Nicholas
Pegg, keen horticulturist, although for much of this year has been extremely
busy updating his David Bowie Anthology – and if you haven’t got a copy yet, go
out and buy one, or put it on your Santa list, is also known by the Whovian
world as a Dalek operator responsible in Dalek history for how many ‘kills’ was
it, Nicholas?
But
the question everyone from IMDB to the PT office wanted to know was, his
connection to Simon Pegg!
Hi
Nicholas.
Nicholas:
Hello there.
Just
to clear something up, you’re no relation at all to Simon Pegg, another Doctor
Who actor, are you? I thought we could lay this one to bed now.
Nicholas: How nice to get a chance to clear this
up. Yes, as a matter of fact Simon Pegg and I are identical twin brothers. No,
seriously, we’re not! As far as I know we’re not related at all. I think we’ve
only ever met once, and briefly at that. When Big Finish recorded their first
set of Paul McGann Doctor Who
episodes about 15 years ago, I was acting in one of the stories and Simon was
in another, so we were ships that passed in the studio one day. Nice guy.
People do occasionally get
us mixed up, and that’s understandable of course. It’s a fairly unusual
surname, and as far as I know Simon and I are the only two Peggs registered
with Equity, the actors’ union. So every now and then I get a tweet from
somebody congratulating me on Hot Fuzz
or my brilliant performance as Scotty in the Star Trek films, and I have to gently point out that they’ve got
the wrong Pegg. Sometimes it can be quite funny. A few months ago I got a
rather indignant tweet from someone who said, ‘Dear Mr Pegg, if you ever write
another Star Trek, please please
please can we have some proper character development for Lt Uhura?’ So I
tweeted back saying, ‘I’ll certainly consider that, and you may also wish to
mention it to Simon Pegg’ – with a smiley, of course. I’m happy to say that
they took it in good spirit. I wonder if Simon Pegg ever gets any tweets taking
him to task about his Dalek operating or his David Bowie book.
It’s even happened
professionally once or twice. A few years ago I did a couple of episodes of Doc
Martin. The director was a very nice chap indeed, and of course he didn’t
actually think I was Simon Pegg, but during the first few hours of the shoot he
accidentally called me Simon instead of Nick a couple of times. I didn’t bother
correcting him – I didn’t need to, because each time he did it, he looked
baffled with himself for an instant, and then apologised. The third time it
happened, he got quite exasperated with himself and said, ‘Look, I’m really
sorry, this is so rude of me, getting your name wrong – why on earth do I keep
calling you Simon?’ To which I replied, ‘Well, because there are two Peggs in
Equity, and you have very sensibly hired the cheap one.’ Got a good laugh from
Martin Clunes and the crew!
I’ve
been researching for the interview (the above was one of curiosity, plus I read
a link at the bottom of IMDB also asking the question), you’re a very big fan
of David Bowie, so much so that, that you’ve written an enormous (and updated)
book called The Complete David Bowie, which must have taken a considerable amount
of time to put together. Did Bowie himself ever collaborate with you?
Nicholas: I’m a huge Bowie fan, and my book The Complete David Bowie is something of
a labour of love. In fact, I’ve spent most of this year working on the revised
and updated edition which has just been published. While researching, and
writing the book over many years, I have been fortunate enough to speak to many
of Bowie’s closest collaborators, but in answer to your question: no, David
himself never made any direct contribution to the book. Nor did I ever ask him
to. I knew him well enough to know that that would not have been his way – he
preferred to stand back from people’s interpretations of his work and let them
do their own thing. Even with something like the V&A’s Bowie exhibition
which has been touring the world for the last three years, David didn’t make a
hands-on contribution. He gave the museum’s curators access to his huge archive
of costumes and other memorabilia, and then he stood back and let them create
their own vision.
I must add, however, and
with undying gratitude, that David Bowie was always tremendously kind and
supportive about my book. It was first published back in 2000, and it has been
through several updated editions since then – this new edition is the seventh –
and every time a fresh edition was published, we would always send a package of
copies to Bowie’s office in New York, and David would always write a kind,
funny dedication in one of those copies and post it back to me. As you can
imagine, those signed copies are among my most treasured possessions. So yes,
David was always unfailingly kind to me and to my book. In my opinion he was
the greatest artist of his generation – and, as countless people will tell you,
he was a gentleman as well.
Have
you always been a fan of David Bowie, and what era of his music was your
favourite?
