Bradley James Interview Transcript 3/3
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I’ve been lucky with those (character deaths) because I’ve felt that the moments they’ve happened there’s been such a spectacle made of the deaths of those characters that it’s nice to know that they meant something, judging by the moments in which they have found themselves being unfortunately killed off… So I’ve been happy to tell those stories because they’ve justified the moment of death in the character’s story.
Peak drama, isn’t it? A good death. That’s what you want, really…
Yeah, but I’m not sure you want to be doing it every single project, which is a streak I’m heading towards…
I mean, I won’t give any spoilers but anyone who has read The Liberator will know the fate of my next character.
Yeah. I was very unhappy when you died in iZombie.
Well, that was only ever going to be a short run. Originally I got told it was going to be one episode.
I was wondering whether it was extended because of feedback.
Well, I… where was I? I was somewhere I needed to get out of, and I got this call saying ‘There’s this show, it’s filming in Vancouver, you’ll be there for a few weeks, and you can get away.’ And there was some personal stuff going on and I was like ‘I’ll do it! Let’s get out of here’ and I get on a plane and I get up to Vancouver and I read the script, which ends with a kind of ‘Oh, maybe this is my next boyfriend…’ or something like that. And I was thinking ‘Well, that’s not going to work very well, because…’
No one’s told me.
No one’s told me. And I think essentially they were just making sure that I could say the right lines at the right time and hit my marks before they went ‘okay, we’re going to stretch this out’. But by the time they had made that decision, I think Damien was on the cards. So there was only so much I could… I mean, I don’t know. I think that was probably the limit of their desire for me to be on the show anyway.
But, I suppose I didn’t quite expect the reaction I got from it. People were very complimentary… and very kind… about… Lowell!
Oh well done! I could not remember his name!
They had lots of kind words to say about Lowell and yeah, it came about at the perfect time, and as I was up in Vancouver doing that, my agent nudged Damien towards me. She’d sent me four scripts at once, and then a few days later she gave me an email saying ‘I appreciate you’re busy, but make sure you read this one.’ And I did, and the rest is history.
And did you have that click moment?
I’ve had that three times in my life, where I’ve picked up the script and I’ve gone ‘This is mine!’
One of them is Damien. One of them is Felix Sparks, who’s the character in The Liberator, and the other one is King Arthur. And despite all the nerves about every man and his dog going in for auditions and what have you – and I fully appreciate this might be hindsight hubris of being able to say it now – but I’ve had it three times where I’ve gone ‘I’m getting this part!’
And it’s not out of me being like ‘I’m getting this part because I’m so good’, it’s me picking up this script and instantly connecting to it, and going ‘I know exactly what I’m gonna do when I go in that room, I know exactly the story they’re trying to tell, and I know exactly the story I want to tell.’
I can’t explain it, but it’s been there three times, and thankfully it’s worked out all of those three times.
It would have been really sad if you’d said ‘Three times! One of them was Arthur. One of them was – -‘ sorry, what was The Liberator character name?
Felix Sparks!
Felix, not Simon. I’m so bad with names, it’s insane! But yeah, and then ‘The third one, I didn’t get…’, That would have been really sad.
Yeah, thankfully that hasn’t been the case! I wish I could manifest that feeling for other jobs but I can’t. As I say, it’s happened three times. Maybe something akin to, in real life terms, falling in love with a character. And you can only fall in love so many times. Maybe that’s what’s happened from an actor perspective. I’ve fallen in love at first sight with those three characters.
So, for our listeners, just to do the promo bit: When is The Liberator out, and where can they see it?
Fingers cross, with all that’s going on right now, we’re still on schedule, roughly speaking… Let’s just say vaguely that it’ll be out hopefully before the end of the year, and not quote me on that… obviously, here we say that, but if there’s an announcement made and it goes ‘In 2021….’ I’ll be…
It’s been the longest post production period of anything I’ve worked on. When you see it, you’ll understand why, but with any luck… I’m so excited for an audience to see it because it’s a story that you don’t really get many opportunities to see, about certain people from certain walks of life, and their involvement in the Second World War, and their stories that we haven’t been told before. And the way that story is told is something you won’t have seen before. The only thing I can equate it to – I can’t really describe the visuals for you, because I don’t have anything to equate it to, but the only thing I can describe is that when I first saw things like 300 or Sin City, I was watching those and going ‘Visually, I’ve never seen anything like this before!’ – Now, this isn’t like those visually, but it had the same sensation for me where I saw it and thought ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before’.
