Nathan Stewart-Jarrett plays Curtis

11 October 2011

Is it nice to all be back together filming?
It's great. Three years in a row. It's awesome. There are some new sets as well. It's good. We're back!

 

Does it feel different from when you all turned up for the first day of shooting on series one?
Yeah, I suppose we're a lot more relaxed. I think I'm more confident - the first year was pretty nerve-racking, now it's much less so. We've got most of the same crew, so we're a lot more relaxed and confident.

 

Before filming a big scene, do you still get a bit nervous, or have you been doing this so long now it doesn't happen?
Yeah, you do get nervous. You've always got something different to offer on days, so even if you've read the scene together and prepared it beforehand, you always feel slightly different on the day, so yeah, you do feel nervous about how it comes out and it gets caught.

 

Curtis is basically a good guy. Is that how you see him?
I see him as a very moral guy - I wouldn't say good or bad, but he's quite moral. Sometimes that can go against him and backfire. But he's very serious, very moral, very moody.

 

In the past, he's had what's proved to be a very useful power - the ability to turn back time. Is his new power as useful? Are you pleased with what he's got?
It isn't as useful, no. Not useful. But he has fun with it. It's fun!

 

What else can you tell us about the new series? What can we expect?
Last year, my personal slogan was to say that we had everything, but just more of it. I think this year you'll see a twist on all of our characters - some people soften, some people harden. I think my character, Curtis, in a sense unravels slightly. He's so cool, to his detriment, and almost quite stoic. And he kind of loses that - so there's a twist this year.

 

What's been your favourite part of Curtis' story to date?
There's a lot of stuff that we've filmed recently that I can't tell you about. I think what's going on this year has taken him in a completely different direction. It's been a lot different to play, a lot of fun. He's unravelling - I think of it like wool, he's just lost it!

 

I've also heard talk of cheerleading zombies.
Yes. There are cheerleaders. And they are zombies. They don't do both at the same time! It's brilliant, absolutely genius.

 

Robert's left. Are you all missing him, or has he been consigned to the dustbin of history?
[Laughs] It was weird at first. Obviously it was the five of us, and it brought a lot of energy. But Joe's great! [Sarcastically] He's so quiet, so subtle.

 

You've done a lot of theatre in the past, haven't you?
Yeah, theatre's really important to me - although I haven't done a play for two years. It's really important to me to get back into that -it's definitely more of an actor's medium. You can do a lot of things that you may not be allowed to do in television. And choice - it's more about your choice in theatre, whereas it's all about the director's choice in television. So yeah, I'd love to get back into theatre, and maybe do some classical stuff as well.

 

Is there also an element that with TV, you never get to feel the audience reaction, whereas with theatre it's right there in front of you?
I always think in terms of laughs at the theatre - you really feel the audience laughing, the crest of the laugh, and that's an experience you really can't get in television or film. At all. So yeah, it is about the audience being there. Breathing people.

 

Do you ever get to improvise in Misfits?
The scripts are amazing and so tight, and there's also the comic timing within the scripts themselves, so generally we don't. But sometimes at the end of the scene we'll carry on and manage to get a bit in there.

 

Do you ever give feedback about the script, and say "I don't think my character would do this"?
At the beginning we often sit down with the writer and director of that block and talk about the scripts and where we're going, and we can ask questions and things go back and forth. Howard [Overman, the writer] has always been very aware of the fact that he's older than us, and so therefore we may have other things to bring. I think last year and even more this year he began to write for us as actors and as people. So that's been quite interesting. And also this year two of the episodes were written by someone else, and so we fed in about our characters, because we've played them for three years.

 

Series one and two are now available to a US audience. Is that exciting for you?
Yeah, we were number one on that channel. It's amazing; we had our picture up in Times Square. It's really exciting in terms of where we go from here, with our individual careers, it's nice that we've got that door opened and we've got a foothold in that country.