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From STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE right through to recent work THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO, voice actor MARC SILK has had a diverse and fulfilling career. So with WALES COMIC CON on the horizon we thought it would be a great time to discuss this incredible journey with the man himself…

STARBURST: When and how did you first get into voice acting?

Marc Silk: My heroes were people that did that. Ever since I was a kid watching cartoons, I was fascinated with the idea that there was someone voicing my favourite characters. So when you see the very rare behind the scenes shows on TV, it blew my mind. There was a documentary on TV when I was 9-10 years old, and it was called Of Muppets and Men. You saw behind the scenes of The Muppet Show. My jaw hit the floor, because you go “Oh my God, those are the people who make what you see come to life!” I remember seeing Jim Henson performing Kermit the Frog, Frank Oz doing Miss Piggy, and Dave Goelz performing Gonzo. I just thought that it was the coolest thing in the world. I remember on Blue Peter once, they had a guest called Don Messick, and they said “What do you do, Don?” and he said, “Well I’m the voice of Scooby, Scooby, Doo!” Again, I kind of fell off the sofa. These were my heroes, they were the biggest stars in the world, but you never really knew who they were. So, it was kind of that. Even as a kid I was taking all of this in, being inspired by people who were behind the scenes. People like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas or even people like Robin Williams and Kenny Everett, a great TV comedian who was also a great producer. As a short cut back to your answer, I did work experience at a radio station in Birmingham. I taught myself really how to run a studio by watching people who I thought were the best at what they did. When no one else was there, late at night I would go into the studio and teach myself how to do it. I would get a microphone out, teach myself how to do character voices, and just experiment. I started out as a producer, making other people sound good. I was the button guy, the pair of hands you see on a mixing desk making other people sound like Hollywood. Bit by bit I needed voices for what I was doing, and I did it. I learned that way, I’ve got no formal training. Being inspired by people behind the scenes, I thought I’d rather be there creating characters, doing it that way opens up a whole new world of character creation that I don’t think you could do if you were in front of the camera, or on a stage. There are hundreds of characters that I’ve performed character voices for. I just don’t think you could do that if you were seen in vision.

What was your first major acting project, and what do you remember the most from this experience?

Things just went well really early on. The first big break was Chicken Run. They’d already cast all of the main characters. Right at the end, I got a call saying that Aardman are making this movie called Chicken Run, they need extra chickens! Basically Aardman needed extra cluckers. So I had to put a showreel together showcasing that I could do really good chickens! I thought, this isn’t just sounds, this is voice acting. So I gave them a whole load of different examples. To show that you understood yes it’s funny, but they might be larger than life characters. In the end it’s still acting. You’re creating these characters, and you’re bringing them to life. So I put this showreel together, showing what I would do, but just to leave them remembering me a bit more, to put my stamp on it, I did a five-part chicken harmony to an instrumental recording of Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York, right at the end! I got the gig. When I was in the studio, any time they needed me, I heard someone say “Can you bring in the Sinatra chicken please!”

You went on to work on the Chicken Run video game! What was that like, and what did you contribute to the game?

Yeah, after we did the movie, I ended up being brought in to work on the game. I was Mel Gibson’s character, Rocky the Rooster for that. I was basically replicating Mel Gibson’s character voice for the actual game. As well as other bits and pieces, again that was very early on, and it opened up the games world for me. I’ve done a lot of game work, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work on some incredible titles.

You’ve worked on a stack of video games over your career; as time has gone on, and the graphics/technology within games has, of course, become better, how has that sort of helped you accomplish what you do as an actor?

At the core of it, where you start it’s exactly the same. In the end, we are telling stories. Any piece of entertainment will have great characters, stories, and performances. So whether the quality of the actual animation is more, maybe cinematic/realistic, that can end up making it a more immersive experience for you. In the end, funny is funny, and dramatic is dramatic. It doesn’t matter how good technology will get, with reading a book it’s still your imagination and great writing that make that thing come to life. I’m a huge tech-head, I love going around a studio, and seeing how technology can help us tell a story. Or make something even more magical. What I love with the advances in it, is like I said, the way it can make it more immersive. There’s a real landmark game that I worked on called Black & White, by Lionhead Studios. I was all of the main characters in that. We recorded that over a series of months. Thousands upon thousands of lines. The scripts were like a printed version of Wikipedia. I was the voice of the conscious of this game, it was the first real, big, God game, where you chose to be good or evil. I was the voice of your conscious, of good and evil. We recorded character dialogue that covered every single permutation of what you could do. For its time, it was ground-breaking. So that is where technology becomes your friend and helps as a game-player. With animation, the computing power now is so much that you could perform an animated character live. You have every possible movement that the character could do. It’s almost like a puppet, and you could talk to someone live, with that character voice performing it live at the same time. We did that when I was performing Johnny Bravo. There’s also a great show on the BBC called Go Jetters, it’s on CBBC’s and I play the kind of bad guy, who is just misunderstood. His name is Grandmaster Glitch, again what we’ve been able to do in terms of being interactive with that show, it helps in terms of education. In the end, it’s just fun. It’s just really great fun, as an audience you like the characters based on the strength of the story, and the performances. That’s what it all boils down to. Brilliant writing, great characters, and great performers. A clue to what is at the heart of something that’s timeless, if you go back to something like The Muppets, if that was great CGI, it wouldn’t have been any funnier. That’s still as funny now. At the heart of those great characters were brilliant performers with Jim Henson, and Frank Oz. It just stays with you.

As you briefly touched on, another huge world that you got to be in was the cartoon classic Johnny Bravo – how did this opportunity come about, and what did you love the most about voicing him?

He is such a larger than life character! Johnny was a big male himbo who loved himself more than anything else. He was put into his place by everyone around him. What I loved was almost going back to the technology side of it. We actually performed Johnny Bravo live for the entire day between shows. So Johnny Bravo becomes the host of Cartoon Network, for twice a year, for about three years. It was a huge technological feat. We did it live in the UK, and it was seen as far as South America. In-between Cow and Chicken, The Powerpuff Girls etc. Johnny was actually the live in-studio link guy, but it was all performed using high-end computing power, and me performing the voice live. Talking to kids live on the phone. Doing competitions and all kinds of stuff. That’s taking something to a whole new level. It’s the first time that an A-list Cartoon Network character had ever been performed in that way. I only found out about it afterwards when I saw a feature about it in a magazine. We were too busy doing it. It was a hell of a thing to do it, and when that microphone opened, the trust in you was enormous. It’s a huge privilege and responsibility, you’ve got to be funny, professional, keep it going, stay in character, do it on time, and listen to what the kids are saying that are phoning you. It was an amazing thing to do the voice for.