Nicholas: I loved Bowie’s music from a very early
age. The first single that I ever went out and bought with my own pocket money
was ‘Sound And Vision’ in 1977, and after that I loved ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ and
‘Let’s Dance’ and so on, but I didn’t really become a hardcore fan until my
student days in the late eighties. That’s when I started discovering all the
early albums that I was too young to remember, and getting into obscure
rarities and all the rest of it. I honestly don’t have a favourite period of Bowie’s
music. I love all of it. And I do mean all of it, including the very early
stuff from the 1960s that a lot of people don’t bother with. Naturally I adore the
classic albums like Hunky Dory and Low and Scary Monsters and all the rest, but I’m just as much in love with
lesser-known things like The Buddha of
Suburbia and 1.Outside from the
1990s. And his later work was just extraordinary. I think his final album, Blackstar, is a masterpiece that stands right
up there with the very best of his work.
To
many, like me, you’re known as one of the Dalek Operators on Doctor Who’s era
from 2005 onwards, but you’re also a known actor for other roles too. What came
first, the Dalek role or your other acting roles?
Nicholas: I trained as an actor – I went to drama
school after university. So being a Dalek is just one acting job among many.
It’s a great job and a very special one, and I love it to bits – but no, it didn’t
come first. Over the years I’ve done everything from Shakespeare to pantomime
and all points in between. In fact, the first two jobs I got after I left drama
school in the early nineties were the title role in a theatre production of Hamlet, which is a dream role for any
actor, and a tiny, tiny part in EastEnders
– blink and you’d miss me. I shot the EastEnders
episodes while I was rehearsing the Hamlet
production. So my baptism as a professional actor involved two very different
ends of the acting spectrum. They were both great experiences in their own way,
and not a bad start for a young actor, I guess!
 |
| Nicholas is the cyberleader with the black handles |
The Dalek gig first reared
its head quite early on in my career – the first time I operated a Dalek was
back in 1993, for the documentary 30
Years in the TARDIS. This would have been about a year or so after I
graduated from drama school, and a friend of mine knew the director, Kevin
Davies. So, one day I got a phone call out of the blue from Kevin, who said,
‘I’ve been told that you’d make a good Cyberman.’ To which I immediately
replied that I’d make a terrific Cyberman, of course! So, that was the first
thing I did – I was the Cyberleader coming down the steps in front of St Paul’s
Cathedral, with Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant doing an interview in the
foreground. And then about a week later, Kevin phoned me up again and said,
‘You’re quite tall, but do you think you could fit inside a Dalek?’ Well, I’m
six foot three – but come on, I wasn’t going to say no, was I? I signed up like
a shot! Luckily I soon discovered that I could squeeze into a Dalek quite
comfortably, and a couple of days later I was on Westminster Bridge, operating
a Dalek on camera for the very first time. Kevin also asked me if I could
suggest anyone else to join the Dalek ranks, and I recommended Barnaby Edwards,
who I’d known since university and drama school – so that cold Sunday morning
on Westminster Bridge in 1993 was the first time that both Barnaby and I were
Daleks. It was Halloween, I remember. Over the next few days we shot some more
Dalek sequences in the studio at Television Centre, and that was that.
Then fast forward to 2004,
when Doctor Who was revived and
started shooting with Christopher Eccleston, and back we came to operate the
Daleks again. We’ve been doing it ever since. And what fun we have. So many
happy times. So I guess we owe it all to Kevin Davies really. We’re still good
friends to this day. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago I had a drink with
Kevin and his son Liam, who was a baby when we were filming the 30 Years documentary. Now he’s a
talented young man following in his dad’s footsteps in film and TV production.
Does that make me feel old? Nah, it just makes me feel happy.
In
your role as a Dalek, knowing that Barnaby Edwards zapped Captain Jack Harkness
in Parting of the Ways, and zapped 10th in Stolen Earth, and not
sure if Daleks chalk up major hits, like Smith & Jones chalked up road kill
in one of their sketches, but has your Dalek been responsible for any major Who
‘kills’ in its ‘claim to fame’. If indeed Daleks have claims to fame.
Nicholas: Well now, hold on a minute, because I
think you’ll find that I zapped Captain Jack as well! There were three of us
lined up in a row: Barnaby in the middle, flanked by David Hankinson on one
side, and yours truly on the other. We all shot that pesky Harkness humanoid
together. So I think we can chalk that one up as a group effort. The same goes
for Penelope Wilton in The Stolen Earth
– that was a three-way extermination by the same three Dalek operators.
