Bradley James Interview Transcript 1/3

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We are hoping to make this interview more accessible for anyone who’s native language isn’t English, by providing a transcript. This will be vastly improved if you listen to the actual Podcast Interview with Bradley James, while reading.

This interview has been translated into Russian

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Hello, I’m Bradley James, and you are listening to Destiny & Chicken, A Merlin Podcast

(Intro Music)

Ruth and Michelle! How are you?

We’re good thank you, how are you?

Very good indeed.

Marvellous.

Where are you right now, sorry?

We’re in our garden.

Oh, okay. Lovely.

Outdoor space.

I have no connection in my garden unfortunately, otherwise I would be outside, too.

I don’t know, I enjoy the Merlin Cave, I think that’s fun!

Oh what, this? This was very much going to come down until I realised that we would be speaking today, so therefore I thought who’s going to appreciate this more than Ruth and Michelle. So it’s lasted a couple of extra days, which has made numerous Zoom meetings very awkward…

Well we appreciate it, thank you

My pleasure! – – Yeah, a lot of people asking why there are multiple pictures of my face behind me, as I talk.

I do like the idea of you in very professional Zoom meetings, just surrounded by a shrine of you.

Yeah. It’s made me quite grateful for the times when the internet connection hasn’t been great and it’s been really pixelated. What’s that behind you? Oh, nothing, I’m just.. just.. something. Nothing. It’s a mess.

Nothing, just don’t look, it’s fine!

I understand you guys weren’t very well?

No, we weren’t, no. We got the COVID. Actually, very mildly, considering. We’re fine, now. But it was not fun for a bit.

I take it you guys live together?

Yes!

Right, okay.

Yeah, I blame her!

And the other one had no chance?

Yes, absolutely. No chance in hell.

Ruth is currently drinking tea that she cannot taste

Oooh, really?

Yeah, It’s really very surreal indeed. And considering food is one of the very few things that we’re allowed to enjoy completely unhindered at the moment, it’s been very depressing.

Right, I’m so sorry to hear that.

Thanks! I trust it will get better at some point.

A friend of mine, who I do a podcast with, back in February had two weeks of being like ‘It’s so weird, I can’t taste or smell anything’. Nobody knew this as a symptom then for anything. And he was like ‘Oh my god, I lost it now, for the rest of my life’. Thankfully whenever we were in contact, I was away. I wasn’t in England. We were talking on Facetime or whatever. Now I realise, he had Coronavirus, had I been in close contact with him, I definitely would have been struck down by it. And loads of people since have come out with all those kind of symptoms where they’ve gone ‘Oh, turns out that’s a symptom now, I had that.’

Well that is literally what convinced you (Ruth) that we had it. Because I didn’t lose my sense of smell or taste, so it was like ‘Maybe it’s just flu. Maybe it’s okay….No, turns out no.’ But yeah, we’re fine!

Well good. I’m pleased you’re better and on the mend.

Thank you.

Forgive me, what are your day jobs?

I work in academic publishing. I publish counselling and psychotherapy textbooks.

That makes a hell of a lot of sense.

And I work for Vauxhall City Farm, one of the city charity farms in London.

Yes, I did know that! That’s brought up, isn’t it?

Yes, sometimes there’s animals in the background of the podcast.

Ah, really? Okay…

This was when we did Shadowhunters, we had a baby goat that sadly lost its mum, that was staying with us for a week, being looked after and bottle fed through the night. She’s on one of the podcasts, fairly hilariously. I think we make it three minutes into the episode before she yells for the first time

Yeah, she got very distressed when she wasn’t being held…

Just like me!

Just like all of us, really.

Yeah, very true.

So we had a little bit of a head’s up in regards to you listening to our podcast, in weird fandom ways, as these things go, by Kat McNamara telling a friend of ours, at a convention in Belgium.

Yeah! Let me try and trace back the steps here… Somebody told me about it. – – Who the hell told me about it? – – But what I then saw was some artwork, because you do those pictures, and I think I saw that in a tweet or something like that and I connected the dots and realised ‘That’s that podcast that someone told me about’. And then I was speaking to Kat and she knew who it was, because you guys are massive Shadowhunters fans, right?

Yeah!

