven’t been told before. And the way that story is told is something you won’t have seen before. The only thing I can equate it to – I can’t really describe the visuals for you, because I don’t have anything to equate it to, but the only thing I can describe is that when I first saw things like 300 or Sin City, I was watching those and going ‘Visually, I’ve never seen anything like this before!’ – Now, this isn’t like those visually, but it had the same sensation for me where I saw it and thought ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before’.

So partly for the aspect of that medium that people are going to see I’m excited for them to see it but also I’ve seen it without all the bells and whistles. I’ve seen it in the form of it looking just like a play. And it’s the story that keeps you going. The sexy artistry that comes with it is wonderful, but it’s not going to hold the audience unless the story is there, and luckily I’ve seen it without all that, and thus my excitement for people to see it. So fingers crossed I’m not falling flat on my face with those words, as people turn off in their droves.

Well we look forward to that over the next something months.

There you go! I love how vague you were able to be with that prediction. But yes, keep your fingers crossed for me, by the end of the year. Oh and also where you can see it: Netflix.

I imagine there is a desire by Netflix to keep things on schedule, as I’ve got a feeling that projects will be drying up over this period of time…

Netflix have been quite cute. I’ve seen… what’s the vicar thing that we watch?

Vicar of Dibley?

Yes! Vicar of Dibley has been put on Netflix.

Has it?! Wow!

Yeah. After your meeting, after your phone call… go watch it!

Yeah! Wow, that’s incredibly…

Something else. I can’t remember what it was now, but a very similar show to that.

Clearly mining the archive.

Yeah. I mean, it really is the time for nostalgia TV.

Yeah, running out of new shows but also ‘People are at home and they’re sad, what can we do? Vicar of Dibley!’

Dawn French chewing everybody up!

I imagine that once this is over no one’s ever gonna want to watch a re-run ever again.

Just throw out all of our DVDs because you’ve watched your quote for life.

Yes! I know a few people who claim to have completed Netflix. And I believe them.

But have they re-watched the Vicar of Dibley?

Not yet. This is the first I’m hearing of it becoming available so thank for the head’s up!

It’s very exciting.

While we’re on quarantine… so, no one knew that you said yes to this interview, except–

Well thank you for your question! It was from an Instagram Live, right?

Yes.

Because after the absolute cluster-f-bomb that was the first Instagram live I did – not that the second one was much slicker in operation – but I was on there with people watching me scroll through…

I mean, about 50 of those questions at a time were ‘Merlin Season 6?’ and of course there’s only so many times you can answer the same question, so I was like ‘Right, let’s do this properly!’

So I’ve written out all those questions and of course I’ve then written the handles that go with it, and then I picked it up and the recognition of the handle hasn’t happened until there’s a camera pointing at me and I’m broadcasting to however many people were watching and went ‘OH, I KNOW THESE GUYS!’

Of course Tom was with me as well. I’ll have to remind him of the commitment he has made, on live broadcast.

Well, tell him if you speak to him that if he does want to come and talk to us, I have very little interest in talking to him about Merlin, because I was a massive, massive Black Sails fan.

Okay, okay… Actually, I think you’ve mentioned that…

Not that his turn in Merlin wasn’t excellent for what it was.

But Black Sails is your jam?

Black Sails is my jam, yeah.

The funniest… I don’t know if it’s still on there (phone), but I sent Tom a recording of me singing the theme tune song to Black Sails.

It’s such a good theme!

Which just sounds like a bag of cats are being strangled, and then they kind of auto tuned it a little bit, and yeah, he’s-

And that’s what ended up in the finale cut, yeah?

I presume so, yeah. You get to ask him, when you speak to him. He’ll be able to give you the insight. Or he’ll be able to play you back the video of me performing the theme tune for him, if he’s still got it..

I mean, that’s worth the price of admission alone.

Yeah.

Honestly, every time we watch an episode I end up cat-howling the theme tune for a long time after…

I do that, and then I do impersonations of the guy… he’s not necessarily the bad guy, but he’s sort of the bad guy…

Do you mean Charles Vane by any chance?

Yes!

With the growl…

Yes. I’ll do impersonations against Tom on What’s App, which I’m sure he gets a kick out of…

I was going to say, does he appreciate them?

I usually get a video back where he is sort of chuckling… the remnants of his chuckle from having just watched it are still there at the beginning of the video.

Sorry, I interrupted your question massively!

