Mark, you did a sort of fantasy action movie with A Knight’s Tale where you were sort of on the sidelines. Do you get to be fully in battle and action in “Atlantis?”
Mark Addy: Yes, although Hercules, we were doing some fights the other day, he’s all defensive. In that fight, Pythagoras ends up knocking the guy out, so it’s really Jason who’s the one who can actually do it. The others are pretty useless.
Is this going to be the first Hercules we see who doesn’t really fight?
Mark Addy: Quite possibly, and I like that.
You’re really turning myths on their head here.
Mark Addy: Yes, yes, absolutely. Listen, I could drink The Rock under the table.
Jemima Rooper: Challenge!
Mark Addy: If he’s up for that…
I know Mark’s work from A Knight’s Tale, The Full Monty and other movies. Jemima, how did you come to this series?
Jemima Rooper: I have a very long relationship with the producers, Johnny Capps and Julian Murphy. I’m a big fan of Howard [Overman]’s work, but I first worked with them about 10 years ago on a TV show in the U.K. We did a show called “Hex” together that was on BBC America years ago. That was a hit for BBC America and launched Michael Fassbender, we like to say.
A lot of TV, a lot of costume drama, “Lost in Austen” was somewhere in America. Lots of ladies like that one, and I’ve been doing theater for the last four years. I was in New York for six months last year doing One Man, Two Guvnors which one the Tony for the lead actor, James Corden. That took up about a year and a half of our lives. By that time, I was like, “I want to do some screen stuff again.”
This came along and it’s like working with family. There’s a great atmosphere on set anyway and then we’re walking onto a set with people that have worked together for four or five years on “Merlin,” and then I know a few people from previous jobs. They’re a pretty amazing producer team.
Mark Addy: Yeah, they’re brilliant.
Jemima Rooper: They get incredible directors and we feel very lucky that it is the way that it is. It’s a good formula. It feels like it’s working.
Mark, you did an American sitcom. What has it been like going back to British television?
Mark Addy: Good, it’s a different kind of thing. Having done 22, 24 episodes a season here, and that was only half-hour, but 13 is a lot for us. It’s a different kind of show as well. It’s bigger, bigger in scale and in its ambition. It is like shooting a movie in 13 short films.
Do you still think about The Full Monty?
Mark Addy: Yeah, I get reminded. People talk about it. It’s the thing that people know me from the most probably, or on “Game of Thrones” a bit more recently but Full Monty, people still remember it. They still play it on British television once a month.
Jemima Rooper: It was on the plane. I was like, “Oh, that’s Mark’s movie.”
Are they still doing a new musical, that’s based more on the movie than the American musical was?
Mark Addy: They’ve done a play. I don’t think it’s a musical. I think it’s a play. It was Simon [Beaufoy] who wrote the screenplay who’s written the play so it should be fairly faithful. Supposedly going to the West End, isn’t it? It’s doing a tour. I think they were hoping it would go to the West End. Who knows?
How was your experience on “Game of Thrones?”
Mark Addy: It was good. I made it to episode seven or eight.
Jemima Rooper: Everyone said earlier, I never thought of that, your death literally starts the game of thrones.
Mark Addy: Until the throne was free, things can’t really kick in.
