This Morning interview

ITV

November 24, 2003

Hosts: Lorraine Kennedy and Phillip Schofield

Lorraine Kennedy: Now, our next guest made his name on the small screen as the smooth talking neighbor for a well known coffee brand. He then left for a year in la-la land where, after a series of 'nearly nearlies', he auditioned for the role of Giles, the watcher in a new project that was being developed and that of course turned out to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as ever, there’s evil afoot… (Tony can be seen laughing at this introduction)

Clip from Bring On The Night with Giles explaining The First and how difficult it will be to defeat it.

LK and Phillip Schofield make ‘ooh scary’ type noises.

Anthony Head: I wasn’t much help, was I? “We can’t defeat it…”

PS: So to save us, or maybe not, we’re delighted that Anthony Head joins us now. Welcome, it’s lovely to see you.

AH: Good morning.

PS: My daughter is such a - such a big fan of Buffy. She’s thrilled that you’re here. But let’s go back a bit. I mean, some people would have found it an experience that would have been easy for you to be torpedoed by a very successful ad campaign. Some people don’t recover from those things and you profited hugely from it.

AH: Yeah, here it had a huge effect and I was being offered lots of theatre roles but I wasn’t getting a lot of film and TV, and that balance can last for a while and then it sort of – you know, the less profile you have the more it sort of decays, the less theatre you do and in the end you’re sort of - you’re out in the sticks. America has a slightly different attitude and it was very much a family decision that we all made together, that it was time to go and see if, you know, what things looked like over there. So we all went out as a family and I got an agent, then we all came back and then I went back out for pilot season, missed it, came back, went back… You know, it was one of those things. But it was an incredible stroke of luck and good fortune that it worked out the way it did.

PS: So you end up in Los Angeles , the auditions for Buffy, which I assume at the time nobody had any idea it was going to end up such a phenomenon.

AH: No, especially not the studio or the network. I mean, actually nobody had an idea. They stuck it in as a mid-season replacement because they didn’t – weren’t sure that anything else would work. So they just kind of went, "Oh alright, try that." But Joss Whedon, who’s the writer, I asked him if it was going to be a success. He said, "Oh yes it will be. No one gets it.” But he said the audience will get it and they will - word of mouth - it will become huge, it’ll be world wide. He knew.

LK: It’s so different to anything else that’s what’s so good about it.

AH: Oh yeah, I mean, the bottom line is when I read the script, it was so good and so powerful and so funny and so witty and so thrilling and I thought, "This has got to work." But you just don’t know. You don’t know.

LK: But you play it all so well, that’s the thing, you play it so straight and that’s the way it has to be. You guys don’t play it for laughs or anything but the laughs come out of the characters.

AH: It’s a real world. If you don’t inhabit that real world then no one will believe in that world and you might as well forget about it.

PS: It’s getting pretty damn scary now though, isn’t it?

AH: It is getting a bit scary.

LK: Because, you know the way we used to watch Doctor Who and we were behind the sofa watching Doctor -?

AH: I did that, yeah. (mimics sticking his head out from behind a sofa)

LK: It’s like that for our daughters. But then she’ll say “Ooh” and she’s holding your hand and I’ll say "I’ll put it off if you want." "No, no, no, I want to keep watching."

PS: It seems to me that our sort of fear must be evolving because you mention the sort of Doctor Who and down behind the sofa with the Cybermen. You show the Cybermen to our kids now and they will think we were mad.

AH: It’s very interesting … you hopefully will be getting to it. The show that I’m doing at Christmas, we’re doing Peter Pan and we’re doing Pirates of Penzance, but this is a discussion that we’ve been having because the director, Stephen Dexter, very much wanted to make Hook scary. He said he’d never seen a truly scary Hook, because it’s always - we’re not doing the pantomime, we doing the original JM Barrie play and it’s - the question is - and we keep coming up with how scary can you go? I mean the Hook that I’m actually ending up with is sort of redolent of Edward Scissorhands or Freddy Krueger. It’s a real piece of work.

LK: He’s a real baddie, a real baddie then.

AH: Yeah and the difficult, we’re saying well if people get – kids - I mean Buffy had an audience from 6 to 86 - or even older, I don’t know. (giggles) But kids do have very, very different kind of appreciation of what is scary and what is … what they can accept now.

PS: Well, knowing you’re in it, they’re going to come along and expect to be scared now anyway.

AH: I think so, I think so. (laughs) Especially – well we are going for a very different look and a truly magical production rather than the old pantomime boo, hiss thing. We want something which will really, really transport them and on the back of that we’re also doing Pirates.

PS: So you’re rehearsing for two plays at the same time? That’s a bit scary, isn’t it?

AH: It has its moments (said in a ‘not really’ way). Luckily I’m buoyed up by an incredibly exuberant, exciting, young cast. A very young cast who - they’re really up for it and Stephen Dexter who is very good at these really energetic, really powerful productions. So I mean, it’s - I’m just being carried along with it. But yes, it is a little scary.

PS: Whereabouts are you then? Peter Pan is….?

AH: At the Savoy . 15th of December, we open with Peter Pan and that’s gonna go for a couple of weeks and then we do Pirates and then we’re gonna jump them back to back sort of every three days.

LK: You’ll have to watch it or you’ll get confused.

AH: Well, it’s all pirates! Some of them sing, some of them don’t, you know. (laughing)

PS: It’s back to the old style of theatre when you had - when I was in Doolittle with a guy called Peter Cellier, his father used to do sort of four or five in a week – different shows - that’s the way they used to do it.

AH: I think in terms of keeping them together, I think because the characters are so different, because the feeling of the two shows is so different, I don’t think we’re gonna get confused. I might suddenly burst into song as Hook, I don’t know. (giggles) But it is, I mean, the bottom line, it’s a very young, energetic cast and a very young, energetic production. I think both of them - we’re doing some very interesting things with Pirates as well.

PS: Best of luck with that. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. Two shows in one.

LK: Yes, thank you.

AH: Thank you.