Normally I would write an introduction here and explain who I’ve interviewed. I’d give a little recap of their career, what they’ve recently appeared in and so on – but that is not necessary here. After getting carried away on an hour long phone call, GCB’s Mark Deklin and I managed to cover everything from Tarzan to Richard III, Thelma and Louise to ‘white marriages.’ I’ll leave it to you to read this fascinating discussion with the incredibly smart, good humoured, and brilliantly gifted Mark Deklin.
BOTR: I’m a huge GCB fan boy so this is an exciting conversation for me.
MD: I know and thank you; we’ve communicated via Twitter before and I appreciate it!
BOTR: I love GCB! It’s hysterical! It really makes me laugh.
MD: (Laughing) Good! And I love that you’re using the present tense.
BOTR: Of course. Well it lives on for me, I watch it all the time.
MD: That really makes me happy.
BOTR: It never actually aired on television here in the UK, so there’s a lot of people here that haven’t seen it or don’t know anything about it.
MD: I had heard that. I wonder why, it doesn’t make any sense to me.
BOTR: It’s available on DVD and I really want people to watch it. Can you tell us a little bit about what people can get from GCB?
MD: Okay, first I have to ask you, am I calling Liverpool right now?
BOTR: Yes.
MD: Okay. I hear it. I have a very dear friend who’s from the area and you have the same accent. I was delighted because [when he married his same-sex partner] it was the first wedding my daughter went to and I thought that was really cool, that that was what her first experience of what marriage can be was. But you guys have an identical accent. He’s a great guy!
BOTR: That’s so strange because I only moved here 15 months ago but my friends always take the piss and say I’ve picked up the accent!
MD: Well he was originally from Manchester so I don’t know if his was a kind of blend between Manchester and Liverpool.
BOTR: I lived in Manchester for three years before this so maybe that is it…
MD: I definitely hear the north.
BOTR: (Laughing) Yes.
MD: (Laughing) But anyway.
BOTR: But anyway. GCB. What is it about?
MD: I don’t have a nutshell answer to that… I would say it’s based on a book which was a memoir, and our series was very loosely based. It jumped off point, we didn’t follow the book strictly by any means. But the idea was a woman who had grown up in a very specific, not just in Texas and not just in Dallas, but a very specific, very wealthy suburb of Dallas. Her name’s Kim Gatwin and this is a true story.
She had left and come to LA and was living the LA life with her husband, and her life kind of went to shit. A bunch of stuff happened and she was forced to go back home. [She] had been a mean girl in high school but had since grown up. She went back and found that a lot hadn’t changed; there were a lot of people who still lived at home, who still had that high school mentality, and this was their chance to get back at the former mean girl with some of her own tactics, and they ended up becoming the mean girls themselves.
That’s sort of the jist of it, and you know, it’s interesting – the title [Good Christian Bitches] – I know there were a lot of Christians who were sort of offended by the title, by the idea that you hear the word Christian and bitches together.
BOTR: Yeah. (Both start laughing)
MD: But I think what was missed was the title wasn’t saying, “Christian women are bitches.” You know, there’s a southern expression where someone will say, “I’m a good Christian woman.” Or you see it in westerns, where they make a reference to, ‘No Christian white man would ever do that!’ It’s a way of sort of identifying who you are, where you come from, and I think the title came from these women who were being very bitchy and mean but would hide behind this mask of, “I’m a good Christian woman, you can’t accuse me of being mean!” I think Kim Gatwin came away from those encounters thinking, “No, you’re a good Christian bitch is what you are!”
So you know, if they were taking the piss out of anything it was more the southern idea than the Christian idea. It just so happened that a lot of the action took place in church because I think that [in] a lot of those towns and societies, the church is the social sector. Interestingly we had a lot of Christian viewers; practicing Christians who loved our show, and rather than thinking they were being attacked, they actually felt that they were being addressed.
They’d say things like, ‘This is great, this is the first time I’ve seen my community represented on TV.’ I will say, I don’t practice any religion myself but I was raised Christian, in a church, and there were practicing Christians working on the show, and there was great care taken to make sure that it wasn’t poking fun at the religion itself, but it was poking fun at the hypocrisy of some of the people hiding behind their Christianity and not living up to it.
