How Douglas Henshall faced up to being TV’S newest doctor
Faced with the prospect of playing a doctor treating a mentally ill patient in Channel 4’s Psychos, actor Douglas Henshall hit upon the perfect preparation – he went into therapy.
‘It’s not quite what it seems’, says Douglas who plays Dr Danny Nash ‘I didn’t go in as the patient. I have a psychiatrist friend and visiting him was the ideal way to prepare my role.
‘I explained the situations that Nash gets into and my friend described how he would respond. It helped to bring depth to my character.’
Psychos takes place on the psychiatric ward of a Glasgow hospital. The twist is in its humour – and the fact that the doctors seem to need more help than the patients.
‘When you film a hospital series, you confront particular medical problems in the script and start to think, “Hang on a minute, I have a bit of that!”’, laughs Douglas ‘There’s a bit of stress and depression in us all, so it was easy to imagine I had developed a stress disorder or depression. Of course I hadn’t, but your mind plays tricks.’
Douglas’s first big break came in 1993 as the wife-beating Corporal Berry in Dennis Potter’s Lipstick on Your Collar and he’s just been in the film This Year’s Love with Kathy Burke. But it’s Psychos that he hopes will propel him to fame, especially as there’s already talk of another series.
Douglas, however, laughs off suggestions he is about to become a heart-throb.
‘Women may find Dr Nash attractive. He’s impulsive and gets into some interesting situations,’ grins Douglas. ‘But me a heart-throb? No, that’s laughable.’
‘I can’t imagine women falling for a small, overweight, red-haired Glaswegian!’
By: Tim Oglethorpe