The star returns in Hammer horror, Doctor Jekyll, but while the character maybe trans, she doesn't plan to play cisgender female roles in the future. Report by Nelsonj. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 I was very disappointed to see when you did your marathons all those years ago, you ran
00:03 past my house and didn't notice. I was delighted you were raising all that money, but I was
00:09 furious that I missed the opportunity.
00:10 How did you know it was right by your house?
00:11 I just saw the footage. I was like...
00:13 Oh, right.
00:14 ...running down that street. I was like, "There's my house."
00:16 But were you in at that time?
00:18 I'm guessing I was in. I was a kid, so I didn't have many places to go.
00:22 How old were you? Actually, no, this is not to do with Jack Lamar. I can't remember.
00:25 I'm not sure when it was. I can't remember. I think I was like early teenage years, but
00:29 I live in... Well, my parents live in Penwith and Preston, so when you kind of came down
00:33 Liverpool Road, this is very niche content for people watching this interview.
00:37 Well, what we can take from this is that that running, that determination to do things is...
00:41 I broke into Pinewood Studios when I was 15. I wanted to do film, so when Joe comes and
00:48 says, "Do you want to go this route?" This is a great role to play.
00:50 Funnily enough, that exactly was my segue.
00:53 Yes, exactly. I should have been trying to break into Bray Studios, shouldn't I? That
00:57 would have been it. They probably would have said, "Just come on in," whereas Pinewood
01:00 was saying, "Stay out."
01:03 Horror is not my starting place in films. The extreme horror, I really can't quite get
01:11 my hands around, even though I have been in Hannibal Lecter TV series, and that was pretty
01:16 out there. But this is great.
01:19 Hammer came to join us in the middle of making it, and Joe wrote the story to me. He said,
01:23 "It's open cast, and it's considered a man, considered a woman, a trans Jekyll and Hyde."
01:29 So Nina Jekyll was in there. I suggested Rachel.
01:32 Yes, it's fair.
01:33 Rachel Hyde, which seems to fit quite nicely.
01:35 It does. It works very well.
01:36 It gives it a lovely color. There is a Rachel I know who I've told her.
01:41 Yes, so these two characters in one character, and instead of changing so that the audience
01:46 go, "Ah, now that's Hyde. Ah, that's Jekyll. That's Hyde." You can't tell.
01:52 I think, I'm not sure if I could exactly tell how I was tracking it in each scene, because
01:59 sometimes she just appears and starts talking in a way, and it's just there for a moment,
02:04 and then it's away. So hopefully we keep them guessing, the audience guessing.
02:08 Yes, definitely. That is definitely the game I want to play.
02:10 Why Susie? Why Eddie Izzard as this face, this brand, to be involved in a story like
02:17 this?
02:18 I mean, it's interesting. You bring up, obviously, Eddie's absurdity kind of comedy, the surrealist
02:25 kind of areas that it goes. So it feels like there's a natural place to kind of, a natural
02:29 fit almost. There was a join there that I could see. But also as well, I was just looking
02:34 for something to kind of go, "If we're going to tell this story, we want to do it something
02:39 unique and find a new way of doing it." And it's usually, it's obviously very traditionally
02:44 played by a very particular type of actor and a very particular type of role. And it
02:48 was like, "Let's do something a little bit more." And we were looking for various different
02:53 people. It was a question of like, "How do I find the version of this film that I want
02:59 to, the version of the story that I want to tell?" And as soon as Eddie was suggested,
03:05 it was like, "This is brilliant. This makes sense."
03:07 Yeah, I mean, I've been doing dramatic roles. Drama was my first love. Having gone through
03:11 it, got better known for comedy. And then after how many, 30, 40 films now, just playing
03:18 dramatic roles. It's interesting. And there is a certain place where a dark comedy can
03:25 sit underneath this role or maybe any horror, particularly a hammer horror. So I was not,
03:32 just playing the drama of the character. But it does occasionally get quite weirdly, darkly
03:37 odd. She says odd things. Rachel says odd things. And I'm not, I wasn't in control
03:43 of that. That was nothing to do with me. She just said, "Because when I let go, it just
03:48 goes wherever it goes." And Joe had the right as director to cut, leave, because it gets
03:55 grandly operatic towards the end. And so that's where Rachel really takes control. And so
04:00 we were just living it, me and Scott. We were living it together on the stage, just being
04:05 there and having this final denouement.
04:08 I should ask, as far as I'm aware, this is your first role as a woman, as in the playing-
04:14 As a trans woman.
04:15 As a trans woman.
04:16 No. Second, second to come out. Third, I've only done three or four. There's one in Chaos,
04:25 I'm playing a trans character as well. So I will play straight roles or trans roles.
04:30 Won't play cis woman roles.
04:31 I just wondered, did that affect your preparation or experience acting in any way, shape or
04:39 form in the way that the character moves or anything like that?
04:43 No, not at all, because the interesting thing is Nina Jekyll is trans, Rachel Hyde, the
04:49 strange thing, is cohabiting in this trans body, but it has nothing to do with the dark
04:56 power that is Hyde and where that's come from and how that's traveled through. It doesn't
05:03 matter who it is, which I think is beautiful. And it's the way that casting, 21st century
05:07 casting is, it doesn't matter, LGBTQ, the color of your skin, it doesn't matter. What's
05:15 going to happen to that person? And your sexuality or your ethnic background should be a background
05:22 and your foreground is what is happening to that human being. So that all human beings
05:26 of the world can interact and see themselves in that character. What would it be if that
05:30 happened to me, if I had this darkness going through me?