So she was aware of it and spoke to me about it, and I gave it a listen. You guys do a fantastic job. I always think you’re very fair with everything you say and you handle things very well, and you go into aspects of the show that I hadn’t even thought about before, so it’s always very enlightening. – -I’ve got some catching up to do. You guys have started the second series..

We’ve nearly finished the second series now.

You finished it? Oh, right…

Nearly. We just did Sweet Dreams last week. The episode with Georgia Moffett?

Oh! Destiny and Chicken!!

Yes! It was quite exciting…

Where is she? She’s up here somewhere… There, can you see her?

Oh yeah. Well, the bottom half of her face.

Little bottom half of her face, there you go.

I don’t know why I just did that. You know the bit where you duck under to look up and it’s like, it doesn’t work that way, it’s 2D.

I feel like Zoom has brought out a grandma and grandad in all of us, when it comes to technology. A relative of mine answered the phone on Facetime the other day like this (puts phone to ear). And I was like ‘I can see your ear, are you showing it to me on purpose?’ ‘No? What do you mean?’ – And that’s been me on Zoom. It’s been a honing process, learning how to use it, and it’s ended up with me creating a.. trying to… (deep sigh) Merlin. Oh dear. The end is nigh I feel for me…

I dunno, I think you did okay. You managed to zoom with like a thousand people the other day.

You were there, did you see it?

We did!

We *saw* it. We got kicked out of the quiz very early on..

Oh…

It’s okay, we weren’t doing very well.

Well, firstly, thank you very much for taking part. I really appreciate it!

That’s alright.

And also, sorry for you getting kicked out. I have a feeling that was a common trope there, because the app we used… it seemed like a lot of people were having problems. Basically I just had my phone with me, and as I’m talking to my laptop I just got a slew of messages from about 20 people working behind the scenes, trying to make this happen. And eventually someone saying ‘Just make sure you apologise to everyone’ and I thought ‘oh god, what have I said now?’ And I’m there scrolling through message to the side of the screen, just like ‘Don’t look over there, look over here!’ and I’m reading back through 50 messages of people panicking. It’s the swans feet underneath the water, which I was witnessing on my phone.

On that note though, kudos! I was expecting an awful lot more constant checking of ‘behind the scenes’ people’s messages. I think you were really subtle about it.

I have a guy… his name is Matthew Mellalieu, and anything that delves into any form of territory involving technology, he… saved my arse basically. He was my producer the other night and the job he did… my god. And the amount of questions he has to put up with from me asking really stupid things… yeah, he’s a saint! So thankfully he was the predominant voice coming through, in amongst lots of others. And meanwhile I’ve got the guys that came on, sending me abuse, which I’m trying not do be distracted by, while very much appreciating the ribbing that I’m receiving from them.

What are friends for?

What are friends for indeed, but to try and make you laugh, or cry, when you are speaking to a thousand people or however much it was

Live on the internet

There you go! Anyway, it was a fun night, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope you guys did as well.

We did, yeah! And yeah, we did quite well on the questions that were season 1 and season 2

Oh, right, of course!

Didn’t do great on the questions after season 2

Fair enough

It’s been a long time…

Well, once you guys have finished your complete works of Merlin, the next quiz you guys are going to be on top of

Possibly, or we’ll have forgotten season 1 and season 2

You’ll have forgotten the first bit, yeah, fair enough!

Seeing as we’re talking about the Merlin Quiz… considering the fact that you had a thousand people attending, with only 4 days notice, and you managed to break a third party app because there were too many people… What about Merlin do you think inspires that kind of loyalty?

Wow. There’s a question. I’m not sure I’m able to get into the mindset of the people we’re talking about there. I can only really comment on what was my experience and whilst I was working on the show, I never let go of a sense of joy and pride, even though there were ups and downs whilst we were doing it, but I never let go of the joy and pride of being involved in it. It’s then very difficult, and I’ve learnt this lesson both ways, to judge how something is going to be received. Your experience very rarely I’ve learnt translates to the experience that the audience has. Merlin I would say is the exception to that.. not that I’ve just decide it’s a rule… but is the exception to that comment, because the experience I had was phenomenal. I just came out of drama school and I landed the role to be Kind Arthur. From the very moment… from the very moment I even had it mentioned to me, actually! I was busy doing a show with the producers, Johnny Capps and Julian Murphy, and they told me about Merlin the Summer before it all got going. Sorry, I’m veering off topic here, as you’ve asked me about the audience.