That’s okay! What I was going to say was that the only people who knew that we were going to do this are our Patreon supporters and we gave them the chance to ask us anything that they wanted to ask you.

Great.

Lychee Jelly wanted to know, what did you stock up on before the quarantine, or possibly more importantly, what do you wish you’d stocked up on?

What did I stock up on? I went and bought Pro Evolution Soccer 2020. And I’ve barely played it. I’ve been just as busy in quarantine as I was before, so I haven’t had a chance to play it really, but I’ve played the odd game, my skills have deserted me. When I was a kid? Pretty damn good. Nowadays that game has moved on. So I haven’t played it massively… 

What do I wish that I had stocked up on? That is a phenomenal questions because I feel it will make me realise what I am missing in my life right now and I have to say, nothing glaringly obvious has presented itself…

The only thing that I did go, I was like ‘You know what? Maybe I should get some weights or something, and create some sort of gym…’ and I went online and every person in the world had had that idea before me, and there were no weights available. So thankfully I have an excuse for not doing any working out or anything. I can go ‘Oh, there’s no weights. Can’t do anything…’

That’s not really answering the question, because I’m not really regretting not stocking up on it but… so far everything is fine. There is no need to panic. I have everything I need.

I we send our weights to Bradley, does that mean I have an excuse for not working out? Because I would like that…

Otherwise, honestly, overwhelmingly everyone just wanted to know what the hell’s up with the mugs?

What are you talking about?

I know. I did say that was going to be your reaction! And I’m pretty sure after Friday’s quiz it was going to transform into ‘What the hell’s up with the shirts?

Which, yeah, I also assumed…

You’ll have to explain my confused facial expression for your listeners. That one’s lost on me.

Fair enough. Anything to wrap up, seeing as you have very kindly stuck with us for two hours and your phone call is coming up?

I don’t think so. I mean, thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for all your support, it has been incredible.

Not at all. My thanks to you! Essentially as I say, you’ve done a great job with your show and it’s an honour that you’ve picked up the show to spend the time that you do on it. The honour of being in the show is one thing, the fact that you guys are talking about it is wonderful, because you deal with it in such a way that is, very much like what I’ve found with the Merlin fan base, large part remarkably respectful which I understand… I thought was the norm, but I’ve spoken to people who have other shows, and apparently it’s not!

So, the Merlin fan base as a whole I couldn’t be more thankful for, but in terms of your representation of it, it’s a real pleasure to have you and the work you guys do for it, and I’m sure your fan base are very happy about it, too, so thank you guys, I really appreciate it.

Aww, that’s very kind!

Thank you.

Only honest. Spitting the truth…

Any last words that you want to say to our listeners?

If only I had something profound to say, other than… you know what? I said something that got put in like, almost like a post card quote when we finished. In fact, I tell you what I’m going to do…. Sorry, I’m searching for an email from approximately a million years ago… Oh, is this it? …here we go!

Right. You may or may not recognise this picture. Again, great for podcasts…

Yeah, okay. Yep.

Okay, so we were asked to give a quote with regards to the show ending and what have you. And they used that bit. Here is the full quote. This is an exclusive. And I wish I had proof read this first.

The Merlin have provided me with fond memories, great experiences, and beloved friends, and all the while we were supported by a devoted fan base who made the show a unique, surreal, and special experience. My words won’t do justice to the honour of being King Arthur, so I shall just say, that it has been an exceptional one, and that knowing the show has been a part of so many people’s lives has been humbling. Thanks for being with us on the journey. It wouldn’t have been half as much fun without you. The Once and Future King.

There you go.

The full quote was never released. But I say that because it still remains very firmly true, very much the case, and hopefully people who listen to your podcast will be able to feel the sincerity of my heart beating for those word, when I say them.

That was perfect. I don’t think there is anything else to add.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for putting the effort into your questions and your interview and everything and best of luck with this podcast and all your future endeavours when you pick up… I’m sure you’ll pick up a new show at some point.

I’ll be devastated, but best of luck with it all!

Thank you very much.

It’s been lovely meeting you.

Thank you guys.

It’s been a pleasure.

Take care!

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23rd May 2020

Bradley James Interview Transcript 2/3

Michelle D&C Supporting Material, Destiny & Chicken 11 Comments

We are hoping to make this interview more accessible for anyone who’s native language isn’t English, by providing a transcript. This will be vastly improved if you listen to the actual Podcast Interview with Bradley James, while reading.

