Dinosaur Hunter
“He’s one of those innately noble guys who is constantly trying to do the right thing for the greatest good, says actor Douglas Henshall of scientist Nick Cutter, the character he plays in the British SF/action-adventure series Primeval.
“That’s kind of his raison d'être every day,” he continues. “Nick is like me in that sense. I don’t think I would have the stamina for what he does, so I would probably have lost it a couple of times by now, but he seems to be always objective and see very point-of-view, which is one of the most admirable things about him.”,
In Primeval, which recently aired on BBC America (the first season hit DVD November 4th from BBC Warner), Henshall plays a scientist who is investigating a series of anomalies that are tearing open holes in the fabric of time. Those holes have allowed prehistoric creatures to emerge in present-day England, and seemingly caused the disappearance of Cutter’s wife Helen (Juliet Aubrey). Cutter assembles a team of investigators consisting of lab technician and occasional bodyguard Stephen Hart (James Murray), young zoologist Abby Maitland (Hannah Spearritt), enthusiastic student Connor Temple (Andrew Lee Potts) and government liaison Claudia Brown (Lucy Brown). Soon Helen reappears soon after her apparent death.
While Henshall agrees that his character was somewhat laidback in early episodes. He takes exception to the fact that Cutter is emotionally cut off following the loss of his wife. “Really?” he responds. “I suppose that’s partly the way he was written and I think that the Adrian Hodges’ idea was to hold him back. But after Series One was over, and finding out that Helen had an affair with Stephen, Nick came back a bit harder in Series Two. I suppose you don’t want a hero who is bleeding all over the screen, so that was probably part of, it in the beginning.
That being said Henshall is quick to agree that Helen is Nick’s emotional weak spot, particularly when it becomes apparent that she has a very definite agenda concerning the ongoing use of the anomalies. “She presses every single button he has,” Henshall declares. “Helen is his Achilles’ heel. She always turns up knowing exactly where to hurt him. She’s the monkey on his back!”
For the Scottish-born Henshall, Primeval is the latest in a career that springs nearly two decades. After establishing himself as a theatre actor in the mid-90’s, he began moving into British television with roles in Psychos, Kid in the Corner, Loving You and Frances Tuesday, as well as the films Angels and Insects, Orphans, Lawless Heart and It’s All About Love.
Having spent the past several years dividing his time between stage,screen and TV, Henshall was working on another project when he first heard about Primeval. “I guess it happened the same way as any job comes up,” he recalls. “I was sent the scripts, sat down and read them, and it was a director whom I had just finished working with –and whom I’d had a really good time with – Cilla Ware. "
“So I read the first three episodes, met with the guys and a week later, I was in the middle of doing a film when I got the call saying , ‘They’d like to offer you the part!’. It happened very quickly. I was surprised, because I thought for something like this there would be more hoops to jump through.”
While Cutter’s basic persona was pretty much there in those early script, it still took several episodes before Henshall was able to make the character his own. “You know how it is: You try little bits and pieces to see what works and what doesn’t, and hopefully you end up with something that works,” he explains. “That’s always daunting, and by Series Two they also decided to raise the stakes as far as the action was concerned. The dialogue for our characters in Series Two was sparser than in Series One, but that was also a time issue. They had more time to develop initial scripts so that was why there were more character issues in the first series.”
“It took me about three or four weeks to settle in, especially to try and get a handle on all the CGI and how to essentially interact with nothing, and also to work out a group dynamic. We have six main characters [and it’s difficult] to find different ways of interacting with people so that [the characters] aren’t the same all the time. You build up different working relationships with different actors who have different ideas and styles. So it takes a little while. About halfway through the first series, we ended up with decent shorthand. And by Series Two, it was a piece of cake.”
One of Henshall’s biggest challenges in those early days was learning how to act alongside the digital beasts that play a big part in each episode. “But that’s also one of the things I really enjoy about Primeval,” he notes. “If you are going to do a show like this, that’s part of the pleasure, but it does take it out of you a little bit. It isn’t quite like Bob Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where I’m completely on my own all the time. At least there are plenty of people around.”