BOTR: I think it’s very successful at that. it highlights the mean girl, cool club, social element and how hard that is to penetrate regardless of how Christian you are.
MD: That’s right. And I think that’s the point; you can find hypocrisy in any circle. I don’t care if you’re Christian, Satanist, atheist, there’s always a clique that’s hard to break in to. That’s part of humanity.
BOTR: Well your character Blake was a character that had a lot of humanity. There’s a transparency and an honesty to his character, yet he was actually living a sort of double life?
MD: That’s something we addressed early on, because I don’t personally know anyone who’s closeted and if I do, they’re very good at it. (Laughing) I didn’t know what that was. I thought somebody gay but not ‘out’ was a liar. And it was really interesting to approach it in a different way. I’m not from the south myself, and Bobby Harling who wrote Steel Magnolias and created the show, he explained to me how there is this thing in the south that they call a ‘white marriage.’ It’s sort of an accepted convention. And he said Blake isn’t tortured, he isn’t self hating, it’s more of a role. He and Cricket know that in order to function in their society, and to succeed, there are certain roles that have to be played. So they’ve agreed to play the role together, but they’re very honest with each other. And to me that was what made me so interested in it. It made me feel like, I’ve never seen this character before. He’s living a double life, and his wife’s in on it, and they have a great relationship together. Except in the sexual department, they have a fantastic marriage, and that was really interesting for me to explore what the dynamics of that marriage might be.
BOTR: Which is quite ground breaking – this character isn’t seen in a lot of television shows. There’s often simple stereotypes rather than this kind of role. As an actor, when you see this role, do you think this is relevant, it’s politically important, I want to tell this story – or is there any kind of hesitation?
MD: Well you’ve asked me a multiple question there and the answer is sort of yes on all levels. Was there any initial hesitation? Yes. I would love to lie to you and say that I’m so enlightened that I didn’t think twice about it, but that wouldn’t be the truth. I certainly had a conversation with my agent and my manager and said, “Let’s just be really blunt here. Do we think this is a good or bad career move to play a character like this?” We had to have that conversation. You have to be honest with yourself about things like this, but what was great was that we then transcended that question. We were able to say basically, fuck that. Any role, if well done, can be ‘a good career move.’ Do you know what I mean?
BOTR: Absolutely!
MD: So let’s get to the heart of the matter; is it an interesting character to play? Is it someone who would be fun to play, and someone you can really sink your teeth in to as an actor? And there the answer was pretty obvious. It was. As an actor you’re always looking for a role that has levels, and secrets, and different layers than can be revealed over time, and with this character that was built right in. As an actor it was extremely appealing.
In terms of the story being told, the other thing I found was that there is a whole community of people out there who, because we live in a society where homosexuality isn’t fully accepted all around the country, and gay marriage is not available in all states, there is an inequality. So there are people that choose to live this lifestyle so that they can be treated like equals within their society. I guess I was a bit naive and didn’t realise how common that was. I had people reaching out to me and thanking me for this portrayal, and I didn’t realise that, okay, this is sort of important. And not to get really self important or make out like, wow, I’m curing cancer or anything like that, but I began to not just like the role as an actor, but actually take pride in what it represented at a larger level.
BOTR: You’re representing an entire section of the world where this really is a phenomenon; to live a straight life on the outside to avoid judgement, yet secretly have a life where they’re fulfilling their own sexual needs. It’s an important representation to finally be on television.
MD: I think so too, and if only because it hasn’t really been seen. Like you said, a lot of the time we fall in to easy stereotypes, but from the very beginning when we sat down to have meetings about where we saw the characters going, I made it very clear that one thing that’s really important to me is I don’t ever want Blake to be castrated, essentially. A lot of gay characters on TV fall in to this sort of flitty, harmless, ‘Oh look, there’s the funny uncle next door!” and I didn’t want that stereotype. It can be a lot of fun and make us laugh, but there’s a level where those characters become neutered. I didn’t ever want that to be the case with Blake. This is a man with biological needs and I don’t ever want that to be glossed over. They really honoured that.
