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?
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