If you enjoy our content why not buy us a Ko-Fi?

Go back to Part 1

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Yeah, they (Camelot villains) do seem to never have tried to kill Arthur before Merlin showed up…

I think there are moments. I think you sort of have to… maybe allow for the idea of his age being a bit of a protective shield up until that point. Because if you’re going along the lines of people with magic not necessarily being soulless evil doers, then there’s an argument there that there is maybe not as much of an attach, or a focus on the attack of Arthur, until he suddenly becomes a force himself, and it is seen that he is suddenly fair game.

That is something that I had to try and use as an answer as to why has Arthur not just been killed by now? This makes no sense. And believe me, the number of times where I would pick up a script and go ‘This makes no sense!’ were immeasurable. But you’re able to find a way. There’s a slight fudging on what you would consider the reality of the truth…

In fact, your show centres on this. You pick up on things that the writers weren’t able to nail down, when they were putting the show together. It makes me realise how tough a job writers and producers have, when they are trying to tighten up any loose end in a story line, and eventually it just gets to a point… House of cards. It’s like this! If I picked up this packet of top trumps, this whole thing just comes (crashing down).

There’s a visual gag for your podcast listeners, but imagine I have a house of cards behind me, listeners, and I’m about to pluck the jack of spades from the bottom there. Anyway…

And you could literally make a house of cards out of Merlin Top Trumps.

Yes I could! Here they are.

Very good.

I should have brought mine, we could have played.

You have a set of Merlin Top Trumps?

I do have a set somewhere in my room, along with the teeny tiny Merlin and Arthur.

Oh, they’re up here somewhere. Here you go!

They’ve been scribbled on because Colin signed mine, and Colin’s version has me scribbling all over it. So our versions are not quite as clean as selling standard.

I think they’re probably more valuable this way.

Potentially.

I think ‘Mint in Box’ only applies until the person in the box signs them, and then you’re okay.

That’s a fair point.

Yours have got cake on though, don’t they?

They do have cake on.

Yeah, Michelle had a dragon birthday cake at some point, and of course tiny plastic Merlin and Arthur figurines had to get involved in…

Oh, fantastic!!

…in the slaying of the cake.

They cut the cake with little plastic swords.

We had to pre-cut with an actual knife, because turns out the little plastic sword Excalibur isn’t all that good, at slaying dragons.

Oh, I’ve never opened up that one… cause that’s in the dragon, isn’t it?

Cause ‘Mint in Box’, you’re not allowed to open it!

I’ve never opened it, so I couldn’t tell you if it was any good or not.

Does not cut cake.

That is a shame. You would have thought at the very least it would cut cake. If it can kill undead armies, cake would have been no match for it.

Maybe cake’s the one thing that stops it.

Exactly! If only Arthur’s enemies knew that that was the way of it.

There’s a Merlin episode…

Morgana’s in a cave, she’s tapping her fingers together with a smirk, and she says ‘Let them eat cake… muahahaha’

Spoof alternative series!

Oh yeah!

I mean, we were going to ask, very much on the premise that we’re aware it’s not happening, but if there was a season 6 of merlin, if there was a wrap up movie, what would you like the story line to be? And I guess, would it involve cake?

What would I want a wrap up story to be… You’re sort of touching on… For lack of a better term, part of the magic of Arthurian legend is that he is the Once and Future King. If you wrap things up, you have taken away the mystery and that spark of excitement that the imagination creates around what that future is. And I wonder if I am really the man who should be telling that tale, or creating that tale, should I say?

I’m not sure I am the writer of such a story, because I don’t think I would do anywhere near the level of justice which would need to be done, to create a worthy enough version, of the ‘Future’ part, of the Once and Future King.

That was a very nice dodge…

It comes from being politically aware with Merlin fans, but also it’s my genuine thought on it. I think realising the currency of, and part of what’s made the show survive, is that it has a future, I believe. And I’m not… the number of times that people ask about Season 6… it’s the first question! It’s the first question that anybody asks, and in it’s own way, that’s a compliment. But those questions probably need to go to the BBC or people in a position different than mine.

I’ve got a couple of contacts at the BBC, we’ll get on that! We’ll make it happen.