Did your background in radio help you with achieving the voice of Johnny Bravo in a live situation?

Yeah, so I hosted a radio show for a few years before I went full time doing voice work. I think that was incredible groundwork, for knowing how to get through anything. Working in local commercial radio, you know that at some point, everything will just fall apart around you. It did. Things would stop working, technical things wouldn’t work correctly. As the host of it, you had to make it carry on. Often when things went wrong, it was almost better because of that. So having that experience was an incredible starting point for performing this character, or any other character live. Because they knew that if something went wrong, you’d make it OK. That moment could end up being more exciting or more thrilling for the viewer, because you know that it’ll be OK. It’s a lot of fun to see how you’ll get out of it.

How did you end up becoming a part of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and what do you remember the most about working on this sci-fi giant? 

I got a call saying, “Are you free? on Tuesday to meet with a casting director of a brand new Star Wars movie?” I said “Give me a second… yes!” and this was of course for The Phantom Menace. I’m a huge Star Wars fan, and it had been 16 years since Jedi. In fact, I’ve still got a STARBURST Magazine from around that time! It’s got Darth Vader, C-3PO, R2-D2, and I think Leonard Nimoy was on the cover as well. I was reading STARBURST in school, I was a fan of it! Anyway, long story short. I ended up working with George Lucas on Star Wars. Talk about a triple whammy. I’m a Star Wars fan, it’s the first Star Wars film since Jedi. I’m working at Abbey Road Studios, and being directed by George Lucas. It was incredible. I played a character called Aks Moe, and he was the ambassador of Malastare, he was in the senate scene. Within the Star Wars universe my role was relatively small, but it was still a role in Star Wars! It’s something that I’m entirely grateful for, and I’ll remember every single moment of it, forever.

It seems like George Lucas was a very interactive and hands-on director?

He was! He was very hands-on. He directed me, and people from Skywalker Sound were in the control room at Abbey Road Studios. Rick McCallum the producer was there, Robin Gurland the casting director, and then George actually directed me. He was such a lovely guy to work with. I walked into the studio, and the first thing he said was “Would you like a potato chip?” so at that point, I thought, “This is going to go OK!” Also, when you work on something of that scale, it’s a really good short-cut for future work, because they think, if they trusted you, then we can probably trust you as well. I think that was the project that opened so many doors. It’s taken me to places that are just wonderful. I now host Star Wars Symphonies, a couple of years ago we did Symphonic Star Wars, and it was the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and myself live at The Royal Albert Hall! We did two shows in one day, and we had over ten thousand people come to play. To be asked to be the person to front that, is a hell of a thing. I go back to, “I’m a Star Wars fan” and a huge fan of John Williams, so to share that with other people that like the same stuff that I do, is incredible.

Going back to cartoons, you got to play both Scooby-Doo and Shaggy, how did you go about doing your own approach on these characters, especially as they’ve been around for a very long time?

I grew up, watching the original Scooby-Doo, and a tip of the hat to Don Messick, the original voice. Scooby-Doo started in 1969, and it celebrated its 50^th anniversary this year. I did interviews for the BBC a few weeks ago, just celebrating, and talking about the history, and my love of it. I got to meet Don Messick as a fan, at a gallery event for original Scooby-Doo artwork, before I was doing this professionally. I’m a fan. I actually collect original animation art from my favourite shows and animation artists. I’ve got a huge archive. My love of this, is more than just what I contribute. I’m still a big fan of the craft that happens behind the scenes. When it comes to my involvement with Scooby, I’ve just always been able to do it. I think that when you really love something, art, music, whatever it might be. It’s just in you. Like if you’re learning how to play the guitar, you learn the tunes by your favourite musician/band. So when doing character voices, I was learning how to perform my favourite character voices, and two of them were Scooby-Doo and Shaggy. You figure it out. So just from playing around in studios for other recording sessions, people got to know that I could perform these characters. But also, more than that. I could perform them accurately. It wasn’t just copying what someone else had done, it was understanding where these characters had come from. How to make them live and breathe. If all you do is copy what someone else has done, you can’t really go anywhere. If you understand why they did it that way, and what made it work. Then that’s the most healthy starting point. Just playing in studios, I would sometimes just do it, for no other reason than it being funny, to entertain people that were in the room. Then word got around that I could do it. Then about ten years ago I got brought in to start doing the voice of toys, games, commercials and things for Cartoon Network, and CITV. It’s a hell of a thing. These characters are such icons, they’re not just another character, they’re something that you’d see on a T-shirt! That’s the level of epic that these characters have reached. So the first day I found myself in a studio with a script, and the first line says “Yikes!” you realise that this is going to be a fun way to spend the day.

Talking of well-known cartoon characters, Danger Mouse got rebooted back in 2015 – how did you become a part of it?

Danger Mouse was a huge favourite of mine, and it still is. The very first cartoon that I ever worked on was created by the people behind Danger Mouse, Cosgrove Hall Films. When I found out that they were rebooting it, I spoke to one of the people behind it and said that “I’d love to be a part of it. There’s a whole bunch I could bring to it.” Then they went, “Alright, leave it to me!” Then a few months later I got a phone call asking me to come down and perform these characters. In the first season of Danger Mouse I’m the voice of 31 characters.

What can you tell us about another one of your latest TV shows, Go Jetters?

It’s an incredible show. That’s now showed all over the world, it’s got its own magazine. They’ve actually just released the Grandmaster Glitch plush toy! So there are a lot of people getting Grandmaster plush gifts this year. That’s an amazing show. It has that Sesame Street, Muppets sensibility, where, it’s really exciting, really funny, but you might just learn something along the way? It’s that. Anyone of any age could watch Go Jetters. It’s a terrific show.

Thunderbirds Are Go is still going strong, especially as it’s a new approach that also respects its roots. What can you tell us about working on it?

