| Primed and Ready
Andrew Lee Potts chats about his roles battling against dinosaurs in the new ITV series Primeval Young actor Andrew-Lee Potts is one of the stars of Primeval ITV’s big show for the New Year, and ITV’s first family orientated Sci-Fi drama series to come in the wake of the success of the regenerated Doctor Who. It is widely known that Primeval will feature dinosaurs (courtesy of effects house Impossible Pictures who worked on Prehistoric Park and Walking with Dinosaurs), but few other details have been released about the series. Until now that is, as Andrew explains. “This series concerns doors in time –temporal anomalies that open up at random, allowing prehistoric monsters into the present day. It’s a two way thing – theses anomalies open doors that can take you into those prehistoric worlds. They shot scenes abroad to get the right sort of location for the Permian era. And not just dinosaurs that come through, we are talking about the whole of evolution. There are these creatures you’ve never seen before from different periods of Time – like the Cretaceous era where there were insects everywhere and scorpions were the size of ears.” nteracting with these creatures for Andrew meant discovering the joys of CGI. “Impossible pictures have never done a drama before – so they weren’t used to working with actors and we weren’t used to CGI, mixing the two right at the start was a real learning curve for all of us. So as a family we all started at ground level. “At first all we had at the start was a traffic cone on a stick – which isn’t that scary, funnily enough. They were describing things to us and we had to react to them. As time went on, things just got better – we had meetings with beforehand with printouts of the designs for the creatures and the relative sizes. You don’t just look at the whole thing.” “Primeval has a main cast of five – a team of people that investigate these doorways. As we’re the first to encounter an anomaly, we’re made to sign the Official Secrets Act and the government kind of own our lives after that. Our special team tries to control the anomalies and understand a little bit more about them, because these can open absolutely anywhere.” We ask Andrew to tell us a little bit of background to the main characters “I play Connor Temple, who is a conspiracy – theory mad student archaeologist and he’s one of the students of Professor Cutter, who’s played by Douglas Henshall. The reason they are in the forest where they find the first anomaly is because I’ve seen a ‘beast’ sighting and we’ve gone to investigate." Douglas Henshall as Professor Nick Cutter “Professor Cutter is the driving force behind the whole thing and he’s the teacher at the university college I go to. He lost his wife Helen Cutter, nine years ago – she just vanished presumed dead. She went missing in the forest of Dean, which is where we found the first anomaly, so with these anomalies opening he’s got a new hope to find his wife. James Murray plays Stephen Hardy, who is kind of a pretty boy. He’s Cutters lab assistant and a tracker. He becomes very useful at trying to track down the creatures; he’s always there at the right time with a gun, for the ladies he’s that kind of guy. Hannah Spearritt as Abby Maitland “Abby Maitland played by Hannah Spearritt who is possibly the closest to my character within the show. I’m completely in love with her- who wouldn’t be, she’s amazing! – she knows this and she struggles with how she feels about me because I’m a bit of a geek. She works at the London Zoo at the Reptile House, so she knows all about the dinosaurs. Lucy Brown as Claudia Brown “Lucy Brown plays Claudia Brown, who is one of the heads of the department in the government, she liaises with them and tried to bring the two teams together. Obviously, all the time we’re surrounded by the SAS trying to save our arses. Finally you’ve got Ben Miller playing James Lester, who’s a cynical, nasty man – he’s really high in the government and hates all of us. He doesn’t want civilians involved with all of this. With his character and mine being so sarcastic, that leads to some nice humour. Andrew - Lee Potts as Connor Temple “Connor Temple is a very unique being – he’s a bit of a frustrated genius, but nobody knows it. He’s got his own unique way of dealing with things- but he’s super intelligent deep down, which is why he’s on the team“He’s dedicated his life up to this point, sadly, in a nerdish sort of way, to developing a website which is all about prehistoric creatures, so he’s one of the most knowledgeable in the whole show, about what these things can do, what speed they go at, what they eat and so on. So he’s quite useful to the team in that way, but the other side of things is they have to put up with his unique sense of humour - he’s very quick and very sarcastic and easily excitable – everyone else is running away and Connor’s running up to the thing with his mobile phone and trying to take a picture. Fantasy is on the upswing now, and ITV hasn’t done anything about this in a long time. “No, this is really a leap of faith for them, this is their first thing. I think the script initially started at the BBC, but when the BBC decided to go ahead with Doctor Who, I think they thought it might be too similar because he travels in time, so they passed on it. But the script has changed a great deal since then, anyway. Doctor Who obviously opened a lot of doors for what was acceptable on TV and what family entertainment should be, and they’ve been wise have ITV, they’ve not cut corners, they’ve not compromised, they took a long time in the casting process. I mean we’re all so different, but we gel in a way that you can believe – it doesn’t patronise, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do, and it’s a thrilling ride.” Every episode looks like a feature film , says Andrew “And in every episode there’s something really random that you don’t expect. Every time you think tou know where it’s going, it goes somewhere else. When you watch it for an hour ir passes so quickly, you’re just so involved with what’s going on “We’ve got battle sequences like you’ve never seen before. It goes insane, there’s some unique stuff. And ITV are really proud of it.” Adapted from an article by David Miller for Starburst magazine issue 345 page 56 All pictures taken from the official Primeval trailer |
 |
 |
 |
 |