There is something a little bit… I mean, inspiring, yes, but also ominous, about the Arthurian legend thing generally. The Once and Future King thing… he’ll remerge when it’s all gone to hell. And the idea that the things that we’ve lived through, that humanity has gone through in the past thousand years, have not been sufficient, to warrant the return of the Once and Future King, is a little bit…

Well, we’ve come out the other side of them…

Yeah. That’s true. That is true. But I think from a story telling perspective, I would find it a little daunting to have to come up with the thing that was bad enough, the thing that was worse than World War 2 and the Black Death, to justify bringing back this king figure, when he hadn’t turned up before. I think that’s a slightly daunting apocalyptic task.

Thus, why you realise how I decided to side step that question earlier.

I would repeat, that we have come through all of those scenarios and let’s hope that we don’t face the one that does require him.

I know that you haven’t listened to the Season 2 podcasts yet, but we’ve spent quite a lot of time in Season 2 realising that Merlin narratively exists for Arthur, and for Arthur’s story, which fits in with what you were saying earlier in regards to approaching Arthur’s character, and how you went about that. I guess I’m just wondering whether that’s something that, from the ‘Inside Perspective’ came across, or whether that’s something that you thought about, something that you talked about…

To touch on what we mentioned before. Arthur can only see Merlin as his servant and he becomes his confident essentially. Arthur cannot be aware of all the extracurricular things that Merlin does for him. So it’s very difficult… I’m probably going over old ground here, but Merlin is there to serve the story of Arthur, and as an audience we are given this special insight, that nobody else gets, apart from Gaius and one or two other characters. But even they don’t get the full picture. They get versions of what happens, they don’t get to see what Merlin goes through, they maybe get to hear about it. The audience is in a very privileged position to be able to see everything that Merlin goes through. And thanks to Colin’s performance you’re there, gripped with it the whole time. What he feels, you feel, because he’s able to do that to us as an audience. He’s so gifted as an actor, and that is again part of the reason why an audience stays with the show. Because they are made to feel that way about this guy, who seemingly has the weight of the world on his shoulders and yet is able to give the pretence to everybody in that world that everything is fine, he goes for the occasional pint down the tavern, and that’s his life.

So, there’s me spearing off on a tangent again, but I think I’m probably retracing the steps in saying the fact that, from my point of view, certainly while we were doing the show, approaching it as ‘this is Arthur’s show’ because anything else he just can’t know about.

And it would be so tempting to be like ‘Oh, maybe he knew that, maybe he knew this’ – No! There can be none of that! Because if you have one moment of him going ‘hang on a minute’, than it all falls apart.

It’s interesting, because that’s something we were asked about by one of our listeners, when we were watching and talking about the moment in Ealdor. Did Arthur know or did he not know, is he suspecting, is this the moment where Arthur maybe gets a bit of an inkling that maybe Merlin is magic. It’s what you said Ruth, that if he is, that makes the rest of the whole show and his actions cruel, rather than just oblivious.

Yeah… Yeah. I hadn’t really gone down that…

Rabbit hole?

I hadn’t really gone down that rabbit hole. – Thank you. Excellent term. – for the reason that I’d always felt very strongly that there could be no indication of Arthur picking up on anything.

I think there’s a huge temptation for actors to… you want to try and make your character smarter than they are. There’s a huge temptation to not seem like you’ve been outwitted. And I think if there’s any trace of that, that you see in Arthur, I have failed massively, because he’s the one guy who, by the time you get to the moment where – again, spoilers – by the time you get to the moment where something does happen, the payoff only comes with Arthur not having had any acknowledgement of it before.

Yeah, totally.

Right at the start of the show, how much of the full plot did you know? We are quite interested in the behind the scenes stuff of TV shows that we don’t know about. How many seasons did you sign on for? Did you know it was going to be five seasons?

Yeah, myself and Colin were straight out of drama school, so we didn’t know any better, and we signed on for five straight away. Which I wasn’t ever sort of nervous about. And the other thing that happened was I remember people saying ‘Oh, I hope we get a second series’ and I just remember thinking ‘Well, of course we will!’

I signed a contract and everything!

Yeah, exactly! In hindsight out of pure naivety. But also because I thought what we’re doing is good! Of course we’re gonna do a second series or a third series. So yeah, I don’t think it was always acknowledged that it would be just five years, but we had signed on for five years.