Yeah, I’m the voice of the incredibly handsome Captain Rigby. He has the greatest eyebrows on TV. It looks like they’re freshly baked. It’s Weta Studios that have done all the live background and models for it, and CGI characters. In Season 3 it’s gone from being a great new animation show, to something that is truly cinematic. Ben & Nick Foster, their soundtrack is a full orchestral score. It’s like something from a movie. Lee Majors is the voice of Jeff Tracey! It’s absolutely incredible. I’m Captain Wayne Rigby, a super tough guy that works with international rescue, but in terms of heritage it’s so wonderful what they’ve achieved. They brought in David Graham, who was the original voice of Parker in Thunderbirds. He is still the voice of Parker now. They know all of those little bits of detailed spice that fans will love. I’m a fan, so I just get excited watching it. You’ve got Rosamund Pike as Lady Penelope and David Graham as Parker. It means the world to me, just being in that room. Forget work for a second, to be in that room, when we’re recording. To walk in there and the original voice of Parker goes “Morning Marc!”, you go, “Yeah, this is it!”.

Two Point Hospital went down a storm with gamers. What can you tell us about your role within the game?

It’s incredible. It was a smash hit for Two Point Studios and Sega. Within 48 hours after it came out it became the number 1 game worldwide on Steam. It was up for a BAFTA this year at the BAFTA Games Award. When you’re playing the game, I’m the voice of the diverse presenters on the radio in the background. It’s become such a big deal now that these characters have a following. We keep on releasing new add-on packs that feature these presenters having new adventures.

How excited are you for your upcoming appearance at Wales Comic Con, and what can attending fans expect?

It’s kind of as good as it gets. The guests that they get at Wales Comic Con are up there with the absolute best that you’ll bump into. The atmosphere is terrific. I love meeting the people that walk through the door, because I think I love the shows as much as they do. So for anyone who is coming to do Wales Comic Con, come over and say hello. I’ll make sure that they are thoroughly looked after, I’ll give them as many voices as they want. Whether they want to bring pictures for me to sign, or if they get something from me, I’d love to do that for them. It’s a great and really exciting day.

What else can we expect to see from you in 2020?

There’s a couple of new shows that I’m working on right now that haven’t been announced yet. I’ll tell you about those when I can. There’s more Thunderbirds to come next year, more Go Jetters as Season 3 continues. I think that it will go to infinity and beyond.

For more information on MARC SILK and his work, visit his official website www.marcsilk.com. To meet him in person, head to the next WALES COMIC CON on December 7th – 8th.

The award-winning actor PETER WELLER has appeared in more than seventy films and television series including STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE episodes ‘Demons’ and ‘Terra Prime’. He is also well known for the cult 1984 science fiction film THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION, and for starring in Manny Coto’s 2002 cable television series, ODYSSEY 5. More recently he played Admiral Alexander Marcus in 2013’s STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, but he is arguably best known for his iconic role as the title character in the 1987 classic ROBOCOP and its 1990 sequel, ROBOCOP 2. We caught up with the veteran actor ahead of his appearance at December’s FOR THE LOVE OF SCI-FI fan convention to talk about his ROBOCOP recollections, his varied career, art, and more…

STARBURST: Is it correct that you turned down a higher paid role in Dino De Laurentiis’ 1986 film King Kong Lives to play the RoboCop character?

Peter Weller: Yes. I had not received the Robo offer, but my dear friend and agent, Rick Nicita, were hoping it was going to come in that day; thus we took the meeting with ‘The Great Dino’; for whom I later did Leviathan, along with his brother Luigi and nephew, Aurelio who was the hands-on producer and who, along with his family, are still friends. Dino had the most entertaining and mesmerising energy. He stood up, came around his desk and immediately demanded, as Rick and I were barely in the door “how much money, you want, not to do this ‘robot’ movie?” I was instantly thinking of Ferraris and such. We got the Robo offer that afternoon, from the great Mike Medavoy for much less loot. Who cares. Money isn’t everything.

The film was highly prescient: despite being set in 1991, it correctly visualised a future of runaway consumerism, movies recorded onto disc, ‘data strips’ – which were basically USBs – and the concept of a privatized police force whose central agenda was profit. Did you think such things were plausible when you read the script?

As a child of the ‘60s, meaning the most influential music, protest, social revolution of the century; by 1986, I was buried into the fallout of the ‘me decade’ ‘70s, thus politically asleep, more or less. Although the script was a powerful and funny read, and the entire adventure was endemic to my life on more plateaus than I could begin to iterate, I did not see the prescient sociology in the script; inclusive of ‘privatisation, trickle-down eco justifying post-modern greed, identity theft, 3rd world exclusionism; crime-cops ownership, media mind-swamp; death by atomic bomb made commercial.’ On and on. I do now, but did not then. I prefer to call my lack of awareness of how profound this film would be… ‘movie-guy myopia’.

Moni Yakim, the mime you’d engaged, originally envisaged a more fluid, Tai Chi-style of movement for the character. How did you both cope with the restrictive weight of the suit and develop RoboCop’s unique physicality?

For years I had practiced – and was still practicing – Iaido or Iai-Jitsu, which is the art of katana fighting or, simply put, the live blade, or to dumb it down, ‘samurai fighting,’ from which Aikido, Jodo, and Karate derive. Living in New York, after interviewing several mimes for coaching – I had taken mime and years of dance – I interviewed with now dear friend Moni and he started moving in a fluid, legato idea with heavy staccato accents at the end of movements, just like Iaido. I loved it. And him. The framework of the movement remained, but the tempo changed when Rob Boutin’s genius suit arrived. The suit transformed previous ideas or concepts about the physicalisation of Robo. The entire physicality was slowed into a ‘largo’ power that bridged humanity and beast. Moni worked with me over a weekend and had me watch Nicolai Cherkasov in Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible; wherein I saw the same thing; huge legato-largo movement with big staccato punctuation. Brilliant. He looks phony and operatic… for about 5 minutes… after which one becomes mesmerised.

Were you comfortable with the third draft of the script, which incorporated Paul Verhoeven’s suggestion that Murphy should have an affair with Nancy Allen’s Lewis?

Never read it. So do not care now, nor ever did.

Whenever production halted during filming, is it correct that you passed the time playing the trumpet? Were you already performing with Jeff Goldblum at Le Petit Four at this point?

