Interview with Katherine Parkinson for Humans

Who do you play in Humans?
I play Laura Hawkins. She’s a wife, a mother, a lawyer, she’s got a good career, a good salary, but she has a complicated past that she hasn’t revealed to her husband. This is despite the fact that she’s been with him for a long time – and the longer the relationship has gone on, the less able she’s felt to come clean about it.

She’s troubled, but she has an essentially good relationship with her husband and her children. But it’s not going through a good stage, I would say.

What was it that appealed to you about the role?
I don’t really come from a sci-fi background, I’m not that familiar with the genre. What I was really interested in was the philosophical dialogue that it starts up. I did Classics as my degree, and my main papers at the end of it were on things like philosophy of the mind and metaphysics – none of which I understood, particularly, don’t get me wrong – but the stuff that I did get excited about was quite accessible.

I walked out of the exam thinking I’d completely nailed it, and ended up getting the lowest mark ever. But the point is, the conversation about other minds I found really interesting. How do we know that there’s anything other than what’s going on in your head? It’s only because other people look and behave the way we expect, that we infer from that that they have an internal life.

All that, even in the first episode, conjures up those sort of thoughts and conversations about consciousness and what it means to be human. I remember reading about Lockeian consciousness and identity, what makes you you. The first episode, which I read, bleary-eyed, with my three-week-old baby, made me think about lots of things.

Things like The Velveteen Rabbit, which is my favourite children’s book, and how the rabbit becomes real because it is loved. And it also reminded me of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. I love that psychological thriller element to this - Laura and Anita’s dynamic, and how f**king frightening she is. The cuckoo in the nest element is brilliant – the feeling of being usurped by this perfect synthetic being who’s good at all the stuff she’s not good at. It felt very close to home!

What was it like acting alongside Gemma in Synth-mode?
It was a really unique experience. She’s done a phenomenal job, because she’s utterly compelling, but in a totally new way and that’s what’s so compelling and frightening. It’s so difficult for Laura to know what is going on in there, if anything.

From the start, Laura is suspicious that this synthetic isn’t just a synthetic, because she says things and does things that feels too human. She plays it so well, it’s difficult not to be sucked in, Gemma’s so hypnotic when she’s in synthetic mode.

Did you do much research into the world of Artificial Intelligence?
My research was reading the script, I’m very interested in all that, though. It was such an interesting job to work on, we did exchange articles as we went about artificial intelligence and stuff like that. I also acquired – at some expense – The Ghost in the Machine, from Amazon. But I’m afraid it has sat, hitherto unread. Though I have got some amusing photographs of my two-year-old reading it with great interest. Although I’m not convinced she’s taking absolutely all of it in.

The show’s got a great cast, hasn’t it?
It has! Most of my stuff was with Gemma and Tom and my family. But I got to work with Neil Maskell and Colin Morgan and Emily Berrington and others – they were all just terrific. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to work with William Hurt and Rebecca Front – I’d have loved to have had some stuff with her. But yeah it has a great cast.

Having young kids to look after, would you struggle with the idea of handing them over to a synth?
Definitely. I felt that keenly. Laura gets very threatened by the relationship that her child inevitably forms with this synth. Even if it’s just a synthetic being with no feeling, the child is going to form a relationship with that machine even so.

If the child is being read to, and the synth is sophisticated enough to be in loco parentis, the writers created some nicely drawn scenes where Laura feels that vulnerability, that she’s being usurped because she’s just not around. And I must say I was feeling that a bit, as I went to work, feeling that I was missing my children. I identified with the feeling of what a compromise and a wrench it is having to let someone else look after your children.

But the whole point of synthetics is to allow us to be more human. They’ll take on the more mundane jobs so that we can be poets or do something that is adjudged to be more human. It’s a very compelling argument, but when it comes into the home… Ironing is one thing, but reading to your child is another. Inevitably it’s not as straightforward as just having a machine to do the chores.

What chores would you be more than happy to hand over to a synth?
I would like to have a gourmet chef synth, that’s not as beautiful as Gemma Chan. That would be my ideal scenario. And she’d do all of the housework. I have to say, I don’t do a lot of housework, so to suggest I do would be wrong. My husband is much better at doing that sort of stuff than me. But working the hours that you do when you’re filming, it’s impossible to eat well unless you have someone cook you nice meals.

You’ve done a lot of comedy – not least the IT Crowd – as well as dramatic roles. Do they require different skills, and do you prefer one to the other?
I think every job requires different skills. Sometimes to the viewer it’ll just look like you’re doing a different accent or something, but it’s more subtle than that sometimes. It’s a different tone, a different mood, a different genre. I think it’s about knowing the show you’re in, and what is required.

It’s all about the writing. If the writing is good, all you have to do is understand it. You don’t have to do anything else. But, in answer to your question, if I was told I could only ever do one or the other, I’m afraid I would go for comedy. But that’s just because I like to laugh.