BOTR: Well because that is so open from the beginning, with Miriam Shor’s character [Cricket], that level of transparency means it never feels sinister of deceptive. It feels warm to watch.
MD: Thank you. That’s something that was very important to us. We knew there was going to be the reveal, the image of Blake and Booth holding hands under the table. We knew people would immediately think, “Ooh, what’s going on, does she know?” And there was a discussion about how long do we milk that out, how long do we wonder if Miriam knows or not? And that would have certainly lent a very soapy element, but we wanted this character to fly, so it was very important to us from the start to be honest with the audience that these two characters are honest with each other. That became a real launching point for us, where once the audience realised, “Oh, she’s in on it!” suddenly the doors were blown wide open and we could do anything with this character.
Even in terms of the way of playing him, as an actor that was such a joy. Playing a character who on the one hand is a cowboy, he’s a butch, manly guy – but he also has his rainbow side. So it was so freeing, I could do anything – there was no wrong. I could butch it up in one scene, and then put on a silver lamé tunic in the next scene and it was all good.
BOTR: (Laughing) I love hearing you talk about these specific examples because I’m trying to be professional here but I love this show. I get so excited talking about it!
MD: (Laughs) I think it’s great! I love that you’re excited about it. It’s flattering and it’s wonderful. You know, the fans; it’s so sad that we didn’t have the numbers the network needed because the people who did watch and became fans were so loyal, and rabidly loyal – it was really touching for all of us.
BOTR: I watch a lot of television, and sometimes you think something might be cancelled at the end of the season, or even mid season, but I never had an inkling with GCB. I never questioned it, I presumed it would have a season 2, 3, 4. It’s really unjust.
MD: Thank you. And the truth? We didn’t either. We ended on that cliffhanger, we didn’t wrap anything up, but we thought we were coming back. We knew it wasn’t the runaway hit that we wanted it to be but we thought we were at least good enough that we could get a season two and then run from there. Apparently, from what I’ve heard, ours was the last decision made that season as to who would be returning and who wouldn’t, and it came down to us and one other show. They wanted to hang on to us but ultimately one of the shows had to be axed. And to tell you the truth it kind of screwed up the year for all of us, professionally. The entire cast missed out on pilot season because we were under contract, we missed out on a lot of opportunities to move on to other projects.
BOTR: I think people don’t realise that as actors you guys are sat around anxiously waiting to find out these things. I think people often presume all shows will just get another season, it’s TV, shows run for years, but it’s not actually certain at all.
MD: Right. And it’s changed a bit. Specifically the business of television [is] different from how it used to be. You look at some of the great shows and you realise that if you go back and look at their seasons, a lot of them had shaky first seasons. They hadn’t quite found themselves yet but they were given the opportunity to grow, grow an audience and a voice. You’re just not given that opportunity anymore. Part of that is the proliferation of cable channels; it’s not just which of the three channels do I watch tonight, it’s now which of the 400 channels will I watch? Or will I record it, or watch something online? And so if you don’t grab the big numbers right out of the gate the advertisers get nervous, they pull of their dollars, and sadly advertising is what drives television. If the advertisers pull out, you’re screwed.
BOTR: Just before we move away from GCB, because I could personally talk about it forever, I want to discuss the musical episode because that was my favourite of the whole season.
MD: It was one of mine too, it was definitely one of mine.
BOTR: Musical television has had a rejuvenation over the last few years. There’s show’s like Glee, and Joss Whedon did the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and they all have a different take. With Buffy it was magical, with Glee they all burst in to song out of nowhere, Grey’s Anatomy was a kind of dream sequence, but this show went for realism. How did you feel about that choice?