No, go for it. It’s your interview!

They told me about Merlin when we were doing a show called Disconnected, which would have been July/August time of 2007. And in December, going into January 2008 every man and his dog started going in for an audition for this show called Merlin and I was like ‘Hang on a minute! I’ve heard about this show. I’ve heard a lot about this show!! I know what this show is about.’ And I hadn’t heard anything. There was just silence. And I was there, very patiently while they saw everybody who had come out of drama school in the last two years, they saw *everybody*. I seemed to be the only person whose phone didn’t ring about this. And then eventually I get this call from my agent. She sends through the script and I try and act relaxed about the fact that it’s so late in the day that I’m hearing about it. I pick up the script and go ‘Oh, this is fun! This hasn’t been an anti climax of the last however many months it was’. And I went in and I was prepped to the nines in terms of what they sent me, and I ended up just having a chat with James Hawes and then walking out, having not done anything you would normally do in an audition and being a bit confused and like ‘Oh no, that was a test, wasn’t it? I didn’t pass… oh no!’

Anyway, sorry, the massive tangent I’ve gone on there is basically trying to depict the moment that was the first time I picked up the script and had a perpetual sensation about this show, even before it materialised into anything, even before I arrived on set. It was the moment of picking up the script and my imagination just going (clicks fingers) ‘Wow! This could be something!’

So… to try and bring it back to the question you asked, what a terrible interviewee I am! Essentially, being able to take that experience that I was having, and match it to something an audience was having at the time of the show being on, is what I’ve found to be quite a rarity.

The confusing thing for me is the fact that that has continued. The show finished in 2012 and 8 years later the response that we still receive from it is huge. Your guess is as good as mind as to why that is. I think I’m probably too deep inside the whole thing to be able to answer why that is. And why I didn’t just say that at the beginning of your question is a mystery to everyone!

We were surprised about it ourselves. We finished Shaodwhunters, which had been live and the podcast episodes were coming out live, and it all felt quite current and it made sense that people were paying attention to a podcast of a show that was still ongoing, and when we were finishing it and thinking ‘Okay, what do we want to do next’ and decided that we want to do Merlin, it felt like a terribly self-indulgent choice. Like, okay, we love the show but it’s been over for almost 10 years and is there going to be anybody who’s interested in going through this again, that’s not just a pure nostalgia trip, and there were a few people we spoke to and said ‘We were thinking of maybe doing Merlin’ and they were like ‘Oh my god yes do Merlin!!’ And then we started it up and a whole bunch of people have come out of the woodwork, who we’d never spoken to before, who were going ‘My god, I’ve been looking for somewhere to talk to people about this show and I’ve been waiting for a conversation about for ever, and I’m so glad that you’re here!’ and like Wow, yeah, sure, that’s great, that’s fantastic! But it’s not something you can count on with a show that’s been done for ten years because stuff continues… so in answer I guess to your follow up question of our question… We don’t know either.

I think what I’ve realised recently… I haven’t watched the show since Christmas eve of 2012, I haven’t watched a full episode. Largely because I don’t think I can bring myself to, from an emotional stand point. I think it will tear me apart in many ways. In good ways! In positive ways. But just doing this quiz that I did the other night, I obviously had to delve into.. I mean one, my garage! And two, the memory banks of the whole experience. And wow! All those memories that came flooding back, the experiences that I had, and the nostalgia that hit me had such tangible form in my mind. I remembered my mind-set, and my feelings towards this and this and this. And I kind of thing that might have been the case when you were watching the show on a Saturday night. There’s a certain atmosphere around Saturday night television. And I remember the atmosphere around that time of year, always starts in September, the kind of back end of the summer, and there was just this thing around 7 o’clock or whenever it was on a Saturday night, and even if I wasn’t about to watch the episode I’d be aware that it was on, and that whole package nostalgia erupted as I reinvestigated the show to come up with 25 questions that people would find mildly interesting.

Did you come up with all the questions? I was actually wondering about that

I came up with… yeah, I came up with pretty much all of them. Like, I had to sort of like…

Check?

