Steve Pemberton interview

We talk to Steve Pemberton about Series 3 of Inside No. 9 and his role in the West End's current hit comedy play. Set in the 1990s, Dead Funny sees Pemberton, Katherine Parkinson, Emily Berrington, Rufus Jones and Ralf Little playing the members of comedy fan club The Dead Funny Society.

Hi Steve. Dead Funny has picked up great reviews. Did you have a sense in advance that you were a signing up for a hit?

I had seen the play before [it was first staged in 1994] and so I knew it was a great West End play, and I knew what it had to offer in terms of lots of big guaranteed laughs and, underpinning that, a troubling story of marriage in crisis. So I kind of knew it had the balance right.

What I didn't know is where individual laughs were going to come, and how it is going to play with a modern audience. So we were all itching to get it front of an audience to see how it was received, because the audience is the sixth member of the cast if you like. They have a different personality each night.

You find the reactions change night from night then? The big laugh points are presumably always there though?

They are mostly always there, but you do get quieter audiences. It is an unusual play in that the first 5 to 10 minutes are quite low-key and sometimes that sets the tone for the whole evening. Generally, we've found the matinee audiences on Wednesday afternoons - which are often the ones you'd dread as an actor - are some of the liveliest, as you do get an older crowd in, and they do love a bit of Max Miller, Jimmy James and Benny Hill - there's some nice reminiscing for them.

An audience takes on a collective personality within the first 10 to 15 minutes, and that's the joy of doing live theatre, it's never the same twice. Sometimes you'll get an individual with a corking laugh that sets everyone else off... you never know what's going to happen.

One thing is for sure: we all enjoy doing it.

Dead Funny has a dark heart. Do you think that ever takes audience members by surprise?

Yes, very possibly it takes them by surprise. They might know the play is set in motion by the death of Benny Hill, and they may know it's about a society who are going to re-enact some classic comedy, so maybe they think they're in for a jolly music hall evening; but really it's a desperately sad play, there's a lot of emotional stuff there.

I think, even if they are surprised by the darkness, in my opinion anyway, it only serves to make those laughs richer and more complex. If you're going to have a custard pie fight going on, it's much more troubling to know that what's motivating that is a breakdown of a marriage rather than someone just deciding to throw some food around.

Indeed. We ought to emphasise there are huge laughs alongside the darker moments. There is also a lot of flesh on show!

Yeah! Kudos to Rufus Jones for what he does, it's really exposing. He is brilliant, he doesn't make a fuss about it at all. I think it's helped that he had already done it in Hunderby and Camping... it's been out there, shall we say.

It was in the original production, and I think it is an essential part of disarming the audience. That's what Terry [creator Terry Johnson] does all the way through, he throws you off your guard. It generates some very uneasy laughter, and I think that's brilliant... to be surprised and not know what's coming next.

We did have a brilliant performance the other night when we were watching the show relay [the TV screens backstage]. There was an old lady in the second row who had brought a telescope... that's not any comment on Rufus whatsoever! She obviously had bad eyesight in one eye, but we did notice the telescope come out at that point.

The show has been running nightly since the start of November. You must know it so well now. Is there any danger of entering 'auto pilot' mode?

Absolutely. Case in point: Just a couple of nights ago there was someone with a really loud cough, and I was thinking how annoying it was that it was going over certain punchlines. As I was speaking I was thinking this, and then suddenly I lost my train of thought...

It's the actor's worst nightmare, when you 'dry'. It only lasts about three or four seconds. But I started talking gibberish. I knew more or less who I was speaking to, but I couldn't remember the words. Luckily Rufus helped me out, and we got back on track. But it really is a lurching feeling in your stomach when you sense these people watching you in the darkness and all the lights are on you, all the eyes are on you, and you haven't got a clue what you're meant to say.

The audience very rarely spots these things unless it's really catastrophic... but it was horrible. So you've got to be focused; it was a good lesson for me!

We've always wondered... do actors retain play scripts in their heads after the run has finished?

It leaves your mind. I guess it's in there somewhere, but it's all to do with context as well... If we're talking about a bit in the play... "oh what's that line?"... you can't just pluck it out, it has to be in the context of you having done the whole play to arrive at that point that you remember it. If we are talking about an individual scene, I can never bring the lines to mind.

There are some things that are drilled in - for example when I had to learn the colours from Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, to use in Psychoville - that I'll never forget. "It was Red and Yellow and Green and Brown and Scarlet and Black and Ochre and Peach and Ruby and Olive and..." etcetera... I had to learn that so well, I'll never forget it. Other things, I'm sure it's in there somewhere, but you do have to make space in your brain to put new things.

The mention of Psychoville moves us on to your work with Reece Shearsmith. There's a episode of Inside No. 9 coming up on Tuesday 27th December set at Christmas. Are you calling it a festive special?

We never intended it to be a Christmas special, but the scheduling of the third series got moved around - they wanted to start the series early in the new year. It would be annoying have an episode with 'Christmas' in the title just after Christmas, so we have pulled that one out of the series now. The rest of the series will follow in February, I believe.

We never wrote it as a Christmas special, but it is a nice antidote to all the other specials I think. There is a tradition of creepy ghost stories at Christmas, and I think it falls into that category. I'm not going to say anything else, so as not to spoil it! It's certainly not a heart-warming, it's not a "let's all end up by the fire with a mug of coco" kind of show!

It's all filmed as if it was a 1970s thriller. It has a real retro quality to it, so I think people will enjoy immersing themselves in that.

You filmed the episode using equipment from the era...

Yes. We wrote the script and showed it to our producer Adam Tandy. He was working in production in, I think, the late 70s and early 80s, and he made it his mission to try and source the original tube cameras. When we got them, we weren't quite sure if they would work or how long they'd last.

Most of the crew came out of the 70s too. We had to have these guys from Yorkshire Television who could do the multicamera stuff, and we had a director in Graeme Harper, who has done some of that as well. We tried everything we could do to make it as authentic as possible, and it was a joy to do.

The temptation, of course, when you're doing something that's not meant to be bad but is 'of its time' is you can ham up the mistakes - Acorn Antiques being a prime example. There's some great laughs to be had there. You want to exploit that, but you don't want to overdo it... We want people to think when they see it, "is this from the 1970s or not?"

It looks brilliant. What can we expect from the other five new episodes?

You can expect the unexpected!

We don't like to give too much away, but there's one set in a restaurant, which is inspired by myself and Reece overhearing some people arguing about who was going to pay the bill - so that's called The Bill.

There's an episode set in a karaoke booth. There's an episode set an art gallery on a private view evening.

There's an episode set around cryptic crosswords, which I'm a big fan of. I got to make my own cryptic crossword! That's set in a Cambridge don's study.

And there's always one set in a very normal house... This time a man finds a shoe outside on the street and he wants to know who it belongs to.

So that's the other five episodes... we do think it's a strong series.

The Devil Of Christmas is definitely part of the series, and when it comes out on DVD it'll be with the others. They are going to bring out all three series on Blu-ray I understand, which is exciting for us.

So, yeah, it's a really strong series; the usual mix of styles and genres. I think one of the joys of Inside No. 9 is coming to it and not knowing what you're going to get, so we don't like to say much else about the episodes other than they've got great casts and we hope people enjoy them as much as they have the first two series.

To find out more about Inside No. 9 see our guide