Arthur Darvill : “I love playing a variety of people and having people believe you are someone totally different each time”
The theatre inspired your love of acting. Are you going to do more now that you’ve left Doctor Who?Yes definitely. My first proper play was with Nabakov theatre, called Terre Haute. I was playing a character based on the Oklahoma bomber, which was interesting. I’m in a play at the moment - Our Boys at the Duchess, and I’m filming Broadchurch [a TV series on ITV, in which he plays a priest] during the day
That’s a lot of work. When do you sleep? Good question. I’m good at sleeping in cars, between things.
What will you miss most about Doctor Who? I think it’s the people that I’ll really miss. We are all very busy but I try to see Karen [Gillan] and Matt [Smith] when I can. Also I love the character of Rory. The journey he went on is close to myself… It’s odd, I will never speak in his way again. Karen and I sat down with Steven Moffat about a year ago and worked out that [it] was the right time. It feels good to go when people still want you to stay.
What next? I made the choice after leaving Doctor Who of doing lots of work that is far away from myself. I did an episode of The Paradise (BBC1) as a barber. I suppose he has the same voice and values as me, it was a really fun part to play. Other than that I’ve taken really different roles. For The Globe’s Shakespeare on Screen season I play Mephistopheles in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, which is essentially like playing the devil, which I really enjoyed. I love playing a variety of people and having people believe you are someone totally different each time. I write music as well, so I work a lot with Sean Walker. We’ve been working on a twisted version of The Bacchae called The Lightening Child with carnival music, so I’ve co-written music for that. We made it really big and refused to scale it down. Finally, the Globe said they would love to do it, so we’ll be doing that next summer. I’ve been back and forth to the US, next year I will spend some time there. Eventually I want to split my time between the UK and there. I have loads of friends over there, I love New York and LA is really sunny. Who wouldn’t want to go?
(Source: blogs.independent.co.uk)
