“From now on in I’m going to stipulate in my contracts that if I’m to have any kind of office I get an ARC …In fact let’s not stint; I want an eagle’s nest lair on the top of a mountain.”
Ben Miller is becoming one of the most ubiquitous faces on UK television. From a recent series of Armstrong and Miller, to new ITV production Moving Wallpaper to Primeval, Ben is one of the most in-demand actors around. He has however, managed to find time in his rather busy schedule to chat about the new series of Primeval, his new sidekick and just what he thinks happened at the end of the last.
“The whole of the last series was all about visiting the past, and they were always very careful not to alter anything for fear of changing the future. But of course, that was NEVER going to work and all that crashing around in past times saw them in the very last episode change something. The Future Predator got released into history, which affected the future.
Cutter comes back to a world that has altered ever so slightly. There is no Claudia, but someone who looks very much like Claudia shows up in the first episode. It is a great twist on the ‘will they – won’t they?’ because it’s ‘boy gets girl, boy travels to past, changes future, boy returns to find girl doesn’t know who he is, girl still exists but as someone completely different’.
It’s a thread which runs through the whole of the second series, and I think it’s such a clever idea, because Cutter – although he can’t admit it to himself – is clearly still in love with Claudia, and then Jenny starts to fall in love with him. Despite the fact that she thinks he is totally barking initially – there is a really interesting dynamic between the two.
To replace Claudia, in this series, I get a new sidekick called Oliver Leek who is played by Karl Theobald from Green Wing who has been just fantastic to work with. Lester pretty much despises everyone and Leek is no different. But Leek, unlike Claudia before him, adores Lester; he’s not thick-skinned at all, he just actively thinks that when Lester is horrible to him, that it is some kind of affection – so Lester gets even more wound up. It’s been enormous fun to play as Karl is so, so funny and again, it’s an entirely new dynamic out of control. He’s like Lester’s puppy; smack him on the nose and he will love you even more. In fact there are so many changes to this new series, both subtle and not so much, which has added a real freshness and pace to it.”
The addition of Karl Theobald from the highly acclaimed Green Wing to the cast has been highly popular move with all of the actors. Henshall himself admits to have been a little star struck when he first met him and Miller is equally as effusive saying quite simply,
“Karl is a comedy genius.”
The addition of Oliver Leek to Lester’s work force isn’t the only new arrival in the altered realty of the return series. Not only does the Home Office official have a new PA, but he also has a vastly improved work space.
“The all star ARC is completely new and stands for Anomaly Research Centre. It looks like a James Bond villain’s lair; it is an amazing rotunda which has a huge atrium, big enough to hold dinosaurs and a whole load of boffins in white coats doing their experiments.
Then there are lots of sealed-off ‘clean rooms’ where, if they suspect that something might have a virus, or if they are concerned that something might be contaminated, they have clean suits and a sealed environment. They have a gym, a relaxation area, an armoury – it’s an actor’s wet dream, especially as my office is right at the top of it!
It was purpose built on this back lot at some studios out near Surrey and it’s just so amazing. At the same time as I was shooting Primeval I was shooting Moving Wallpaper in the same studios. It just looks so extraordinary that everyone in Moving Wallpaper wanted to come up and see it. I showed so many of the M W directors around it as everybody always wanted to know what happens in this extraordinary building. The ARC was the subject of much intrigue and speculation; which of course is as it should be!
That said, it also has drawbacks, as Leek’s office is actually leaking! They didn’t put a roof on it as the set designers have to cut holes in the ceiling for putting lights and rigs up. But because the summer was actually a monsoon, the rain just kept on pouring in. We were practically swimming in there at one point.
From now on in I’m going to stipulate in my contracts that if I’m to have any kind of office I get an ARC and a wet room. In fact let’s not stint; I want an eagle’s nest lair on the top of a mountain.”
At the end of the last series, the relationship between Lester and Cutter was still one of out and out hostility, is that still the case?
“At the start yes, but by the end it becomes something approaching respect by the end. This was really fun to play as well, because life changes, relationships alter and move forward. Emotions are constantly shifting and it is vital to reflect that in drama.
Cutter more or less despises Lester in the first series, and that is more or less entirely mutual. And that is where we start out again in this series; but Cutter has vulnerability that he didn’t have in the first series and Lester can see he is all over the shop. It unnerves Lester a little I think, as Nick has always been so together but there has been this change and Lester reacts to it in a rather surprising way. It could be the ideal opportunity to exploit this as a potential weakness, but he doesn’t.
We can almost guess that the dynamic between them has been slightly different anyway in this new future; that it hasn’t been openly antagonistic. Cutter has come back to a new future, where the dynamic between him and Lester is slightly different, and it therefore takes a different path. In Physics there is something called the Initial Condition, or Boundary Condition: if you take any physical formula about how matter behaves, you end up with a different result, depending on the point at which you started.
