Interview with Tommy McDonnell for Glue

3 September 2014

Tommy McDonnell plays Dominic Richards

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What is Glue and what can we expect?

It’s a murder mystery, but not your average murder mystery because of the young cast that are involved and where it’s set. It has a different take in that sense.   What everyone can expect is a lot of fun, a lot of thrills, they’re going to be asking a lot of questions because of the murder running through it.

Can you tell us a bit about who you play and what your character is like?

I play Dominic Richards – he is the assistant horse trainer at Lambourn stables, but he acts like he runs it himself, so in that sense he is very ambitious and he knows what he wants to get out of life, and he’s not afraid to get his hands dirtier in getting it.

Did you know much about his backstory? Or do you think that was important when you started playing the character?

I did a fair bit in the stables around the horses just to get an understanding of how assistant horse trainers are – not just around their horses but around their apprentice jockeys, the stable lads and the staff on the stables. So I did a lot of observation work on that – how they hold themselves around a horse or around their employees, as they’re seen as a bit of a higher figure in the stable community.

What was it like to work with the horses?

They can be very unpredictable. Horses are massive animals so they are quite daunting! For my character I had to be around horses a lot but I found it quite easy being at their side – but basically the higher you are in the stables community, the less you have to deal with the horses. It’s kind of like a foreman on a building site – you just bark the orders and get everyone else to do your dirty work! I would have like to have a go at riding the horses as I didn’t get to do that.

The countryside plays a big role in the show. Would you say that it was a very different way of life?

I think it has its own way. Basically the community in West Berkshire – where we were staying, where we were put up – everyone has their own way of living, and everyone knows everyone around there so it’s not like London living at all. The talk of the town, everyone will know it within a couple of weeks if something is going around. In that sense, it was different in that way but young people in that community, everyone gets up to stuff as they do everywhere else. People at that age they misbehave, and I’m sure at that age people misbehave everywhere and get up to whatever they get up to. It has its contrasts but it also has its massive similarities.

What was filming like? Did you hang out with the rest of the cast when you weren’t on set?

I got to hang around with the cast a fair bit as we were all put up in the same location. We were filming sporadically and my character isn’t part of the actual gang itself, he’s kind of on his own, but we all became like a little family. We were the village, we were what we were creating in a way because we all became very close.  We always had a laugh, we found the enjoyment in the dark times too because you kind of have to because of the nature of the story. It is a very dark story but it has so much humour too. 

How did you find out ‘who dunnit’?

We didn’t know at all from the beginning, we were all prime suspects to the very end. We got fed the scripts as they came so we didn’t receive the final drafts of the final episode until the last couple of weeks of filming and that’s when we found out. It was a rollercoaster.

Can you tell us a secret?

Not really a secret but I’m an avid Arsenal fan.

ENDS.