And in terms of… obviously for me, you’re aware that Prince Arthur is going to become King Arthur, you just don’t know when. I think when we initially got it, I maybe received the first three scripts. I think there were certain elements to the show that maybe took my surprise in terms of where they went with certain things. But on the whole you could maybe argue that I had the most obvious journey, given the awareness everyone has. Even on base levels. You say the name King Arthur to people and they have some recollection of it. Certainly in England or Britain. They have some semblance of what you’re talking about. Even some people play dumb about it, they’ll be like ‘uuuuh…’ they’ll know about King Arthur in some way. Because they’ll have been told a story when they were a kid, or they’ll have seen a movie, or something. So arguably I probably had things mapped out for, me at the beginning, in a clearer way than any of the other actors did.

Though how much of that is your knowledge of the Arthurian legends, and how much of that was actual discussions with the writers and producers about in regards to what they were going to put in the show?

Probably more knowledge of Arthurian legend. If I had a criticism, and I use that word carefully, if I had a criticism of the producers, it was that there was maybe a lack of information on the future. And that might have been because they weren’t too sure themselves where it was going to go. But sometimes scripts wouldn’t arrive that quickly before we were shooting them…

I’ve never worked on a job as hard as Merlin, since. And it was my first big job and I am so please for that, because everything has been a walk in the park, relatively speaking, since. The hours we did, the way… just, just all sorts of things. And in no way is this a complaint because all of it was a small price to pay for what was a fantastic experience. So I’m not complaining about it at all. But the way things were handled, through circumstances out of the hands of the producers or the writers… there’s deadlines that need to be met here or there. And once a show starts becoming successful, a lot of people want to get involved and want to put their name to it. So all of a sudden you’re answering to… I remember we started the second series and all of a sudden we’re getting visits from every producer at the BBC who wants their name connected to it in some way, so they can put it on their CV later on and go ‘Yeah, I worked on that’. Makes sense. That’s the deal. That’s what they have to do to progress in their career and what have you. But it doesn’t make the process any easier. Bizarrely, you remember the people involved that were able to step back or be quiet sometimes, which is not an easy thing to do.

So I would say, for all sorts of reasons, out of the hands of the people we were in direct contact with, we weren’t always given as much of a head’s up as I have since received on storylines and information, that definitely helps, when you are playing a character.

And the way I’ve worked since… I wouldn’t want to go back to the way that we worked on Merlin, because I’ve since been exposed to a way of collaborating that is much better, much more effective, much more helpful. But again, I’m so thankful for having been through that process with the way Merlin was put together, because I feel ready for almost anything, or certainly a lot of things. There’s lessons I’ve taken from it, and then been able to help out with other productions I’ve been on and go ‘Oh, well. This circumstance happened here and this is the problems we had and this is how it got solved…’

I’ve steered off again… Did that answer your initial question??

It does! And it was really unexpected and really interesting because I always assumed that cast, especially main cast, are going to have meetings about what’s happening in this season, get to the end of the season, are we going to be renewed or not? If we are going to be renewed, here’s what we’re thinking the plot’s going to be. But also, okay, we’re singing you on for five years. Over the five years here’s the story we want to tell. So it’s fascinating to hear that that was not the case,

Well, look. I’d go back to the point earlier. I’d just come out of drama school, I didn’t know any better. Colin was the same. We graduated the same year, we turned up, fresh faced, not knowing what the deal was. And I think we both learnt a hell of a lot because of that experience.

Not that we were taken advantage of, but there were certain naiveties in the way we approached things, that I do not allow now. Because it’s just not helpful for me. I’ve learnt my lessons through that show. So I look back on it and think how grateful I am for having had that experience, because I learnt most of the lessons I needed to learn about the industry on the show, but I don’t look back on it negatively, because I had such a great time doing it.

That feels an awful lot like Star Wars. I worked with alpacas on Star Wars – The Force Awakens. It was a great experience, it was huge amounts of fun, and I look back on it and go ‘you did not pay me enough money for this’.

That sounds about right.

You learn stuff.

It’s like any first job, isn’t it? You start doing anything and you have no idea what the boundaries are, what is appropriate to ask for, what is appropriate to question, you’re just like ‘Thank you, a job, I sign the contract, you’ll pay me money, that’s awesome’. And it’s not that they’re being mean or manipulative in what they are offering you, you just don’t know how to ask for anything else or to question anything, so you just accept it as it is.