MD: I completely agreed with it. We had multiple conversations about [it]. Bobby had approached me early on because he knew that I sang, and I wanted to sing if I had that opportunity. And of course they had set the perfect opportunity in the pilot with Carlene, you know, Kristin Chenowith. You’re not going to cast Kristin Chenowith in a show and not use that voice. Why would you? And when you’ve created a show where the spine, the social center is the church, why wouldn’t Kristin Chenowith sing in your choir? That’s so obvious. And so that device had already been put in place where it’s not magic, and it’s not a ‘musical’, it’s a real world and people don’t just burst in to song with orchestration out of nowhere. There’s a reason for it. And of course Miriam’s got a great voice too, so it made sense to set up this rivalry between Miriam’s and Kristin’s characters. That gave us excuses to hear Miriam sing, and that lead to a lot of fun stuff. You know, the sing off they had at the auditions.
BOTR: That’s my favourite! That’s one of my favourite scenes.
MD: I didn’t have any lines in that scene so literally my job when we were shooting was to just sit there and watch these two brilliant actresses go at it. We were all crying, we could not keep a straight face. And I was lucky that Blake was allowed to be amused by it, I didn’t have to keep a straight face. The bloopers barely dented the surface; that was a really fun day.
But yeah, going back to your original question, Bobby and I were talking about how do we introduce Blake to sing with somebody when we’ve already set up this convention where it’s not magic; how do we suddenly justify Blake bursting in to song? So Bobby had what was, I think, a brilliant idea of, of course, we put on a church musical. It’s one of the few moments where Blake’s ‘rainbow side’ gets to come out about. And even that was an interesting balancing act because it felt false where if I’d played it like – I mean, I could have played it where Blake’s show queen really came out, and I certainly could have played it that way and that would have been fun, but that rang false for me. It seemed to me that it should still have an element of, it’s not a show queen, it’s just a guy who’s still kind of a jock but happens to be kind of good at this. It should have that flavour, so everyone’s not there saying, “Oh my God, look at that guy, he’s flaming,” but that people just think, “Oh look, it’s Blake, and he’s kind of good at this.”
BOTR: It was a great acting choice, it was so funny.
MD: Yeah, we had a lot of fun putting that together. And the dancers that were there were great. You didn’t get to see enough of them in the final edit. They were so game. We did some basic choreography and then I just started making stuff up and they just went with it. And of course David was hilarious in his reactions as Jesus. And people have commented that that was such a brilliant acting choice on David’s part [David James Elliot who plays Ripp] to look at me like, “What the fuck is this?” But the truth is, and David’s a great actor, but that was literally just David thinking what the fuck is Mark doing? (Laughing)
BOTR: (Laughing) That’s hysterical!
MD: He was so game too. There was this take we did where I just went over to David and grabbed him and pulled him in to dance and we just went for it. We had so much fun. It was goofy and ridiculous and never would have made the final cut but it was hilarious.
BOTR: It sounds such fun. I mean, I’ll be walking around the house now, I go to make a cup of tea and I get, ‘It’s a miracle, miracle!’ in my head and I think, ‘Where’s that from?!’ and then I remember your scene.
MD: That’s one of the best compliments you could give! Thank you. (Laughing) I’m in your subconscious, I love it.
BOTR: All the time! I actually have a question for you from my friend Anna, who I know you’ve spoken to on Twitter before. You’ve had guest roles and story arcs and recurring roles on so many shows, from Desperate Housewives to Justice, Castle, CSI: New York, CSI: Miami, the list goes on and on. Anna wants to know of all the shows that you’ve ever worked on, which do you think has had the best writing? I know it’s probably like picking your favourite child but which did you really click with on a writing level?
MD: It is like picking your favourite child, isn’t it? I guess… that said, there is a quick answer for me and that’s probably Lonestar. That was a heartbreaker. You talked about not seeing the GCB cancellation coming, well Lonestar, none of us saw that one coming. It was the sought after pilot script of that season, everyone who saw the script wanted to be in it. I wanted to be in it. And sadly the audience didn’t get to see it unfold. They saw that brilliant pilot that Mark Webb directed but there were so many story lines that were yet to unfold. Kyle Kinnen is such a great writer. I don’t know if you caught his show ‘Awake’, with Jason Isaacs?
