#like with voice actors doing child voices

[p-cap-press]

INTERVIEW

Peter Capaldi: 'We didn't rehearse for The Thick of It. I could never remember my lines'

The Doctor Who star talks about the new series of The Devil's Hour, having a sinister voice, and how society has stopped investing in young people

(Photo: Yoshitaka Kono/Amazon Prime)

Helen Brown

October 18, 2024 5:00 am (Updated 8:58 am)

Peter Capaldi can trace the moment he “became the go-to person for the darker, more disturbing parts” back to 2013. “I was recording a voiceover for an Anchor Butter commercial,” he says. “They had a nice, cosy slogan, ‘Anchor butter: Tastes like Home.’ I did the line to the best of my ability, but they said: ‘Could you make it a little less sinister?’” He grins and shakes his head. “I thought, ‘It’s all over now! But if people want to buy sinister, that’s alright. I’ll give it to them!’”

Zooming onto my computer screen, he’s edgy in a crisp black blazer and a black shirt buttoned tight up to the jugular. This means that his pale, gaunt face seems to float above his collar like a ghost train skull – an effect he can enhance by tilting his head forward so that shadows blot out his eye sockets and hollows his cheeks. 

This happens when he rocks forward laughing at the recollection of how that Anchor butter experience would be his last commercial voice over – “because I could no longer do it without irony, without indicating my distrust of the whole process”. Capaldi was 55 at the time. He’d just finished a seven-year stint playing foul-mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the fourth and final series of Armando Iannucci’s political comedy The Thick of It (2005-2012). And he was on the brink of sending a whole new generation of children scuttling behind their sofas as the Twelfth Doctor in Doctor Who, bringing an unprecedented existential chill into a show that had “obsessed” him from childhood.

Although this was always Capaldi’s take on Doctor Who, he tells me he was “never scared, not at all” by the programme when he was a boy. Instead he recalls the science fiction and horror films he devoured as “a gateway to the imagination” for a creative child. Capaldi, the son of Italian immigrants who ran an ice cream business (and were neighbours of the Iannucci family), famously wrote to the BBC, aged just six, to say that “when I grow up I want to be an actor so I can help Doctor Who”. By the age of 18, he was writing fanzines about the show and bothering fan-club directors by expecting a direct dialogue with the producers of his favourite show. 

It may seem like Capaldi was destined to play the Time Lord – but his working-class background forced him to take a roundabout route into acting. He didn’t get into drama school because he didn’t know enough about the audition process to have prepared monologues, and went to art school instead, where he became the lead singer in a punk rock band called the Dreamboys. “Art, music, horror films… all these OBSESSIONS,” he chuckles now, grateful for the government grant that enabled a working-class boy to imagine a career in the creative arts was possible. “Art school was the right place for me and my parents couldn’t afford it. Back then there was a belief in investing in the potential of young people, which seems to have gone. That’s terribly wrong, denying that potential.”

That said, Capaldi did get into trouble in his first year of art school for “spending too much of my grant on curries and lager and not enough on art supplies”. He recalls finding a letter his tutor had sent home to his parents, warning them he would be chucked off the course if he didn’t pull his socks up. “Luckily I got to the letter before my mother did, hid it and worked harder.” 

Capaldi fully expected to metamorphose into a director at this point. But – despite an initial invite to the Weinstein party – it didn’t happen for him. Looking back, he’s relieved not to have been sucked into the Hollywood system. “It is rare for British directors to flourish over there,” he says. “The traditional path is that they do an independent movie and the Americans love it. They get you on the phone and suddenly you’re making a film with some big Hollywood star and that does OK. But the next one doesn’t and it all begins to fall away… I think that may have been what would have happened to me…” He rakes a hand through his shock of white hair and chuckles ruefully. “Luckily it all fell away much more quickly than that in my case!”

But after “one really terrible year when there was no sense of anyone being interested in me in any way shape or form”, he was rescued by the plummy-voiced actor Martin Jarvis (who had appeared in Doctor Who in the 60s, 70s and 80s), who cast him in a radio play. Everything picked up from there. Which led to Malcolm Tucker. 

I’ve always thought one of the things that made Capaldi such a compelling Doctor – and now such a deeply unsettling Gideon Shepherd – is the way he seems to transmit unpredictability. The combination of the mad-scientist hair and restless energy lend him a crackle of cosmic instability that makes you think he could glitch between dimensions at any moment. He suspects he learned this working on The Thick of It. 

“Armando [Ianucci] was obsessed with filming everything live,” he says. “Although a lot gets made of the improvisation we did, he wanted the script word-perfect. But there were no rehearsals, so the performances were alive, full of attack.” He says there was added jeopardy playing Tucker because he “had so much material to learn I wasn’t always certain of my ability to grasp it all. Sometimes I would have to stick an extra ‘f***’ in while I searched for a word.” 

He hung onto that tension when he was cast as the Twelfth Doctor and says it “helped me keep things vital at times when we were down to a last take, shooting in a car park in the rain and the latex was all coming off the monster.” Some people, he says, “will have seen my Doctor Who through a Malcolm Tucker filter.”.

He agrees that The Devil’s Hour is, in many ways, a kind of Doctor Who for grown-ups, “plugging into a creepy cosmic thing I’ve accrued”. Instead of latex monsters, his character is battling “real, adult fears”. The show confronts us with rapists and paedophiles; torture, murder and mutilation. Blowing through the chilly heart of the series is the dread of isolation – the fear that even our parents and children may not know or love us. Perhaps that they’re not even real. 

“The show has been really popular,” mulls Capaldi with mild surprise as we wind up our chat. The actor tells me he’s a vulnerable person, “scared of all kinds of things as a father and as a grandfather… as a sentient observer of this world, what’s NOT to be scared of?” For this reason, the man who’s planning to spend his Christmas Day watching the new Nosferatu film suspects horror shows like The Devil’s Hour offer an essential release valve. 