Production never halted. There were no stalled moments. The shooting went like a tornado thanks to Paul, Jost Vacano, the script and crew and especially the Robo make-up/costume team. Yes, I played the trumpet; but I was up every morning at 3:00 AM running four to six miles a day, prepping for the New York Marathon. Jeff and I started at Le Petite Four in 1993 I believe.

You were very focused on set and reportedly stayed separate from the actors playing the villains. Did you workshop any scenes with them? And did you ever get the impression that Kurtwood Smith’s character Clarence Boddicker knew that RoboCop was one of his own murder victims?

I was never kept separate. I stayed separate on set because the character was alone in a bubble called ‘machine.’ Thus I rarely spoke to anyone except Paul or the Robo team on set; they referred to me as ‘Robo’ on set if they needed to address me. Understand that I warmed up vocal cords to drop intonation, and was also saving my voice. However, off the set, I would hang with Kurtwood and Joan Smith; Ray Wise, Calvin Jung, Jesse Goins. The bad guys were my buds; Kurtwood and Paul McCrane still are. I never considered if Kurtwood knew Robo was Murphy. I assumed he knew; as we were both set up.

You produce some horrific screams during the film, most notably when Murphy is executed, and again when RoboCop’s chest is pierced during the finale. Which painful experiences did you return to hit those notes?

Any of a thousand pains, emotional and physical, since infancy.

Peter Weller on the set of RoboCop (1987)

Did you think RoboCop would go on to become such a prominent part of your acting career?

I knew a) that Paul Verhoeven was gifted; and I had worked with Mike Nichols, Sydney Lumet, Richard Lester; been inducted into the Actor’s Studio by Elia Kazan with whom I had only done improvisation, but that was enough to reveal his genius; studied with the great Uta Hagen, etc and had seen all of Paul’s films. RoboCop, as brilliant as it was penned by Michael Miner and Ed Neumeier – who wrote it, by the way, right next door to where I now live – would have never been that film without Paul’s infusion of loss, identity, myth, empirical value. I knew it would be terrific, but there is no guarantee of success or classic legacy until the audience sits in front of it. My career? I never think of ‘my career’. I only move from one gig to the next… by choice. 

You’ve said before that Paul Verhoeven’s involvement in the project is what led you to lobby for the part of Murphy. Were you happy to commit to the sequel despite his absence?

The sequel lacked a third act. I said this going in. Had a ball making it. Loved Irv Kirshner and Frank Miller. No third act, alas.

Were you proud to support the 2011 Kickstarter campaign for a statue of RoboCop to be erected in Detroit?

I did not support nor denigrate it. I only supported Martha Reeves move when she was, I believe, on the city council, to line the Detroit greats from music and sports along the waterfront by the arm of Joe Louis, the bronze icon by renowned figurative sculptor, Robert Graham, who is a great friend and influence. The statue of Robocop is on its own.

Are you happy that the film is now part of the Criterion Collection, alongside such classics as Seven Samurai and Naked Lunch?

…and Sweet Smell of Success, possibly one of the three most poignant and brilliant American movies about America ever made. Yes.

How did you transition from directing and starring in movies/TV to qualifying as a Renaissance art scholar?

A long series of events, beginning with the wonderful, beautiful, mind-blowing intelligent Ali Macgraw taking me by the hand through five floors of the largest ever Picasso retrospective at MoMA before sending me to Italy, where I now live part-time. And then seminal director of photography, Vittorio Storaro, sending me to see Giotto’s Capella Scrovegni [Arena Chapel] possibly the single most influential piece of western art in the early modern era. It is all visual information and entertainment, one way or another, n’est pas?

The impact of RoboCop has not dimmed in 32 years. Does it feel strange to have been part of art history, as well as studying and teaching it today?

Strange? No. Immensely satisfying, yes. I just, in October of this year, while directing Magnum P.I. for CBS, took a Friday-night flight from Honolulu to Salt Lake City to connect to St. Louis, just to give a 25 minute paper and answer an hour’s worth of questions at the Sixteenth Century Society of 2019, one of the larger and important academic yearly events on the Renaissance. The panel of papers addressed ‘Why the Renaissance Matters’. My paper was ‘Giotto, Caravaggio, and Storaro: Renaissance Narrative Art to Modern Film’. This paper journeyed from that very Giotto fresco cycle, to which Storaro sent me, through futurism, modernism, post-modernism – Carrà, Rothko, Mondrian – to Storaro’s cinematography. Then I had a steak with some scholars; and jumped a 6 AM flight back, 15 hours, to Honolulu to continue shooting. Most people I know didn’t consider that ‘strange’. They voiced it as down-right lunacy! But I have been blessed with my father’s gift of tenacity. And my mother’s gift of passion. As she would say: “do it all. All of it… and do not quit.” 

PETER WELLER will be appearing at the world’s biggest Sci-Fi fan convention FOR THE LOVE OF SCI-FI, December 7^th and 8^th at Bowlers Exhibition Centre Manchester alongside the legendary WARWICK DAVIS, THE BOYS and DREDD star KARL URBAN, THE PUNISHER’s Jon Bernthal, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER’s Dolph Lundgren, LETHAL WEAPON’s Danny Glover, STRANGER THINGS’ Charlie Heaton, FLASH GORDON’s Sam Jones and Brian Blessed, STAR WARS’ RAY PARK, SPENCER WILDING, and UK exclusive MARK DODSON, and martial arts legend AL LEONG. For more information and tickets visit www.fortheloveofsci-fi.com

 

We caught up with STARBURST favourite NICK FROST to talk about his new animated sci-fi movie STARDOG AND TURBOCAT…

STARBURST: What attracted you to the project?

Nick Frost: The chance to make a film that my kids can see. I don’t think there’s anything I’ve made up until this point that my kids are allowed to watch! I have a seven-year-old who’s constantly badgering me to watch things that usually involve beheadings, or someone being eaten, or swearing, or “daddy, why are you in bed with another lady that isn’t mummy?”, so it was a nice opportunity to do something that I could be proud of my children watching!

You voice StarDog in the movie, how do you prepare for this kind of role?

I come in with an idea of what I think the character is and meet with the creatives on the other side and between us, we find a voice that suits the character and is true and honest and easy to reproduce. It’s fine to do a crazy voice but you run the risk of tearing your throat to pieces and never being able to work again.

