In Harm's Way Remember those old disclaimers on Hercules? Seeing as they only exist as CGI, Primeval could claim that ‘No dinosaurs were hurt during the making of this series’, but it couldn’t say the same of it’s cast, as resident action man James Murray found out to his shoulder’s cost. Not that he cared that much… “Good, it was fun,” he says of playing Stephen Hart, ostensibly Professor Nick Cutter’s research assistant, but more usually the dinosaur-battling element of the team, “that’s what attracted me personally to this project, because I’ve never really done too much hands-on-shameless boy’s own gun-toting stuff before. I knew it was going to be physically quite tough and that’s what I prepared myself for and that’s what it was, and it was a lot of fun as result.” Fun, but also painful. “Well, yeah,” he admits ruefully, “I hurt my shoulder on a particular forward roll that I had to do, which has been cut! I dislocated my shoulder briefly on one sequence at the beginning of Season One, because it’s all about timing isn’t it? And when you’ve got five minutes to get a shot there’s a lot of pressure on you to get it right, and the first thing that goes out the window is personal safety. From your own point of view that is,” he adds “You throw yourself around like a rag doll, inevitably you’re going to get hurt, but I walked away pretty unscathed apart from that.” Still, a dislocated shoulder, that’s pretty agonising. “It is,” he shrugs, perhaps a little carefully, “but it was something that’s happened to me before. If you have a loose shoulder it happens frequently – although after the show I had a big operation, so it’s all fixed up for Series Two. I knew I had to have one sometime, but this brought it forward and in view of the physical aspect of this job, if we go on to do more of it, it seemed the right time to do it, so I would be strong enough and it would be healed by the time it goes again, if it goes again.” And the irony is that not only was the guilty shot eventually cut, but that Murray couldn’t see the sense of it in the first place. “It was running away from the Gorgonopsid that I think you saw in the episode there, “ he says speaking just after a Preview of Primeval’s opening hour. “Originally they wanted me to do a forward roll as I was running away, which I never quite understood, because the last thing you would want to do if you were running away from something is a forward roll. But who am I to say?” But then the shot got dropped? “It’s all very quick that sequence isn’t it,” Murray comments. “I think it probably is unless I stand corrected, because it didn’t quite fit in. There’s no real reason why he would be forward-rolling or pirouetting away from the dinosaur.” In the midst of a strong ensemble, Hart remains something of an enigma, as while he’s got plenty of action scenes from the word go, and it’s clear he knows about the circumstances of Helen’s disappearance, there’s been little insight into what he cares about and the history with Cutter that makes him so loyal – and, Murray says, that’s deliberate. “The thing about Stephen, I think”, he explains, “is that he’s a bit of a closed book. When I read the scripts I said ‘What makes him tick? It’s quite important,’ and I spoke to Adrian Hodges, the writer, who said ‘Well, there’s a reason why he’s closed, because he’s guarding some things,’ and that reveals itself to a certain extent in the final episode, which will then go on to have bigger consequences from that. “So I’m hedging my bets a bit, as to really discover what’s interesting about Stephen, we will have to wait for the second series. That’s a risk you take, and I was prepared to take that risk, because in the meantime it’s certainly not easy running around chasing things, let alone worrying about why.” So, Murray’s not the sort of actor who has to have a biography for his character at the back of his mind? “Adrian was very kindly letting me know what the back story was, “ he comments “But, to be honest, if he didn’t I could make it up – the audience aren’t going to know too much that’s revealed anyway; it could be anything, so unless you have the rest of the ideas, it will come across that there’s something guarded.” Aside from Hart’s history there’s obviously another secret that will be revealed as the series goes on….”Why the anomalies are happening? Yeah, it’s definitely revealed,” Murray confirms. “As the series progresses, it’s something that the professor and his team are trying to work out vigorously, at the same time as we are trying to keep those predators at bay. We don’t quite work it out, because Helen holds the secret, she holds the key to that key, and she obviously, for reasons that will transpire as the series goes on, she’s again a very much closed book and is not massively willing to share what she knows with everybody else. So, Adrian doesn’t reveal all initially in the first series. He’s got a few aces up his sleeve. I don’t know what they are; you’ll have to ask him!” While we wait for those cards to be played, it’s business as usual for the Primeval team, as they tackle monsters emerging from the anomalies, and for Hart that means guns! “Yeah, he uses guns again later in the series. There was a bit of training, absolutely, there has to be just for safety reasons,” The actor had handled firearms over a career which goes all the way to an appearance in Shoestring as a four-year- old, “but mostly I’d use period guns,” he explains, “which they don’t really let you play around with too much ‘cause they’re valuable antiques, as well as killing machines. There was a bit more training this time ‘cause they could be freer with us. The army were there, two or three armourers. In very episode they would be on hand to show us the ropes with the guns and it was important that you get it right, ‘cause if you’re playing a character that’s meant to know that thing, you really should know what you are doing.” Even when you’re pointing the weapon at an effects man holding a position marker. “That seemed bloody silly, every single day. It has to be an interesting way to make a living, to be genuinely scared of a piece of plastic on a piece of wood wielded by a very unscary looking man from the CGI department, it’s an odd way to make a buck.” So what does scare him? “What terrified me as a kid? Cockroaches,” Murray says. Oh dear…he must have loved the script for episode two, which comes pretty close “Yeah, I was dreading it when I read the series, that there would be one scene where thousands of cockroaches because I have a phobia against the things, luckily there hasn’t been in series one and… what else scares me? Unemployment!” Murray laughs “No money!” Like many actors waiting to hear about a role, Murray currently has a beard which keeps his options open, it’s there for a bearded part, and can be shaved in an instant. “Yeah, I haven’t shaved for you today! I’m working on something now that is a work in progress, I’m sorry for being so vague, but it’s one of those that’s there but not been green lit. The money could be there any day now, but you know how precarious the film business is. Apart from that nothing, so I’ve had this operation and then I’ve been in a sling for three months and then I’ve been doing physiotherapy for a month, so I’ve been resting as they say.” But, he says, getting back on topic “Yeah, these kinds of creatures have would have scared me as a child, absolutely; I have faith that when kids of a certain age watch this show, they will be frightened. Some of the creatures are fearsome. In episode two, there are some creepy crawlies – over-sized creepy crawlies are scary things. So I think we’ve done our job well enough to scare people.” Though the series could have been scarier, he adds…… “From the scripts we read, inevitably when a thing gets commissioned, they’re not 100% sure as to what slot it’s going to go into until it’s made and they see it, so it was slightly dark, slightly scary, albeit in a way that it doesn’t suffer from being lightened up a bit, ‘cause it still is very effective, monsters are monsters. But if I can remember – forgive me, I’ve got a terrible memory, it was over a year ago, it’s been a long gap since the end of filming and transmission – it was a little darker to begin with.” As for the creatures not being the usual tyrannosaurs and velociraptors, he says “At the risk of sounding like a terrible bore, I think there is a certain educational aspect to this show, It is a family show which means there are going to be younger people watching it, and I think it’s important that if you’re going to introduce monsters that they are monsters that we haven’t seen before, if you are going to show that monsters that did exist. There are some fictional monsters at the end of the series, but the ones that did exist I think it’s important to show the ones that perhaps the kids haven’t got plastic models of at the moment. It’s educational in that respect, but I don’t want to sound like a politician.” Anthony Brown – TV Zone –Issue no. 213 page 26. |
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