Karl Davies interview for The People Next Door

24 March 2016

 

You're in a new one-off drama for Channel 4, The People next Door. Can you explain what it’s all about?

Sure. The concept is this. There's a young couple, and right at the beginning Gemma, who’s the wife of my character, announces she’s pregnant. So they move into a new property, and start filming the move into their new house, and filming a baby blog. So it's all home movie footage. And in the process of filming our baby blog and our new life in our new house, we become aware of noises from the house next door. We then go on to record the noises, and keep a log of them as an evidence blog, because we suspect that something untoward is happening in the house next door.

 

It's not filmed conventionally at all, is it?

No, it's a whole mixture of different mediums. We start off with a home movie camera, and then we go through iPhones and CCTV cameras and anything that captures an image. So we see it from all sort of different points of view throughout our house. And it finally culminates in a nanny-cam going into the house next door. So it's not a conventionally shot drama, it's got much more of a found-footage feel.

 

The nanny-cam is hidden in a teddy. It's a bizarre idea, isn't it?

Yeah. I think in some countries they're being made illegal. But as things stand in this country they're still legal and readily available. You can get all sorts of different ones on various websites. It’s very intrusive!

 

The way it's filmed, in some scenes it looks as though you’re actually filming using the video camera. Were you ever actually having to film and act at the same time?

 Yeah, through most of it. Most of it is us behind the camera, shooting each other, while saying our lines. If there was a specific shot that Ben wanted, with a really complicated focus, then he'd take over, and stand in front of us for those. But at least 80 per cent of it is us shooting it. So that was another complication.

 

It must be so difficult; performing in a scene while having to make sure you’ve got the shot right.

It was really complicated. At first, my initial thought was “This'll be great, there will be no complicated set-ups, no crew, it'll be a really fast process.” In fact, it was longer. We'd be left in the room, just the cast, and we'd shoot a scene for five or six minutes, where there's no form of feedback. So we'd finish shooting the scene, and then we'd walk outside, tell the crew that we'd finished. Then we'd have to sit down with a Sony Viewcam or a Panasonic Handycam and watch it back. So then we'd down tools for ten minutes while he watched the take, then he'd come back and give us notes on the performance, change notes on the story, then he'd give us camera notes. It was quite a long-winded process in the end. But it was worth it for the final effect. But it caught us off guard, how complicated it would be.

 

In some respects, did having no crew there make it easier to get into the emotional side of things, because you're only with other characters, you're not surrounded by eight other people and loads of equipment?

Yeah, definitely. From that point of view it was a really liberating way to work. And we weren't steadfastly held to the script, we could play around a little bit. We weren't solid on lines. Everything was a bit flexible, and could be improvised, as long as we got the story across. So from that point of view it was a great way to work. And it was very odd, not something I'd ever done in 17 years of working – be left alone to have an argument in a house, and just throw stuff at one another and scream and shout. It was a very exciting way to work.

 

The producers have got experience filming dramas in different ways, with things like Cyberbully and Blackout. Had you seen those before you signed up to this?

I checked out Blackout to see what the intention was, and how it worked. I had a look at that. I'd been aware of things shot in a similar fashion before. I think there were so many different ways of recording this, that's what made it exciting for me. The fact that even when we were shooting something, there was maybe CCTV being filmed that we weren't aware of sometimes. Everything seemed to be recorded at once. There was nowhere to hide, basically. It was a lot of fun!

 

What was it about the script that interested you in taking the role?

I think it's the ambiguity. I could read it and think that the guys next door are the bad guys, and why wouldn't someone investigate that. And then you could sit down and read it again and think “Actually no, at no point do they do anything wrong, and it's clearly Gemma that oversteps the mark.” It's just those questions, it wasn't clear-cut, and I really like that. And also, it informed how we were playing it, because at no point do we know who’s right and who's wrong. And having watched the final thing, I still don't.

 

It's almost entirely about Richard and Gemma – you guys are in just about every scene together. Did you enjoy working together?

Yeah, a huge amount. We got on very well, right from the start. Right from saying hello, it was clear that it wasn't going to be a problem for us to work well together, and that played out. The complications came from things we weren't expecting, like the camerawork, things like that. In terms of the performance, though, we clicked straight away. It was just capturing on camera what we were supposed to capture – that was the tricky bit for both of us, I think.

It's fair to say that Richard is the voice of reason in this scenario, isn't it?

Yeah, I think he's the most middle ground. He has to be won over; he doesn't jump to any conclusions. But in the end he does come round to her way of thinking. And then he definitely oversteps the mark himself. But he delays it for the longest possible time.

 

It's got an air of tension throughout the whole thing, but towards the end it really ramps it up, doesn't it? You almost have to watch the end through your fingers.

I hope so; I hope people feel like that, yeah. Anthony's so bloody scary anyway. From a performance point of view, that wasn't a problem. I was quite happy to be terrified, that wasn't that difficult. But hopefully people watching it get that as well.  It is a bottom-clenching moment at the end.

 

You've been on our screens already this spring in series two of Happy Valley. You must be thrilled about how that's been received?

Yeah. There was always that fear, going back for a second series, that you get that tricky second album scenario. Should you leave it alone because people were so happy with the first one? Could it do it again? But I think Sally [Wainwright, the writer] is so brilliant that it's survived those problems, because she went at it from a different angle. She introduced a whodunit, which wasn't there in the first series. So just putting that new twist on the piece was genius. And she is genius.  As soon as we saw the scripts, we knew there was no problem.

 

What kind of reaction do you get from people when you're out and about?

Positive, really. I think people just want more of it. And hopefully they will continue to do so. The question I keep getting asked at the minute is “When is the third one?”