“It’s like when you are a kid coming up with the pretext for a game: You have that pretext and you believe in it. There’s no sense in trying to dissect it. You just say ‘OK, so the monster is over there, and it’s coming to get us!” That’s about as complex as I make it. Certain technical things are tricky, such as [pretending to] see something in the distance getting closer, where I need to do things with my eyes. I’m a bit of a geek that way. I want to master those things and get them right.”
Henshall also must deal with the baggage that comes with being part of a high-profile genre series. “It’s probably 10 times worse for David Tennant in Doctor Who,” he insists. "He could probably talk about that better than I can, because to be perfectly honest, I haven’t had that much attention, so I haven’t had to put up with that much."
“The most I get is, I’ll be in the supermarket and occasionally kids will run up and say, ‘Oh my God, what are you doing here?’. That’s really sweet. So it has been really easy for me. I suppose part of it is living in London, which is an anonymous city. I’ve had an easy ride, and whatever attention has come my way has been very pleasant and easy to deal with. I have no complaints.”
In Series Two, Henshall’s character was still dealing with emotional fallout from the previous season’s cliffhanger. Returning to the present day, Cutter discovers that some unforeseen event during his visit to the prehistoric past has triggered a “Butterfly Effect” that has changed each of his co-workers in some subtle way and - completely eliminated Claudia from the new reality as if she never existed.
“I suppose there was a bit of an adjustment in the first couple of weeks or so,” Henshall says, “where I was thinking ‘Am I doing the same thing? Is this the same guy? Does this feel the same? There was also some added pressure from having done something fairly successful, because you have to repeat the trick and make it better. But as far as the cast dynamic, that was easy to step back into again. It’s like putting on an old jacket: You know you looked good when you used to wear it, but you aren’t entirely sure what it does anymore!”
Over the course of Series Two, Cutter’s team has to cope with a number of revelations concerning the anomalies – including a secret plot within the government to use the prehistoric creatures captured over the past several months for an unexpected and sinister purpose. Plus, Cutter is again betrayed by Helen, and by his right-hand man Stephen.
“It’s funny,” Henshall reflects. “I have to go back to something we were talking about earlier, about being emotionally cut off. Cutter does have a soft spot for Connor and Abby, and he ends up becoming a slightly unwilling surrogate father figure to both of them. But as far as someone hurting him personally, Nick never expected that to happen with Stephen. He expects it with Helen, because pretty much nothing she does surprises him. But [the first time Stephen betrayed Nick], Stephen was younger, more impressionable, perhaps slightly naïveand possibly manipulated by Helen. You can only be so upset at someone like that. But when Stephen does it again in Series Two, he’s now an adult. Stephen can make up his own mind, and he made the wrong choice and I think that hurts Nick.”
Looking ahead to Primeval’s completed Series Three, Henshall is reluctant to disclose much in the way of details. “I guess the main thing you can expect is that Helen isn’t finished yet”, he reveals “And there are some pretty big discoveries coming up early on, including the issue of what’s causing the anomalies in the first place. If you want to keep interest going in a series, you have to make some forward progress. But as far as storylines and stuff like that, if people were excited enough to watch Series One and Two, I don’t really want to give anymore away about Series Three.”
The past several months have been extremely busy ones for Henshall. In addition to wrapping up Primeval’s third season, he’s in a new adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray with Ben (Prince Caspian) Barnes and Colin Firth “ Right now I’m doing something for ITV called Collision, which is about a car crash on a motorway. I play one of the cops who investigates what happened,” he says “It’s been nonstop this year, so to be perfectly honest, I’m looking forward to having a holiday. But it has been a great time.”
Douglas Henshall offers a final sale pitch to genre fans who have yet to take time to experience the series. “People who have any interest in monsters, action, good characters and excitement, well, that’s all enclosed in our show. That’s what we do every week. Primeval is a really good action-adventure series with great characters that you can watch with the whole family!”
Joe Nazzaro, Starlog magazine, January 2009