Interview with Will Tudor for Humans series 2

25 October 2016

Given that Odi was last seen heading for the scrapheap, I’m slightly surprised to be talking to you for the second series.

I think a lot of people were!

Did you know you’d be back?

In our very first rehearsal as synths, Gemma Chan and I were discussing the plans for the series with our director. So I was aware there was a story to be told but, as with any series, you can never be too sure because it’s in the hands of other people. But I’m so glad to be back – Odi was a wonderful character and coming back to him was a joy.

Was it easy to become a synth again?

I must admit that I’d been missing it over the year in between series, so I’d slip back into it every now and then. We had to do homework and perform synth tasks around the house for the first series, so I kept slipping back into it. And then there were requests from friends and family to be a synth and freak people out. I obliged, of course!

Odi was unique among the synths of series one, because he was obsolete and malfunctioning. Is that still the case?

It is. Synth School was focused on a fully functioning synth, so it was fun to reverse engineer that, and I’ve been putting in more detail for this series. We’re a few months on from series one and Odi’s been among scrapped synths for a long time, like an old fridge thrown on the rubbish heap. Because of his faults and the emotion and personality that George [William Hurt] gave him, he’s gained a kind of personality, so to see him treated like that is heartbreaking.

Is his personality still familiar from the first series?

He goes on quite a journey this year. Without George around to fix him, he’s a synth without a purpose – he’s much more twisted and his mind has gone. Quite a lot of his personality has disappeared with these malfunctions, but he won’t stay like that forever, fortunately.

Is Odi aware that George has died?

How synths process the passing of a primary user is interesting. We discussed it at the beginning of series one, whether they’d be able to comprehend it, but those memories are still there for him. His understanding of it initially is fairly minimal because of how his hardware has been corrupted. We don’t see his recollections yet, but we will…

Odi was the only major synth character who didn’t become conscious. Were you looking out for Odi’s moment of clarity in the scripts this year?

Yeah. Because he’s an earlier model and very broken with it, would it be like installing brand new software on faulty hardware? Something like installing Windows 10 on a computer originally designed for Windows 95? I always thought that would be interesting to examine.

Can Odi ever be happy?

I think his raison d’etre has always been to serve. I think he’d want to find the same sort of thing as he had with George, as that dual unit where both parties rely on each other in a very pure way.

Has it been odd not having Rebecca Front [Vera] and William Hurt around this year?

Very strange. The scenes we filmed last year were very intense: it was George’s complete love and Odi’s complete need, this mutual devotion. Because it’s an ensemble piece, some of the narrative threads join up but some stay separate, so I didn’t see a lot of the other cast during filming for series one. But the crew’s great and it’s a nice group of people, so it was an easy transition.

What should we most look forward to for series two?

It explores the place humans have in the world in relation to other being much more, and it’s getting increasingly timely given the growing debate over driverless cars and AI. As for Odi, his search for a purpose in an uncaring world is explored in almost human terms, which I was very touched by, but some of those scenes are very funny as well. All I can definitely say is that it’s very, very good. Spoiler alert!