MILES RICHARDSON - The Many Lives of Irving Braxiatel // Doctor Who : The Sirens of Audio Episode 49

0:00 hello i'm annette badland and you're listening to the sirens of audio shake your booty i'm shaking mine [Music] hello me one hello me too have you heard about 43 to wednesday's offensive comments in their latest podcast no do tell me too they were having a dig at other podcasts suggesting that we might be reviewing big finnish stories that we'll never listen to again me one do you mean they were trying to be funny at other people's

0:45 expense in 2021 me too they just can't do that in this enlightened age of righteous indignation it's an outrage me one those utter audiophobes next they'll be telling us that big finish aren't canon me too they already have that was on their last episode me one [Music] but but you're not seriously telling me they're canon phobic too they say they're not but that can't possibly be true because we said they are and they're trying to get people to sign up to their patreon page me one this is just a blatant cash grab how dare they earn 25 a month from their podcast when our only reward for doing a podcast

1:32 is the joy of receiving a daily email from charitable telling us our latest rankings in romania there is only one solution to this me too what's that me one cancellation we've got to get them cancelled how dare they make a podcast it's entertaining topical and demonstrates pure genuine roll around on the floor aussie humor me too you're right this is 2021 after all they don't agree that big finish is canon they're trying to profit from providing entertainment to those who choose to subscribe and they don't care that they hurt our feelings with their opinions get onto twitter me one doing it right now me too and make sure you get everyone in that

2:19 0.65 percent in fandom who think exactly like us to tag apple spotify and any other podcast service to have 43 to wednesday thrown off the internet and don't forget to say that anyone who listens to them is pure evil as well me one done me too already me what there are only five of us in that percentile me too really me what yes it's actually 0.0065 me too oh doesn't matter outrage will win in the end me one it always does me too

3:15 [Applause] so [Music] g'day audio files you are listening to the sirens of audio where we explore the universe of doctor who uh in the audio media my name is dwayne and my name is philip g'day everyone good day duane i'll bet you're looking forward to today's episode with miles richardson i can see you've been delving into your back catalogue there i have been i've listened to lots of stuff i mean it's 20 years of back catalogue so it's um it's a fair whack it's a fair wagon quite an interesting character who was who was mentioned way back in 1979 in

4:02 city of death for the first time wasn't he that was that was brax as opposed to miles he wasn't mentioned back in uh city of death his character sorry yes yes yeah right oh it's hard to get them both right there fiction is blending with reality here but before we get into that we'll get into that in a minute let's just jump down that rabbit hole once again yay okay so for today's rabbit hole topic we're going to dive into the fact that there's lots of things ending all over the place we've got the monthly range ending just next month at the time of recording by the time this goes out it'll probably be this month

4:48 when uh when the monthly range is ending we've just had the gallifrey time war series uh although i did listen to the extras and they did talk about potentially opening that up to future producers and script editors with the characters who knows what's gonna happen to that but for the moment under scott hancock certainly seems to be finished is is that a a slightly sad thing for you phillip or is it is it opening up brand new possibilities what would you say yeah it's one of those interesting things is it because i mean in terms of gallery i actually i went back and actually listened to the very first episode today again and it was just amazing like capturing gary russell's vision in terms of the west wing and dynasty on steroids it

5:35 really does do that and those first three seasons i did just a door but i loved it coming back every time because i love the characters but there's a level which how often can you bring them back i i didn't know actually because as much as they talk about you know it was the end for gala a time war i've realized that that's actually being a bit cryptic because it's the time war gallifrey has ended it doesn't mean that gallopra has ended and so i think big fins were being a bit um clever by suggesting this was the end totally because it of course doesn't need to be in fact they've left it so you actually want to have more yeah scott hancock did use the term this particular segment of the time war so lots of different well the stacks of history throughout

6:22 the throughout the time war lots of different stages of it and we're both in the tv series and with big finish so yeah that's this particular segment of it which really kind of only lasted the 16 episodes didn't it yeah and that was probably enough to be honest i think what's what's concerning me most with the ending is the fact that uh the classic series the classic companions the classic doctors they are still you know hugely in my heart and they're the stories i love to hear and with so many of these series closing down um you know i ca i couldn't get enough of war i could never get enough of louise jemison and so as differences goes down i'm wondering well marvin don't forget darvin and narvin yeah no he's yeah definitely and yeah brax as well um with these ones becoming

7:09 less and less around we're losing some of these the regular work of these actors so it's great they're going to the new series they're great it's great they're starting new shows up but yeah i guess i'm a yeah creature of habit and nostalgia and while we start these actors with us these amazing actors i want to make sure we can still keep using them yeah absolutely what do you think is going to happen we've had box set four of uh the eighth doctor time wars series is that going to continue that we don't know so i mean there's a lot of stuff being kept secret um you know it was a fascinating challenge with ken bentley who is working on so much stuff he couldn't tell us but yeah the fact he had to open up his excel spreadsheet and reveal

7:55 nothing to us but we knew he was just working on so much stuff so it's hard to know what is coming i mean robots was originally supposed to be four box sets and we know they've increased it to six so they've obviously worked out well we're gonna have another eight stories that they've just put in it's that 12-month period when on caldo and maybe they'll put in another couple so you could never say never and of course you know it's a big finish to business and it's therefore sales matter and i'm suspecting that a lot of the new stuff is a bit more popular with fans at the moment more than the older stuff but that being said they've still kept things like betty alive i mean there's not as much bend as i'd like but you know there's still bitty coming out so yeah we we're always waiting for the next press announcement to see what big fish is going to do and

8:41 interestingly um when we talked to peter purvis he you know he let us know he'd done something else but we didn't know what it was and you know i think a couple of days after we spoke to god revealed about the fact that you know it happens every time it happens every it does happen every time is it the heat something's coming they don't know when and then we hear immediately afterwards yeah so yeah so we know there's more there but yeah i just i'm never satisfied ah well you should be have you ever seen the back catalogue of big finish fairy kim that'll keep you going if you start from scratch again you can come back and talk about it again in 20 years i have it all though yes well i think for me personally as a little personal thing in relation to the monthlies i always right from well i wasn't collecting them

9:26 right from the very beginning but when i started collecting them the specials went on so able to fill my back catalog so and i've religiously subscribed to the monthlies if i haven't subscribed to anything else i've always subscribed to the monthlies and i've put myself under a certain amount of personal pressure to keep up with those above everything else so perhaps at times i've put the monthlies ahead of things and fallen behind on a few things so to me i'm kind of feeling like it's going to be good not to be under that personal pressure and i'll be able to feel a bit freer to give more time to to to other ranges even though the monthly is one story it's still been that regular thing that's been constant all the way through so it's the one thing i felt that i had to

10:12 listen to no matter what and i put other things aside for instance gallifrey time war 3 i i haven't heard that yet so i skipped that i listened to time off time or four i know you're going to scowl at me for doing that philip but i did that i still enjoyed i still enjoyed it but that's just an example of one of the things i put aside and just haven't got back to it as yet um so yeah for me it's a it's um it's going to be a good new beginning i think with uh seeing the end of some of these things particularly the monthly range for me yeah just looking forward to seeing what really shape takes its place yeah i'm sure so let's uh let's let's jump out of this rabbit hole and philip i'm going to throw to you would you like to throw in a trailer for the extinction event we're going to come back with miles

10:57 richards in a moment but i know you've been listening to the extinction event today one of the benny episodes should we throw in a trailer for that let's do that because it's it's the first so this is season two of benny um but the first time brax actually got cast and first time he met an actor so the extension event professor bernie summerfield and the extinction event [Music] my voice what about my don't know you [Music] what's wrong with my voice

11:55 i think it's a ground quake the extinction event is that what charming meant to do in the quake won't we be buried alive sorry were you talking to me [Music] throughout the long history of doctor who there's never been a character as complex and morally ambiguous as irving brextell first mentioned in a throwaway line in city of death when romano refers to the

12:41 braxton collection brax would become a major regular feature of books during the wilderness years before becoming a central character in two major spin-offs of big finish both the burning summerfield and the galaxy gallifrey series when brax moved to audio big finish had to find an actor who could play a giant range across a huge amount of time in his own time stream be commanding friendly devious and terrifying their choice miles richardson who has also gone on to play a number of other roles in other shows as well which we hope to discuss so welcome miles hello how are you both nice to see you great to have you here with us thank you for giving me some time i'm just wanting to start with what is it that made you want to become an actor oh oh well it's it's a family firm

13:27 really it's it's in the blood uh my father well both my parents were actors they were founding members of the royal shakespeare company here in england in the early 60s um i grew up in a theater basically because after school i would go to the green room at the rsc in stratford and and that was sort of where i went i mean it was it seemed um it was almost not it was mapped out for me but i didn't really ever think there was any other choice um my brother however always thought it was a rather foolish silly way to own a living and became a graphic designer which uh means he sort of works for himself um um and uh it suits him down to the ground um but for me uh no it was just inevitable really well i must confess i am a bit of a fan

14:13 of your father so in richardson um probably most famous for people in australia and probably elsewhere too for his role in the house of cards is france urquhart yes that was beautifully timed uh because the the opening scene of that is my father's holding a picture of of margaret thatcher and he puts it down and says if all good things come to an end and the first airing of the show coincided with the week that margaret thatcher resigned and it automatically captured the nation's attention and uh you know everyone was gripped from that very first opening scene um so it was very fortuitous in in many ways for my father and it sort of basically meant that he never had to think about what he would do next because he was constantly in demand

14:59 yes i actually saw your father live on stage in the hollow crown he came out to sydney and so i got to see him live and actually i lined up backstage i didn't get to talk to your father i got to talk to diana rig and derek jacoby um but missed your father because i was talking to derek at the time they loved doing that show i mean they had various different casts i think my father was the most consistent one um but you know they have people like donald sindon in it and you know anyway they just love doing it because it was like getting as my father said it's so nice to get all the old farts together again and they just loved interacting with each other and it was a joy it was like it was like a paid holiday i mean for example going to australia with the show it's like you

15:45 know well why not a bit of sun beautiful yeah so yes we'll have to work in the evenings but that's neither here nor there but there you go i mean you could tell that it felt like they were having a lot of fun on stage with each other with the roles they were playing it was just it was an amazing performance you know it was oh yeah they they had a whale of a time i mean you know um and ian and derek despite the fact that they're different styles um actually are very very complimentary physically with each other they just worked beautifully together and that actually is the only time they they had worked together was on the hollow crown and i'm surprised that they didn't um they weren't partnered up before because they were just magical together your parents were happy for you to go into acting even though

16:30 they thought it was wise of you or not wise um well um i grew up we grew up in in a genteel poverty i think is the best way of describing it i mean we were constantly mortgaged to the hilt and um you know we we never had any money when i was growing up and my parents didn't become comfortable until they were in their 40s uh so it was but they hid all that from me you know my brother and i were never short of things uh we didn't think we were hard done by because we didn't know anything else really but we we were when i looked at it we were very poor um for most of my childhood but so they didn't discourage but they they would rather i probably had gone into a profession where i had a stable financial

17:16 yeah i was financially stable uh because it's still a struggle now um especially at this current juncture in history yes it's hit actors really hard isn't it um you i get you got to act with your father a few times that a thrill to do well um yes and no in so much is that my father wangled me into a couple of tellys but we never actually really had any scenes with each other i mean when to play the king i'm on he's watching me on the television set in um uh the porterhouse blue i'm heckling him from way back in a dining room so we don't really have any kind of scenes where we went face talking to each other so i can't say that i ever did act with

18:02 him we just have to be in the same project as it were that lots of your presence would be on stage i see you've been in more than 70 plays yes so is this your main passion or do you just you like changing styles no it absolutely you see the thing about working on film and television is as i've discovered on a few occasions it's happened to me the bigger the part the easier it is small parts are much harder to do because you arrive you don't know anyone you're on the set you do you see you go whereas if you're doing a big part and you're there consistently over weeks actually the rhythm of it becomes much easier to work with um so i think for me stage is

18:50 much more appealing because you've got the rehearsal period to start off with which when you're at the royal shakespeare company can be as ludicrously long as 14 weeks but at least you know at least it's normally about three weeks you do and so you are very very familiar with not only your character but also the other people you're on stage with so and also you get the the wonderful feedback from the audience when you finish the show you get a round of applause well you don't get that on a film set you sort of you know you go to the catering van and have a cup of tea but you don't you don't get a kind of rattras appreciation from a thousand people um so yes stage is uh my first it can be taxing when you're in a long run when you do nine months

19:37 of the same beats eight shows a week that you can begin to sort of look at that wednesday matinee and think oh god i really don't feel up to this today but if you don't give it your all then you're actually just cheating yourself because you know and i've worked with some actors who do take what i call take an afternoon off and just sort of wing it and um it's it's it's insulting to the audience it's insulting to your fellow actors and it's insulting more importantly to yourself so you know that's that's my opinion on on lazy actors do you come across many of them i wouldn't think they'd survive for long um in the olden days people did get by and uh in modern days you don't um some

20:24 actors i work with and who will remain names um who are already established names uh sometimes can be lazy because they figured they don't have to work so hard anymore and that's that's that's very insulting because a lot of the audience have come specifically to see them and if you're not giving your all then you really are cheating people um but it doesn't happen that often and having said that i'm surprised how many well-known famous actors work their bollocks off on stage and whether they're of an age when they could really just not bother and they're rich enough not to bother anymore but they do it because they love it uh i mean a prime example is the late

21:09 tim pickett smith who i worked with uh on a play place called the king charles iii which is i think you had a touring version of it came to australia um and he was he was exhausted he was an exhausting piece and he was you know when he wasn't on stage he would go home and sleep because he was so tired but he he uh wouldn't take a day he did have to take a day off because he broke his collarbone he had to take six weeks off and i am to be his understudy so i know how hard the part was to do and i had 20 years on tim so there's an example of you know actors who you know just don't need to do that but do because they love it 2003 to 2008 you were part of the royal shakespeare company um

21:56 now we haven't got any well actually we've got the bell shakespeare company out here which is this does a couple of plays a year what do you mean to be part of the royal shakespeare because is that like the highest height of companies you can join i would suggest that uh it was a kind of family legacy because my parents were in the rsc and my father was there off and on for like 15 years of his career and played virtually all the major shakespearean roles and for me it was kind of like a legacy um i would suggest that perhaps for actors now it is not the be all and end all it used to be it certainly was in the 1970s but now most actors would rather have a television career than a stage

22:41 career and why not because it's much more financially secure the rsc still don't pay the kind of money that you get in a west end show and also predominantly all of the work is out in what you might call the sticks and strapped upon avon so it's not near the kind of hub of of theater i think a lot of stage actors would much prefer working at the national royal national theater in london than working at the rsc in stratford um but having said that to having the chance to work in a repertory system i.e at one point we were doing eight plays in rotation seven of which i was in um god it keeps your interest up because a week can go by before you do that

23:27 richard the second again uh and sometimes when you're rehearsing a new play and months can go by before you do that henry fourth again um parts one and two so in terms of an as an actor it it keeps you very very interested in what you're doing and that is the major advantage of the rsc and also they look after you so when when you you i spent five years virtually solid with them and the drawback is when you start working for them you get terrible withdrawal symptoms it must be like when somebody who works for say a chartered accountancy firm in the has done for 20 years and suddenly gets fired or the firm goes bust and they're out of a job and the kind of mental withdrawals they have from a situation like that

24:14 you know it doesn't happen to act as much because you know normally we're only working for somebody for nine months maximum or in the case of working in regional reps only for six seven weeks maximum so you know we're used to chopping and changing but that was the that was a feeling that not only i had but a lot of other actors who worked in a long company had that uh it was like a terrible shock when we finished with seven plays in your head at the same time did you ever get on stage and just think what player am i in and what's my next line um it's strange enough i never had that problem but i do remember i shared a dressing room with an actor called clive wood who was playing henry four and i remember he would sit there and he's just gonna go through his lines

25:00 oh [ __ ] and i said clive what's the matter he said i've just been going through henry iv part one and it's henry iv part two this evening you know so you sometimes get this dichotomy um and there was another act called jonathan slinger who played not only richard iii but all the predecessors too richard the third so richard of york and then he also was playing uh richard ii and then when we finally got to do henry v um the director said could you possibly play fluelin captain fluellen who's the welsh captain who never stops talking and and uh jonathan said i've i've did not stop talking throughout this entire eight can i at least have this episode off and um michael said i don't think anyone else could play it as well as you

25:46 could and he was absolutely right nobody could he was very very funny because actually whole point about slowly is it's a crashing ball and it's a temptation to cast a crashing boar of an actor to play it but we fortunately didn't have many crashing boards so the best thing to do is make this boring person extremely interested which is what slinger did um but his head as somebody said that our hippocampus must have been twice the size of a normal human beings because we had so much in our heads for so so long but um and what's really interesting is i now can remember vast swathes of um the plays but weirdly enough not the principal parts i was playing but the parts that i was under studying because you obviously

26:32 locked that bit of information in a different part of your head and um michael boyd who was the director um insisted that everyone regardless of who they were playing had to understudy as well so we were all learning other people's parts and i can remember all those other parts but i can't remember a single line of my own cards but it's uh what 12 years ago now i think so not surprising how things go apparently you've done a hundred video voiceovers of video games in part of your career um well a lot of it is adr work which is uh when you make sounds on other people's films and uh you know because when you record a film you know all the people in the background have to be they're not saying anything because of

27:18 course you can't edit it all together so when the film is finished they then have to put those voices in the background back on again and sometimes you can actually make an impact on a film just by doing using a voice my favorite example of that is is a bond film die another day the opening shot of that the teaser shot is james bond escaping from a prison ship swimming uh in the water to the hong kong yacht club getting out of the water in these kind of prison pajamas with a long scraggly beard and long hair and he walks into the foyer of the hong kong yacht club and he goes past a krusty gentleman reading a newspaper in the corner and he goes up to the desk and the dusk clerk says ah mr bond your usual room sir now

28:06 my contribution was to that was when we were in the booths um i said to the director oh look i i know what that old man is saying and said okay mars go and do it so when he walked past moment he's not wearing a tie and when you see the film there it is and you know it's just really lovely when you make contributions to something and and that's that's just in a booth in a recording studio in soho in london you know and uh that's very gratifying so yes i've done a hundred or so films um and video under video games um again it's the voice isn't it gentlemen but also it's been that one's different because you have to think on your feet because sometimes you have to um you

28:53 have to improvise um five or six minutes of dialogue in the background and you also have to try and make not be too interesting because you don't want to distract from what the principles are doing so you've got to make small talk and try and make it boring but make it flow i think the worst i ever had is there's an actor over here called tim benting who's very famous because he's in a audio in radio series longest running radio series in the history the archers he plays a major character david archer and we were doing a film and these two guys were watching a german homosexual porn film and so me and tim had to do uh german porn noises in the background so we're going to keep understood so doing all this

29:39 kind of stuff and we're desperately trying not to crack out because we're and all the rest of the people in the room are all going try not to make noise because it's hysterically funny that me and tim two middle-aged englishmen uh being german porn stars um yeah so it can be quite uh interesting at times philip sent me a bizarre uh youtube commercial it was a commercial that you sent me something about bubbles oh yeah yeah that one that's the last job i did that was last november um as you see it's for three cents soda and uh i actually had to go to athens to film that because we weren't being allowed to do that kind of filming over here and i went out three days before the

30:26 country went into lockdown so it was extraordinary for tutors timing and uh yeah the only reason we were in athens because they were allowing this sort of filming to take place and the director for to say he was danish so you know the only country we could meet up together to do this advert was in greece which is all very strange but um as you can see from the the video um from the advert it's a lot of fun to do and it's a it's very me it's very early if everything was going to do an advert that's what he'd do really esteemed gentlemen members of the council the reason we've urgently convened here today is because this here young man claims to know the secret to the most flavoursome of pink grapefruit soda he asks us not to extract the juice from the grapefruit but

31:11 i cannot even utter it go on tell them laddie squeeze the peel right into the soda what's a naive porpoise gentleman gentlemen i would weigh to all my diplomas that this dallard's brain is about the same size as this grapefruit here don't offend the grapefruit professor furthermore he maintains that by carbonating at maximum pressure he can achieve the bubbliest crispest and longest lastic ever essence a soda could ever have maintains that his delectable sodas can

31:57 make cocktails of deliciousness [Music] is there a doctor in the house a boy a medical doctor does anybody have anything to drink i do [Music]

32:48 now you're coming up to your 20th anniversary at big finish and playing brax so how was it you came to to work for big finish um weirdly enough it all stems from working for um real-time pictures and keith's barn father who you might have come across his work he does stop to his spin-offs in video dramas and um during that kind of fallow period when doctor who was off the air it was people like keith and big finish who were keeping the intrest up and i think it's because i'd done a police for him that my name was sort of out there in the kind of doctor who firmament and i was asked yes and yeah and and uh

33:35 yeah that day was rising was the first one um and everything was because of that that uh they they they got me in to do first of all i was in a a doctor who one playing of all things charles darwin doctor who blood tide there's something in here some sort of lizard i think release i destroy them the bible tells us that this world of ours is a mere 6 000 years old [Music] that the lord created in six days that there was but one flood that was

34:22 it's about the size and proportions of a man two arms two legs so to my mind these fossils should not exist and now they have come back yes yes they have come back and they like what i did and and i like doing it because the great advantage of doing audio dramas you don't have to learn the lines you don't have to put on any makeup you didn't have to put any costume on you can arrive in your series you can get in the booth you can read the bar and you can go home and you get a lovely lovely lovely lunch cooked by toby the

35:10 sound technician i'm sure you've all heard about the lovely lunches everyone talks about their lunches yeah they're fabulous yeah it's yeah so that's how it happened and then of course they cast me as irving and what was interesting is because i knew nothing about this other world of doctor who um i must confess i'm not really a huge science fiction fan and i know i'm a big fan of drama but i'm not necessarily a sci-fi fan but what i discovered quite early on is that with science fiction everything is possible absolutely everything is possible um and so as we went through uh being irving i suddenly discovered oh

35:56 oh i'm a time lord oh i never knew that oh oh i'm doctor who's brother but no one ever told me that so all every time i did one i suddenly learned something new about irving and then of course it all went very bizarre and it was like three irvings going around the universe doing different things he got quite malevolent at times and it all became very bizarre and i'm sure you have you had the latest um gala fray yeah we both finished the last couple of days yeah well as you probably know i don't want to put any spoilers out there but you know it's not the first time that something drastic has happened to brax um but you know i mean i've been killed off about four times i think but i've always come back um in some guys or another because of course there's

36:42 so many of me out there doing different things in parallel universes so it doesn't i never i never feel overly concerned when they they they destroy me some way or another i was actually going to ask you because brax is one of the most complicated timelines i think of any character because as you say he's constantly in communication with his past selves future selves there's different timeline ones that come in um and i i actually read an article just to try and get my head around everything and it was it was bigger than i had actually remembered um how much that did you feel you needed to know or you just got the lines of the script and you just go with what's on the page um it would be disingenuous of me to say that i just learned the lines i would just read the lines out and

37:27 don't worry about the plot because that's not true because you've got to understand everything um i have to confess that sometimes i get scripts and i go i really don't know what on earth is going on but when you get to those situations you just have to find the reality of what you're saying um and once you've you know it might not make sense but you've got to try and make it make sense to the listening audience so you've got to try and convey what it should mean to an audience and what's confusing about brax is that it's not confusing isn't that he he is you're right he's very very different i mean he's not the same person all the time he can be very very different people so the braxton gallifrey is a much serious of brax than the brax from

38:13 bernice the back the backs from bernice did at one point become quite malevolent and evil but then you know we discussed it and uh they decided to pair back this huge it become far too large the bernice stories had become there was too many characters so they trimmed them all back and just left the basic ones the ones they wanted to keep one of whom i'm glad to say was brax and it became the bracks that we now have with bernice summerfield who's much kinder softer smoother fluffier funnier which is the bracks that i like out of all of them um and yeah so that's the growth period i mean i don't know what's going to happen next you know i

38:59 did speak to scott scott's was has now finished um producing the gala phrase um and scott's a a good egg and he said oh i wouldn't worry miles you know brax will never disappear he'll always come back somewhere at some point sometime so i'm waiting for the call but i do know because of i don't you're probably aware that they become extraordinarily popular the big finnish audio dramas and so actually the people falling over themselves do them now which they which is very nice but it also means they have a huge backlog of stuff they have to do and i had actually a very good script that a friend of mine had written which actually got produced by the bbc on radio but i did i put it forward to big finish for the

39:45 consideration they said um miles we've got so much stuff we just haven't got room for this i'm so sorry so you know they are they are victims of their own success in many ways uh in terms of the acting style in uh studio as opposed to on the stage um i did hear on the extras that you're a very physical actor even within the sound booth so how important how important is that uh in in terms of getting your your part across well i i i always work standing up because you could i think you can hear when people are sitting down even when i'm supposed to be sitting down i'm standing up because you just have to free up you know your your energy i mean i remember going this is really weird i've been from the township but i went to see

40:30 an opera don giovanni uh before it all everything's shut down and there was one point when the actor sorry i should say the singer playing don giovanni was rolling around on the floor but singing at the same time and i thought my god that is so extraordinary that he can actually roll around on the floor and still produce this extraordinary sound and of course i just suddenly thought well yeah that's the power of your diaphragm and your and your rib control and i think you know that's that's exactly sort of what i do that when i'm in the booth i am giving it the power and energy that that voice needs if they're in that situation and um if you can't do that sitting down and yeah at some time it can be very exhausting even though you're standing up in a booze you're not even running around

41:16 or but you know it requires that level of effort otherwise again you're not you're not um portraying the the drama of the situation in terms of um uh the past year in particular but there has for some time been periods where scheduling has dictated that you do your parts all separately um was that happening happening more recently um as opposed to the past and what do you prefer you you might find this um hard to believe um but there are a couple of episodes of uh both bernice and gallifrey where it was entirely done with just me and scott hancock reading all the other parts and that's purely down to scheduling um there was one occasion where i my car

42:04 broke down i was on tour i was doing a play my car broke down i couldn't get to the studio so he arranged for me to meet up with scott in some another studio and i played the entire thing with him and that has happened a couple of times and that happens actually more often than you know and i would um i would dispute that any audience member who could tell me which one of those episodes i was just me and scott rather than me with the other actors um in terms of what i prefer well scott actually said he preferred it when it's just me and him because it gets done a lot quicker because there's not all the kind of joyous gossip that goes on because what you probably get from the extras is you get you know the fact that we're all constantly having chats all the way through the recording

42:50 process because we all have a good laugh we all chat away we all gossip like crazy we all catch up with each other um i was intrigued to hear on the the extras for um the last gallifrey that scott not scott um sean carlson was lamenting the fact that we hadn't seen each other for about eight years and we haven't which is a real shame because sean and i used to go like a house on fire we were such good mates despite the fact we were playing characters who hated each other but we got on so well um and you know i feel yeah i miss i miss sean a lot we haven't seen each other for ages it's a real shame i'm gonna have to have a word with with uh whoever's producing the next one they get us in the same room again because it's much more fun when we're together

43:36 i think it's one of the things the big finish used to keep hidden was the fact that actors weren't in the same place i think they wanted it to look like it wasn't the case but they actually became quite proud of it i think the last couple of years realizing this we can make drama anywhere anytime with anyone um and we've got the technology to do it and i've always been doing it for a very long time but it was kept secret for a long time i think it's just because um maybe you use the audience members would think of it differently if you you thought we weren't actually talking to each other um but um yeah well i mean i i i don't think it's down to how well the producer gives the performance and people like scott people like gary know us well enough now that they can

44:22 give a rocks a rough approximation of the performance that the other person's giving you know even if it's something you know even if somebody who's completely different from scott say lala ward you know he can do a very good impersonation louise jameson surprisingly good impersonation um that gives you the feel of what you're uh what you're you're you're coming up and some actors of course i know so well i mean like lisa barman and i have known each other for 30 odd years and so i know her so well that scott doesn't even have to try i know how she deliver a line so you know it makes it makes life very easy in some respects i was listening to your first episode on bernice with lisa in the last couple of days the extinction event and you and her just seem to have this immediate rapport

45:08 so had you worked together before then no we never had worked together we knew each other socially because i mean lisa uh if you've interviewed her for when you do interview her lisa knows everybody i mean she's one of those people who just knows everybody um she's very gregarious and um yeah we just knew each other socially for such a long long time um and so we naturally fell into each other's way of thinking quite easily but also the great thing about the relations between bernice and brax is that it's a great sparring relationship there's a lot of wits to be had from both characters though um sometimes though lisa did think at one point they were making her a

45:53 little bit old womanish i think was the word she used a bit of a haradine as opposed to wit um and i think that the writers took that on board and bored and smoothed some of those rough edges off a little bit um but she's still the the freewheeling drinking hard-nosed um investigator that she always has been has the shape of the whole profession changed a lot more recently i mean with theater and plays you go in you have a rehearsal period of three weeks to did you say 14 that's unbelievable um you have this rehearsal period where you get to know each other you get to try things out with with the audios it's in the studio you have to hit your mark almost immediately how do you is it just

46:38 the fact that you're professionals that you can just do it make it work so seamlessly or what what is the process to make sure you actually relate so strongly so well so quickly well it really is just dying to know your character um i was very pleased when i found out that the writers and there are quite a number of different writers but they all now write when they write braxitel they write with me in mind because what happened to begin with is i would say do you mind if i just change this do you want if i just say that you want to do this and they go oh yeah and they liked what i was improvising and so now they they write that so a lot of brax actually is is part and parcel of my invention i mean his terrible jokes his rye humor his

47:24 kind of slightly comic villainy uh is is my contribution to brax but now of course the writers have taken that contribution and and do it for me so actually i find now that i don't have to do so much of that but going back to your original question um it's if it's people you know they cast you in your character because they think you are going to i mean if in stage and theater now if they want a one-legged welshman they'll find a one-legged welsh you know they don't need to strap your leg up and say could you do a welsh accent you know they cast to type much more it's very hard now to be able to play a character because they'll just cast a character to begin with um and in rehearsal of course uh

48:10 you know sometimes that's half the job of being in rehearsal is to get to know your fellow actors but of course in in audio dramas you don't get that opportunity but then what you've got to hang on to is your character and i know irving very well now so i know how he would interact with a complete stranger so i don't need to know the other actors that well and you know the last one i did i didn't know half of them and didn't matter were you aware that in the early days of the bernie summerfield audio plays that there was an ongoing story arc that sort of weaved its way between the audios and then novels were continuing the story and then it dipped back into the audios were you being

48:56 updated with um the continuing story at the time do you recall um i'm to be i'd be perfectly honest with you gentlemen i haven't read any of the books um and the backstory to irving is so complicated and so convoluted that uh even the writers lost track of it at times and i'm i personally just always just look at the individual drama that i'm working on and see what happens with that and sometimes there's references to things that have happened that i know nothing about but you know it's a bit like being a barrister you don't necessarily need if you're playing a barrister you don't need to know you how to be a barrister you don't need to run to law

49:42 college to to to learn the ins and outs of law to be able to play a barrister on stage you just need to know the lines and the story and and i would say that playing irving is very much the same i don't need to know everything in fact it would take me far too long to know everything about irving i just need to know what is specifically happening to irving in that particular story that's all i need that might be considered lazy but it's not i don't think it it because i just know the character so well now i don't need to know everything yep is it is there more stuff you'd like to do with that character or you're just waiting to see where it goes from here um i would like to continue being irving

50:29 braxittel this is not up to me of course this is up to the writers the producers i love playing him and you know as an actor of nearly 40 years experience the best feedback i've ever received comes from doing these audio dramas i've been in countless west end shows i've done with our rsc i've done films tellies but you know what the fan base for big finish is quite extraordinary um and it's very heartwarming to have this extraordinary feedback and it's partly to do with irving it's partly to do with me being irving it's but it's more importantly the the that extraordinary fan base out there and uh i i just i i feel very humbled

51:15 by the the affection that brax is held in held in um and yeah that's why i'm gonna carry on playing it basically because i get the i get adoration and it's not really for me it's for irving braxton oh the bastard no it's not i can't imagine another voice playing irving like as soon as you came started playing him that was the voice and yeah it's it's so clearly you yeah it's um well i'm thank you for that it's it is yeah like i said in our writing for me i have to confess the last gallifrey idea the land that's just come out um i had some temporary dental work in and and my my speech is a bit slushy because i've got bad teeth uh at that point so

52:02 i'm hoping next time i won't be so slushy um because i didn't i did hear that i was sounding a bit weird on the audio i think i noticed but there you go um in 2013 you started playing a number of roles in dorian gray yeah is that because scott hancock had been working with you on gallifrey and wanted to bring you across with him um i think so and also um of course alex and i again as soon as we met we immediately got on really well together i mean really really well another actor who just it's just a joy to be in the room with and i think it was alex who said can we get miles back here to do something which is why when we did the real dorian gray the actual story he got me

52:47 into play um henry wouldn't who i'd already played on stage so it was like falling off log for me um and also when he did his hamlet he got me into play claudius which i'm really grateful for because claudius is a part that i've hankered after uh for years so he gave me an opportunity to play a part uh albeit in a booth rather than on a stage that i've always wanted to play so you know that that's sort of i think it's alex's uh input that got me into the uh the the dorian greys and what great what great great dramas they are too aren't they they're really good coming soon from big finish productions lord henry wooden mr dorian gray how do you do you know it's funny where i go these days yours is the name i hear people are staring at me harry i don't like it

53:34 well of course they're staring at you but why because you are dorian gray you have a wonderfully beautiful face and beauty is a form of genius oh don't don't don't frown what the gods give they can take away very quickly trust me mr grey youth is the only thing worth having youth is the only thing worth having when i find i am getting old i shall kill myself has basil shown you this portrait yet not yet no it really is his best work you know it's very odd what is this picture simply having it there in my studio the way it looks at me as if it's judging me you believe your picture of me judges you yes yes and it sees through me as if

54:19 putting my heart beneath a microscope and what does it see everything dorian it sees everything [Music] the dorian grace is an amazing series which yeah took yeah very different take on the whole thing and yeah it's going to have side side adventures like that it's actually going to ask you about hamlet um i mean sadly so far big fish have already done two shakespeare productions and the hummus one was just a masterpiece in terms of what it produced um the cast i mean alex vlados was just an amazing hamlet um but i barely want to talk about you know you're you're all as claudius is that's the first time you played claudius

55:04 yeah well believe it or not yes um i'm you know i've not really been old enough but i am i am the right age now to play claudius um you know it's just one of those parts that i've i've always because you know even when i was a young actor i knew that i was never going to be a hamlet i was never going to that's not my kind of part because i'm i'm just too um what's the word i'm trying to i'm too much of a king actor they call them in france not necessarily the best actor on stage but the actor who plays authority and you know hamlet is too troubled for me to play whereas claudius is the kind of part that i'm readily up to do i can do that you know it's a bit like in romeo and juliet i was never going to be romeo i played mercutio i played benvolio i played paris i

55:50 played the duke um i've done that play so many times there's no way that i was ever going to be a romeo even when i was in my 20s was i going to be playing that part so yeah claudius is a partner um i'm by the way i'm waiting now to play uh lord capulet because i love that part i really want to play here um even though i've done the play about five times um so yeah it's about down to the kind of actually that you are um so yeah so i've knocked off knocked off claudius now i could tick that box even if i wasn't in a costume i think you did you needed it in costume i think they think about claudius and you're actually i was once again listened fairly recently your interpretation of claudius was claudius is by far the better king

56:37 i mean you can imagine can you imagine hamlet being king he would be so pathetic like you wouldn't want him to rule the trouble is how claudius got there but in in every other way he's by far the best king for the land oh well this is this is what shakespeare intimates i mean he's he's not a fool shakespeare he he knows who's the proper who should be king and it's claudius um yeah and it's a real tragedy that actually denmark goes down the train because hamlet's bugging everyone up and you know fortinbras comes in and takes over oh great just what we need bloody foreign um so you know it's a it's it's a but i yeah you're right i i listened to it um when i got it i thought because you know they've done hamlet audio on the bbc and

57:23 there's quite a few versions out there but it was really good i was so surprised just how good it was um i was very very impressed and i think that a big finish would be proud of having produced it even though it was alex who bullied them into it but you know why not my hour is almost come when i to sulfurous and tormenting flames must render up myself alas poor ghost hitting me not but lend thy serious hearing to what i shall unfold oh speak i am bound to hear so art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear coming soon from big finish

58:11 productions hamlet do not forget this visitation is but to wet thy almost blunted purpose amazement on thy mother sits speak to her hamlet come come you answer with an idol go go you questioned with a wicked tongue have you forgot me no by the rude not so you are the queen your husband's brother's wife and would it were not so you are my mother laertes what's your father dear to you are you like a painting of a sorrow a face without a heart why ask you this not that i think you did not love your father but that i know love is begun by time

58:56 and that i see in passage of proof time qualifies the spark and fire of it i'll be your foil ladies in mine ignorance your skill shall like a star in the darkest night stick fiery off indeed ah say you so come on no big finish we love stories remember me so it was was all the cast actually aimed to be in the theater in sorry these are in the booth that day were you yeah yes we were we were all on site for that one um and in many ways i think perhaps it would have been difficult not to i mean even though that

59:41 of course there are a lot of monologues from hamlet and they are monologues not soliloquies because they're in blank first they're not they're not inverse they're in there and they're they're not rhyming couplets it's blank there so you know they are monologues rather than soliniques so you even though there was that was the case you you still needed i think the background energy of all the other people in in the in the room somehow it's a it's a lonely and crowded play hamlet you know it's about solitaryness in a crowded place there's something claustrophobic about hamlet yeah um you don't know there's nothing else

1:00:26 coming up at the moment that you know with big finish that you can talk about there absolutely nothing i do know when i spoke to scott um when we recorded the last gallifrey that they've got three years worth of stuff in in the can already because you know they they can't be foolish to release all of them all at once so they got like three years worth of stuff that is already recorded obviously under this uh which is great because underneath these current situation people can't go and record um well you can but it's very difficult um so yeah it's a good thing that big finish have got this backlog of material so i have no idea when they're going to be opening things up again i mean

1:01:12 i suspect that things will be loose enough by the summer that things can start happening again i certainly have got jobs coming up in the next couple of months which obviously they'll be socially distancing but you know they're still making films um that they're planning to do the play i was going to be in last year start to rehearsal at the end of april um hopefully open at the end of may but we'll wait and see you know um let's i i don't count my chickens until i'm in the costume and in the wings for jobs sometimes so what do you have what do you have coming up you have to say what what is it these are work or other things this there well there's a couple of things um there's um role play work which um you can socially distance

1:01:58 quite easily um for um a big project here hs2 and so it's a lot easier to have live actors in a room because then you can answer questions in character so there's that that starts next week um the play i was going to do is the wonderful old um warhorse agatha christie's a witness for the prosecution which is going on in london i was i was scheduled to start that april of last year and now we're going to start in april of this year and there's a film which i got a couple of days on in may uh which i can't tell you about okay but there you go but that you know i mean and last year despite everything i had five jobs granted those five jobs only took about seven days of my year but that's five jobs more than a

1:02:44 lot of my friends had um you know it's been really bad for some people uh but uh yeah so it's been it's been um it's been gratifyingly good for me uh despite everything well should we have anything else you want to ask well i was just going to say that you and i are going to start our campaign for a uh uh a brax and narvin spin-off box set now aren't we definitely that would be that would be great i mean i think you know perhaps the scenario that brax and narvin have gone into a tardis and by accident they're in the same tardis and then scarlett spins off into another universe and they're stuck it'd be like you know bonnie and clyde or

1:03:31 or more like walkerman wise actually um sort of working together in a really touchy way to solve major universal problems i'd love that i'd love it let's see what happens listen thank you so much for your time miles really appreciate it um thank you for what you've brought to a big fish as i said coming up to 20 years which is a pretty huge milestone for working with one company 50 productions um and that's aside from everything else it yeah often you keep popping up i was watching the crown recently you know you said that you're on my tv screen in the crown and so um yeah i had um i didn't realize at the time but i had pneumonia when i filmed oh i wondered why i was i was wondering why i was a bit sort of was

1:04:17 woozy and then i ended up in hospital two days later wow well glad you survived that okay at least before before you go i'd just like to say a big thank you to all those big finnish fans out there because you know you make the whole experience of doing these audio dramas it's more than just a job it's a pleasure because of the the tremendous feedback that we all get from all those people out there who just listen to the audios and love them and uh and take the time to let us know how much they love them i think it's great well we certainly love the work you've done we thank you so much for your time that's been my pleasure thank you very much gentlemen bye goodbye hear your lord president

1:05:05 your father as you make this great sacrifice from big finish productions gallifrey time war volume four when two mighty armies bend the constellations to become their battlefields a warrior must decide we tried to turn back the tide but failed our friends have been taken one by one so what is left for us to do run hide it does not sit well with a warrior to run but sometimes it is the only choice or we can resist but what of the last those who fall in

1:05:52 battle are they condemned to rise time and time again to take arms against an enemy who never rests history is written by the winners in a time war that history can be rewritten by the losers no one's truly gone until they're gone from memory farewell my friends big finish we love stories so that was an absolutely fantastic chat we had with miles richardson thank you

1:06:38 very much for organizing that philip it was wonderful and you know what we're going to talk about some recommendations now to end off the show and i think it might be your turn yes because it's always my turn thank you dwayne um yes i would actually recommend something by miles and one of the things that uh we saw that miles was a huge shakespeare um career and for big finish he actually came in to play uh claudius in hamlet so sadly big fans have only done two shakespeare productions so far both of them are just amazing if you if you okay even if you don't like shakespeare get them and have a listen to them because they're amazing but i'm going to recommend hamlet um you get to hear miles richardson play the evil

1:07:23 uh stepfather um of hamlet and all the casts are magnificent so it's got um oh the accidentally ingrained lost losses using my head a moment ago um alexander vlahos yes thank you alexander vlahos isn't it um terry malloy plays polonius um it's it's full of amazing doctor class people um and big finished people great actors really distracting their stuff what about you well um my recommendation is also uh in a roundabout way um indirectly uh miles richardson based because i was watching on amazon there's a film version of peterloo which i was watching and

1:08:10 miles had had a part in that so if you you can catch that movie on amazon prime it's a very very long film but very interesting nonetheless but that made me turn to the peterloo massacre which was the fifth doctor adventure from a few years back written by paul mars uh featuring the fifth doctor tegan and who else was in it was it turlow and nissa i think it was turlo and this is just just listen tegan just nissa yeah that's right yeah shows shows how closely i was listening to it but anyway i uh pure historical um we were talking about it recently on a show that we did with um with ross aiken from gallifrey's most wanted we had him on the show and he was talking about uh historicals and

1:08:56 that is a pure historical not that there's too many of them around but this was a a great one it's always good to visit or revisit so my recommendation is the peterloo massacre [Music] what's happening to the tardis the navigational systems are malfunctioning due to traveling backwards through decades of your girl carboniferous much care for the industrial revolution so you're saying we got lost in the spark places before but this is terrible 1819 doctor great challenges lied it'll be like nothing this city has ever seen before 18 19 18 19 come on doctor think why does that year fill you with dread

1:09:43 someone's got to stand up and tell the truth my friends into the midst of a disaster what are you talking about it's august the 15th 1819 we're in manchester so we're on the eve of the darkest day in this city's history it's a great choice i think the fifth doctor and historicals just go so well together i think he has done quite a few in big finish range and it's just his doctor to suits them a choice dwayne excellent so that's our show for this week hope you enjoyed it uh make sure you send us lots of lovely feedback and uh join our facebook facebook group um we just search for the sirens of audio on facebook you'll find us there we'd love to engage

1:10:29 with you make sure you subscribe to us on youtube as well we've got some videos going up and uh once again thanks for for listening or thanks for watching thank you philip for coming on and uh and sharing this episode with me it's been great being wonderful thanks dwayne have a good week until next time tata you have been listening to the sirens of audio episode 49 the many lives of irving braxiatel with special guest miles richardson and your hosts philip edney and dwayne bunny theme music by husky by the geek you'll find his video of the theme tune on his youtube channel rate review subscribe and love us on apple podcast youtube or whichever multi-dimensional version of a podcast app you use send your emails to sirens of

1:11:17 audio gmail.com and we'll read them when we return from the axis and our website is at dot sirensofaudio.com our twitter handle is at audio sirens

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