What was your biggest challenge with this role? 

I’ve never done an American accent before. I’ve been reticent and afraid of doing an American accent because people just judge you on the accent rather than the performance but I thought ‘well why not’? So I just had a go. I think time will judge me… and Americans, but I enjoyed doing it.

What qualities do you like about your character?

He’s a tryer who works hard and is very enthusiastic about life. He’s a good egg who’s been hurt and wants to try and find out the truth about a man he loves and I can really relate to that.

Who’s your favourite superhero?

There’s one by Image Comics about a boy called Invincible that I really love. It’s about a 14-year-old boy who suddenly realises his father is a god and his mother was human. He’s a kid at school and suddenly starts to get these amazing powers. Out of all the superheroes, that’s the one I’ve read front-to-back and loved forever.

If you could have a superpower what would it be?

Flying is fine but imagine you could re-arrange items down to a molecular level. To just be a god would be it.

Are you a cat person or a dog person?

I have had dogs and as much as I love dogs, I’m a cat man. I have a cat called Eric. He’s the bane of my life and one of the loves of my life. He’s the boss of the house and he’s very naughty.

If you could be an animal what would it be? 

I’d have to say a domestic cat. I think they have lovely lives if they have nice owners. Or something in the Fjords like an Osprey or something.’

How do you think the movie will be received? 

I think people will really like the film. The world’s in a kind of mucky place right now so to get a film which is so full of light and hope and comedy and friendship is the thing we need right now.

STARDOG AND TURBOCAT opens in UK cinemas on December 6th

Ahead of this year’s WALES COMIC CON, we caught up with CLIVE MANTLE to discuss his beginnings as an actor, ROBIN OF SHERWOOD, ALIEN 3, and GAME OF THRONES, as well as his latest time travelling books THE TREASURE AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD and A JEWEL IN THE SANDS OF TIME…

STARBURST: How and when did you first get into acting?

Clive Mantle: Well I’ve always done school productions. The first sort of serious foray into acting, was when I was lucky enough to get into the National Youth Theatre when I was 17. A notice went up on the school noticeboard, and I applied because I knew that I enjoyed doing it. It was something to do during that summer holiday. I was lucky enough to get in, because thousands of people applied from all over the country. They took a hundred new people for the summer, I was one of them. From that moment on my life absolutely changed. It was literally like a light switch going on. I was suddenly amongst people who were all interested in the same sort of thing. I fit in for the first time in my life. I’d always been a bit of an “odd bod” at school. Not terribly weird, I just didn’t fit into any particular group/gang. I was just randomly walking around myself a lot of time. Acting rescued me.

What was your first major acting project, and what do you remember the most about this time?

Well around about that time, I was lucky enough to go to Kimbolton school, where part of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII is set, Catherine of Aragon, was actually imprisoned for a large part of her ending years in Kimbolton Castle. One of the scenes in Henry VIII is set there. Every year the school would do a production of Henry VIII in the courtyard of the castle. I was there at the right time. I had a false beard stuck on, and just managed to learn my lines in time, by the skin of my teeth. I played Henry VIII in the Kimbolton courtyard. So I think that was the first time that I realised the weight of responsibility of playing a huge part in something. Having it be all eyes focused on you. It was up to you to deliver the goods. That was a huge milestone. Then various parts of the National Youth Theatre that followed. You were just building confidence, and you get to work with wonderful playwrights. I was privileged. I got to around the age of 21, and then your life clicks on another couple of gears, as you are honed, and ready to be thrust out into the profession. To be honest, you’re never more capable than when you leave drama school, as you’ve been rehearsing and playing three or four plays at a time. Your mind is never crowded with that many roles again because you tend to be tackling one thing at a time. At drama school, your mind is split into so many different ways, and you’ve got to be brilliant at them all to stay there.

Robin of Sherwood

How did you get involved with playing Little John, in Robin of Sherwood, and what do you remember the most about working on this series?

I was very lucky. Talking of the National Youth Theatre, an amazing woman called Esta Charkham who was the casting director, was in the country at the time. She was part of the National Youth Theatre, and she used to come back to watch our productions. She was casting Robin of Sherwood, and I was the only name in the frame. She only put me forward to the producers. Had they not been happy with me, they would have obviously looked elsewhere. So she brought them down, and I was playing Little John in a wonderful production of Robin Hood at the Young Vic Theatre. A lovely treatment of the Robin Hood legend by Dave and Toni Arthur. Esta brought Paul Knight and Richard Carpenter down to the Young Vic to see me play Little John, and then a couple of weeks later I was called to a meeting at Pinewood. For all intents and purposes, it was a casting session. I walked in and Paul Knight, who is about the same size as me, got up from behind the desk and gave me a great big hug, and more or less said welcome aboard. I’ve never ever had an audition like that before, I was just given the part. It was absolutely wonderful. Again, that changed life dramatically. To have a solid run in a TV show, and not only that but a brilliant and high profile TV show, was just obviously a fantastic leg up. Still to this day, it’s probably one of the things that I’m best known for. Being in touch with all of the Robin of Sherwood fan groups, as I think most of the cast is. We are reminded on a daily basis what the show meant to thousands of people. It still does, and they’re showing their children, and their children’s children now. I think it’s 35 years ago this year that it was transmitted, which means that we were making it 36 years ago! That’s a long, long time. People still love and remember it. They’re watching it to this day. I’m a little scared to watch it, just in case it’s dated. I watch it very sparingly; I watch clips, tiny little bits. I just want to remember the memories that I have from making the series. The effect it’s had on people is good enough for me.

It’s a role that you’ve considered to be “one of the most enjoyable in your whole career?” Why do you think that is, and just what did you love so much about playing this character?

Without a doubt. It’s fantastic to be part of a group like that. Each of us very distinct and different. Each of us served a different purpose within the group. Richard Carpenter, who wrote the bulk of the series and whose vision it was, he was clever enough to come down to Bristol and go out for drinks with us. He’d just watch how we joke with each other, and how we responded with each other. He’d use that in his writing, and played up to it. He knew that they were our strengths. The important thing for me was to try and create a fully rounded character. He was headstrong, wonderfully powerful, a brilliant fighter, a close and loyal, right-hand man of Robin Hood. It was also important he was fallible, that he was wrong, and could make wrong decisions. He could make headstrong decisions that lead them into trouble. I didn’t mind the fact that Little John made mistakes, and that he was terribly sorry about it all afterwards. Or would rectify his mistakes. I wanted to present as many facets of the character as I could, and I was allowed to do so. 