“There’s a calming quality about going into this dark, nightmarish world. Then getting to the end, watching the credits roll and being reassured that it was all a pretence.”

‘The Devil’s Hour‘ series two is on Prime Video

[glowsticcc]

the amount of money i would pay to have a video that is just professionally done dubs of the egg signs

[caterpillarinacave]

a thing about myself I've discovered is that entirely regardless of what piece of media he is in I will only ever see Ben Stiller as Larry Daley

[foxgirl87]

What is he even yapping about here. He’s literally an outsider as well. Fucking hypocrite

[anoray]

Random thought for the day...

Unlike Anakin, Caleb Dume was raised in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, so wouldn't he speak with that type of accent in the Bad Batch episode instead of like a grown up Kanan Jarrus?

Little Hera spoke with her original Ryloth accent in the TBB episodes...so it would have been interesting to hear what Caleb sounded like as a padawan (perhaps like a mini Obi-wan?) before he developed his Kanan persona to blend in with the riff raff.

[girlsnap2025]

HELLO.

So, here's the official cast list for the "Pine Point Insomiac" Radio Play so far:

Nil - @imcynthiali

Dimitri - @highclasshomosexual

Momo - @pebblesno1defender/@nat-the-rat326

Journey - @ratseathumans

Marco - @skippsmandolin

[aromanticasterisms]

yknow i was a little miffed when yoimiya got her second story quest but i can't even be mad that cyno's getting his. he's been around since manga days he deserves it

[the-commonplace-book]

wow fuck sag-aftra for screwing over video game voice actors

[ooglywooglies]

(about quest for camelot) i read the books plot summary (the kings damosel) on wikipedia and bro this is NOTHING like the movie, and like i kinda gave up on reading it bc my adhd is acting up but i feel like they just took the setting and made a generic disney princess adjacent girl power 90s movie and then STILL fucked up the girl power part

[nonbinary-sticks-the-badger]

i love tails' little mischievous laugh so much

[brynn-lear]

Dear Brynlee,

With great detachment and shame I have just realized a moment ago that beside Dainsleif, I know not of any others that you may favour from the Genshin Universe. Lord Ayato, perhaps? I wouldn't be so sure about him; regardless I hope you would answer my question and forgive my impudence for having delayed this for so long.

With Love,

Chryseis Valois. [ik. this is only needed for anons. i just wanted a cool name😂]

Dearest Chryseis,

Please don't ask for forgiveness nor should you feel shame, especially since you do have it right. The only man I care most deeply in that universe was the boughkeeper.

He reminds me of His Majesty, King Dimitri. I've always entertained the notion that if the latter and I were born in a more equal societal footing, we might end up as partners in knighthood. I think somewhere out in that alternate realm, "Dainsleif" and my counterpart had committed to achieving that dream. In addition, he and I are currently working together on a project— and I believe Dainsleif does find my face familiar prior to our meeting.

Lord Kamisato? Well... He... literally sounds a lot like Dimitri. I've heard his voice. I had the privilege to talk to one of his versions several times when the soul was misplaced. I quite like him. As for finding a semblance of romantic attraction towards him, that's another complicated matter. I don't believe I am as fond of him as Dainsleif. But I can't be too sure...

I suppose if we're talking about admiration, "Duke" Wriothesley and architect Kaveh have their charms. The duke is quite the smooth talker and has the suaveness to pull it off. Meanwhile Kaveh has a certain "relatability" factor fellow artists would nod at. Do I find myself sparking a romantic attraction for either men? Unlikely.

This is likely such a disappointing answer. As much as I liked traversing Teyvat, I doubt I'd find my soulmate there. It's similar to looking at a restaurant's menu, appreciating its variety, but has no intent in placing an order. That... Probably sounds ridiculous.

All my love,

- Brynlee <3

[pwurrz]

“i hate griffin burns because of the way the eng localization team erases the nuance of his character and he just goes along with it!! he’s also completely ruined the fandom perception of childe by being silly and making lighthearted jokes!!!!” sounds like a you problem idk

[almonddirge]

Hearing people with speech impediments always makes me feel better about mine but I can’t actually say it most of the time because it feels like a backhanded compliment almost in the vein of “wow, fat person, I admire your ~confidence~ for posting a normal ass selfie”

[bunny-heels]

i hate how obsessed ive become to this show but god i cannot help it

[elvesofnoldor]

honestly it truly is fucking nearly impossible to adapt interview with the vampire (1976) into any sort of visual medium that is 1. honest to the source material and 2. not triggering as fuck to watch. The only adaptation of IWTV that i will accept is a MAG style found footage audio drama of the entire book told as the conversation between Louis and Daniel. It'd be presented as the cassette tapes that the conversation was committed to, so it'd have the cassette tape audio effect the way that MAG episodes had. It'd also have the sort of eerie non-diegetic ambient mood music that MAG has, and the soundtrack would played over passages that's most revealing of Louis' true character. Different than the book, Daniel would interrupt Louis when Louis describes Claudia in very gross and p*do language, asking him to clarify, so that audience is more directly called to ask to question what kind of person Louis really is. And instead of ending in Daniel asking to be made into a vampire, this audio drama would end in Daniel questioning the narrative that Louis presented and Louis' intent for inviting him home after spotting him at the bar, angering Louis and prompting Louis to attack him. The cassette tapes would abruptly end with the attack. The End.

[phagodyke]

i saw devs when it came out + then kinda forgot it existed for years but i remember rly liking it so im rewatching now and this might sound kinda dumb but lyndon being played by a woman was genuinely a gender turning point for me like its never commented on or made into a whole deal its just. a cis actress playing a cis guy