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Douglas Henshall ITV.com from December 2007

Douglas Henshall on being Shocked by the Creatures.

Hi, welcome to itv.com. My name is Dougie Henshall. I play Professor Nick Cutter in Primeval. Something has gone wrong in the course of me going through an anomaly to the past and coming back through. We’ve done something wrong with the past that’s affected the future and basically that’s erm..got rid of Claudia Brown in a way.

Ah, the ARC, it’s a great big saucer of a place that looks like, If IKEA ever designed a Bond set, it would probably kinda look like this, kind of all kind of glass and steel and wood..It looks fab, so very retro and very kinda spacey.

A utahraptor, which is the first genuine dinosaur that we’ve had in Primeval, because all the monsters that we’ve had on Series 1 are predated Jurassic era. People wanna see that. They wanna see something they recognise and see something they know a little bit, especially the raptors were the scariest things in Jurassic Park, so I think that made them accessible for a generation of people.

Because you are constantly working to nothing your...my expressions of kind of surprise or shock tend to start to merge into the one expression. You kind of find yourself doing the same face as you did for the last monster you saw. But, I kind of think..well how many ways can I be shocked? Do you know what I mean? What is it about this one that’s either more or less shocking than the last one? http://www.itv.com/Drama/cult/Primeval/Episodeguides/default.html

Brightcove Primeval Interviews re: Series 2 for Digital Spy- December 2007: Interviewer (In); Dougie Henshall (DH)

In: Okay, so we saw at the end of the first series that Claudia's gone missing... DH: Yeah. In: ... Um, what happens next? DH: Well, what happens next is that we find out that she has indeed not just kinda gone missing but she was never born and nobody has any idea what I'm talkin' about. Um, and it transpires that something we, we did something when we were through that last anomaly thats changed evolution and in very, kind of, subtle ways. And that some people who had existed have got completely different lives and other people were ever even born. Uh, it turns out that we've always worked at this place called the ARC. Um, so yeah, they're very subtle changes. In: Is series two, then, about trying to correct that mistake or is it.... ? DH: I kinda, I think it starts off, certainly from, from (coughs) Cutters point of view, of trying to go back and correct a mistake and then actually realising that instead of kinda worrying  about what's happened in the past, there's enough to worry about what's happening in the present. So its just about kind of acceptance that the world is different and trying to deal with it as it is. In: What do you think he feels for Claudia? DH: Um, I think that he was never sure, they never got a chance to find out which was probably slightly harder than actually finding out whether it would have worked or not. You're left with an awful lot of "what ifs" so I think there's a bit of that. In: There is a new woman on the scene... DH: No, I know, exactly. And then you've got to deal with the fact that you think "Well, sooner or later she'll realise that she's who I say she is", y'know? (laughs)

In: And how does the thing, there was a revelation at the end with Stephen about Helen. How does that work out? DH: Um, well, you don't really have too much time in Primeval to kinda sit down and discuss how you feel about things. Um, it’s kind of, 'cause there's always, y'know, there's a velociraptor in Bentles to take care of so you kind of, things kinda tend to work themselves out or not through actions rather than words, I think. Um, because I think that’s partially the nature of the show, really. In: And how does his relationship with Lester change this series? DH: Um... In: Do they come to blows at all? DH: Not much. No, no, no, no. They're still just kind of, um, thinly veiled hatred, really. (laughs) And there isn't a great deal... but, however, it does kind of, um, move forward a little bit and I think, by the end of the series there's a little bit more respect for one another. Um, I don't know necessarily that you could say "like" but it might look like it’s going that way. In: And apparently you've been told how the show pans out and how it ends. DH: How do you mean, "I've been told?" We've shot it... (laughs) Oh you mean series 3? In: Series... Well, in general, the whole show. DH: (considers) No, I have, I have an idea about what I think they'd like to do but I have no idea how they're going to get there. In: Your fellow cast members were claiming to know how it all ended. DH: Well they obviously know more than I do then. (smiles) In: How long do you think it can go? DH: I dunno. I think it’s got the capabilities to go almost anywhere that they wanna take it because it’s such a great premise that you can go through these things called anomalies and they will take you to somewhere where you don't know. Y'know its like a cross between, y'know, the best of shows like Star Trek or Star Wars and Mr Benn, really, in that if you can go anywhere then you can go anywhere, really. So, y'know, if you kinda run out of creature of the week stories, you're not, um, hide bound by anything. You can go anywhere, y'know, I mean they could start going to areas in time that aren't so far away. Y'know, you could start discovering Iron Age, Stone Age, whatever, y'know. I think the list is endless, so I mean I think from that point of view, and you've got a bunch of characters that I think would be able to stand the test of time. So, y'know, I think it could run for a while

In: Okay. And on that line, what do you make of the comparisons with Doctor Who? DH: Tiresome, to be honest. I kinda think, y'know, (sighs) first time around it was kinda fine because you kinda think, "Okay,  I guess people are gonna say it." But I mean I think there would be more scope for comparison or whatever if we, if we were up against each other directly but we're not. Um, and I don't think that our show is a derivative of, of Doctor Who in any way, shape or form. I mean, I think it tips its hat more to films that Doug McClure used to be in and y'know, they said, y'know, last year, "The A Team". Y'know, it’s an ensemble piece, it’s not about one man and a sidekick, y'know. In: And finally, did you ever expect the show to be this much of a hit? DH: Well it’s not that I expected it to be that much of a hit but I certainly thought there was a possibility, yeah. Because its, it’s a good show. Y'know, you can never really tell when you're making something - you always hope it’s gonna work out well but even if you make it well you can never tell how the public are gonna respond to it. But, um, and that’s the bet, that you can never expect. You have to just hope that they're gonna like you. Um, the idea that they have I hope will build in the second series hopefully. http://link.brightcove.com Transcription by Debbie Seed