Interview with Neil Pearson for Power Monkeys

25 May 2016

Channel 4 spoke with Neil Pearson, who known principally for his acting – on TV, film and radio -  makes his directorial debut with Power Monkeys. Neil will be directing the show’s Russian segments offering viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the Kremlin’s Western-focused media machine.

Everyone knows you as an actor, but you’re actually behind the camera for Power Monkeys. What have you done in the way of directing before?

If you look on IMDB, precisely nothing! But I’ve directed for the theatre, and I also directed for radio – I directed and produced The Missing Hancocks for Radio 4. I did two series of The Missing Hancocks, and we’ve just had a third series commissioned. We also took the show up to Edinburgh last year, and did it live, which I directed. Obviously I’ve been on film and TV sets for 30-odd years, and while watching other people do it is no substitute for doing it yourself, I think I know my way around a film set enough to be able to keep up. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

So you’re making your TV directorial debut on a show where a lot of it is shot on the day of transmission. Are you mad?

You make it sound easy, because what you didn’t mention is that the strand I’m doing is quite often in Russian! So naturally they were keen to find someone who doesn’t speak Russian to direct! Yeah, it’s a bit like learning to drive in Rome – if you can drive there, you can drive anywhere. That’s part of the attraction. Most of the attraction, of course, is working with Andy and Guy. I’ve worked with them on a number of different projects over the years, most notably on Drop the Dead Donkey – I know how that close-to-the-deadline thing ticks, from having done it on the other side of the lens. It’s challenging. At the moment we’re in pre-production, and I feel quite serene, but I’m mindful of the fact that that’s probably because I don’t know what it is that I don’t know. A piano is probably about to drop on my head. But there will be friendly and capable people around, and whilst I’ll have the stabilisers on my bike, I’m hoping I’ll be able to do most of the pedalling myself.

What did you make of Ballot Monkeys?

I enjoyed it very much. I love the way that Guy and Andy’s work flirts with what is legally possible in those situations. Obviously you have to be mindful of the fact that you’re putting this stuff out during an election campaign, and there are rules and regulations about that, but what’s great about their stuff is that the political acuity and the laughter isn’t all that they do. It isn’t even most of what they do. What they do is root their stuff always in character, and that is a big attraction. It’s an attraction as an actor, because it gives you something to get your teeth into rather than just delivering gags, but it’s also useful where I’m looking from now. My strand will mostly be two characters, and you have to root that in character, because if you don’t do that, then you really don’t have an anchor for the whole narrative arc of that strand of the show. So true to form, these people are people as opposed to just joke-tellers.

Tell me a bit about these characters you’re dealing with.

Oleg and Alexei are two people who are employed pretty close to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Oleg runs the office which analyses, filters, processes and presents, for the Putin inner circle, the Western media. They take in what’s happening every day, they take in all the reactions to various things that Russia is involved in, or that Putin may have said, and they provide a digest for the Politburo. Oleg is the older of the two, he’s been there a long time, knows his way around the office, and around the politics of the office. Alexei is the new whizz kid, the guy who’s been brought in to fill a vacancy, and is shown the ropes by Oleg.

Presumably you’ve had to find Russian actors to fill these roles?

…Or people who are perfectly fluent in Russian. We’ve got Ben Willbond playing the older of the two. He’s English, but fluent in Russian, studied Russian at University and has been there a lot. And we have Alec Utgoff, who is Ukranian and is a fluent Russian speaker. So we have a mix.

Presumably you’ll also need to have subtitles done at the last minute.

Don’t think we haven’t thought of that! They’ll mostly be speaking in English, for two  reasons; this is a department that deals with the Western media, so their English language is very much part of their job. Alexei’s, while extremely good, needs a bit of work on its idioms, and what a Sun [newspaper] headline may mean, and so on. So speaking in English is good for him - it’s good for professional practice. Also, they find that if they speak in English, very few people around them in the office can understand them, which is also good news. So while there is quite a bit of Russian, I think for time reasons as much as anything else, we’re going to try and avoid any of the topical stuff being in Russian.

 

Have you always known that you wanted to pursue directing, ultimately?

No, but I’ve always known that I’ve got a curiosity into those other departments. I like the way a film set ticks. I love being able to move from stage to screen, and I don’t want to change that, but if you did put a gun to my head, film, whether it’s small screen or large, is where I really like to be. I like the communality of it, I like the mosaic nature of putting these things together, building block by building block. That’s always appealed to me.

Power Monkeys airs on Channel 4 every Wednesday at 10pm from 8th June, with an extra special episode following the EU referendum, at 10pm on Friday 24th June.