BOTR: No, I didn’t…
MD: Such a smart, interesting writer. And then when Jon Voight signed on to play my father, we just thought, “Oh my God!” We were on the front page of USA Today as ‘the best show you’re going to watch in 2010.’ And then a few weeks later we were cancelled. I’ve never seen the axe fall so quickly in my life.
BOTR: It’s so shocking when it comes from nowhere. Lonestar was described by yourself as a “cross between Dallas and Big Love.” Am I correct in thinking that?
MD: Yeah, I mean I did say that in an interview, and the truth is a lot of people are always trying to make the Dallas comparison, so I said that in response to a question, ‘Is your show the new Dallas?’ The truth is I don’t think we were a lot like Dallas other than we were set in the same city. We were a big oil dynasty with the patriarch and sort of evil zion so certainly there were parallels, but aside from the external parallels, I don’t think we were like Dallas. I think we were more like a cable show, and we always should have been a cable show. I always thought that Lonestar should have been on TNT, or AMC, or Showtime. It had that vibe.
BOTR: Do you ever notice that you have a tendency to be cast in a cowboy role? You have a kind of cowboy career going on.
MD: (Laughing) Yes and no. Hollywood tends to… people are funny, the way they think in Hollywood. I always tell this story, I was always playing these kind of suit-wearing professional types. Maybe they were detectives, but always a square jawed guy in a suit who would say a load of jargon. Then I did… I want to say it was an episode of Frasier. It was a period where I did a coupe of sitcoms, and literally all of a sudden I wasn’t being brought in for any of the square jawed suit guys, I was just being brought in for ‘sitcom guys.’
I remember I was in an audition and Dave Foley was there from The Kids In The Hall, which was odd because we’re not the same type at all. And we ended up seeing each other at about four different auditions and he came over and introduced himself and said, ‘Let me guess, they’ve decided now that you’re a funny guy.’ And that’s what they tend to do, they look at your most recent thing that you did well and say, ‘Oh, that’s what he does.’ So I wouldn’t say that people are generally looking at me and saying he’s a cowboy but for some reason I do connect with that whole southern thing, I’ve ridden horses my entire life and do feel equipped to play the cowboy.
BOTR: I think it’s that you really know how to wear a stetson.
MD: You know, that must be it. (Laughing) It really could be something as simple as that! You’re constantly trying to break out of [people’s] perception. Perception can be the death of you in this town, even if it’s a good perception.
BOTR: Is that part of the fun for you? To always be hunting down the next challenge and breaking out of molds?
MD: Absolutely. That’s a balancing act because at a practical level, this isn’t a hobby, it’s what I do for a living. How I pay the mortgage, put food on the table. There’s a part of me that thinks, if they think I’m good at this thing and want to keep hiring me for this kind of thing, maybe I should just do this thing. You know? But then that’s offset by the artist in you that doesn’t want to keep doing the same thing over and over again. I want to mix it up.
BOTR: That desire for evolution must relate to your career in general, because there’s part of your career that I find fascinating and that is that you used to be a fight director on Broadway.
MD: It’s very interesting because even that was never something that I actually pursued. It was something that I was fortunate enough for it to keep coming back to me. I had studied combat and part of classical training is that you learn how to use a sword, we were doing Shakespeare, and I had a certain facility for it to the point where I was getting cast in those sorts of roles so I would very often end up being the fight captain, and I got a reputation of being good at it.
I was playing Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and the director was choreographing the fights and I would always tweak them a little bit. I just knew how to make them better. And finally when we were going to the next incarnation he said, “Hey, not only am I going to recast you again as Tybalt, but I want you to choreograph the sword fights.” I said that I wasn’t a fight director and he said, “Yeah, you actually are. You’re better at this than I am and I’d like you to do it.” So I was honoured. I did the best work I could do and it turned out to be quite good, and then over the years with certain producers I would get a call out of nowhere saying, “Hey, we’re about to open on Broadway and we’ve got this muddle of a fight moment, we don’t know what to do, can you come down and fix it for us?” I would say sure and go down town and fix the fight, and I hadn’t done anything that special, but because I was in the right place at the right time, producers would say, “You’re our guy now!” I’m think I did good work but I was also very fortunate.
