| The last six months have been especially busy for Douglas Henshall, with film after TV drama after film. The Silence, How I Was Stolen By The Germans and Eagle Of The Ninth are a few of his recent projects still due for release. I manage to catch up with him just before he heads out to Los Angeles to explore opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic.
By: Susanne Kinnaird Thanks for taking the time to speak to me, Douglas. How are you doing? Well, I’ve been about a wee bit as usual. But I’ve been well. Just now I’m looking for some where to stay in Los Angeles for a few weeks. Oh really? Yeah, I’m going out there on Friday. But I’ve kind of left these things to the last minute. We’ve booked our flights and I’ve got a car, I just need to find somewhere to drive it to. What will you be doing in Los Angeles? I’m just going over there to do some meetings with agents at the tail end of pilot season. And to get a little bit a sun to be honest. I’ve been in Dublin filming. Yeah, you’ve been all over Europe filming in the last few months. In Dublin you were making new BBC thriller The Silence. How did things go? I think it went well actually. The filming was quite hectic though. But, everyone seems quite pleased with it. Your character in The Silence is another Scottish policeman who seems to be a lot like the character you played in ITV’s Collision. Well, I worried that there were going to be comparisons with Collision. After filming, I’m less worried about it now. My character’s actually not like Tolin in Collision. Tolin was quite measured and he didnt lose his temper very easily, whereas the guy I’m playing in The Silence kind of shouts at everybody all the time. He’s a lot more of a live-wire. He’s that kind of person really, he’s just a wee bit more volatile. Collision received loads of good reviews and you have been nominated for Best Actor by the Broadcast and Press Association Guilds. How do you feel about the success the drama received? It was a nice surprise to be nominated. I mean theres about 10 other nominations, I think, so I don’t get overly excited about things like that. But it’s nice because it means that somebody somewhere has gone, ‘Oh he was good in that.’ So thats always nice to hear. I was very happy about the response that the programme got. I think it was deserved as well because, I mean there were lots of people in it, it wasn’t like it was about me. It was a big ensemble piece and it was well scripted and well directed and there was a bunch of really good actors in it. We could only go in and make a mess of it really because all the ingredients were there for it to be good. How was it to film? It was a really good experience all round actually, and that doesn’t happen all that often so it’s good to enjoy it when we do. You know when you work on things, and you have a good time, and everything seems to have gone really smoothly, and then sometimes it doesn’t work out quite as well as everybody thought it might. This was one of those happy coincidences where everybody had a good time and the program worked out well too. It was great fun and I’m glad that people liked it. Really, what are you thinking of when you say it didn’t turn out as well as you thought it might? Oh, well, I did a film years ago with Thomas Vinterberg called It’s All About Love. Joaquin Phoenix, Clare Danes, Sean Penn and Mark Strong, a great big cast and a great director. His previous film had won awards and Best Film at Cannes. So, it was an amazing experience working with him. Everybody though it was great. And then it came out and it died, a horrible death. I still kind of think of the film as being a kind of noble failure, if you like. It just didn’t do anywhere near as well as everybody hoped it would. You can never tell, I suppose. Before the new year you were in Serbia, and you filmed How I Was Stolen by the Germans. How was that? Yeah that was a really different experience. The director is like a 70 year old man called Milos Radivojevic and he’s about 85-90% deaf and he doesn’t speak any English. Essentially the story is his story. I had an interpreter on set everyday to interpret what Milos was saying to me. And it was tricky. Basically, when he would sit down and look at a tape he couldn’t really hear what I was saying or understand what I was saying, because sometimes I was speaking in English. So he was very, very concerned with what it looked like. He would judge whether what I was doing was any good or not by looking at my eyes. And if my eyes looked liked I was telling the truth, it was a good take, and if there was something in my eyes that he couldn’t believe then that was a bad take. That must have been really difficult? It was quite freaky. But the thing about Serbia was that, you know, it’s only 10 years ago that Nato were bombing Belgrade. They don’t have as much as we do, and the camera would break down pretty much every day. You ended up having to be a bit more creative and I admire the way that everybody just took things in their stride. I enjoyed that experience. It is fundamentally a Serbo-Croatian film though. How do you think you got the role? Well, I know how I got the part. The guy who’s the producer and the