Interview by Phillip Schofield and Lorraine Kennedy
Lorraine: Our next guest made his name on the small screen as the smooth talking neighbour for a well known coffee brand 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 new project that was being developed and that turned out to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Clip of S7 shown
P&L: Ohh scary
Tony: I wasn’t much help, was I?
P: So to save us …or maybe not, we’re delighted that Anthony Head joins us now. Welcome, it’s lovely to see you…
Tony: Good morning
P: My daughter is such a, such a big fan of Buffy and she’s thrilled that you’re here, but let’s go back a bit. Some people would have found it an experience that…you could have been torpedoed by a very successful ad campaign. Some people don’t recover from those things and you profited hugely from it.
Tony: Yeah, here it had a huge effect and I was being offered a lot of theatre roles but I wasn’t getting a lot of film and tv, and that balance can last for a while and then the less profile you have the more it sort of decays and the less theatre you do and in the end you’re sort of 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 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 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.
P: So you end up in LA, the auditions for Buffy, which I assume at the time nobody had any idea it was going to end up such a phenomena.
Tony: No, not at all, 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…they weren’t sure that anything else would work so they kind of went "oh alright, try that". But Joss Whedon who was 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 the audience will get it and they will … and word of mouth it will become huge, it will be world-wide".
L: It’s SO different to anything else that’s what’s so good about it.
Tony: Oh yeah, I mean when I read the script it was so good and so powerful, so funny, so witty and so thrilling and I thought "this has just got to work" but you don’t know.
L: But you play it all so well, 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…
Tony: It’s a real world and if you don’t inhabit that real world then no-one will believe in that world and you might as well forget it.
P: It’s getting pretty damn scary now though isn’t it?
Tony: It IS getting scary…
L: Oh it is …cos you know the way we used to watch Dr Who and we were behind the sofa watching Dr Who, it’s like that for our daughters. But then she’ll hold my hand and I’ll say "I’ll put it off if you want" and she’ll say, "no, no I want to keep watching."
P: Our fear must be evolving because you mention Dr Who and being behind the sofa from the Cybermen but you show the Cybermen to our kids now and they think you’re mad.
Tony: 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 then Pirates of Penzance, but this is a discussion we’ve been having because the Director, Steven Dexter, very much wanted to make Hook scary. He said he’d never seen a truly scary Hook because we’re NOT doing the pantomime, we doing the original J M 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 Freddie Krueger, he’s a real piece of work.
L: He’s a real baddie
Tony: 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. But kids do have very, very different appreciation of what is scary and what is … what they can accept now.
P: Well knowing you’re in it they’re going to come along and expect to be scared now anyway.
Tony: I think so, I think so…*giggles*. We are going for a very different look and a truly magical production rather than the old pantomime boo hiss thing. We want something that will really transport them and on the back of that we’re doing Pirates…
P: So you’re rehearsing for two new plays at the same time …that’s a bit scary, isn’t it?
Tony: It has its moments but luckily I’m buoyed up by an incredibly exuberant, exciting young cast. A very young cast and they’re really up for it and Steven Dexter who is very good at these really energetic, really powerful productions and I’m just being carried along with it. But yes, it is a little scary.
P: So whereabouts are you then? Peter Pan is….
Tony: At the Savoy…15th December we open with Peter Pan and that will 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.
L: You’ll have to watch it or you’ll get confused.
Tony: Well it’s all pirates! Some of them sing, some of them don’t.
P: It’s back to the old style of theatre when you had …when I was in Doolittle with a guy called Peter Seliere, his father used to do sort of four or five in a week - different shows…that’s the way they used to do it.
Tony: 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. But it is, the bottom line is it’s a very young, energetic cast and a very young, energetic production. I think both of them …we’re doing some interesting things with Pirates as well.
P&L: Best of luck with them…thank you very much indeed for joining us…two shows in one - scary.
Tony: Thank you.