I was lucky, I had support from Mum and Dad - they said as long as you work hard, anything is possible. I never thought past those two things - that I liked living in imaginary worlds and that it is possible to do that for a living.
The Victorian world is extremely dark and extremely bright.
Tone is always such an important thing, and that's achieved through a multitude of people. It comes through the writing, it comes through the way it's shot, and it comes through the production design and the sound design.
None of us really know where we're going.
I hope I'm always lucky enough to be able to work in theater, TV, and big films and small films. I think there's advantages and disadvantages to all of them. The fact that this was a small film without much money and without much time made it rich in energy and momentum and drive when we were actually making it 'cause that's all you've got. You've just got the story and the people.
I love playing a character that has more than 90 minutes, and that keeps going.
I think it's amazing to have one writer write every episode of a series. It's very rare, I think. You get a voice that continues.
Weirdly, some of the middle stuff of the descent into something going wrong were the hardest, tonally. You don't want to jump the gun and be instantly paranoid about the fact that she has made coffee wrong because that would be weird. It's the slow build and letting it sink in. If they say everything is okay, you believe your partner. You don't want to rattle the boat too much on your honeymoon.
The story revolved around this universal identifiable fear that we must all have, at some point, when you commit yourself to being with another person, to have and to hold until death do us part. It's a huge thing. I just felt like it was a brilliant examination of what would happen, if the person that you trusted implicitly and thought you knew every follicle and pour of, inside and out, started to not be that person anymore, inside. Physically, they're still there, but they're not there mentally.
The strength of the script, for me, was that you're really left, right till the end, to know what's happening. This seemingly perfect, happy, kooky real relationship slowly turns into something horrifying, but you get there through a filter of reality with all of it.
There's comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy. There's always light and dark in most jobs. Whether it's framed as a comedy, drama or tragedy, you try to mix it up within that. You can work on a comedy and it's not laugh-a-minute off set. You can work on a tragedy that's absolutely hilarious.
Personally, I just want to work on stuff that challenges me, that excites me, and that I think is original. You want to do something that does to other people what films do to you. It's the most wonderful thing in the world when you can lose yourself from reality and go into a story, and believe it and go on that journey with people, and you have to work that will somehow do that. It won't always, but hopefully sometimes.
The different variables involved in anything creative, really, are massive. When it comes together, it just clicks, I suppose.
I look for something that grabs me and that's heartfelt, and that's coming from a good place. I want to work with good actors and with directors that I can learn from.
It's a real testament to the amount of skill and talent involved, across the board, whether it's the production design, the construction, the costume design, the other actors, the way it's shot, the directors we had on it, or obviously John's writing. When things do go well, it sometimes seems easy, in a weird way, but it's actually down to a lot of cogs working in a big machine. But, I'm certainly happy to be going back. I'm excited to carry on.
You just want to find a story that grabs you and that you've never seen before, but somehow you can't imagine it not existing. It's like a good book. What makes a good book is hard to say. I don't know. I just look for something that grabs me. I don't have a way of looking for a project, and I don't know many people that do. It's just year to year, and what's going around and what's there.