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| Kline in the swashbuckling Cyrano de Bergerac |
Even just a few years ago, I was lucky enough just as the writers’ strike was starting and LA was shutting down, and I got a call from producers I’d worked with ten years ago saying, “Hey, Kevin Kline wants to do Cyrano [de Bergerac] on Broadway; will you come in and choreograph the fight sequences?”
BOTR: Wow.
MD: Of course I would! (Laughing) What a charmed thing that was. I’m very grateful for it. Yeah, it’s my other career and it’s very interesting.
BOTR: Every actor has their tool box of skills and it’s great that you’ve got the swashbuckling thing, the horse riding, and you’ve also got a real personal passion for history. Does that inform your process when you’re trying to climb inside new characters?
MD: Oh. You follow me on Twitter! (Laughing) There’s no question about it. When I played Mark Twain a few years ago, it’s interesting; I’m not trying to compare myself to Daniel Day Lewis, but he got a lot of flak for his vocal choices for Abraham Lincoln. I thought he was fucking brilliant, but when I was playing Mark Twain it was the same kind of thing – playing someone who is a famous historical character, we all have a notion of what he looked and sounded like – but there aren’t any actual recordings. You have to do your detective work and figure out how you think he would have sounded. You don’t have conclusive proof, you just have to mark an artistic choice, so [history] definitely informs things like that.
My love of history is at peace with the fact that I’m a story teller. History is the story of our civilisation. It might not even all be true, who really wrote that story? Is that just one side of the story? You guys are seeing it now with Richard III being dug up.
BOTR: How crazy is that?!
MD: It’s amazing. I have a boner.
BOTR: I was going to say, that must be like history porn for you.
MD: It really is. There was even that one picture they have of his whole skeleton laid out and you see the scoliosis in the spine, and you read about the different humiliating scars they found – clearly somebody stabbed him in the ass after he was dead as a way of humiliating him. I almost feel embarrassed the way I would if someone walked in on me looking at porn. It’s so personal but of course for years there have been people who questioned [whether or not] he really was really such a villain or was that just Tudor propaganda? And now they’ve dug up the body, all those questions are being reignited.
There are princes in the tower that are supposedly in these urns that they have, and now there are people saying, “Well now let’s do DNA testing on that and maybe exonerate Richard, maybe they aren’t even the two princes that he supposedly killed.” There are church officials and royal officials who are really resisting that. It’s fascinating, it’s a story, it’s all drama. I find that context is very important to me, as an amateur historian. Everything happens in a context. As I approach a role as an actor, I like to find those layers and secrets because that’s the context. You and I aren’t just having a scene in a vacuum. There’s a whole context around us and if you don’t bring a sense of that to the character you’re going to bring a flatter, less multi-dimensional character, I think.
BOTR: It’s interesting that you call it a story because it really is when you see, for example Richard III’s skeleton and the scoliosis, and you see that recreated in the arts. Kevin Spacey played him last year with the hunched back, the strong nose with the bump, and it’s so interesting when that corresponds with artistic impression.
MD: It’s fascinating! I was reading a really interesting article with this woman who has scoliosis and the empathy she felt with Richard when looking at that picture. She was saying, “I can imagine how he woke up every day in pain, feeling twisted and uncomfortable. How he actually might have been a pretty irritable fellow, maybe with good reason. He certainly wouldn’t have been treated nicely by his peers.’ It’s all very fascinating.
BOTR: One of your next projects is the new Tarzan movie [starring Kellan Lutz]. Are you still filming?
MD: I’m not. I did that this summer and my part in that’s done but I know they’re still in post-production. Yes, I was in Munich working on that this summer.
BOTR: How was Munich?
MD: It was fun! I love Munich. I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in Europe when I was younger; I lived in Vienna for a short spell and one of my best friends was living in Munich, whilst one of my other best friends was dating a girl in Bologna, so we had this triangle between those three cities for that summer, so it was lovely to be back.
I speak German but it is so rusty so it was nice to go back and get around without having to revert to English. And it was fun; CGI is an interesting process when you watch behind the scenes, which I do because I’m an incorrigible nerd.