As for
definite kills of my own, let me think… oh yes, I’m pretty sure that I was the
one who exterminated Nisha Nayar through that barricade in The Parting of the Ways. Barnaby got Jo Stone-Fewings, and I got
Nisha. Then I was Dalek Sec in Army of
Ghosts and Doomsday, so anyone who
gets exterminated by him in that battle scene, I can chalk that one up. What
was next?
 |
| Nicholas was Dalek on the Right of Dalek Sec Hybrid |
Daleks in Manhattan. Well,
it was me and Hankinson who took the Sec hybrid to the theatre in chains and
exterminated him on stage. You’re right, it was definitely Barnaby who shot
David Tennant in The Stolen Earth, so
that’s a good chalk-up for him.
In Victory
I was the one who exterminated those two squaddies in Churchill’s bunker, so
that’s two more for me. I can’t believe I’m doing this. What’s next? Did we
even exterminate anyone in Asylum? I
can’t remember. I can remember Rusty careering out of that corridor on a rope and
crashing into me. That was pretty hair-raising. Barnaby and I both exterminated
quite a few stuntmen in The Day of the
Doctor. And I was the Supreme Dalek in the Magician’s Apprentice story, so I’m going to claim a big chalk-up
for Missy and Clara there. Except we didn’t actually exterminate them, did we?
Drat.
You’ve
written and directed several Doctor Who stories for Big Finish. Which was your
favourite and why?
Nicholas: I don’t really have favourites. I find
that very hard to do, especially with my own work. It’s like asking a parent to
choose their favourite child! I do have a soft spot for The Spectre of Lanyon Moor, because that’s the one that I wrote as
well as directed. I was lucky enough to get a wonderful cast for that one.
James Bolam was superb in his scenes with dear Maggie Stables, who is sadly no
longer with us. I had acted with both James and Maggie before in separate
theatre plays, and getting them together in that story turned out to be a great
recipe. And of course Lanyon Moor
also gave me the honour of writing and directing the first adventure that Colin
Baker’s Doctor had with the Brigadier. I adored Nick Courtney, as everyone did,
and it was such a pleasure to write and direct for him. What a joyful time that
was.
Among the other ones that
I’ve directed for Big Finish, I have happy memories of directing The Holy Terror over two swelteringly
hot summer days during a London heatwave. That was a great script from Rob
Shearman, who was an old university friend of mine. I had recommended him to
Big Finish as a writer, and in return Gary Russell asked me if I’d like to
direct the first story that Rob wrote for them. I jumped at it, of course. You
couldn’t fail to see it was a brilliant piece of writing. I had another lovely
cast for that one, led by an absolutely outstanding performance from Sam Kelly,
another brilliant actor who has sadly since died.
And then there was Loups-Garoux, and Bang-Bang-a-Boom, and Shada
with Paul McGann and Lalla Ward… yes, I have very happy memories of all of
those stories. Shada was a very
special time. We had yet another wonderful cast, people like Andrew Sachs and
James Fox and Hannah Gordon and Melvyn Hayes and Susannah Harker. We all went
up to Bristol to record it, and stayed in a hotel together for a few nights, so
it was a bit like being away on a location shoot. The social life was just as
much fun as the studio!
You’ve
also appeared as an actor in many Big Finish productions. Do you have any
favourite roles?
Nicholas: One of my favourites as an
actor would have to be the Big Finish production of Treasure Island, which was adapted and directed by Barnaby Edwards.
Tom Baker was playing Long John Silver, and it was a really high-class
production all round: if you haven’t heard it, I do recommend giving it a listen.
The sound design and music are exceptional. Barnaby wrote a very clever script,
and the cast he assembled was a delight. A wonderful actor called Tony Millan
played Blind Pew, and made him every bit as terrifying as I remembered when I
read the book as a boy. I was playing Captain Smollett, a role that was quite
suited to my natural voice, but I also got my teeth into some fruity accent
work on some other characters, which is always great fun to do on audio.
Among
other things I played Black Dog, who’s one of the really scurvy pirates, and in
some other scenes I played a more innocent young pirate called Dick. In fact, there’s
a scene near the end where Dick is shouting across the ocean to Captain
Smollett, and Smollett is calling back, so it’s just me having a conversation
with myself! I think we recorded it in two separate passes, so I didn’t have to
keep switching from one voice to the other. We also had Nicholas Farrell, a
brilliant Shakespearean actor, narrating the story as the grown-up Jim Hawkins.
