A Favourite Quote from Him
"RA: I always maintained that Gisborne was only interesting when he wasn’t getting what he wanted. Give him what he needs and it’s over. In simple terms, as one of the baddies of the piece, which was essentially aimed at youngsters, he really did have to suffer for the suffering he had caused. I am glad he was able to free himself from the burden of his actions and to die a noble death. I will miss him but that’s why it had to end, I would have hated to grow tired of that character, he was hard work to play and needed a lot of ‘concessions’. Much has been said critically about contradictions within this character, but it is my belief that much of our expectations of dramatic characters especially written for TV are paradoxically unrealistic. We expect them to be perfectly formed, that they are for example ‘always bad’, somehow linear. I believe that this is what leads to a stereotypical realization of that character, for if we look honestly to ‘life’, for realism, then we have to accept that is its possible for a man to kill the woman he loves, in a crime of passion, regret this till the day he dies, despise the man she truly loved, and yet still find a way to friendship with him. As I have said before, I don’t think it is unrealistic to believe that a serial killer can return home to his wife, who he loves dearly, tenderly kiss his newborn daughter good night, it’s just hard for us to accept. One of my great mantras is that ‘characters are at their most interesting when they are behaving out of character’, so when actors say: “my character just wouldn’t do that”, I always say ‘well see what happens when you ‘make’ them do that!’ I had to instruct myself like this quite frequently with Guy of Gisborne, which is why he became interesting to me. He helped me to develop as an actor, for this reason."
Vulpes Libris interview 2009
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