BOTR: Obviously Europe is going to appeal massively with your interest in history. Have you ever travelled anywhere and thought, ‘Wow, I cannot believe I’m actually here’?
MD: I’ve actually had some of those moments right here in America. Sometimes in the most obvious of places. I’ll tell you, the first time I ever went to the Grand Canyon – have you ever been to the Grand Canyon?
BOTR: I’ve never been but I would love to.
MD: It’s such a stereotypical tourist spot and we’ve all seen thousands of pictures, everybody knows what it looks like, but I’m telling you, Olly – when you see it in person for the first time it is grand. It is a grand canyon. It takes your breath away. Photographs don’t even begin to do it justice, it is huge. The stratification of the rock, the different colours – it is stunning. My jaw dropped.
I felt the same the first time I ever went rock climbing up in Yosemite. My dad and I drove across the country together and hit the Badlands in Dakota. We got out the car and I have this great picture of my dad, it’s one of the last road trips he was able to take before his Parkinson’s became too bad, and there’s a great picture of him looking out at the Badlands. His jaw is on the floor like a kid on Christmas morning. Down on his knees. It’s quite wonderful.
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| The Badlands, Dakota |
I guess I’ve had those moments in all sorts of places. When I was living in Europe we went skiing at a mountain where you actually take the tram up in to the bowl of the mountain. That took my breath away.
BOTR: Thelma and Louise is my favourite movie so I really want to go to the Grand Canyon and just basically pretend to be Susan Sarandon and look around.
MD: Of course! And I’ll tell you, maybe I’m just a weirdo, but my whole life I’ve picked out suicide spots. And not because I’m suicidal, but standing on the edge of a place like the Grand Canyon I look down and think, ‘This would be a good place to do it.’ Literally, if I had to choose my last moment on earth, flying through the air in this canyon wouldn’t be such a bad one.
BOTR: It makes for a great movie moment.
MD: Right! Right. Which of course you know was not their original choice of ending…?
BOTR: No, I didn’t…
MD: Originally, apparently, it was supposed to be a dream sequence, or an ambiguous, ‘is it real or is a dream?” The car was going to land and they were going to drive away.
BOTR: Noooooo…. I wouldn’t have liked that.
MD: Of course not! And again, apparently it was going to be done in such a way that it couldn’t really be justified as a fantasy. It was so much better just to have it fade to white as they’re airborne.
BOTR: Yes! Such an iconic scene.
MD: Oh God, yeah.
BOTR: I cried at the end of that move. I sobbed! I had become best friends with Thelma and Louise by the end of it.
MD: If you don’t cry at that movie you’re lacking something in the human being department.
BOTR: Yes! I love that you said that.
MD: (Laughing) I just love when people find unexpected moments of connection. Again, going back to our earlier conversation, working with Miriam. There were these two people who weren’t having sex, yet we could find these moments to connect and contact. Going back to Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln, one of the things I noticed – did you see how many times he held hands with people?
BOTR: Yes!
MD: Unexpected people, like rough, gruff soldiers and he would reach out and hold their hand. It was the sweetest, tenderest thing. I love moments like that.
BOTR: And again that plays in to the history because we’re questioning our own preconception, and then we’re seeing the artistic conception. It can be nice when that sometimes clashes, and other times there’s a cross over.
MD: That’s right. And that’s what art is, it’s all about interpretation. At some point the line gets blurred between what was and what could have been, and I think it’s nice to explore both.
BOTR: To kind of wrap up, I guess, so I don’t keep you here all day which I would love to [at this point Mark and I have waxed lyrical for 45 minutes], what is the next great show that you want to star in that you haven’t yet been on?
MD: It’s always changing for me. There’s no set project where I say, “That’s the one!” For me it’s always about being different from what I have done [before.] I had a conversation with my manager recently about different possible paths and I’m really ready to play someone who’s dirty, and gritty. Really dirty and damaged but still with a heart and layers of complexity and humanity. Maybe someone who’s on the outside, a little busted and a little ugly and unsavory. But that’s because I always want to do something different. As far as stories I want to tell, they’re infinite.
Theatrically, a pet project of mine that I’ve always wanted to do is direct and produce a double production of [George Bernard] Shaw’s Man and Superman. I want to take the dream sequence from Act III out and perform it simultaneously next door in a black box theatre, as just the set piece ‘Don Juan in Hell.’ That’s something I’ve always envisioned and wanted to do, and I will do one of these days.
BOTR: It sounds like you’ve thought about it in depth!
MD: Oh yeah, definitely. Going back to your question about history, one of the cool things about theatre is the sense of history and context. Any time you step in to a role like Hamlet or something, there are all the shades of the actors who have played the role before you, they’re all with you. It can be daunting but I think it’s wonderful. We steal from each other but we also bring ourselves to it so it’s constantly evolving. I look at theatre and see more set pieces, like, ‘Yes, this is the play I want to do next,’ but I don’t look at TV and see the same specific thing. It’s about which story do I want to tell next.
BOTR: I’d love to see you in something really dark. I’d love to see you in something supernatural! Maybe witchy or demonic?
MD: I would very much love that. The vampire genre and zombies, they’ve become so popular.
BOTR: Horror television is the hottest thing, it’s very topical right now.
MD: It is and I find myself saying, “Am I really interested in creating the new Twilight?” Probably not. I would want to go more towards HP Lovecraft, that ball park. The Doom That Came to Sarmath (1920), do you know that story?
BOTR: I don’t!
MD: My God, I would love to do that story. Or even Asimov’s Nightfall. There was a film adaptation that I don’t think worked but those are stories that are haunting.
BOTR: Supernatural?
MD: Certainly The Doom That Came To Sarmath is. Nightfall would be considered more straight up sci-fi.
The basic idea is a world where they have multiple suns in the sky and multiple orbit patterns, and there’s always sunlight of some form. They’ve never experienced the thing known as nightfall, although there are legends about it. There’s a religious cult around it and it turns out that every couple of thousand years the orbital pattern is in such a way that there actually is a nightfall, and it’s apocalyptic. People lose their minds because it’s so disconcerting to them to be in darkness. They have no electric lights as they’ve never needed them so the entire planet descends in to panic, they end up burning down their own cities. It’s such a simple concept but so brilliantly written. A cool, really well told story.
BOTR: Although sci-fi shows do frequently get made, I find that there’s often not a lot of faith in them.
MD: They do, and I actually think you guys on your side of the pond have a better track record with it. Here largely what happens is it ends up going to the SyFy channel and it becomes formulaic or cheesy or predictable. It’s unfortunate, a lot of the time that falls down to budgetary concerns. But you guys have done a nice job with Dr Who, and what was that one with Barrowman?
BOTR: Torchwood.
MD: Yes! Thank you.
BOTR: I think it’s maybe our sense of humour in Britain; there’s a wit and a sense of irony to our sci-fi.
MD: I agree. I call it the Douglas Adams view of things. There’s no question. You see it in the old stereotype that British actors do words better than Americans but Americans do emotions better than Brits. I don’t think that’s true, but there’s a rhetorical tradition in British theatre and English society. Americans for whatever reason don’t have the same history of rhetoric as you guys do. It’s different and I really appreciate that light hearted British wit.
BOTR: I’d love to see you come over to England and work in the West End or maybe tour nationally.
MD: Make it happen Olly!
BOTR: (Laughing) I’ll call people.
MD: Get someone to send me a contract and I’ll be there in a heartbeat.
BOTR: I’ll start advertising. I’ve had such a great time talking today Mark, it’s been such a pleasure, it’s been such fun. Thank you so much for your time!
MD: Well it’s been a mutual pleasure. I actually just looked at the clock and realised that we’ve been on the phone a lot longer than I thought we had! Usually with interviews after about fifteen minutes I’m kind of looking at my watch, so yes, please take the compliment. It’s been lovely chatting with you!
- Mark Deklin can be seen in Tarzan in cinemas later in 2013. Follow him on Twitter @MarkDeklin.
- Interview by: @OllyCromack and @Blog on the Rails.
