BBC Cult - Printer Friendly Version
Joe McFadden - Lord Byron

I believe
  Do you believe in ghosts?

I suppose I do believe in ghosts. I'm not a massively spiritual person or anything, but I believe there's a lot more going on in the world than we can see and we can touch. I'm perfectly open to accepting that there are ghosts and there are spirits wandering around.

But you haven't seen one?

Not yet seen one, no. But I've been to spiritualist churches and things like that, and seen people getting messages from beyond the grave. They're too spot-on for it just to be coincidence or for it just to be tomfoolery really. Yeah, I do believe in ghosts.

An actor's life for me
  Why did you want to become an actor?

I never actually decided I wanted to be an actor, it kind of happened to me from a really young age.

I was 12 in Glasgow when I started, and the jobs kept coming. I've got my school in Glasgow to thank for that.

I went into a long-running soap in Scotland and the jobs just really kept happening. I never really sat down and decided [to become an actor], but that's probably for the best because I don't think I would have been one of those people who went to drama school for three years on the off chance. I don't think I would have had the guts to do that, so it's been ideal the way that it's happened.

What's been the career highlight for you so far?

I particularly enjoyed doing a drama earlier this year for the BBC called Sparkhouse, which was myself and Sarah Smart. It was a kind of reworking of Wuthering Heights, but updated with a modern text.

Sally Wainwright did the script for it, and it was really massively enjoyable. We had such a great time, myself and Sarah working really closely together and making it work. The rest of the cast were fantastic too.

Being Byron
  What was your first reaction when you were offered this part?

Shock really, I have to say, because I wasn't even aware that Byron had Scottish roots. But I got on the internet, as you do, and I discovered that he moved to Scotland when he was about 10 and spent a lot of his formative years in Scotland before he went off to Europe, before he did all his writing.

[I was] also very pleased, as well as shocked. I was really happy to be involved, especially with this amazing star cast. I feel a bit of a fool next to them all, but hopefully their brilliance will rub off on me.

Who's queen?
  Who's head ghost out of the three, would you say?

Probably Boadicea, I have to say. Being seven foot tall, naked and beautiful, I think hats have got to go off to her.

Has the nudity been a problem in the studio?

No, no, it's been very welcome actually. If only (laughs). Yeah, I'm probably the least influential of the three of them because I just go around spouting poetry the whole time and getting on people's wick. Being really self-indulgent and loving the sound of my own voice, which is obviously very far from myself.

Building Byron
  How would you like to see Byron develop in future instalments?

On reading up on him, he's described throughout as being a sexual athlete who jumps from bed to bed of the English aristocracy and thoroughly pisses them all off.

He ends up being ostracised because of it and goes away to Greece, which is where he dies. So yes, maybe a bit of that, maybe a bit of bed-hopping would be in order - if ghosts can get up to that kind of thing. I'm sure they can.

Past master
  Would you have enjoyed living in the 1830s?

They certainly knew how to dress back then. It was all so extravagant, wasn't it? I'd probably enjoy that, all the big capes, and riding horses as well would be a lot of fun.

That's if you're rich, of course. There was so much poverty, and that would be the downside of it all, that there was so much disease and plagues and people dying everywhere, and just real rank poverty. So that's probably what I would miss - the cleanliness that we have today. The things you just take for granted, that the water's safe and that you're not going to die by the time you're 30.

It's a kind of magic
  If you could have a magical power, which one would you want?

It would be really good fun to fly, I think. It would be good to make people have to tell the truth. To be able to see when people are lying, that would be quite interesting. Yeah but flying, that would be amazing.

Anybody particularly you'd like to get the truth out of?

No... Politicians. That would be very interesting - to see what they actually mean.

Slay time
  Are you more a science fiction man or a horror man?

Horror. I love slasher films. I'd love to be in a slasher film. That would be really cool. Or something like Buffy. It looks like they're having a real laugh on that, with a bunch of youngsters. I don't know how they could not have a good time. Yes, something like that would be fine.

How have you found working with Amber and Chris from Buffy?

They're making a really good drama. Obviously Amber is coming from the massive sci-fi drama thing which she has going on in the States. She's bringing that here and it's translating really well and she's gotten a really good cast together who are making it authentic. I mean, you've got Leslie Phillips for God's sake!

It couldn't be any more classically archetypal English than that, so yeah, it's working very well.