Channel 4’s The Mimic returns with its second series. We had a chat with Terry Mynott, who plays Martin on the show, about series two, impressions and being in TV’s most unconventional comedy cast.
Hi Terry. What can we expect from Martin in series two of The Mimic?
We see a very exciting nemisis played by John Thomson. We also have a love interest coming in and we basically join him not doing as well as we thought he was going to do in series one.
Do you feel like you have found your footing with Martin going into series two?
Yeah I definitely think we have…not that I’ve hit many second series (laughs) but it feels like everybody knows what they’re doing. We feel like we know what we’re doing and the foot on the accelerator is either taken off on some elements or put straight back down on others. You get a chance to look at the first series and go “Ok where can we take it from here?”.
How’s the fan reaction been for you?
I can’t fathom it. I live in a dungeon – I live in my own little world, I spend a lot of time in my garage tinkering with my motorbikes and stuff. I’m not the most “go out”-able person and just lately I’ve started going out and doing more press and stuff and I’ve been blown away. I thought it would go out to my age range…you know 21, no. You know mid-30s to mid-40s but it’s all over the place, I just can’t fathom it really. I’ve had young girls who you’d think wouldn’t give a monkeys to people well into their 60s so I must admit I’ve been really taken back by how well received it’s been. I know it sounds a bit crap but you just would never dare to think because in this industry you just get your head down, you do something and then nothing in this industry is over until the fat lady sings you know what I mean? You can get a job and be axed at the last minute. It’s been truly truly amazing.
The Mimic has joined a new wave of realism comedies over the last few years. Do you think the face of comedy is changing?
You know I can never comment on the zeitgeist of what’s going on, I just feel personally with The Mimic we wanted it to be 50% drama in a way that you say “Oh don’t say that to Neil’s character” or “Don’t give her coffee” those little things that you’ve got with comedies that don’t necessarily rely on the big comedy anchor, like a big bucket of water is going to fall on them, it’s about laughing because you know the characters and that’s what we wanted to do really and I’ve think we’ve achieved it.
You also do some great impressions in the second series, some we have never seen from you before. How do you go around preparing them?
We wanted The Mimic not to become “The Terry Mynott Show” where we just keep leaning on the best impersonations that I do. So what we spoke about was where has Martin been in the downtime and what does he do and basically the box-set generation or ability to watch stuff online is the new world isn’t it? People immerse themselves, they do like weekend marathons, so we wanted it to be about where Martin’s been so what I end up with is a humongous list, and I say humongous I’m prone to exaggeration – 20 voices, which is enough to do anybody’s head in seeing as I can only do about four good impersonations, the rest is just bumpy fillers you know? You create a character; I don’t ever think you ever go for a proper impersonation because you’ll drive yourself mad.
For about a week I listened to the voice, and I won’t even try and create it, because you need to have an inner monologue and most people will do an impersonation of Doug from accounts. What you end up doing is like everybody’s on a tea break and you’re taking the piss out of Dominic from Goods in and somebody will do an impersonation and they’ll just copy the imitation and everybody will explode with laughter and for the rest of the afternoon everybody’s going “Oh listen to Larry he does a great impersonation” and that is because you can hear them in your head and you get that with your favourite actors. So for about a week I’ll listen to them, and then for two weeks I’ll walk around and if it feels much like learning to play football or catch a ball with the wrong hand for about two weeks as I get better and better so I just try and recreate it. I try and look at it like a big mental block of wood.
I can’t imagine how it must be listening to the voices on end, especially if you’re repeating them.
Well I did Morgan Freeman the other day for a Lego advert, I say the other day I’m getting to that age where everything was the other day.
Yeah I do the same!
(laughs) It was actually a Lego advert for last year and Morgan Freeman had a bit where he said too much and they just wanted him to say a little bit. I went in to do him and as I walk in they say “This is Terry Mynott he does the best impression of Morgan Freeman” and I sounded nothing like him. It’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s about understanding that you will never do a great impersonation and all you can do is copy the intonations and the reflection of how someone speaks, so that’s why I only listen to them for about a week and I chuck it out. But the Breaking Bad thing I walked around for weeks going (breaks into Walter White) “I am the one who knocks!” and in the end I wasn’t getting anywhere near it so I chucked out, I didn’t listen to it anymore and then I kind of created a weird Bryan Cranston that I think is a close as I can get.
And I think that adds more to The Mimic because if it was a perfect impression it wouldn’t add to the real life element.