Yeah. I mean, the fact that I was playing King Arthur takes away any qualms I have about… If I was doing a role that was not something I was passionate about, but the passion for the role was there. All of these hardships… I mean, hardships, let’s be real. All of these obstacles that were there, in no way was it unbearable. That’s not at all the case. It was just that there were lessons learnt, which in the future I have since gone ‘Okay, I’ve met that situation before, and I would rather go this way, than the way we went on that thing.’

The other element to it (filming Merlin) was that we had Anthony and Richard, who are certainly experienced and were incredibly mentors, wonderful to have around and we learnt so much from them. We learnt so much from them. You got different perspectives on what was going on. Sort of dragging this into the politics of working on a show, and I’m not sure to what degree your audience would take an interest in hearing about the behind the scenes difficulties to it, I don’t want to make this a boohoo…

I don’t know, we find it fascinating, so they’re gonna have to suck it up

Fair enough. But as I say, for all those lessons learnt, it was all a very small price to pay for what were five… I just look back so fondly on five fantastic years. I wouldn’t have done (the quiz) the other night if I had a negative kind of… I’ve had one or two experiences on set where I’ve come away just not feeling great about the experience. And that leaves it’s mark and I’ve just sort of left it there and gone ‘Ok, that’s what it was, and what have you…’

I haven’t got that about Merlin at all, as I say, going through things for the quiz the other night just brought back all these brilliant memories, these brilliant times that I had, and yeah, whilst being overwhelmed with nostalgia, I was overwhelmed by a sense of being… I’m waxing lyrical about being grateful about it, but that’s truly the case.

Though while you’re going down memory lane… what was your first day on set like? Mostly in regards to Anthony Steward Head?

Anthony I met on the read through, because there was another guy whose face was in the little casting box. We’d been given like a sheet of paper to say who the cast were, and there was another guy’s headshot any time I went into the office. For ages it was just mine and Colin’s faces up there. And then faces started to appear either in like the makeup room, or you’d meet someone from a department from the pre-show ramble you go through, and they’d be like ‘So and so has been cast’ or ‘They’re talking to this person, they’re talking to that person’, so when we got to the read through I’d heard a name of somebody else to play the role. And I sort if didn’t have any particular feelings either way. I was like ‘okay, that’s the person playing my dad. I can see why they cast him, or want to cast him’. And then I turned up for the read through, and Anthony’s standing there. And I hadn’t watched Buffy for… when did the last series of Buffy finish?

Finished in 2005…

2005? Okay, so it had been 2 or 3 years. And I had watched all of Buffy. And I turned up to the read through and Anthony’s standing there and I literally turned to someone and went ‘What the hell is he doing there? What’s he doing? Who is he playing?!’ and he goes ‘Oh, he’s your dad…’ – ‘WHAT?’

So of course I went over and we sort of had a very quick adjustment to this father and cheeky son dynamic that saw us through the 3 or 4 years that Anthony was with us. It formed very quickly, that dynamic that remained.

And, you know, there were moments through the show… there was a lot of time hanging out, certainly in France. There was a champion’s league finale one year, that we were filming somewhere in the middle of nowhere and Anthony had this plush set up for him to go home to, and I was staying further away from wherever we were, and it meant that I would miss the champion’s league finale. And he was like ‘Come round and watch it at mine!’ and little things like that happened. I’d have missed it. He had no interest in football to speak of, but little things like that, where he was kind of playing the role of my faux dad off set as well. And you know, I was so grateful to have… not just an actor like him playing my dad… I mean, any time I see a clip nowadays I think ‘Christ, he was good!’

Yep.

But as a person. You know, to have him assume that role. He didn’t need to. You work with actors who turn up, they do the job, and off they go. There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s just the way they work. But Anthony would very much engage himself as Anthony, in the stuff that would happen off set. We’d be in France and I spent – – In the first year of being in France I spent two months in a hotel in a village in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing in this village. Nothing.

And I was required for all two months of the shoot and everyone else went home at some point, and I was going stir crazy in this little village, in the middle of nowhere, I knew no one… there was a weekend where I was literally there by myself. This was early on and the crew hadn’t quite congregated. We eventually found ourselves in Compiègne as a whole group and things became fantastic in that regard, but before that we were all staying in all different parts, no one knew where anyone was, we couldn’t get together and spend weekends going for a meal.

And yet, while we were out there, Anthony was there, with a bunch of people much younger than him, and invested his time in you as a person, away from the show, away from acting and what have you. We’d be sat down and he’d have me pestering him while he was trying to eat his dinner but he wasn’t there going ‘go away, please’ with his body language or anything like that.

