Interview with Hayley Squires The Commuter

26 September 2017

Can you explain a little bit about your episode, The Commuter?

It follows Timothy Spall’s character who is your average hard-working man who works at a train station and has done for many years. He has quite a complex family life as his son has a psychotic disorder that he suffers quite badly from. We begin with Tim’s character and watching how he deals with that as well as the run of the mill, stressful nature of his life. He tries to do the best for everybody and one day at the train station he comes across a woman who wants to take a train to Macon Heights. Tim follows her and ends up on this train that takes him to this alternative world of Macon Heights, which is a beautiful, clean-cut, friendly place. It’s about him becoming addicted to escaping to this place and his struggle with existing there and existing in the “real” world.

 

Can you tell me about the character you play?

Within Macon Heights you come to find out that all the people that Tim’s character comes across are all there for a reason, having escaped the real world for one reason or another, and have chosen to live in Macon Heights. I play a waitress in a coffee shop/café that Tim comes to and I serve him cake and hot chocolate every time he comes to visit. We sit and have conversations with each other that go from being light and beautiful. But as Tim’s world unravels you find out that my character is hiding something and is trying to escape something dark that happened to her, and that is why she has chosen to exist in Macon Heights.

 

What was it that attracted you to this project?

I read the script,I thought it was brilliant and I was really interested. It’s so theatrical because of the alternative world so I was interested to see how that would transfer onto screen. I wanted to work with Tom Harper, the director. I had seen his episodes of Peaky Blinders and other pieces of work that he had done and I just thought he was brilliant. Knowing that Tim was playing that character in all of my scenes was a perfect combination.

 

How did you enjoy working with Timothy Spall?

It was great. I had to shoot all of my stuff in a short space of time so it was quite intense but it meant we got to do the journey in chronological order which was really nice as their conversations get more and more intense as they go on and find out about each other. I actually worked on a film with Tim in 2014 but we didn’t have any scenes together so it was really nice to watch him. He’s a legend. I sometimes got a bit distracted watching him on the other side of the camera instead of responding in the way that I should have. That’s happened a couple of times on his moments but he was great, very encouraging. Between the three of us me, him and Tom [Harper] we had to work out how to translate this journey onto screen without its seeming too radical or bizarre so that it was routed in human feeling.

 

Were you already a Philip K. Dick fan? Had you read any of his stuff, or seen any of the screen adaptations?

Blade Runner and Minority Report were the two that I had seen. I didn’t realise the amount of work he had done and where he began. Funnily enough when I went for the audition I was doing a play called The Pitchfork Disney by Philip Ridley, and at the beginning of the play he uses a quote from one of Philip K. Dick’s stories. It was really odd because I remember seeing that and looking Philip K. Dick up, and looking at his stories, and a couple of weeks later this script came through and I went to the audition - it was a bit strange!

 

What was the experience of filming like?

We were trying to work out how otherworldly we were supposed to make Macon Heights and make this other reality. Tom [Harper] was specific about the fact he didn’t want to make it bizarre but it should have a feeling of America in the 50’s. The set design was incredible and the costume design, the colours were incredible; it sort of did the work for you. It was freezing in there and we were surrounded by these beautiful cakes. Across the episode I give Tim about 6 different cakes and we were trying to work out which ones were real and which weren’t.!

The series is so varied, and his stories are all so different. What do you see as the universal themes that unite his work?

From what I know of his work, it seems to be that he creates stories where he wants to explore the extraordinary nature of human feelings and human relationships and connections and what we are capable of. All of the stories in one way or another cross over into a wider world or alternative world or something that seems beyond our reality but with very human emotions and relationships. It’s almost like he’s expressing that we feel such extraordinary things and we can feel such extraordinary connections with each other that it has to go into this other world. Also escape runs through quite a lot of his work, escape from one’s self or the word that you think you can’t belong in.

 

Why do you think so many of his stories are still being made today?

His stories are timeless because they are about emotional connection and ultimately how people attempt to survive in the world, which people are always going to be able to tell stories about. Particularly in terms of the entertainment of his storytelling, it doesn’t just exist in the mundane or domestic so he takes the human experience which every single person can relate to and then puts it in this more fantastical setting. He talks about what it is that makes the world run - so politicians, nature, money and love - all of those things that exist that keep the world together. Then in 2016/2017 those things across the world have been tested in a big way so I think that’s probably why his work is very relevant and of the moment.