Mark Gatiss interview for Coalition

18 March 2015

What was it that attracted you to Coalition?

I’ve always been fascinated by Peter Mandelson. I’ve always wanted to play him, really. But also, the script was fantastic. I’m a bit of a politics junkie, and I’ve always loved any kind of dramatization of big political events. I remember watching Suez when I was a kid, and there was also a marvellous thing on ITV about Thatcher’s last week in office, with Sylvia Syms in about 1990. I think I wore that tape out I loved it so much. I find the whole thing so illuminating – it’s very different to our perspective as punters, watching these events unfold. You discover an awful lot about the machinations of it all, but also the incredible pressures they were under. The scene where Gus O’Donnell says “Gentlemen, the world is watching. If we don’t have a government by Monday, the markets will start selling our debt.” You never think about these things. Clegg was under enormous pressure to form a government.

 

What did you do by way of research into Mandelson? Did you study him?

Yes, a lot. There’s a lot of wonderful stuff to watch. There’s a particular documentary called The Real PM, which actually covers the period of the election, which was fabulously useful. It’s full of illuminating little things. I watched that a lot, and his campaigns. I watched him getting gunged. I watched that extraordinary victory speech from Hartlepool in 2001 “I’m a fighter not a quitter.” He’s always fascinated me as a political animal, and the kind of dichotomy between The Prince of Darkness persona and the reality. Apparently in person he’s very funny, very clubbable, very amusing and sophisticated. I think it suits him to maintain this Dracula image because it makes him sound very powerful.

 

Presumably you have to be careful that, in capturing the essence of him, you don’t end up doing an impression of him.

Yes, exactly. You’re not there to do an impersonation. It’s got to be about the script, and you can’t let it get in the way of that. I’ve played quite a few real people – I’ve done Malcolm McLaren and Bamber Gascoigne, and getting the voice has always been very important to me, but if you can give a suggestion of it, without it getting in the way, that seems to be the best way to do it. It’s not about doing an exact impersonation.

 

Is it fair to say you played Mandelson with a degree of comedy?

Well, it’s always there, you see. And a lot of pathos as well. I did actually meet someone who knows him well who says “He does smile, you know.” He’s not this eternally grim-faced figure at all. There’s a lot of fun to be had. I certainly enjoyed myself playing him, not just because of his personality but because of the circumstances. He explicitly says that he was trying to give Labour a decent send-off. And what happened on election night was they did far better than expected, and suddenly every political instinct in his body rises up and he thinks “Hang on, we can do this.” So the circumstances, which are semi-farcical, certainly help with the element of humour. But I was keen that he didn’t just come across as a dreary, Machiavellian villain.

 

Funny you used the word Machiavellian – you always seem to end up playing Machiavellian figures. Why do you think that is?

I’ve definitely entered the mandarin phase of my career. I remember once being offered three gay vicars in a day, and I thought “Something’s going on here. There’s a dangerously Derek Nimmo angle to all of this.” I’d played a curate in Miss Marple and a vicar in Midsomer Murders, and that was obviously a vicar too many. And in recent years I’ve definitely entered a reptilian mandarin phase. There’s a clear line of symmetry between Mycroft Holmes – who we always intended to be very Mandelsonian – and Stephen Gardener, who’s the Tudor Peter Mandelson. Nature abhors a vacuum – there is always a place for a person like that behind the throne, and there always will be, I think.

 

Do you have a better insight now of what it was really like to be involved in those negotiations?

Yes. It gave you a lot more sympathy for all those involved. It’s only five years ago, but already it seems like a lifetime. Doing it, we all had lively and fascinating political debates about what had gone on, and particularly what’s going to happen next time. That’s going to be an even stranger drama. I want to know who’s going to play Nigel Farage. But it was genuinely very moving to play the end-game of this – the moment when Gordon Brown puts the phone down on Nick Clegg, and it’s over – it’s not just the end of Brown’s brief premiership, it’s not just the end of 13 years of Labour government, it’s the end of the entire project, which goes back to pre-John Smith. Years of planning, and suddenly it’s over. There’s Harriet Harman, Mandelson, Brown, facing each other in this room, and they’re not actually natural friends, but they’re the last people on the deck. They’re the last ones standing.

 

There’s a brilliant scene where, after the Tories have presented the Lib Dem negotiators with ring binders and beautifully laid out plans, Mandelson produces a crumpled bit of paper in the equivalent meeting with Labour. Is that a fair reflection of what happened?

As far as I know, yes. The Tories were frighteningly well-prepared, and I think that’s what made the difference. They were so much more persuasive. The Labour team rather arrogantly acted as if they were still the government. The Lib Dems came out of that meeting very angry because they thought it was a bad-tempered meeting. I think Labour assumed the Lib Dems would never go in with the Tories.

 

As a writer yourself, are you aware of what a complex undertaking something like this must have been for James Graham?

Oh very much so. It’s quite something to make a tense political drama (a) out of something where we know the result and (b) out of a process, the negotiations, a lot of which would probably have been grindingly boring. He’s done a wonderful job of fileting out the human story in all this. He’s given everyone a proper character, and not just the character we see when we watch them on TV. He’s made the characters a lot rounder – certainly I found that with Mandelson.

 

As a writer you’re most associated with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who. Which one would make a better Prime Minister?

Oh, The Doctor, of course. The Doctor has an infinite capacity for compassion. Sherlock Holmes has almost none at all. Definitely the Doctor.