He was very generous with his time and with his… with his… affection’s not the right word, but… I suppose generosity, maybe?

Wait… Have I just said he was very generous with his generosity?

You have, but we understand what you meant…

Erm.. He was very generous with his….

Self?

Hmm. I want to pin it down but I also don’t want to waste your time whilst you listen to me um and and ah about trying to find words.

Seeing as we are talking about Tony Head… Tony Head is the reason why I started watching Merlin, literally that was it

I mean, love you n’all.

I mean, you’re great now, but Giles was going to be in another television show and as far as I was concerned that was enough, I was sold.

Yeah.

It was very difficult at first, being a huge Giles enthusiast, watching Tony Head do that was very difficult. I find it a little bit traumatising to be honest.

Yeah. Yeah. He changed… this word is something I don’t mean in a literal sense, but his weight shift from Giles to Uther is almost opposite ends of the spectrum. And what I mean by ‘weight’ is more ‘light weight’ and ‘heavy weight’ in terms of… The head mistress of my school was Mrs. Gillsen. She was about five foot tall, very slim lady, and shorter than most of the students, but the weight that she had, the presence that she had, was incredibly. So I don’t mean weight in the physical sense, I mean it more in a sense of your presence being light or heavy. And of course as Giles he’s got a lot of light weight, and sort of like ‘Oh, yes, very good’, searching through books and stuff and pushing up his glasses, and then as Uther his presence is just in the room, and it fills the room that he is. And that is only a credit to Anthony in terms of being able to transform like that. And as you say, you start off and you’re like ‘Oh, there’s Giles!’ and I don’t think it’s long before you’re like ‘There’s Uther!’

‘Oh my god…’

Yeah. Yeah…

But on sort of description they’re not parts that are entirely unrelated. There’s a kind of ‘paternal figure to child of huge destined greatness’ and are you going to antagonise or support that destiny?’ I guess. So maybe coming into it there was a deliberate ‘No! Must be very very different.’ Though obviously the part of Uther does speak to a certain tyrannical heaviness, I suppose.

Well, I wouldn’t want to put words in his mouth, but Anthony has two daughters, who he’s remarkably close with. And I would say that in Buffy he probably was in more natural territory, of being able to be that more natural paternal nurturing type. And in Merlin it sort of helped out that he doesn’t have any sons. It’s uncharted territory for him. And you kind of get that awkwardness in Uther being a parent that I think Anthony had an understanding of in terms of suddenly being like ‘Oh, I have a son!’ Because I think he was making discoveries in that himself. He’s certainly aware of what it’s like to be a boy, but to bring one up was not something he’d experienced before. So I think there was a lot of that journey that Anthony was able to learn from his own experience into the character.

That’s really interesting, yeah. Obviously, having kids, but of a different gender…

Yeah, and of course there’s no mother figure around for Arthur, to give him guidance on how to do it, whereas that’s obviously very much present in his home life and what have you, with bringing up girls and going to his wife and asking for advice on whatever he needs to know to bring up girls and then suddenly being by himself and being like ‘Alright then, I’ve got this young actor here who sort of seems to look up to me and ask me a lot of questions about stuff. He seems to like football a lot. What do I do? – – Well done, young man…’

You know, there’s probably a lot of correlation between the two situations he found himself in.

How many questions about Buffy did you ask?

Not that many! Stories would appear but… as I say, I hadn’t watched the show for a few years and enough time had passed, so I wasn’t in that place anymore…

It’s funny, because you talk about the idea of Merlin living on, and it’s not that Buffy has died by any stretch of the imagination, but it was very much an experience of the time for me, and then I put it to one side. And I’m sure there are people who that is very much the experience with Merlin as well, but I didn’t quite have that ongoing experience with Buffy. I was like ‘Right, I’ve seen it. Done.’

It’s almost like you binge watch things now on Netflix, and you go through it, and then it’s gone sometimes. Not quite as drastic as that with Buffy but certainly by the time it came to working with Anthony, it wasn’t that I was desperate to know all of those bits and pieces, but I was certainly fascinated when a story would arise about the show, and very keen to get him to elaborate on whatever story it was.

We met… He introduced me to Brandon Alexander. No, not Brandon Alexander. Brandon…

Nicholas Brendon?

Nicholas Brendon! Sorry, his character was called Xander.

Yes!

