Interview with Johnny Vegas (Jason)
Category: Press Pack ArticleHow is Jason’s family life?
Jason, Lorraine (Suzanne Ahmet) and Kelly (Buket Komur) are basically a happy family, getting on and getting by. Like my own family growing up, there’s a lot of love but not a lot of cash. They're not destitute, but they're always counting the pennies and keeping as many of their problems away from the daughter as they can, putting on a brave face. His mum Janine (Anita Dobson) has got money and is almost lording it over them, so it's that thing of: when do we ask? He doesn't want to go cap in hand. Janine’s not a bad mum, but he has a strange relationship with her. I imagine he was very close to his dad, and sees his responsibility being to look after his mum. When his wife hints at some of Janine’s faults, Jason has to acknowledge them – but she's still his mum and he still sees himself as the dutiful son. They have a good sense of humour, which is a really good working-class way of taking the sting out of things.
What would they like for Kelly in the future?
I think both Jason and Lorraine probably had ambitions, but perhaps Lorraine didn't go to college as intended because they had Kelly. They’d want her to go on to college, without living vicariously through her. They see she's got that potential and they'll put everything they've got into ensuring she can realise that. She’s bright, so they want to see her get the opportunities she deserves.
Generation X don't come out of this series too well…
No, we don’t fare very well at all. For a while, my obsession was surviving the zombie apocalypse. When my son was going to school in Kew, my big idea was learning how to hotwire a boat on the Thames, or to get into Kew Gardens because they'll have all the seeds to repropagate, and they’ve got the high walls. So to come in and play someone who fails so spectacularly was a tough ’un.
How does Jason respond when things start going wrong – does he have a clue what to do?
A common theme in zombie films is that the kids are ahead of the parents and keen to investigate. The parents have adopted that “let's sit and wait” attitude – which you don't do, because the ones who stay still, die! For Jason, there's the panic of not being able to make sense of it, because if your house was trashed, you'd think “party” or “burglars”. You wouldn’t instantly jump to the conclusion that your mum's a zombie. So while the kids want to find out what’s going on, Jason’s more: It will sort itself out, let's wait and see and put our faith in the authorities to handle this. My mum always had that thing about the government and the authorities knowing best. As we saw with Covid, they don't. They're clueless, and they mishandled it in a shocking way. We as a nation have settled for far lower standards, politically, than would have been allowed a few years ago.
You and Ben Wheatley have a history, don’t you?
I've worked with Ben lots of times. He directed two series of Ideal for BBC Three, and we shot a pilot many moons ago. I'm a fan of all his work. If you've worked with him, it's like a conch: he blows it, you drop everything and assemble. He's fabulous because he can combine humour and darkness, which is how I like my comedy. Me being a massive zombie fan was really exciting too, and as an actor, he's great to work with. You will run stuff off the script, then he lets you off the leash to ad lib and play around. You never know which version is going to get used. As a comic and someone with ADHD, it’s good to know you can at least put your ideas out there. He knows what he wants, and however much stress there is or however late it is, you’re just happy to be there and confident something good is being made.
What else is special about working with Ben?
He doesn't shoot it to death. It moves pretty quickly and you never get to the point where you've done a scene so many times that you’re making a mess of it. Ben writes amazing scripts, but he's not at all precious and always wants to see if anybody else can bring anything to them. That's a dream gig for me – the best job I had in ages. I pretty much know this guy, Jason. He reminds me of my dad so I didn’t need a great deal of prep. I got it pretty much on the first read.
It's a very varied and diverse cast isn’t it?
Yeah. I’d never worked with Suzanne, but we're still in touch. I always have a version of imposter syndrome: would she be married to this? But we gelled straight off the bat, and Buket was phenomenal, so it didn’t feel forced to pretend to be a family. I’d known Anita Dobson for years and been a fan, then we did Murder, They Hope and I found out she’d be tearing my throat out in this. She was well up for it! The younger cast were so funny, but there was a point between scenes where all the young cast were talking about stuff and I just stood up and said, “I have absolutely nothing to contribute.” I've never felt so old! But they were fabulous, they had a great energy and kicked ass. It was nice to be accepted by the elders and the up-and-coming talents.