Quite often in comedy, you don’t want things to change too much, as it is the repetition of something familiar which provides the laughs. But in every episode of Primeval the characters are changing. Although their personalities are all the same, you have come back to a future where they have all started out at a slightly different point, and they have ended up somewhere different; and that’s really interesting. Time travel and the human story really start to overlap.
One of the things that I think Adrian Hodges does very well is handle the emotional stories of the characters. The higher concept stuff about time travel and dinosaurs is balanced pretty equally by human drama. It’s very real.”
In series one, Lester was very much office bound and saw no action in the field whatsoever. Miller himself described him as “not really an ‘in the field’ type of guy.” Is this still true, or has Ben finally seen some CGI action?
“This series for me was very exciting because, in the last one, for the team, going to see Lester was pretty much like going to see the Headmaster, and sitting in the Headmaster’s office, with the Headmaster saying, “We saw you cycling across the school yard and you’re on a week of detention” – but in this series I actually get out of the Headmaster’s office, get down into the Dining Hall, and I get to fight some creatures.
Lester gets a Rambo moment: he faces his moment of reckoning at the end of this series in the form of a future predator, which is rather poetic don’t you think?
It’s a case of kill, or be killed. There was a huge mammoth as well, that I am sort of dealing with at the same time. I’ve got a machine gun, a mammoth, and a future predator. I’m not going to tell who wins though. As you can imagine things get pretty hairy for Lester, as he is so far untested in the area of physical combat. Whether or not he makes it out alive and with his suit and tie intact is for the audience to find out.”
And it seems that is this showdown between two very different types of predator was one of Ben’s favourite moments throughout the whole shoot.
“It was just great. Nick Murphy, who was the director of the last two episodes, myself and the crew spent the most amazing week shooting Lester’s Rambo sequence – which is unheard-of in TV.
We had hot-head cameras, huge cranes – I’ve not seen as much kit on the feature films that I’ve worked on. We had every possible imaginable toy, including an absolutely enormous crane, which was the size of the atrium in the Arc. It could shoot me from my office all the way downstairs, around anywhere – it was absolutely amazing. That was my absolute favourite bit. For a few days I imagined that I was Bruce Willis; it slightly went to my head and I did think that I was a kind of action hero. God, it was fun!
Action hero moments aside, the first day that we shot in the ARC was very exciting. It was amazing to go into this space with Jamie Payne, the director who shot the first block, and see him working out how to film the space to make it look as brilliant as it is– we were all completely overwhelmed.”
However, it’s not all good news for Ben. Over Christmas, the Primeval toys will hit the shelves. Sadly for the actor, Lester is not to be among them.
“I don’t get a toy. I was fitted and measured for a toy, and they even made the prototype for one which Andrew saw at the factory. Cameron, the producer, had to phone me, with a lump in his throat, and say, “I’m really sorry to tell you, but you’re not going to have a toy.” Apparently, everybody has to have a monster – in the new series every action figure has to have an appropriate nemesis.
Now I’m thinking that maybe I could have the future predator! Or the mammoth. Or just a gun; I’d be happy with a gun! So I was a bit gutted, really. I’ve always wanted to have an action figure, but I’m not giving up hope. I think maybe next Christmas might be a Lester Christmas. Well, guys, you know where I am; you’ve got the prototype, you’ve made it, you’ve got the measurements – don’t be shy!”
But while the nation waits for a Lester Christmas, it can however take fashion notes from the character most people on the set of Primeval want to dress like. He may not be making his way into homes up and down the country and sitting under Christmas trees over the festive season, but it seems Lester is quite the trend setter:
“When I go with the costume designer, Jackie, to get Lester’s clothes I always think they seem completely outrageous. But by the end of the series it looks completely normal to me. Everyone on the set really covets Lester’s clothes and people are always asking me whether they can get hold of them. In particular, one driver was very into a particular pink shirt and tie that I had, so I bought it for him at the end of the series. Somewhere, there is a driver dressed just like Lester!”
With Moving Wallpaper also coming up early in the New Year and a new series of Armstrong and Miller having just gone out, whatever is next for the actor, it’s abundantly clear that he is in a very happy place.
“I have got a couple of other things that are developing, but it’s quite difficult to fit in three things in a year. I was shooting Moving Wallpaper and Primeval at the same time and am hoping these will keep me busy for a little while. I have always got other things that I’m developing; I do love writing anyway, and I love producing, too.
You don’t want to have too many irons in too many fires, but I like to have one or two other things that I’m working on as these things take time.
You just never know. One of the things that I really love about my job is that I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I work on things that I love, and it’s all jam to me. Whatever I am doing is jam; I try only to do things that I really care about and enjoy because life’s too short.
But now that I am older and have a wife and family, I feel that, when I am not with them, I want to be doing something that I absolutely love; and I think it has made me more focused about my work in a way that I didn’t expect. My career has really taken off since we had a baby – it’s very odd! I’ve been really, really lucky and I’m very excited and it feels like happy days.”
From Primeval Press