Game of Thrones

You got to play Lord Greatjon Umber in Game of Thrones – can you tell us a little bit about what this was like, and how it compared overall to anything else that you’ve done before as an actor?

Yeah, so you enter into all of these things with great goodwill. With the hope and belief that they’re going to be wonderful feasts for the audience. I have to say that that rarely happens. You are lucky enough in your career to be a part of one series that fulfils all of those criteria, and Robin of Sherwood had certainly done that. With Game of Thrones, I was in the first series, and at that point no one really knew what kind of effect it was going to have. They had certainly thrown a pile of money at the production. It was amazing to be a part of that. There were over 300 speaking parts in the first ten episodes, and it was a huge undertaking. It was like throwing mud at a wall and seeing if it would stick. You just never know if these great endeavours are going to take off. Obviously Game of Thrones did, maybe more than any other show has in the history of TV. With a lot of hard work and expertise from hundreds and thousands of people, they did something right. They created something absolutely wonderful and lasting. It can be watched again and again for decades. It’s not just a one-hit-wonder. People will be able to go back to it in 20-30 years, in the same way that people are going back to Robin of Sherwood now. It was an amazing thing to be a part of. It wasn’t necessarily the most comfortable filming experience that I’d ever had. It ended up being -22 temperature-wise. I was on the edge of Strangford Lough, out there in Northern Ireland. The most beautiful location. It was cold, I can tell you that. I had just got back from Everest, and the coldest I had got there was -15. Which is plenty cold enough. So for it to be colder in Belfast than it was high up in the Himalayas was a source of great joy! I can remember having a chat with some of the Night’s Watch. It was their first major TV experience, and I was saying to them how they should just grab it with both hands. Enjoy the ride, like we enjoyed Robin of Sherwood all those years ago. Enjoy the work, the scripts, and make the most of it all. As it’s gone on, I think the performances throughout the series are universally pretty brilliant!

STARBURST, of course, loves to cover sci-fi, so you weren’t going to get away without us asking you questions about Alien 3! So, first off, how did you get involved in this classic franchise?

Again, there’s so much luck involved in getting work. When I was at my drama school, I was part of a wonderful production called East by Steven Berkoff. I played a middle-aged man. I had my head shaved for the part. A mate of mine said, “While you’ve got your head shaved, let me take a couple of photos, you never know when they’ll come in useful.” So he took a couple of me walking through the street with my head shaved, then a couple of me looking through a chain-link fence, looking like a prisoner. When I left drama school I went to my agent and said look “Just in case these ever come in useful, here are some bald photos” she said “Oh yes, thank you very much!” and put them at the bottom of a filing cabinet somewhere. Cut to years later, David Fincher is looking for a whole cast of bald actors to play the most desperate villains in the universe. My agent dusted off the photos, took them out, and sent them off to Fincher. When I went into the casting at Pinewood, there was my picture up on the noticeboard. He turned around smiled, pointed at it and said: “I told the casting department, get me 20 more like that!” That photo literally got me the part in Alien 3. Well, had I messed up the interview, it would have been curtains of course. It just shows the amount of luck, the tenuous strings on which our careers hang, and the decisions that people make. It’s so far out of our hands at times, but it doesn’t really bear thinking about. Rejection, there’s no rhyme or reason why you don’t get the part. You can’t torture yourself for weeks or months after you get turned down for the part that you are absolutely right for. You just can’t trace back the root in regards to why one person gets the part and one person doesn’t. Anyway, that was Alien 3 which was a glorious experience, just a whole load of British actors sitting around getting our heads shaved at 7 in the morning. A whole lot of sitting around playing scrabble I seem to remember. Having a very good laugh with the wonderful Sigourney Weaver. She threw herself into it, and it was very fun. We had a lovely time. 

Alien 3 

So leading on nicely from that, can you tell us a bit about what director David Fincher – who was just 28 years old at the time – was like to work with?

It was incredible. You’re right, I think that it was his first major film. He had the whole of 20th Century Fox on his shoulders, watching every penny that he spent. He had banks of monitors in front of him, computer units, main units, etc. It was like a technological exercise more so than anything else. He was very funny, calm, cool. He got excited about acting performances. He could have a laugh, a smile. I had a line where it says “I don’t give a fuck what she says!” and I was staring at Sigourney in front of me with her shaved head. For some reason, on the last camera rehearsal I said “I don’t give a fuck what Shirley Temple says!” and the whole set just stopped. Sigourney Weaver looked at me with a slight sort of look in her eyes, and I thought “Oh dear, have I overstepped the mark?” People started scuttling around for a minute or two in a brief hiatus. Fincher just came up and gave me a great big thumbs up. He was obviously checking to see if it was OK for me to say Shirley Temple, and he came back and said “Yes!” so it was in. Fincher was excited by that, he loved extra stuff. Also, because we all looked the same, Peter Guinness and I, for example, kept calling each other by our names, otherwise no one would have known who we were when the credits went up. Fincher looked at us one day, and he said “Guys, I know what you’re doing! Stop calling each other by your names!” We were like “Okay!” [Laughs] He could spot the tricks. Even Sigourney Weaver’s picture to me, looking at it now on the wall of my study, it says To Clive, a rapist, a convict, a swell guy all in all. Much love, Shirley Temple. I had a great time.

For those who haven’t checked them out just yet, what can you tell us about your books The Treasure at the Top of the World and A Jewel in the Sands of Time?

They are time travelling stories. My time-traveling hero gets a map for his 13th birthday through which he can disappear, or he is actually called through to various places in the world, at various points in history. He lives an adventure while he’s among real, historical events. He comes back to report to his friends; it’s obviously partly set in present-day where he’s facing trials and tribulations, bullies, the nightmare scenarios that kids are faced with day to day in our present time. But also juxtaposed with historical events. I’m halfway through writing book three now, which is Freddie and Me, The Great Plague, and the Great Fire of London. I can put him anywhere in history, and report back. It’s a fantastic thing to do, and each book takes me about a year to write because I have to research them thoroughly, as I have to weave an adventure around real settings. Also, they’re going down very well. They are on recommended reading lists, and the first one won the Peoples Book Prize. That’s great, and it supplements my acting work. You’re never 100% busy as an actor, so it’s great when I’m not working, I just disappear up to my study and work on the book. 