And young Jim-lad himself was played by a very talented young actor called
Edward Holtom, who had worked with Barnaby in a play at the Globe Theatre. He was
only about 13 at the time we did Treasure
Island, and he gives a really first-rate performance. That character has to
hold the whole story together, and Edward really nails it. I remember Tom Baker
was hugely impressed by him. In fact, I recently cast Edward in another project
that I directed. He’s 17 now, and I think he has a great future ahead of him.
As for acting roles in the
Doctor Who audio adventures… again, lots
of happy times, but a story that springs to mind is The One Doctor, which was a wonderful spoofy script about an
impostor travelling around the universe pretending to be the Doctor, and
conning planets out of money by defeating fake invasions. Brilliant idea. I had
a few different roles in that one, and it was all quite wacky and out-there, so
I was allowed to let my non-existent hair down a bit. In one section I played
an ancient old man who had been a contestant on a galactic quiz show for
centuries, getting every answer right until the Doctor comes along and outwits
him. In another episode I played some sort of drunken reveller who greets the
Doctor at a street party – I can’t quite remember the details, but I do
remember that I based the voice on William Hague, who was the leader of the
Conservative party at the time. It just seemed to fit!
Oh, and I have to mention another nautical escapade in which Barnaby once again
cast me as a ship’s captain. Doctor Who
and the Pirates was a complete hoot. We all got to sing these marvellous
Gilbert and Sullivan parodies, and I played an absolute upper-class twit of a
sea captain. Typecasting again. We had a ball on that one, and it was a
terrific script by Jac Rayner. The silly fun and games counterpointed a really grim
storyline. Proper grown-up writing.
Who
is your favourite Doctor, or do you have several?
Nicholas: What’s the famous line? Splendid chaps,
all of them! Honestly, I don’t have a favourite. Over the years, either on the
TV series or with Big Finish, I’ve been lucky enough to work with every Doctor
from Tom Baker onwards, and I can honestly say that each and every one of them
has been a delight. Tom was ‘my’ Doctor when I was a boy, so he will always
have a special place in my heart, but it has been an absolute joy working with
every Doctor. I adore Peter Davison. And David Tennant. And Sylvester. And
Matt. And all of them!
When
you’re not writing about David Bowie, or Doctor Who, what do you do in your
‘spare time’? Do you have non-writing hobbies, or does writing take up a good
portion of your time, so that you have no spare time?
Nicholas: Working on something like the Bowie
book does take up a huge amount of time. This year, it pretty much blotted out
everything else for six or seven months. But yes, I do have plenty of other
interests, whenever I can grab any spare time. I love getting into my walking boots
and exploring wild places. I don’t mean serious mountaineering with crampons
and ropes and all that; that’s not for me. But I love long walks on remote mountains
and moors in Scotland or the Lake District or the South-West, which is where I
live. And, connected with that, I love visiting ancient sites – stone circles
and burial mounds and so on. I’m a bit of an amateur archaeologist on the side.
In fact, a lot of The Spectre of Lanyon
Moor came out of that: my combined love of walking on the moors in Cornwall
and exploring prehistoric sites along the way.
Gardening is another hobby.
I love it dearly. Being out in the fresh air with a spade and a fork and a bit
of sweat on your brow, giving nature a helping hand. In my experience, there’s
nothing quite like the feeling of fulfilment that comes with sitting in your
garden on a lovely summer’s day, with the flowers blooming, and butterflies
flitting about, and dragonflies hovering over the pond, and thinking to
yourself, I made this. Having said that, you should see the state of my little
garden at the moment. It’s an absolute disgrace. That’s the fault of the David
Bowie book. I slaved away on the book pretty much non-stop from March to
September this year, every day, weekends and all. No time off for good
behaviour, and certainly no time for gardening. You should take a look at the
wilderness outside my back door right now. That’s my next project. Taming the
jungle!
I’m also a very keen
reader. Another downside about writing, for me anyway, is that I can’t read
while I’m doing it. When I spend all day working on my own book, the last thing
I want to do in the evening is read somebody else’s! My brain doesn’t seem to be
wired to make that transition. So that can be quite cruel, because I love
reading so much. Now that my book is all finished and published, I’m getting back
to reading other people’s books in earnest.
What
book are you reading at the moment, and do you prefer fiction over non-fiction,
or vice versa?
Nicholas: Oh, I read all sorts: fiction,
non-fiction, poetry, history, drama, everything. But I suppose fiction is my
big thing. I studied English Literature at university, and there’s nothing I
love more than burying myself in a good novel. I often have several books on
the go at once, as I have now.