Yeah, Like Katie’s for example with the water bottle. I remember there was this whole thing with the water bottle.

Yeah, we did not know that one!

I seem to have memories of it being part of the behind the scenes stuff and what have you. And I realised as these questions were coming up, I thought ‘Are these too hard? Are these too easy?’ so I thought let’s just mix up the tone of them, so they’re not all stuff you can see from the show. Let’s make sure that whoever wins this is like a die-hard basically. But yeah, the majority of it was just me trying to throw together bits of information I remembered, or specific episodes that were in my mind, and research telling me stuff that I didn’t even know. And mind you, I say that.. a lot of people did very well in that test! It was scary.

Yeah, before we got kicked out we were kind of around the 200 – 250 mark.

So in the top quarter then!

Yeah, I mean, the bottom part of the top quarter, yeah. But we looked at the gap between our point score and the give people at the top and yeah, we’re not going to catch up with those people. S’not gonna happen!

I’m still blaming the gin & tonic on the failure of reaction time, that’s what I’m blaming it on!

Well at least you – excuse the pun here – entered the competition in the right spirit.

Well, yes indeed!

Also you didn’t tell anyone it was going to be speed based.

No, I don’t think I even knew.

If we’d known we maybe would have drunk less.

But maybe you would have had less fun that way!

We did a test of it a couple of days before, and it was an absolute farce, as none of us knew any of the answers. I was there just trying it out and our scores wouldn’t have got onto any leader board, had it been included. Matthew was there and he knew all the answers, and he still got most of them wrong. So I think that pressure of wanting to get it quickly threw people off a little bit… Or added an element of skill!

It’s just any time you give anyone a buzzer (buzzer smashing mime)

That’s me while I was hosting the quiz! Just outside of shot was all the chaos, while I tried to remain calm within this rectangle frame.

I mostly liked the one question that was clearly put up accidentally. I dropped my phone and possibly knocked over something in the panic to push the button on the unexpected question.

Oh yeah, someone… I think their finger slipped and he suddenly started throwing the question out. It was maybe one of Rupert’s. We’re talking and all of a sudden the question came up ‘ooooh my god what happened when??’

Everyone go! Questions! Questions!

Winding back a little bit to podcasts…

Yes, sorry, I keep veering off on tangents

No, that’s okay. But seeing as we were talking about podcasts… Are You Having A Draft?

Yes!

How long was that a thought that you had? Was it always a podcast thoughts? Or was it just that you really wanted to do something with it?

Okay, so here’s the story behind it – Another story. I was in Poland at the start of last year. I was working out there. And Marcus, who is my co-host, was an agent at the time, and his agency had a guy come in to talk to the agents about podcasts and to give them a general head’s up on the deal of podcasts. Cut to them being in the pub afterwards

Obviously

Obviously. And Marcus was just casually chatting with this guy, and talking about our fantasy football league, which we’ve done for however many years. What usually happens is that a lot of the guys in the league will talk about the league and how we do it and what have you, and what usually happens is that someone’s either not interested and they’ll change the subject, or someone goes ‘ph my god, I want to be part of that!’ – And this guy suddenly went ‘That is a brilliant idea for a podcast! It is niche!’ and Marcus was like ‘Oh, really?’ and he’s like ‘Yeah! Would Bradley be interested in hosting it?’ to which Marcus sort of deflated a little bit because I think he thought ‘Oh good, I’ve got myself a podcast here.’

So I get a phone call from Marcus and he goes ‘Guess what?’ – ‘What?’ – ‘How would you feel about turning the draft into a podcast?’ – ‘How would we do that?’ – ‘I don’t know!’ …And then he tells me the story blah blah blah. So I get back and I’ve got a hiatus of about two months over the summer, before I go to Atlanta. And in these two months we basically recorded a whole bunch of, if you listen back on it, nonsense. Trying to figure out what it was that we were going to make this podcast about. By the end of those two months, I’m off again, but we sort of were in a place where I thought ‘Actually, we might be able to do this’. So we put it all together. Our producer Zac had control of the editing and we didn’t really know anything in terms of the bells and whistles you have to put on it afterwards. We were just recording stuff and then going blergh (vomit mime) there you go Zac, you sort that out! And you guys will be very aware of this process… Where did you get your music from by the way?