Yeah, we really wanted it to be where Jean turns around and goes “Nope, that sounds nothing like him” or people that keep thinking I’m doing Victor Meldrew instead of the Imp from Game Of Thrones and you do it all the time and you try and do it and you won’t always be on and people will just go “nope, nope” and we wanted to keep that in we didn’t want to do any takes where we’ve felt we were trying to take it all too seriously.
Jean (Jo Hartley) and Martin (Mynott)
How does it feel it be in one of the most unconventional comedy casts in TV at the moment?
(laughs) Oh it’s wonderful! We wanted a new cast, we knew we didn’t want to go for any usual suspects even though we’ve ended up getting some in because they’re just so bloody brilliant but we wanted to try it out. We really wanted Jo Hartley not really because of THIS IS ENGLAND but because of the scene she has in DEAD MAN’S SHOES where you can just see she has the ability to turn it on in seconds and you can see empathy, it’s all in her eyes and we got her in and she said yes and we literally went out, the same with Neil (Maskell), to shoot the four minuters, which no one’s ever seen, maybe they’re on the extras I’m not sure, but literally where the director and the writer sat me and Jo down on a park bench and they said “Look these are the parameters: you’ve found your son” and the stuff that Jo came out with, and the chemistry that we both had, made us instantly go “grab her with both hands and get her!”
And then there’s Neil, who you wouldn’t really expect would ya? He’s got a bit of a hard man type trail on him and again we did a scene around the corner, it’s called Booze Planet or something in Kentish Town, and the bloke that hired it out to us hadn’t told his dad that we had hired it out so we had to do the entire scene all the while the bloke is going “Please hurry up my father will be back in ten minutes” but Neil was just absolutely brilliant. Sometimes he will do something and I just don’t expect it.
I can’t imagine how much fun you must have on a set.
Yeah there’s only an 80% accelerator on a read-through, everybody saves their A game when they get there. Both of them do it, I had to do a scene where I was in bed where I was just about to get an operation done and Jo just did the most spell-bounding piece of acting I’ve ever seen and it was my line and I just had to turn to the camera and said “I don’t know my line because she’s just completely blown me with how good she is” it’s just things like that. And Neil had to do Elmo in one of the scenes and he got a little bit conscious about it and every time he knew it was brewing up…oh god we cried that day, every time he went “Elmo!” so loud it was like a gun shot in the cast and crew we were just in tears by the end of the day. But yeah, it’s a dream cast and there’s no egos or anything so it’s the best job I’ve ever had.
Where would you love to see Martin go in the future?
I would love to see him progress a little bit. I’d love to see him get off his arse and push himself a little bit more into the world of entertainment. I don’t think we ever want to take him all the way to the top because we kind of like the grass roots of it, the real stuff. For me it was kind of like Only Fools And Horses always used to say “This time next year we’ll be millionaires” it was that kind of hopefulness. I loved it when it had its feet grounded in what we all have to deal with. But as I said I’d love to see him get off his arse and move a little bit towards being a bit more successful.
And lastly I wanted to talk about what’s next for you, you’re quite a bit of an enigmatic character…
I’m just in an industry where I’m not allowed to say anything. I just did a show the other day which is really really good and it got awards and it’s brilliant and his last name rhymes with my first name BUT I’m not allowed to say.
What about THE GREATEST ENGLISHMAN? Is there any news on the release of that yet?
I don’t know, it’s so up in the air because it’s all self funded and stuff I just don’t know but I absolutely adored working on that, I gave it a 100 million percent. I trained for a year solid because my character Paul Boyton he paddled up every river in the world so I wanted to be able to put a paddle in my hand, like if you were playing a cowboy you’d want to be able to ride a horse. I trained all year solid and then my back gave out. I went to a specialist and they said the muscles in your back are interfering you’ll have to start doing weights so I went and got a personal trainer and I went and bought my own blow up canoe and children seemed to mock me wherever I went. I’ve never been in a blow up canoe that has caused so much controversy with children! There’d be kids on the bank going “That’s nice mate how much was it?” and I’d go “Yeah, 50 quid” and then they’d go “Yeah it looks it, rubbish!”. So I did all that, trained up and then they changed the scenes at the last minute because of budget problems and then I must have spent around 15 minutes in the water and then I was in a floatation thing so I just floated.
Warren Brown, Terry Mynott and Hannah Tointon in ‘The Greatest Englishman’
Well at least you were prepared!
Oh I loved it, absolutely loved it. That whole psyche of what it must have been like living in 1860, what a brave new world is and what constituted as a good time. It was truly amazing. Also Warren Brown was just effortless and Steve Oram was brilliant, so was Georgia Maguire. I wish there was more I could say about it! But I’m so proud of it.
The Mimic series two premieres 16th July, 10pm on Channel 4.
