Before Julian Bleach, Davros was Terry Molloy.
Terry Molloy was the man behind the mask of Davros for inResurrection, RevelationandRemembrance of the Daleks.
No, not really!
I suppose as a kid I was always very good at doing voices.
Back in the 50s, I used to memoriseThe Goon Show, and replay them to the family.
I was very good at doing voices like that.
But Ive always had a facility for accents and dialects.
In fact I wanted to be a vet when I was at school, that was my ambition!
So I decided to go in a different direction.
Very nearly got lured into the world of pop music by the time Id finished there.
Youre the first person Ive ever spoken to who chose acting because it was more secure…
Being an actor youve got to have a thirst for insecurity!
And has that carried on with everything youve done since?
Ive got an extremely low boredom threshold.
If I get fed up with something, Id go and do something different.
Has that affected some of the choices youve made, then?
Which can happen if people put all their eggs in one particular basket.
Ive always jumped shipped a lot throughout my career.
And yet the one constant has beenThe Archers?
I suppose the one constant in my whole career has been radio.
And thats where Ive done the majority of my work, and in fact some of my best work.
Ive always enjoyed that media, probably more than any other.
Its the media where I think the actor has got the most control over the finished product.
And it doesnt matter what you look like.
Is it the speed of radio that appeals?
I like the speed of radio, and I actually like the lack of pressure.
You think, oh God.
Life should be more fun than that!
So when you did television work, did you find yourself slipping into that pressured mindset?
You have to be very, very disciplined to step back from it.
You cant give what you should be giving.
And they just say yeah, and they do.
Theres that lack of pressure in radio.
So where does Davros fit in?
But I never got bored of Davros actually, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Which wasnt very mobile.
I hadnt seen Davros at all.
I grew up with Pat Troughton, he was my Doctor.
So I drifted away fromDoctor Whoby the time it got to Jon Pertwee.
Id seen the Daleks from previous episodes, William Hartnell episodes and things like that.
So I knew who the Daleks were, but Id never actually come across Davros.
Id heard about him.
But I didnt follow it.
Do you know about the Daleks?
Do you know about Davros?
Not really, Id heard the name and that was about it.
And he said would you like to come down and have a look at these tapes?
So he sat me down and ran the tapes.
And he said do you think that you’ve got the option to reproduce that.
Like any actor worth his salt, I said absolutely not [laughs].
I said yeah, yeah, no problem.
I thought this would be an interesting challenge.
I said, well thanks!
That, in a sense, was what I went into the profession for.
All the variety stars of the time.
She married my father and settled down.
That was in my blood, and she said to me when I first started, whats your ambition?
Do you want to be a star?
I just want to be a working actor who is doing lots of different and interesting things.
In those days that was people like Bernard Hepton, and Leonard Rossiter.
Good, strong character actors who worked in all sorts of different media.
Not just being lumped into one thing.
You said that you took on roles that other people had taken before.
It depends on the profile of it really.
I didnt have much time to think otherwise.
And I thought Ive just got to make this mine.
You do that a bit as well.
Youve got to be true to the character and true to yourself as an actor.
Otherwise it just becomes a pastiche, a cartoon of what somebody else has done.
In hindsight, do you agree with that?
Yeah, very much so.
Its very unqiue as a show as well.
Not just in the subject matter it takes, but also in the actors that it attracts.
And it wasnt a kind of kitsch thing, they enjoyed and took seriously the drama that we did.
Were dealing with whole different generations of technical facilities.
Its got that peculiarity of attraction.
Thats a very British, and particularly English, way of approaching problems.
It seemed to underpin the production of the time.
You were sat in an Emperor Dalek shell waving a torch around inRemembrance of the Daleks?
It was like last minute, they think oh my God!
The Emperor Dalek ought to have an eye, like all the other Daleks.
We havent got one!
All weve got is this plastic panel.
Well, weve got to have a light behind.
Oh damn, weve also got to flip up the lid.
Terry, can you wave this torch around in front?
And if you look carefully, the eye fades out before I flip the lid up.
You just roll with those, you know.
Nowadays there would probably be a two day stoppage while everyone goes away and talks.
Hopefully they would have pre-planned that a lot more.
The classic example isRevelation of the Daleks, where they put me in the fish bowl.
Which eventually we did manage to do.
What they hadnt bothered to do was measure me!
And I ended up getting a crick in my legs.
We did all the stuff in the fish tank in about 45 minutes.
But again, we did it on the day.
The chair you were in looked horribly tricky to control.
Was it, and how did it evolve as you returned to the role?
The chair never evolved!
It was very difficult.
The mask we did several times.
That was the idea.
It did sort of work, but not totally.
Were your kids ever scared of you?
They got quite hooked into it, and they watched it while it was on.
There were one or two that they found a bit spooky.
Hed got himself a job on the show.
So the whole concept of filming was less mysterious to them, because they saw things happening backstage.
This is a new drama series calledDoctor Who, and lets start from there.
Is that still your feeling on the revived show, and are you a fan of it?
Im a great fan of it.
They did things we did in the original.
The stories are based on character, theyre based on good stories and good characters within those stories.
And for that I thought, yeah, great.
But then Russell T, Phil and all that lot, they were all fans anyway.
And Im like, youve seen it?!
And theyve got the old DVDs out and are looking at those!
How do you feel about the revival of the Davros character?
I think for the fans its fantastic, absolutely brilliant.
And I think it had to happen.