So partly for the aspect of that medium that people are going to see I’m excited for them to see it but also I’ve seen it without all the bells and whistles. I’ve seen it in the form of it looking just like a play. And it’s the story that keeps you going. The sexy artistry that comes with it is wonderful, but it’s not going to hold the audience unless the story is there, and luckily I’ve seen it without all that, and thus my excitement for people to see it. So fingers crossed I’m not falling flat on my face with those words, as people turn off in their droves.
Well we look forward to that over the next something months.
There you go! I love how vague you were able to be with that prediction. But yes, keep your fingers crossed for me, by the end of the year. Oh and also where you can see it: Netflix.
I imagine there is a desire by Netflix to keep things on schedule, as I’ve got a feeling that projects will be drying up over this period of time…
Netflix have been quite cute. I’ve seen… what’s the vicar thing that we watch?
Vicar of Dibley?
Yes! Vicar of Dibley has been put on Netflix.
Has it?! Wow!
Yeah. After your meeting, after your phone call… go watch it!
Yeah! Wow, that’s incredibly…
Something else. I can’t remember what it was now, but a very similar show to that.
Clearly mining the archive.
Yeah. I mean, it really is the time for nostalgia TV.
Yeah, running out of new shows but also ‘People are at home and they’re sad, what can we do? Vicar of Dibley!’
Dawn French chewing everybody up!
I imagine that once this is over no one’s ever gonna want to watch a re-run ever again.
Just throw out all of our DVDs because you’ve watched your quote for life.
Yes! I know a few people who claim to have completed Netflix. And I believe them.
But have they re-watched the Vicar of Dibley?
Not yet. This is the first I’m hearing of it becoming available so thank for the head’s up!
It’s very exciting.
While we’re on quarantine… so, no one knew that you said yes to this interview, except–
Well thank you for your question! It was from an Instagram Live, right?
Yes.
Because after the absolute cluster-f-bomb that was the first Instagram live I did – not that the second one was much slicker in operation – but I was on there with people watching me scroll through…
I mean, about 50 of those questions at a time were ‘Merlin Season 6?’ and of course there’s only so many times you can answer the same question, so I was like ‘Right, let’s do this properly!’
So I’ve written out all those questions and of course I’ve then written the handles that go with it, and then I picked it up and the recognition of the handle hasn’t happened until there’s a camera pointing at me and I’m broadcasting to however many people were watching and went ‘OH, I KNOW THESE GUYS!’
Of course Tom was with me as well. I’ll have to remind him of the commitment he has made, on live broadcast.
Well, tell him if you speak to him that if he does want to come and talk to us, I have very little interest in talking to him about Merlin, because I was a massive, massive Black Sails fan.
Okay, okay… Actually, I think you’ve mentioned that…
Not that his turn in Merlin wasn’t excellent for what it was.
But Black Sails is your jam?
Black Sails is my jam, yeah.
The funniest… I don’t know if it’s still on there (phone), but I sent Tom a recording of me singing the theme tune song to Black Sails.
It’s such a good theme!
Which just sounds like a bag of cats are being strangled, and then they kind of auto tuned it a little bit, and yeah, he’s-
And that’s what ended up in the finale cut, yeah?
I presume so, yeah. You get to ask him, when you speak to him. He’ll be able to give you the insight. Or he’ll be able to play you back the video of me performing the theme tune for him, if he’s still got it..
I mean, that’s worth the price of admission alone.
Yeah.
Honestly, every time we watch an episode I end up cat-howling the theme tune for a long time after…
I do that, and then I do impersonations of the guy… he’s not necessarily the bad guy, but he’s sort of the bad guy…
Do you mean Charles Vane by any chance?
Yes!
With the growl…
Yes. I’ll do impersonations against Tom on What’s App, which I’m sure he gets a kick out of…
I was going to say, does he appreciate them?
I usually get a video back where he is sort of chuckling… the remnants of his chuckle from having just watched it are still there at the beginning of the video.
Sorry, I interrupted your question massively!