It seems like the story has been a lifelong passion of yours? With your father telling you many tales of Everest, so that must of been very rewarding for you to work on?

Yeah! In fact, the idea came as I was walking away from Everest. Your head is cleared, by the simplicity of walking in the Himalayas, your life becomes about keeping warm, fed, and keeping watered. Looking after the people around you. They’re the things that life actually revolves around. You get rid of all the rubbish in your head like, when car insurance is due, have I sent an email to so and so, etc. All of that gets put in the junk file, and it gives you wonderful freedom in your head to realise who you are, where you are in your life, and what you’re going to do when you get back. So yeah, the idea for Freddie going through a map to anywhere in history came to me as I was walking away from Everest. It was 4-5 years later when I actually had time to sit down to start writing it. I was in South Africa, working on a long job, and I had many days off between filming days, and it just took too long to go home and come back again. So I was out there, and I sat and started writing the book. It was a long time after Everest that I did that, but it meant so much to me. When I was born in 1957, it was only four years after Everest had first been climbed, by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. The more you read about Everest, the more you found out about Mallory and Irvine in 1924, being spotted less than a thousand feet from the top, dressed in tweeds, and stout walking boots. It’s incredible really, to think of them up there. Your mind goes to all the possibilities, I had read a lot of books about Everest, and I had to go to Everest myself, go and touch it, and hug it. Pay my respects to the brave men and women who had been there and not come back. Also, the brave people who have got to the top. Now, I’m passionately involved in it not becoming a circus. It’s a holy mountain really. It should be treated with great respect. Every year now people are buying their way to the top, and that’s not what I approve of. I approve of the expeditionary force, the amazing spirit of man and woman pitching themselves against the elements, against themselves to achieve something. Standing at the top of the world seems to be quite an amazing thing to do. However, buying your way into doing that seems to be a slightly distorted way of doing things.

You recently took on voice acting work for the game Anthem! Can you tell us about what this sci-fi adventure was like to work on, and maybe how working on video games differs for you as an actor?

It’s very different. You do have to throw yourself into the hour-two hour session. They give you a few quick notes about the character that they want you to do. Obviously, there are non-disclosure agreements that you have to sign. So no one tells you a lot about the part, characters, or even what the game is. You just have to throw yourself into it, and rely on their feedback. Luckily because I’ve done a lot of voice work in my time, for adverts, audio-books, dramas, etc, you get a very quick shorthand about what people want. You can’t sit down for half an hour and discuss the character, you have to give an immediate reading, and then if it’s not quite what they want, you just slightly adjust it. I’ve not seen or played the game yet, and I haven’t heard the result of my work, but I hope it’s OK and that people are enjoying it! It’s not something that you get involved with, because I don’t think that you’re allowed to. They’re so scared that the premise of the game will get out into the world before they’re ready to launch it. I’ve just dubbed a series for Netflix, but I don’t know the title! So, people say to me “What are you working on?” and I say “I’ve just done a series for Netflix that I’ve just dubbed, but I’m not allowed to know the title!” This is the world in which we live.

How excited are you for your upcoming appearance at Wales Comic Con, and what can attending fans expect?

I’m very excited! It’s a big one. It’ll be delightful to see people and have a chat. I always enjoy that. You can always tell the mega fans of Robin of Sherwood, Game of Thrones, Vicar of Dibley, because they’ve got a look in their eye, and talk about the project in a completely different way. The devoted fans are just glorious, and I’ll give them as much time as possible. If there’s a large queue then that limits that time. I always say to people, “Look, come back later when the rush is gone, and we’ll have a proper chat.” What’s lovely is that I’ll have my books with me, and be able to talk to people about those, it’s very handy for Christmas, getting a signed copy of the book for their loved ones. It couldn’t be better timed. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of the Game of Thrones people. Quite a lot of the gang are there, like David Bradley. It’ll be lovely to catch up with some old mates. We are a very tight-knit bunch, all of the people that are lucky enough to get invited to conventions. In the evening we’ll have a beer and reminisce and then in the day we’ll chat to anyone who presents themselves for a picture, autograph, whatever. It’s going to be a very happy couple of days, and I’m looking forward to it.

What else can we expect to see from you in 2020 as an actor?

I’m going back to the English National Opera, later on in 2020. A wonderful production of Iolanthe that I was involved with a couple of years ago is coming back into the repertoire. That’s very exciting. If you spoke to me last week, I would have said that I was taking part in a theatre tour from February – June, but I think that’s folded, as is the way at the moment. In the old days, if you were contacted about a theatre tour, and you said “Yes”, that was it! However, now theatre tours can fold very quickly and last minute. So I’ve been left with a gap in my diary for the first part of the year, but, to be honest, I’ll be finishing this third book, over Christmas, and early into the new year. I’ll send that off to my publishers, where they’ll sit on it for a week, or six weeks while they all make notes, and then it’ll come back to me so I can do the amendments. Then hopefully it gets published in June. So I won’t be sitting on my hands waiting for things to happen, I’ve got plenty of things to keep me busy!

For more information on CLIVE MANTLE and his work, visit his official website www.clivemantle.com. To meet him in person, head to the next WALES COMIC CON on December 7th – 8th. 

LITTLE MONSTERS is not a zombie film, but it is a film with zombies. Starring Alexander England as Dave, an immature man-child trying to get his life on track, Lupita Nyong’o as kindergarten teacher Miss Caroline, and Josh Gad as an obnoxious children’s entertainer, as they try to keep a class of five-year-olds safe from a zombie outbreak. STARBURST had the chance to sit down with director ABE FORSYTHE at the recent London Film Festival ahead of the film’s November 15th UK release…

STARBURST: There’s an interesting origin story behind this film, could you talk a little about it?