He introduced me to Nicholas Brendon and I remember that at the time being like ‘Oh, wow!’ and I guess he must get that reaction quite often. That over-familiarisation – which I had, because I knew Anthony. ‘We’re buds now, because I’m friends with Anthony!’

So yeah, I certainly didn’t pester him too much on that front.

So I think we can conclude that Bradley played it cooler, than you would manage Ruth.

Oh, I’m sure!

I think there’s something interesting about just the time of their airing. Buffy was sufficiently long ago that unless you did have boxsets or DVDs or whatever else, it was sort of gone for a long time. Whereas Merlin finished sufficiently recently that it was on Netflix probably 3 or 4 years after it finished, rather than 20?

Yeah! What we had… the show finished at the end of 2012, but the show aired in over 180 countries. And what happened is it finished at different times, for the next 2 years I think it was? So you could tell when the show was airing in a certain country, because 3 months later the fan mail that would come through was from that country. And you’re like ‘Oh, I guess Chile is watching Merlin now…’

And then, once it had started to finish its natural run in each of these regions it then got to Netflix. Netflix picked it up, and suddenly this whole new… and this continues. There’s still an audience. The number of messages you get from people saying ‘Oh, I only discovered the show last week and I watched all five series in seven days’ and you’re like ‘It’s been around for ages! How did you miss this?’

It’s created a fan base that… that’s one thing I don’t think I expected when I signed on for it straight out of drama school. I may have been very hubristic about the show continuing on from season to season, not thinking anything of it. I had no idea that 12 years on there would be people still getting into it and being supportive in the way that they are. The level of support is incredible and even though they don’t necessarily hear from all of us, I am very aware that it’s appreciated by everyone in the show. Because also it’s only very few occasions where it crosses any lines to being inappropriate. That’s the other aspect. We seem to have an audience that is very respectful.

Yeah, I was wondering in how far that kind of loyalty and that excitement does occasionally become a problem, when you’ve got iZombie, or Medici, or Liberator coming up, and people are still yelling at you about Merlin…

I mean, define ‘yelling at me’

All caps on twitter…

Yeah, well, look… there are obviously going to be people who see you a certain way and want you to fulfil that role in their life, let alone in the show. And the truth of that scenario is that you cannot… or certainly I can’t, and I think I speak for all of the cast, surely… in no way can you allow yourself to be limited by the limitations that are set for you by people wanting you to remain, say if you’re in my position, Arthur.

Because it’s not sustainable, from a practical point of view of living and making a living, it’s not sustainable from a creative point of view, from fulfilling the things that I want to achieve in my life. I can’t do that by remaining in the frame work that certain fans would want from me, I suppose.

But that’s the way it is. Again, it’s that weird sort of unfortunate… not unfortunate, but it’s an off beat compliment, that people had such a sensation of joy or whatever it is that they connect with the show, that they want to hold on to that.

And then there’s a huge number of people who are incredibly supportive of the things that I have gone on to do, the things that Katie, Angel, Colin, Anthony, Richard have all gone on to do. Even the guys that we saw the other night, the knights. They’ve found themselves receiving a level of support that I don’t think they imagined when they picked up this script that they were handed by their agent however many years ago ‘Do you wanna play a knight in this show?’ – ‘Oh, go on then! I’ll give it a go’ and however many years later they’ll be doing a play, or they’ll be… you know, Eoin and Tom funded a movie that they made because they found themselves in a position where the support for them, from the majority of the Merlin fan base, was in such a place that they wanted to enable Tom and Eoin to make this film, which is incredible.

I’m referencing it, but the other night is possible purely due to the fact that the Merlin audience has been so gracious and so supportive. Now, granted, we’re playing to the crowd by doing a quiz about Merlin, but the fact that they were still there to be able to do that for is remarkable. And I couldn’t be more thankful for that. Hopefully it continues and hopefully, on a personal level, I hope I continue to do work and give performances that is worthy of that support…

Well, I think so far you’ve certainly followed through on all expectations because you ruined all of our Christmases and then you’ve gone on to die in every single role you’ve done since, so…

Yeah, that’s… happened two or three times now. I’m trying not to get a complex about it. When I turn up they go ‘This is a character we want to kill!’

Becoming a bit Sean Bean-y, maybe…

Yeah. Ironically one of them being killed almost at the hand of Sean Bean. Take him, not me.

At least Sean Bean also died…

Yes! At least he paid for his crimes…

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