Amazingly, it’s stock. We spent about three days listening to unending stock clips. Sufficiently medieval-esque, whilst also not being too Lord of the Rings serious business-y. And that’s what we landed on.

It’s a great choice!

We weren’t sure about it when we picked it, but it got to a point where we had to stop listening to stock track snippets.

Also, the way they work, so we use Audiojungle amongst other websites, and it’s like the songs have a watermark, the way photographs do, except it’s just a lady saying ‘Audiojungle’ every ten seconds or so, so you can preview it, but you can’t steal it, without paying for it. And after about half an hour you have no idea anymore what any of the jingles sound like, all that’s in my head is just this lady going ‘Audiojungle… Audiojungle…’

When I was a kid, that was like trying to record songs off the radio on tape cassette and then all of a sudden a voice would go ‘ATLANTIC 252’

No, you ruined it!

Damnit!

I’ll have to wait for like four hours for that one to come on again.

…Music ….Podcast …Zac.

He put it together, he goes ‘There you go’ and we listened to it and I was very aware that I didn’t want to put anything out that was just going to be for the sake of it. But we got to a place where I was happy with it in terms off… you mentioned it earlier Ruth in terms of being ‘indulgent’. And I certainly don’t think we escape indulgence at all. Sometimes we swim in those waters. Sometimes we deep dive. But we try to keep out of them as much as possible.

And yeah, it’s been fun basically. The whole point of the league was that we were getting to that age where we were starting to see each other less regularly. Some of the guys, things had happened in their life, where they just weren’t around. And any time you saw them it was by quite specific appointment. And a big part of why we created the league in the first place, seven, eight years ago, was to have a regular date, at least once a year, where we met up with friends that were threatening to drift away. And that is the very core of this whole thing and remains the core of the podcast. We’re not football experts. We’re friends who have a subject in common and enjoy the camaraderie and basically ripping into each other about that as well, that’s a big part of it.

And maybe that touches on what you asked earlier with regards to the show. There’s probably an element of the community and that communal feel that the show brings. I don’t know if that’s because of the dynamics of the characters, because of the presentation of Camelot as an idea, and an ideal of a time and place that people could exist in, and what that sparks in people’s minds on whether they want to be a part of that. And then you’ve got what you guys have probably discovered. You’ve got this creative project together which is born purely of the basis of what seems to be a very close friendship that you guys have, and if you didn’t have that, you wouldn’t draw people in to listen to it. I wouldn’t have listened to the first series if there wasn’t that core relationship between the two of you, that is really what we’re investing in. And it’s really that we have that common subject matter at the same time that also provides that continuity and I think you need both of those things.

That’s an interesting aspect because we have a number of our listeners who listened to The Descent Is Easy, our Shadowhunters podcast, who then started listening to Destiny & Chicken, and they’ve never seen Merlin, but they started watching it, because they wanted to keep listening to our podcast on a weekly basis.

Well, thank you for drawing an audience towards it! I couldn’t be more grateful.

You’re welcome! But it’s kind of mind blowing. The concept that there’s people out there who are going out of their way because they want to keep listening to our podcast.

It’s a bit of a head trip.

As I say, I think it’s a great compliment to you. Whether they are aware of it or not or whether they can articulate that this is the reason, the fact is that people want to be involved in your friendship. Or not be involved, but want to vicariously live through your friendship. And again, we’re drawing parallels here. Merlin and Arthur provide that for people. There is a desire to vicariously live through their friendship. Their brotherhood as it were.

Interesting. And well done for bringing it back to the show, which we keep failing to do!

One of the things that I’ve been finding really interesting as we’re going through the episode is Arthur. This dude that’s at the centre of the story. One of the things about podcasting the way we do about a show is that you watch it in an entirely different way because you’re picking up on things that you have to sustain a conversation for over a number of weeks, and it means you think about things in a very different way than I did, when I was just enjoying it as a fan initially. And I think this idea of it being Arthur’s story in a really fundamental way I found really interesting. And I’m wondering if that’s something that you felt as you were making it. And also how you came to Arthur as a character, because you seem to have a huge amount of empathy for him, and he’s not necessarily always the easiest person to like.

