The Monday Interview
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Monday Interview |
| Interviewer: | Pat Jenkins, Janet Ellicott, and Ann Wigmore |
| Interviewee: | Paul Darrow |
| Date(s): | October 20, 1980 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom(s): | Blake's 7 |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Monday Interview is a 1980 interview with Paul Darrow, the actor who portrays Kerr Avon in Blake's 7.
The interview is long, and conducted in the style of what would be published in a magazine or newspaper, rather than as a transcript.
The interview is interesting for many reasons, one of which it took place before the last season was filmed.
This interview was written by Ann Wigmore and published in The Paul Darrow Zine.
"On Monday, October 20th, Pat Jenkins, Janet Ellicott and I (Ann Wigmore) went along to the National Film Theatre, to meet Paul Darrow, a meeting which was certain, however it turned out, to leave us all slightly 'mazed'. What follows is the result of that meeting ..."
"Much of what Paul told us during that time was private. [snipped]
Since the Liberator Popular Front are printing this interview in the more usual fashion, we have elected to try to give you a verbal sketch of Pau1, based on what he told us - his attitude to his work, his interests and ambitions. Those of you who have met him may like to compare your impressions with ours. Those who haven't, I hope, will gain some idea from this account of what he is 1ike."
Some Excerpts
Paul's view of the character he has portrayed for three series was a considered, understanding one. Avon, he admitted, is cynical but not, in his opinion bitter. A little hard to imagine after all the let-downs which the character on screen has experienced. According to Paul he (Avon) "Accepts the situation as it is and reacts accordingly. Perhaps not necessarily in a way that anybody else might think is, say, moral or anything, but he gets out of the situation. It's as simple as that." Paul sees no 'special' (i.e. romantic) situation existing between Avon and Cally - at least, not yet. Thus putting paid to quite a few fan stories, I'm sure ... As he put it, "he'd kill her if it was necessary. He would. If she got in the way, he'd kill her. If she doesn't, he quite likes her". However, he did go on to say "Interesting to note that the only person he really likes on board the ship is an alien". So perhaps there's some hope yet? Of the relationship between Avon and Vila, Paul's opinions seem to echo those of some of the fans: "It sort of faded away a bit. I don't know quite why. I think because, without any disrespect to the writers, they didn't really develop him (Vila) and when they did, they went in the wrong direction." A statement with which most people who are long-time viewers of "B1akers Seven" would probably agree. This is no reflection on Michael Keating's skilled and lively portrayal.
[Speculations on Avon's love life] ... led us to the interesting thought that Avon has not yet shown a weakness, one weakness deep and strong enough that he could be brought down with, and Paul's only doubt about that situation seemed to be that he didn't really think that Raquel Welch would be free to take the part of the weakness! He seemed to be considering Pat's suggestion that Avon's one weakness is Blake, a belief shared by many "Blake's Seven" fans, but his comment on the relationship between the two was that: "One of the things he didn't respect Blake for, of course, was that when he had the opportunity, he didn't finish Travis off. That wasn't entirely Blake's fault, that was in the script. But we got him in the end". His opinion of the character of Tarrant was, as expected, sympathetic, and with Steven Pacey "in mind." As he put it, the episode "City at the Edge of the World" where Vila fell in love, would have been more effective as an episode for Tarrant, to generate sympathy for the character in the audience's mind. Vila, Paul said, already has that sympathy. He went on to talk about the character in relation to Avon: "There are some people who work well in a time - you can't have Starsky without Hutch - and I think that applies to Vila. Vila needs someone to work off. It can be either Avon or - mainly Avon, actually, I think, because with Avon's cynicism, he's hard, you've then got the opposite side of the coin. But he's still there, (Vila), he survives. So he has that in common with Avon. He's a survivor. And come the showdown, he'll be on Avon's coat-tails because he knows that's his best chance. So he's nobody's fool. I think perhaps they might develop that a bit more".
Paul explained one mystery to us, the reason behind the destruction of the Liberator (which I, for one, found rather sad). It turned out to have a typically practical explanation: "Well," he said, "It was getting a bit tatty towards the end because it got bashed around a bit and we'd had one or two explosions on it and so on. So I think that might have been one of the reasons why they decided to blow up the Liberator and start all over again with another space-ship, which I understand they are going to do". With his next sentence, Paul drew a unanimous chorus of groans. " ... And also, as Vere (Lorrimer) said to me, we're going to have hew guns that go 'Bang'. Well, the others looked a bit like hair-driers, didn't they ?". This was the moment where Pat reminded us of the description of the guns in the highly amusing cartoon hook, "Drake's Seven" - Perspex tubes with a light bulb in the end, to which Paul added; "Which is exactly what they were". He went on to say, "When I killed my girlfriend, Anna, in the episode (Rumours of Death), I was so close to her with this gun that would disintegrate anything else. I said, 'You mean I don't kill her outright? That close? What a terrible shot he must be'. And they said, 'Well, yes, but for the dramatic effect, she's got to die slowly".
Pat brought up the interesting point about the secondary characters in "B1ake's Seven", the constant surprise that each and every one of them seemed to work so well. Paul's answer was: "Terry Nation and Chris Boucher were the two men who knew most about the series, so inevitably, apart from the.odd one that came in, like Tanith (Lee)'s, because she's a fan, their scripts were probably the best, simply on the basis that they knew what was going on, and so they could create these characters, whereas if you were asked to write a script for it, not having seen many episodes, you could bring in a character and suddenly find a situation developing where that character was not realistic enough, or just didn't fit in, and would overbalance the script". He expanded upon the point. "Chris (Boucher) was the script editor, of course. I would like for Chris to write some more. I think the most he's written for one series is three, or possibly four. Three, I think. If he could write six, and say have Tanith write three or four, and then Terry maybe write two or three, then maybe you've got it. And then it's very tight. Whereas if you bring in a dozen writers, unless they know the subject, they're going to reel it off as if it's "Z-Cars".