That’s okay! What I was going to say was that the only people who knew that we were going to do this are our Patreon supporters and we gave them the chance to ask us anything that they wanted to ask you.
Great.
Lychee Jelly wanted to know, what did you stock up on before the quarantine, or possibly more importantly, what do you wish you’d stocked up on?
What did I stock up on? I went and bought Pro Evolution Soccer 2020. And I’ve barely played it. I’ve been just as busy in quarantine as I was before, so I haven’t had a chance to play it really, but I’ve played the odd game, my skills have deserted me. When I was a kid? Pretty damn good. Nowadays that game has moved on. So I haven’t played it massively…
What do I wish that I had stocked up on? That is a phenomenal questions because I feel it will make me realise what I am missing in my life right now and I have to say, nothing glaringly obvious has presented itself…
The only thing that I did go, I was like ‘You know what? Maybe I should get some weights or something, and create some sort of gym…’ and I went online and every person in the world had had that idea before me, and there were no weights available. So thankfully I have an excuse for not doing any working out or anything. I can go ‘Oh, there’s no weights. Can’t do anything…’
That’s not really answering the question, because I’m not really regretting not stocking up on it but… so far everything is fine. There is no need to panic. I have everything I need.
I we send our weights to Bradley, does that mean I have an excuse for not working out? Because I would like that…
Otherwise, honestly, overwhelmingly everyone just wanted to know what the hell’s up with the mugs?
What are you talking about?
I know. I did say that was going to be your reaction! And I’m pretty sure after Friday’s quiz it was going to transform into ‘What the hell’s up with the shirts?
Which, yeah, I also assumed…
You’ll have to explain my confused facial expression for your listeners. That one’s lost on me.
Fair enough. Anything to wrap up, seeing as you have very kindly stuck with us for two hours and your phone call is coming up?
I don’t think so. I mean, thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for all your support, it has been incredible.
Not at all. My thanks to you! Essentially as I say, you’ve done a great job with your show and it’s an honour that you’ve picked up the show to spend the time that you do on it. The honour of being in the show is one thing, the fact that you guys are talking about it is wonderful, because you deal with it in such a way that is, very much like what I’ve found with the Merlin fan base, large part remarkably respectful which I understand… I thought was the norm, but I’ve spoken to people who have other shows, and apparently it’s not!
So, the Merlin fan base as a whole I couldn’t be more thankful for, but in terms of your representation of it, it’s a real pleasure to have you and the work you guys do for it, and I’m sure your fan base are very happy about it, too, so thank you guys, I really appreciate it.
Aww, that’s very kind!
Thank you.
Only honest. Spitting the truth…
Any last words that you want to say to our listeners?
If only I had something profound to say, other than… you know what? I said something that got put in like, almost like a post card quote when we finished. In fact, I tell you what I’m going to do…. Sorry, I’m searching for an email from approximately a million years ago… Oh, is this it? …here we go!
Right. You may or may not recognise this picture. Again, great for podcasts…
Yeah, okay. Yep.
Okay, so we were asked to give a quote with regards to the show ending and what have you. And they used that bit. Here is the full quote. This is an exclusive. And I wish I had proof read this first.
The Merlin have provided me with fond memories, great experiences, and beloved friends, and all the while we were supported by a devoted fan base who made the show a unique, surreal, and special experience. My words won’t do justice to the honour of being King Arthur, so I shall just say, that it has been an exceptional one, and that knowing the show has been a part of so many people’s lives has been humbling. Thanks for being with us on the journey. It wouldn’t have been half as much fun without you. The Once and Future King.
There you go.
The full quote was never released. But I say that because it still remains very firmly true, very much the case, and hopefully people who listen to your podcast will be able to feel the sincerity of my heart beating for those word, when I say them.
That was perfect. I don’t think there is anything else to add.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for putting the effort into your questions and your interview and everything and best of luck with this podcast and all your future endeavours when you pick up… I’m sure you’ll pick up a new show at some point.
I’ll be devastated, but best of luck with it all!
Thank you very much.
It’s been lovely meeting you.
Thank you guys.
It’s been a pleasure.
Take care!
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4th June 2020 @ 8:05 am
Thanks for all! You are fantastic!!!!😘😘😘😘