Okay. I’m not sure if all actors do this, but there’s an argument to be made for when you are playing any character, you are in your own show. There’s a fine line you have to toe, that you are not getting in the way of the story that is trying to be told, by the writers, directors, producers, and in fact if the show doesn’t have your name as the title, you obviously have to work within certain parameters. But ultimately, the story you are there to tell, is your characters.

Now, the unique thing about Merlin is, I completely agree, that it is Arthur’s story. Because it specifically, the whole way through, the objective of the show is Arthur’s destiny. And we are reminded of that in every episode in some way, shape, or form. However it is told through the plight of the man who has the most work to do for Arthur to fulfil that destiny. And so, you have a character called Merlin that the audience can relate to like that (finger snap).

The vast majority of human beings on this planet are not royalty, they’re not going to assume a throne and a kingdom. So we as an audience find it a lot easier to relate to a guy who’s just turned up, doesn’t really have much, and is constantly making discoveries, not just about the world, but about himself, because that’s an experience we’ve all been through.

So when you’re approaching it from the actor’s point of view and you’re saying ‘Right, I’m playing Arthur’, there is no point until… well, I won’t dish out spoilers cause I know you guys go series by series, but there is no point where Arthur should have the same viewpoint of Merlin, as the audience does. And in terms of… when you get onto a set… even when you get someone who’s a grip for the day, or a new caterer or something, the show is called Merlin, and there’s the guy playing Merlin. There’s going to be a certain level of behaviour towards that person. That’s just the way dynamics are on set. And it’s important, as a cast, that the minute the camera is rolling, there is no trace of that anywhere. Because this character… nobody knows about what the audience knows. And so, unless you’re approaching it as your own show, unless you’re approaching it as ‘Arthur’, you’re gonna fall into the trap of going ‘Oooh! This guy’s special… for some reason… don’t really know’ but that can’t be the case, so you have to get rid of that whole trace.

So very much so, I was approaching is as though this is Arthur’s journey to becoming King Arthur. And the blueprint is very simple. He starts off in one place. Not likeable. You’re not meant to like this guy. You’re meant to go ‘Hey! This isn’t the guy I thought was going to appear when they mentioned the name Arthur.’

That’s point A, and if you want to simplify it and say where he gets to is point B, there’s a very clear journey that he has to go on. And he learns a hell of a lot. There’s a lot of lessons on the way to becoming King Arthur. Cause he’s got a long way to go.

Now, linking the chain here. In terms of having empathy for that… Whilst on the outside you’ve got a guy who is unlikable, there are reasons for the traits, that an audience is exposed to. There are reasons behind those traits. And there’s a backstory to… there’s a backstory to all of us. We are all responsible for moments in time where our behaviour has been less than exemplary. There’s probably an explanation behind it. There is moments where we all fall foul to some form of negativity and it comes out in a certain way. And so, once you understand what it is that is making Arthur behave in a certain way, you can easily gain empathy for a person, because you understand that… not that you take away responsibility as though it’s not their fault, but we are all dealt a hand, and you are then responsible for how you play that hand. I’m over simplifying it, but without droning on too much about the nature vs. nurture aspect of life…

And to get more specific, when I turned up at drama school, I had come from a village where it was all guys. We all played football. There were barely any girls in our village. And to this day I’m still very close to this group of guys, we have a very close bond. But there is something that happens to your energy as a person when that is the case. So I turn up at drama school and I’ve sort of morphed into this ‘lad’ for lack of a better turn, who wants to be an actor. You don’t see that too often, though it is represented every now and then. And I turn up at drama school and there’s a variety of people there, all with different sensitivities, different characters, all with different… I’m being exposed to types of people that I’ve never been exposed to before in my life. And there’s a bit of a through line with something I went through at drama school that I was able to use when it came to trying to approach Arthur. With Arthur, it’s not that he’s not exposed to these people, but he’s a prince when we first meet him, and people don’t often say no to a prince. They mould to fit around him. The lifestyle you lead is enabled by the people around him, wanting to be part of his life, not specifically because of his character, but because of his world. So you get this version of Arthur that has not had boundaries set out for him to be any other way than what we see. All of a sudden Merlin turns up and everyone starts to try and kill Arthur so that changes things. We have five seasons of examples of why Arthur eventually ends up being ‘King Arthur’ and not ‘Oh god… Ugh! King Arthur…’

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