This understanding of the problems, not only of scriptwriting but of the world of televised SF in general was underlined by what Paul said next: "I think that the powers-that-be don't realise the effect that the science-fiction genre has on people, and I think that if they were made more aware of that, then I think the quality of work and the liaison between the people who watch it and the people who actually do it would be better. I'll try and use any influence I've got to make that better. About your (The LPF & Horizon's) Convention, for example. I mean, it would be nice to guarantee that every single member of the cast would be there. There's no reason why they shouldn't be. And why shouldn't they .... I don't know when they're going to do this next series - as I say, I haven't really been officially asked - but assuming it's done, your Convention's in May. Well they're bound to have one episode by then in the can. Well, why can't they, for the fans, show a special preview ? I mean, that would guarantee a full house, wouldn't it? The Producer says, 'Well, okay, we'll just show - if we haven't got the full episode, we'll show you a rough-cut. Let's show you the filming'. It would be interesting, wouldn't it?"
Away from his work, Paul's interests are many and varied. Like most artistes, music figures in his life and his tastes are quite catholic, as he put it, with Elvis Presley being a great favourite: "I'm not mad on all the groups", he said. "I don't understand them. Maybe people said that about my generation, I don't know. Presley, I thought, was the King. Still is." Paul told us that his favourite Elvis song, or one of them, is "Suspicion". "And there was another one - "Surrender" (Here he treated us to a short burst of "Surrender"). I like all his songs, he was great, he had something a lot of people haven't got, and he had an arrogance. Curiously enough, Jackie Pearce said to me one day - in fact while we were doing "Terminal" and I got up in that costume, and I played a scene with her - "I know what you're doing", she said, "You're Elvis". And she was right, absolutely right. She'd hit the nail on the head, because when that costume was designed, I said, "Can you develop it a bit this way?". What I'd really like to do is grease the hair back". And he said, "It's Elvis". And he designed it on that basis, and I think there's a hint of him in Avon. I get all my heroes in" he added with one of those smiles, well-remembered from ... well, you name it."
It was evident to us that Paul is an avid reader (Avid readers can recognise one another from great distances ...) Paul had shown us this already to some extent, by arriving to meet us carrying a copy of "Smiley's People" by John Le Carre. To Janet's question, "When you get time, what kind of books do you read?" and the following question, "Do you read a lot of science-fiction ?" he gave us a long and enthusiastic answer: "No. Now, that's curious, because people do send them to me. I find some of them very difficult to get through, actually. I liked Asimov very much, a couple I read of his, and one or two others. I've read one of Tanith's (Lee) actually, a recent one, which curiously enough, she wrote about me, that is to say, Avon. She called the character Parl Dro. You can't get much closer to my name than that can you?". She very kindly dedicated it to me, and it's called "Kill the Dead", and it's a sort of ghost-story. I think it's worth reading. I read it, I thought it was knock-out, actually, I was very pleased with that. I think she's so talented. I quite like reading her work. And she says that I should read Michael Moorcock she says he's pretty good."
When I shot Travis' hand off in the first series, that's a pinch from "Magnificent Seven" because Blake says to me, "Good shot, Avon" and I reply, "Bad shot, I was aiming for his head", which is a direct pinch from "The Magnificent Seven". And another one was a pinch from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", which, when I turn round to Blake, who'd gone off thinking about something - we had to pick him up on a random teleport - (The episode "Trial") and I had to say to him ... he apologised for dropping us in the rubbish again, ... and I said, "Stick to action, Blake", "that's what you're good at", which was again a pinch from "Butch Cassidy", because he says in that, "Stick to thinking, Butch". So we would have liked to developed that. That was the relationship with Gareth. He was Butch Cassidy and I was the Sundance Kid. It didn't quite work out like that, but it would've been nice ... originally it was going to be a "Dirty Dozen" in Space, because we're all criminals, you know".
That statement caused me to comment that this fact tended to be forgotten, by which I was referring to those scriptwriters who seemed to have lost the direction of the series and the characters, forcing them to go off at various tangents which people who have watched the series from the beginning could hardly recognise as the "Blake's Seven" they started out with.
"From the Federation point of view", Paul said, "We're terrorists. If you look at it strictly from their point of view, we're the I.R.A. I tend never to forget that, so whenever a Director says, "Oh dear me, you can't kick him in the crotch or anything like that", I say, "Well, I am a criminal you know". And he says, "Oh, alright".
Pat asked Paul to consider something which, as science-fiction fans, we had wondered if Paul had ever though of: "You've now become famous as Avon, and you're probably not aware of the extent to which science-fiction heroes are absolutely immortal. Does it ever strike you that in thirty years time, people will ... not have you type-cast as Avon ... but you will be immortal as Avon?"
The answer which he gave her was another small surprise: "I don't think you can knock being immortal, can you? That's rather nice. That wouldn't worry me in the slightest. I'd be quite pleased. It'd be marvellous in thirty years time if somebody came up to me and said, "I remember you as Avon". It's nice to know that you've given people sufficient pleasure that they'll remember it thirty years later".
"Oh yes," Pat assured him, "that happens in science-fiction all the time".
"Well, I think that's great," said Paul.