Perry Benson Talks Somers Town - page 2

10 months ago 12th Jan 10:17

And what about the kids in the film what were they like to work with?

I had worked with Tommo before on This Is England so I knew him quite well, which helps as well even though you are creating a new character. And Piotr, the other kid, was brilliant and very grown up for his age, he was only fourteen, he seemed very mature for his years and when he first arrived at the beginning of the shoot he could hardly speak any English but after three weeks he was fluent which was amazing. But it as a case of having to learn something, when you are chucked into the deep end you have to I suppose.

Your other film that doing the rounds at the moment is Mum and Dad can you tell me a bit about that?

Mum and Dad is a very brutal horror film, it's quite different from Somers Town, and it opened on Boxing Day in about fifteen cinemas. But it is the first film that Revolver that have dealt with, they are the distributor, that is a multi-platform release so on the same day it's released on DVD, able to download and you can buy it on Sky download.

It is quite important for me as an actor and it is the main reason that I took something that was quite a departure from many of the roles that I have played, which are down trodden comedic parts.

You began your career in television so how does working in TV and movies compare?

Well I still do work in television and I have just finished a very small part for the BBC in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perin but that enabled me to write a song for it so that was the main reason why I did it, which I sung on the George Lamb Show on BBC Radio 6 yesterday called Mad Mum.

I suppose, from an actors point of view, it all depends on the budget because sometimes the budget can be exactly the same, like the BBC project that was quite well funded, so it's probably better funded than the film Mum and Dad and indeed Somers Town.

The role of Henry Livingstone in You Rang M'Lord is still the role that you are best known for did you ever expect that this would be a role that people would be talking about twenty years after you first started?

Well I suppose that it is a very strong role and David Croft and Jimmy Perry are very good writers so you expect it to live on I really enjoyed working with them, and everyone involved, it was a really nice time for me.

From the conception and the pilot right through to the end I probably worked with them for about ten years, and I worked on Hi-De-Hi as well, and after that David Croft wrote something called O, Doctor Beeching! which I worked on as well. I got to drive steam trains which I wasn't all that interested in before I did that but now I have a great interest in the whole railway thing, not in a divvy way, but I really liked it.

And how demanding is it when you are filming a television series?

I have only done things like that which last three months at the most and it is quite a demanding job but it's like filming, when you do a film, it's such a tight schedule like Somers Town that was supposed to be a short and we filmed over two and a half to three weeks and Shane Meadows would think nothing of working seventeen hours. But you know that you are getting something done and you can see the progress. It was supposed to be a short film Somers Town and he shot so much that it turned into a feature.

And how did you prepare for your role in Somers Town or any role?

Apart from basing it on my family and people that I knew, which gave me something to go on rather than just plucking it out of fresh air. I did another film for Shane called This Is England where I just came straight off of a set, I was working for ITV on a hidden camera show that never saw the light of day called There's A German On My Sunbed, I was in Benidorm for twelve weeks and they were workshopping so I never got the opportunity to do that.

I just turned up on the set and they turned the camera on and that was that there was no script or character in the script, no there was a script of sorts but my character wasn't mentioned, so I had to fly really.

What is it about independent movies that you seem to be drawn to?

Well I would really like big budget people to give me a job but they don't and it's just one of those things. I would love to do a Merchant Ivory type film or another director that I really like is Joe Wright, I've known him since he was a little boy, so if he could give me a job I would be very grateful.

Finally what is next for you?

I'm going to be doing a series of This Is England in the new year for channel four, which Shane Meadows is at present writing, it will be all of the same cast that were in it before, including Thomas Turgoose. And Shane is keeping control so it won't be a watered down effort like Lock Stock, which I love, but when they did the series unfortunately it went off the rails a bit and Shane says that he wants to make it into a British Sopranos, which I would love if it was, but those are lofty ambitions but we will all try our best. I'm promoting Mum and Dad at the moment and the DVD release of Somers Town which is on the 12th January.

Somers Town is released is out now on DVD

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw