Page 21 - Real Style July 2018

TGH: Joe is, as his name suggests, an Average Joe. He completely loves his family. He’s devoted to Laura, loves his kids, but he is an impulsive
to you. You are hiding a lot in yourself, and that can be quite hard to do. Actors generally love to hide behind a character. They want to present a completely different person to themselves. When you are asked to play someone who is actually not that far away from you, it’s quite difficult.
RS: Are there any actors or directors you want to work with?
TGH: A particular favourite show of mine is The Leftovers, so I would completely love to work with that entire creative team. I would love to work with Charlie Booker [again]. I did the first ever episode of Black Mirror. I would love to work with Lucy Prebble again; I did two plays
in common with Joe than I’ve had with any character. Joe is
not such a huge leap; he’s like
a slightly more straightforward version of me. It’s been a challenge in its own way, because it’s actually quite hard to play someone who is quite close
RS: Tell us about working with Gemma Chan. How was this experience?
TGH: She’s great. We also worked together in Season 1. We were watching Gemma do her extraordinary movement work, the way she embodied Anita was unlike anything I have seen. It was so close to being human, but not human at the same time. It was incredibly unsettling.
RS: What was the biggest creative challenge of working
of hers, called Enron and The Effect. And I would love to work with my wife, Jessica Raine, because we haven’t worked together since we met!
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strain on the relationship.
on a show like Humans?
TGH: The biggest thing is to make everything seem normal. That’s the biggest challenge, because particularly now
in Season 3, with the world
of synthetics and conscious synthetics. By the time we got to Season 3, the trick was to make it seem as if it’s just the world that we live in now, with a few subtle changes.
RS: Tell us about some of your other upcoming roles.
TGH: I have a movie coming up later this year, called The Visitor. It’s a kind of modern Gothic fairytale horror, about a family in a house in the middle of nowhere. That’s coming out in September. Then I also did Where Hands Touch, which is also coming out in the autumn.
RS: Joe sounds like a conflicted character, and one with many levels and depth. Would you say you have anything in common with your character? TGH: I think I’ve got more
guy. He generally acts before he thinks, which is usually disastrous, and it’s his decision to buy Anita (Gemma Chan) the Synth for the family. He does it out of desperation, because he thinks that it’s going to give his relationship with Laura more time to breathe. Inevitably,
it turns out to be exactly the opposite and it puts an enormous
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