Theres no way, from the moment the Daleks arrived, that they could not eventually bring Davros back.
And I dont know I really dont know!
what the story is.
But I dont know what that direction is.
I will be fascinated to see what happens with it.
Julian Bleach is a terrific actor, some of the stuff hes done, you know.
And I hope that they give Davros a story that he deserves when he returns.
Have you spoken to him about him?
No, Ive not spoken to him or met him.
Ive no doubt that at some point in time I will.
In fact, I only met Michael Wisher once, sadly only just before he died.
We met up for the first time at a convention.
David not only had to take over the character from Michael, but also had to use Michaels mask!
Which didnt really fit him.
Which I thought was a shame.
They came back much harder when Davros came back with me.
There are people who go on the rants of Davros, and yeah, there were rants in there.
There had to be.
But also there were a few moments of cold menace.
But what makes Davros work really well is his relationship with the Doctor.
That Ill be interested in seeing how it comes through.
For me, Davros and the Doctor are almost equals, and intellectually they realise they are equals.
They are both alone.
And its brought you to your audio work onThe Scarifyerstoo?
Yeah, thats been great.
And they rang up and said do you want to do a Davros, but without the Daleks.
I said yeah, thatd be interesting.
And then its great doingScarifyers, it came out of left field.
Id never worked with Nick Courtney before, not onDoctor Who.
Our paths never crossed.
Yet we met at conventions and got on really well.
And they put together extremely good and funny scripts which have been a delight to do.
Theyre hopefully going to be doing another one.
This is one that will run and run, hopefully until myself and Nick drop off the edge.
But theyre a lovely couple of characters.
Its been great fun.
They dont sound like the kind of things where you turn up and do a job.
That and Big Finish seem to be the kind of productions where people get more involved with them?
I think partly to do with the relaxed atmosphere of working in those situations.
It is fun to do, its great fun.
The studios get hot, though!
That aside its great fun.
Its always good to see.
Its like you see on the floor, too.
I was talking to myself.
Yes, I was!
Telling people they had a nuclear power station in their back garden!
Was it the colour you didnt like?
I did several series of that!
I cant think of a scarier thing to do!
It was scary, because we had no script.
We had a scenario, but you didnt know what was going to happen when that person turned up.
Hed already had four years of stopping the real gas board from digging up his garden.
They were immediately at boil point.
But the trick ofBeadles Aboutwas always keeping people just on the edge of boil.
Dont let them boil over, else it becomes very unpleasant.
It could end up in violence.
And did you have both of those experiences?
Someone who twigged it and someone who got very het up?
Theyd all twig it.
Every one of them would twig it at some point.
At some point in the shooting, theyd go hang on a minute, this isBeadles Aboutisnt it?
I recognise you off the telly.
Expecting you to go gosh, you sussed us!
But of course, you dont.
You just hit back even harder.
Im sorry, can we not prat around when Im requiring 850 from you now?
What are you going to do about it?
And they snap back a bit and say hang on a minute, no.
All you see on the telly is two minutes.
We were there for an hour and a half!
And on it hed put the call sheet for the day on the clipboard.
One guy just grabbed the clipboard off him and looked at it, but he didnt actually read it!
All he was doing was trying to give himself thinking time!
It was flying by the seat of the pants a lot.
You really didnt know what was going to happen.
Did you enjoy it?
I did in the early days.
Towards the end I got disillusioned with it.
Theres no skill, theres no subtlety.
Once youve got somebody hooked into the supposed reality of the situation, you could then move it further.
So well put your girlfriend into this hotel, and youll have to be 20 miles down the coast!
The only way to get round it would be to get married now!
So youd conduct this ridiculous ceremony at the airport, and theyd go along with it.
Then youd charge them for doing it!
And if they hadnt got the money, youd take things out of their bags!
If you dont want to be married, youll have to get a divorce when you come back.
The guys going yeah, well do that, and the girlfriend is going what!
You could layer it each time depending on how much people bought into the reality of it.
[laughs] He said incredulously!
Theyve put it on DVDs, and it pops up on web discussions boards quite often.
I spent my life being a hologram!
It was one of those very bizarre shows.
When I joined it, the average age was around 12!
There were two of us grown ups in the cast, hoping to hell that another would join us.
Is interaction with the audience very important to you?
I think its vital.
They can do that.
I find theres quite a similarity betweenThe ArchersandDoctor Whoin that respect, in the fandom base.
Its the same withThe Archers.
A lot ofThe Archersfans come to conventions with their tongues planted very firmly in their cheeks.
The same thing happens withDoctor Whoconventions.
Some take it extremely seriously too, I know, but it is a family feel to it.
Youre not too grand to take the job.
And I know that some actors have difficulty interacting with the fans.
And does that suit you?
Even when I speak they dont know who I am, because I tend to use different voices.
The anonymity that I can slip behind!
What are you up to next?
And in February we were invited out to Harvard, to deliver the show there.
Next year, 2009, will be the bicentenary of Darwins birth.
Itll be 150 years sinceThe Origin Of The Specieswas published.
So itll be a big year for Darwin.
But he said I think there is a way of having religion and science in this argument.
Pushing the envelope, both of them, in different ways.
So its fascinating from that perspective, but also who they were as people.
And when you read Darwins letters, hes actually an incredibly funny guy!
And The Archers rolls on of course!
We wish you the best of luck with it all.
Terry Molloy, thank you!
The Archers Addicts fan club can be foundhere.