leading actor in it is a guy called Svetozar Cvetkovic. He’s a very good friend of Tena, my partner (Croatian playwright Tena Stivicic). I went out for dinner with him and Tena when he came to London for the Film Festival. He asked me about coming out to Serbia to do a film there. I didn’t hear anything from him until February or March last year when I got a script sent to me that was in English, but all my dialogue was in German. So I had to say I’m sorry but I don’t speak any German. He said, Well you can learn some can’t you. So that was how it came about really. And how was learning German? Heh heh. I think it was ok. I mean, it was tricky. Did you have to start from scratch? Yeah I don’t speak any German at all so I had to start from scratch and I didn’t have anyone to help me. I bought a language course and I went to Berlin for a few weeks to hang out with a German actor over there. But thankfully for everybody if its shown in Germany, it will tend to get dubbed by German actors anyway. So, if they show the film in Germany there will be someone else doing your voice? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they always do that. It’s quite funny. When I was in Berlin I got recognised a few times for being in Primeval, but they always said, ‘You’re that American actor from Primeval!’ I was like, What do you mean, I’m not an American! But they don’t know whether I’m an American or where I’m from. It gets dubbed in German over there so they assume that you must be American. Do you think you will learn any more or do you think that's it for German? You know what I would really like to say that now I’ve started I’m gonna finish and I’m going to be a fluent German speaker, I would love to say that. But, I think Tena would be inclined to maybe murder me if the first language that I learned was German instead of Croatian. Another part you did recently was a Briton in The Eagle Of The Ninth, and you said it was a really fun part to play. Yeah, it was great fun for me to play. I didn’t have much to do. I think was in about the first 15 minutes of the film. But I had a whale of a time riding chariots! I mean its just the greatest fun. It really is. It’s like a go-kart for an adult. Its this cut-out wicker basket with like, two wheels, with no suspension obviously, because they didn’t have any suspension then, and all you’ve got is two strips of leather attached to two stallions. And you’ve got to try and control with that! These are horses with a proper opinion about whether they want to go left or right. But, oh man, I had such a good time. I hear that you went back to your home town of Barrhead to help out with a fun day not long ago. Do you feel like the place has changed when you go back now? Hmm no... I remember it differently but I think that’s more to do with me than it is do with the place. I think everybody remembers where they grew up slightly differently. I’ve done a lot and seen a lot since then. When you look back you’re always looking through slightly tinted rose spectacles. What’s your earliest memory of it? I suppose, not really my earliest memory, but the place where I spent most of my time was in the park where I played tennis. The clubhouse is just wrecked now and the courts are just unused and overgrown and that was sad to see. So many summers there that gave me something to do. That was one thing that gave me so much pleasure, and now the kids who were my age don’t get to do that. You said that you left Primeval to do more stuff in the US... Well no. I didn’t actually say that. I left Primeval for a number of reasons; I didn’t want to do Primeval anymore. You’re definitely not going back then? No. ...Not even if they do a film version? That would be very different. It would be, as far as I’m aware, an American studio who have picked that up, and obviously if they ask me to be a part of that then I would be very interested in doing that. But no, I wouldn’t be very interested in coming back to the TV show. So you’re looking to do things in America now? Well I’ve always been looking to do things in America, America’s never asked me to do anything. It’s not that I never wanted to. Its just the way that my careers gone, but I think if you want to work in America you have to make the effort and go and thats why the last couple of years I’ve started to go. How long will you going out there for this time? Just a couple of weeks. I’m meeting with some agents and managers just for some pilot TV shows and we’ll see what happens. I’m just going to start going out there a little more often. At this time of year in Los Angeles there’s this kind of casting frenzy, there’s all these pilots to be made. A very small percentage of those get picked up by the TV stations. You get a lot of British actors go out there, you know, swallows in spring. What's next for you ? I have no idea. I don’t know what the answer to that is. I’m unemployed. Do you know what, I’m actually quite happy to have a break. The last six months have just been nuts. So it’d be nice to just sit on my bum for a wee while. A bit of a reminder that I’m still here. And I still have to find somewhere to live in LA! Interview extra Susanne Kinnaird - 16th February 2010 |