My copy of Being Human Series 4 arrived today, here are some excerpts from the interview with Damien!

http://damienmolony.org/2012/04/21/being-human-series-4-dvd-blu-ray-damien-molony-extras-and-interview/

BEING HUMAN SERIES 4 DVD / BLU-RAY | DAMIEN MOLONY EXTRAS AND INTERVIEW

The Being Human Series Four DVD / Blu-Ray has numerous incredible extras, those including Damien Molony will be sure to please his fans! In the deleted scenes there are more Hal press ups ( I counted 40, but with an epic twist ) an intriguing dialogue between Hal and Annie, a scene on the street with Hal and Tom, and an interview with the man himself .

In the interview Damien is so animated and enthusiastic about playing Hal, it is an honour to have such insights from the actor who brought him to life.

Here are some excerpts!

On Hal ‘teetering on the edge’:

“Teetering on the edge and clinging on by your fingernails is great fun to play because no matter what the scene you’re doing at the moment, there is always something in your head going ‘appetite, appetite, appetite, appetite; feed me feed me feed me’ which is what vampires are all about really..always at the back of their mind there is this terror, and for Hal it’s this horrendous past that he’s been running and running and running from, and he’s incredibly remorseful about it and he feels very very guilty.”

“Kirby the ghost, comes in in episode 4 and says, ’I met quite a lot of your friends in purgatory’ and that for Hal is a real slap in the face, because obviously you think someone’s dead and they’ve just moved on and they’ve gone. But those people are still in purgatory suffering because of things that Hal has done.”

“Every morning that he wakes up, he knows that could be the day that things could go wrong again and it’s that idea of Hal trying to stay focussed and trying to utilize the different routines that Leo has given him to stay safe, because of the horrendous things that could happen if he goes slightly off track.”

“If he lets any sort of emotion in, or lets any change into his daily routine then everything could just collapse around him and he could be suddenly back, killing, slaughtering, like he did when he was preying around Eastern Europe during the 1600s tearing women, tearing everything, that he could get his hands on, apart.”

On Mitchell:

“Mitchell was just a fantastic character and Aidan did such an amazing job with it, he was such a cool vampire.”

“When I was auditioning for it I was like, are they replacing like for like? do they want an irish vampire to replace him? Because I was quite nervous about that. But they told me that Hal is stiff upper lip, very posh, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old, and is coming from a completely different place than Mitchell.”

“As I read the script it kind of gives you a little more confidence because Hal is so different to Mitchell, Hal is not cool, he’s not cool at all god bless him! So I was relieved a little bit to read that, because to see an amazing character like that – I know the fans absolutely loved Mitchell, I mean I love Mitchell as well – you’d be devastated to see your favourite character go, and to see someone try and replace that is very frustrating, so I was happy to see how different Hal and Mitchell actually were.”

On Playing Hal:

“It’s very exciting, it’s so much fun when you get the blood on and you get the teeth in, your like, ‘oh my god this is amazing, I can’t believe this is my day job!’.”

“Hal goes around pillaging and raping and he’s just so evil and so malicious, and then you kind of you flip reverse it to something that is so completely different, he’s just so afraid with contact with human beings, he’s so afraid of beautiful women because that’s what he was so used to, he was so used to any beautiful women that he saw he would just dive on them.”

“It’s great fun playing the two polarities of the character. And especially the worst time for Hal is when he thinks everything is going alright – obviously this house everything bad happens in this house in Barry – so stuff is just thrown at him and a lot of it is how he deals with it and he relies so much on Annie and so much on Tom to keep him safe, because he’s so terrified about what could happen.”

On Hal and Tom

“Hal and Tom are just absolutely destined to hate each other. But, I think because they’re both on their own – Tom is on his own he’s got no more Mcnair, Hal is on his own – they have to forge a brotherhood together and from about the end of episode 3, you actually start to see the little twinkling of respect for each other and, not a love, but a real kind of brotherhood.”

“They have some very funny scenes together in the café, where Hal is chopping lettuce and he’s just so afraid of getting germs or anything and Tom ceoms in and he’s ‘chop chop chop chop chop’ and Hal I think learns from Tom, Tom learns from Hal and they’re both horrendous with women, so I think it’s very, very funny.”

 

On Hal and Women

“Hal is used to the dowry system and the classical 18th century style of courting and I think he finds modern techniques and modern flirting absolutely disgusting; you should never say to the lady that you love her, never say that you’d like, you know. You absolutely treat them with respect and treat them with dignity and that kind of thing – and you know, that’s absolutely the right way to do it.”

“Tom is more innocent and Tom has been coached by Annie a little bit, you know, ‘just go in there, tell her you love her and see what happens’, get her drunk and try and shag her, and that is just not the way to do things according to Hal.”

“In episode six they both meet women, and it’s a disaster, you just see the two of us, complete losers in love, trying to help each other out and two wrongs don’t make a right in that respect because they both give each other horrendous advice and it just crashes and burns so horrendously. It’s very very funny.”

On Mr Snow

“Mr Snow is one of the greatest characters ever written. We all read episode seven and it just said, ‘Mr Snow emerges from the dark and says, “who’s hungry”’…and when we found out that Mark Gatiss was playing him, there was just so much excitement all around the set.”

“On the first day I got given the character of Hal, there was a documentary by Mark on BBC3 about vampires and vampire films and I went out and bought every single film that he mentioned on it to see, to research vampires, what it was like to be a vampire, that kind of thing, so I was just obviously in absolute awe of him.”

“Mr Snow’s so evil, so dirty, so ruthless, and so lethal and what’s so great about the character Mr Snow is that he exists in all vampires, in their blood, in that they have transformed into vampires with.. n element of Mr Snow’s DNA, so ultimately we all have this connection with Mr Snow.”

“He kind of controls us, so even with his eyes, if you make eye contact with Mr Snow, suddenly you’re in his grasp and you’re in his control. So the first couple of scenes I did with him I couldn’t look him in the eye, because I was terrified because he just stares at you, he just looks at you, he’ll rub your fingernail, it’s such a little detail but it’s so powerful..he’s a very, very scary guy.”

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I can make no apologies for this being entirely Damien / Hal centric, (the clue is in the site name) but have to say that all of the extras are extra amazing, most notably for me producer Phil Trethowan wishing out loud for a Being Human film (Oh my..can you IMAGINE?!) with a premiere including all the past cast, Michael Socha saying “sugarlumps” and in response to the question “so the fans have another reason to watch this season?” his reply: “Yes, Damien Molony”.

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Check out the official BBC Being Human site here
Get your copy of Being Human Series 4 here