Matthew Lewis:
So the whole thing happened very fast for me. I’d been approached for the role, and then spoke on the phone with Brian Percival, who said he’d love to have me do it. Because I’d not played anything like Hugh before, I said to him, “Can I send you a couple of scenes?” He said, “No, no, no, you don’t need to do that. No, you’ll be great.” I said, “I appreciate that, Brian, but can I send it for my own well-being? So that I know that if I’m doing this accent, I’m not going to turn up on the day and you’re going to go, ‘Is that how he’s going to speak?’ I just want to send you it in advance to give you an idea of how I see Hugh.” He said, “Fine, fine, fine,” so I sent him a couple of scenes. And then I didn’t hear anything for months. I thought, “Oh, God, was it that horrible?” I had to go and do reshoots on a film that I’d just done in New Zealand, so I left, still hearing absolutely nothing. And when I got back to New Zealand, the makeup lady, who I’d told about the role because she was a big fan of the original series, was like, “So are you doing it?” I was like, “I don’t know anymore.”
After, my wife and I landed back home in Florida at 6am. We’d been flying for 24 hours, and I’d just got into bed, and my agent called just as I was dozing off and goes, “Right, yeah. All Creatures and Small. Can you be in London tomorrow?” I was like, “What? I’ve heard nothing, I thought they hated the tapes and I wasn’t doing it.” She’s like, “No, no, no, they’ve been busy casting some other roles and they’re really sorry it’s last minute, but can you be there tomorrow?” [A conversation followed with the producer, who convinced Matt to join them the day after the next.] I went to sleep, woke up the next day, booked a flight, flew into London, and then went straight from the airport to my costume fitting.
I was completely out of it, but then as soon as I’m in the costume fitting and we’re trying on the clothes, the white tie and the three-piece suit and the hat, it just got me so excited. Any period pieces, you put the clothes on, and it sort of reminds you why you got into acting, because it was to play make-believe—the same thing I used to do when I was a kid. I used to put on costumes and act out scenes from films, put my robe on and pretend to be Luke Skywalker. You put on the costume and go, “Yeah, this is it. I can be somebody else now.” So I was fit in the costume and then, literally the next night, I was in white tie doing the party scene. It was quite a whirlwind, and because I had so little time to prepare, I probably would’ve been a bit at sea without the costume. Thankfully, with the accent and the costume and the incredible period production design, it all helped get me out of jail a little bit, with the absolute tiny 36-hour prep time that I had!
About the car: It was a Riley, what was called a “pre-select,” which is almost like an automatic, would you believe? It’s really incredible piece of engineering, I’d never heard of one before and it was a dream, really pleasant to drive—especially, I think, in comparison to everyone else’s vehicle. I drove it a bunch of times, but then when we were doing that scene where we come together on the bridge, I was like, It’s quite narrow, that, and I’ve got to make sure I don’t make a mess of this. The stuntman had been doing a lot of the drone shots for me, and as he was getting out the car and handing it over, he said, “Yeah, yeah, I know, it is a bit nerve-wracking. I think someone just said it’s worth about 400 grand.” And I was like, “You could’ve told me that when we wrapped at the end of the day. Why have you told me that and you’ve just handed me the keys?” So, that was a bit of a handful!
But, once you get in the car and once you sit down…It’s very hard to describe to people who haven’t acted, it’s a thing that just happens, it might even be some kind of mental psychosis, I don’t know! But when you’ve done all your prep, and you know who he is, and what he is, and when you’re in that car and you feel the car and you’re in tune with all of his emotions—it sounds so pretentious—but you just kind of go onto autopilot and you’re no longer thinking about the words, they’re just coming out. It’s quite rare for me to get that. It’s like when everything just goes right. And when I hit it, it’s the most amazing, euphoric feeling afterwards when they yell cut and you go, Yes! I was in that. That was amazing. That wasn’t me at all, that was Hugh. Literally, Hugh was saying all that.
And then, when you don’t get it, that’s the worst. And that’s most of what I think I’ve established over the last 10 years, what acting’s about: When you don’t get that feeling, you’ve got to figure out why. Is it that you don’t have a motive? Or you’ve missed a crucial piece of the character, that’s not explaining why you’re saying these words? Or maybe it is the dialogue, maybe it’s just not something your character would say…Acting is really finding that, and there’s loads of things that have to come together, like a jigsaw—a jigsaw piece on its own is meaningless, but when it comes together, you see a piece of art, it’s like that. And you have to make sure that all the pieces are in there together and if one piece is missing, it’s not quite the full picture.
What’s nice about it is it kind of vindicates you. If you put all that work in, and you get that feeling, you go, “Yes, I know that I’ve done everything I needed to do for this role.” And then if you don’t get it, you know that you’ve dropped the ball somewhere, you’ve not done enough work, so that’s when you go back to the drawing board. It’s a really nice bellwether to just let you know whether you’ve done enough, or you haven’t done enough. And there’s roles I’ve done where I’ve not had that feeling and years later, still to this day, I kick myself and go, “You didn’t do enough there, and that’s why you didn’t get that feeling, doing that character.” I never went to drama school, so I’ve had to learn this all on the fly, and theater’s really helped me with that a lot…and I’ve had some wonderful directors and fellow actors that have sort of helped me with it over the years. It’s like riding a bike or playing bar chords on a guitar—you can’t figure out what it is, and then, suddenly, it happens and you go, “Damn, that’s how it’s meant to feel. That’s why people enjoy doing this.”