Abe Forsythe: Oh, 100%! That’s the most important part for me contextually, and that’s why I’ve made a real effort to travel with this movie to film festivals. People go into the movie, thinking ‘okay, we’re going to go in and see a zombie movie. I’ve seen zombie movies, I’m over zombie movies. Zombie comedies are only ever Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland.’ Everyone always says the same stuff. So for me, it’s really important to put forward where this movie came from. I’ve got a son who’s now eight years old, but he was born with multiple, severe food allergies and some other health conditions, and as a result he had never been out of my care – until he went to kindergarten.  Out of my camp until he went to kindergarten. And it was a really terrifying thing for me to have to hand him over to someone else.

We really lucked out though, because his kindergarten teacher was amazing. Not only did she look after his health needs, I also got to see him have his world opened up for the first time. So it led me to realise… I always knew teachers were important, and that they were undervalued. But specifically kindergarten ages, I just had never thought about all the things they do for us and for our kids; I got to see first-hand what this woman did for my son. And then what happened is that I chaperoned this school excursion with her, my son and 25 other kids – we went to a petting zoo, which is part of where we ended up shooting the movie. And the inspiration for the movie came from that. We were literally driving on a tractor train which stopped, and the woman driving the train got off to investigate something. It was just one of those random ideas of, what if it was a zombie? Then how would we protect these kids if there was a zombie apocalypse? And I just kept extrapolating from those ideas, like it’s not just stopping them from having their brains devoured by zombies. It’s actually about protecting them from being corrupted by everything that was around them. Then this thing just kind of poured out of me. The movie is basically a love letter to my son and to all that he’s taught me.

And the kid who takes the fictional placeholder for your son [Diesel La Torraca, as Felix], he’s incredible. That scene where he has an allergic reaction was probably the most emotional moment of the film.

That was really important, and I think he is incredible. It was also the hardest thing to film, for obvious reasons. And that was an important scene for me, because at that point it was still a fun zombie movie, with songs etcetera. It was key at that point to let the audience know there was still danger here, and specifically real-world dangers. One of these kids could die, and I wanted to make that point by having a threat that people can identify with; and building an action scene around someone trying to get an EpiPen was a good way of reminding people of the stakes. All the kids in that scene just did an incredible performance. And then you get to see Miss Caroline becoming the lioness protecting her cubs.

And it leads to that iconic image that’s on all the posters, of Lupita Nyong’o in a yellow dress soaked in blood, wielding a spade! What were your inspirations in creating her character and her look, beyond drawing from real-life?

I think there was some discussion with the costume designer – he’d done my last film and done an incredible job – along with the production designer and the DP, we did talk about wanting to push the world a little bit. Not so it’s so over-the-top that it becomes silly, but more that we needed to think about it. So the departments had a think about how to represent the characters in their look, which is why Miss Caroline wears the sunny dress, because she’s the light for these kids. And there’s something about that dress, with the bum-bag and the ukulele, it had a very Sound of Music quality to it; but then saturating that dress in blood, and the dichotomy of those colours working against each other. You’ve also got Teddy McGiggle in the big polka dot suit, and Dave in the heavy metal tees, which changes as his character develops. It was giving them a slightly pop kind of look but making sure we were grounding that with bits of performance that remind us it’s real, and that there’s serious stuff going on. We talked a little bit about the looks in Coen brothers’ comedies, or The Big Lebowski, where there’s so much backstory to their looks that they contribute to the worldbuilding.

What did you have to do to land someone like Lupita?

That was all my US casting agent, because she was the one that suggested making a list of people we thought would be great for Miss Caroline. And we started pre-production when our casting agent said, “Look, you’re going to get one of these people, and they’ll be great. But now’s the time to just swing for the fences. Let’s go unrealistic. Who’s that person you would want most for this movie?”.And Lupita was that person. No one thought we would get her. I happen to be at the same agency as her in the US, which meant that at least the script got put in front of her. She’d just finished doing Black Panther, she’d said she wanted something completely different, something she hadn’t done before, like a comedy. It just timed out well that her agent went, “It doesn’t get more different than this…” and gave her the script. Lupita read it, and 24 hours later we were having a two-hour long Skype call. And next thing was, she was on board. Everyone was just, “What the fuck just happened?” What was key for me was that the things that resonated with her in this movie were the same reasons I wanted it made, and having an actor of her calibre recognise that and come on board was incredible. And you know, there’s a lot of intentionally lowbrow things in the movie, but the reason they’re there is to show the contrast between that and the more beautiful, emotional things.

What’s interesting is that you focus so much on the kids and the humane element of the story that we never find out much about the zombies’ backstory. Why did you decide to leave that out?

There was a version of the movie where we started with the military base right at the beginning, and there were other versions where we explained more about it, but for me it was never something I was interested in. It was meant to be that these characters would find themselves in a movie that they didn’t think they would be a part of. We’re in their world and all of a sudden, we find ourselves in a zombie film. And to be honest, I feel like we we’ve seen so many zombie movies and TV shows that we’ve reached a saturation point where we don’t need the rules explained to us anymore. The only thing people need to know is, are they fast or slow? I wasn’t trying to make a zombie movie, zombies just happened to be in the movie.

And with all this talk about Lupita’s role, in fact it’s Dave who is the central character. Is that because you were placing yourself in the story?

Not really, he represents a very particular type of male for me. And it’s someone I think I shared traits with at some point before becoming a father, but I tell this story because, for all the normal, clichéd reasons, I was terrified of becoming a father. But when my son was born, I remember this profound feeling when I looked at him, that all those things I was worried about totally went away. At that moment it’s like, it’s now my job to make sure that you’re okay. So since then my life totally revolved around my son, but I remember when he was a toddler and we would walk down the street and every single time, when we would cross a couple, the man and woman reacted to him so differently. The woman would engage with the kid, and the guy would do everything in his power to pretend my son wasn’t there. That kind of guy was more the inspiration Dave, those who think that having a child will be the death of everything of who they are, when the reverse is true. It can be the beginning of you growing up and realising that there’s more to life than your own shit.

Do you have future projects in the works that we can look forward to?

I’m working on something else with Lupita and this film’s producers, on something that’s similar to Little Monsters in that it’s a genre. It’s not a zombie movie, it’s not horror. It’s a different genre that we’re very familiar with and would be totally in line with STARBURST. It’s making very big commentary on the world right now, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

LITTLE MONSTERS opens in UK cinemas and on Sky Cinema November 15th.