At the moment I’m reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which is a novel I’ve only just got
around to, ten years after it won all the awards. I’m also dipping into The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury,
which is a famous short-story anthology that I blush to say I’ve never read before.
I love Bradbury’s prose. So deft and economical. But just today I’ve put both
of those books aside to re-read a novel from my childhood by a wonderful author
called Natalie Babbitt, who sadly died just a couple of weeks ago. She’s best
known for a novel called Tuck Everlasting, but my introduction to her
work was another one, The Search for Delicious.
It’s a book that I read as
a boy and it has stayed with me all my life. Now I’m reading it again, and
rediscovering how beautifully written it is, and how very apt it still is for
the world we find ourselves in today. It’s a fantasy story for children, full
of dwarfs and mermaids and magic, but at the core it’s a tale about the vanity
and folly of humankind, and the madness of crowds. Believe it or not, the
backbone of the plot is about a referendum that gets disastrously out of hand
when it is exploited by a nasty and unscrupulous man driven by his own
ambition. Does that sound in any way familiar? Anyway, that’s The Search for
Delicious by Natalie Babbitt. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I think it’s
one of the most perfectly constructed, moving, funny, haunting novels I have
ever read.
With
your new updated version of The Complete David Bowie now on sale in the shops
and online, what are your plans now? What projects have you got in the pipeline
that you can share with us?
Nicholas: I’m currently working as consultant on
a major new BBC TV documentary about David Bowie, from the same team who made a
programme called David Bowie: Five Years
back in 2013, which I also worked on. The new film is called David Bowie: The Last Five Years, and I
think it’s going to be rather special. I’ve been working with the producer,
Francis Whately, and his team for several months, and it’s in the middle of
production right now. It’s due to air on BBC2 in January.
The other big project that
I’ve been working on for many months, and at long last is nearly ready for
release, is a concept album called Decades
which I have co-written and co-produced with a brilliant singer-songwriter
called David Palfreyman. It’s a double album full of David’s songs, with various
guest singers handling the lead vocals on different tracks – we have vocalists
like the fantastic Sarah Jane Morris, who famously sang ‘Don’t Leave Me This
Way’ with the Communards, and Mitch Benn from The Now Show, and Cassidy Janson who plays Carole King in the West
End musical Beautiful, and all sorts
of other people too – including a superb singer called Eliza Skelton, who is
the daughter of Roy Skelton, who was the voice of the Daleks back in the day.
And in between the songs
on the Decades album, there’s a
linking narrative, and that was one of the places where I came in – I devised
the concept with David, and I wrote and directed all the dialogue sequences. We
have some wonderful actors, including David Warner and Jacqueline Pearce, and
Richard Coyle, Jan Ravens, Simon Greenall – he did a Doctor Who, didn’t he? He was one of the gang in the Abzorbaloff
episode. And playing David Warner’s character as a boy, we have that fine young
actor from Treasure Island who I
mentioned earlier, Edward Holtom. Anyway, the album is all finished now, mixed
and mastered and ready to roll on vinyl and CD and download. We’re just in the
process of sorting out artwork and designs and pressings and all that. Oh, and I
directed the video of the first single too. That was fun. It’s one of the songs
that Sarah Jane Morris sings, and she’s so great in the video. What a
performer. Decades is something that David
Palfreyman and I have been working on for a long time, and I have to say I’m rather
excited about it all. I’m as proud of it as I am of anything I’ve ever done. We’re
looking at early 2017 for the big launch, so watch out for that. So yes, it’s
been quite a busy year, one way and another.
Are
you going to continue with your role as a Dalek Operator for the new series of
Doctor Who, or are you moving on from this role into one that sees you as a
person rather than a machine? Although let’s be fair, Daleks do ROCK!
Nicholas: Yeah, Daleks do rock, don’t they? I’m more
than happy to be a Dalek. If something a trifle more humanoid were ever to come
along in Doctor Who, I certainly
wouldn’t turn my nose up at it – but hey, being a Dalek is cool enough for me.
As for the next series, I’m sure you know that we have to sign the official
secrets act. So, I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about that. If I did, I’d
have to exterminate you!
And
we wouldn’t want that, would we? Thank you so much for a fantastic interview.
Many
thanks to both Barnaby Edwards and Nicholas Pegg for the cover art photos.
And
to BBC Doctor Who & Big Finish for the other photos throughout the
interview.
Nicholas
Pegg’s book, The Complete David Bowie,
is published by Titan Books and is available now from Amazon and other
booksellers. The album Decades, by
David Palfreyman and Nicholas Pegg, will be released in 2017.
