Matt Lucas (Chancellor Dongalor) interview
One of Britain's most successful writers and performers, Matt Lucas, became a household name with his starring roles in Little Britain. In Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire he gets to play an out-and-out villain, albeit a lovable one. Chancellor Dongalor was at the military academy with Krod and now lives in a large castle in the backwater of Hessemeel. But he is determined that all that is about to change thanks to his discovery of the Eye of Gulga Grymna, the deadliest weapon of the ancient world.
Matt enjoyed playing Dongalor - even though his scenes were shot over a very intense two-week period, as he had to rush off to the States to play the parts of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum in Tim Burton's new feature film Alice In Wonderland, and star alongside David Walliams in Little Britain USA. But he was determined to find time to co-star in Krod Mandoon...
He says: "It's exciting to be a part of this very imaginative series. It's not like anything else on TV, although if pushed I'd say it's Lord Of The Rings meets Blackadder meets Monty Python. Krod Mandoon should appeal to fans of Red Dwarf and Superbad too. The production values of the series are very high with big, ambitious sets, and in many ways it looks more like a film than a comedy series."
He continues: "My character, Dongalor, is a bit of a despot: an evil man with too much power. He's a cross between the Bond villain Blofeld and Pol Pot... Blow Pot, perhaps! He's psychotic really. Can you be a sociopath and a psychotic at the same time? If so, then he is!"
"I was particularly pleased to hear that Sean was in the show as, by coincidence, we had actually met for the first time just a few weeks before through a mutual friend. I grew up watching Sean playing Tegs in Grange Hill and I also remember seeing him in EastEnders. I really admire him as an actor as he is very thorough and leaves no stone unturned. I was really impressed to see Sean embody his character from the very beginning. He gives a very credible performance as Krod and I hope that he gets the credit he deserves for what he's done. He's doing very well in the States and I think it is really nice that British audiences will get to see him again."
Matt got to wear some pretty eccentric costumes in the show, not least a pair of goat fur underpants and not much else. He laughs: "It was great fun and a very happy series to work on. Luckily I don't take myself too seriously and I don't think that my chances of playing Romeo have been changed in any way because of the silly costumes in Krod Mandoon."
Matt's on-screen partnership with Alex McQueen (Barnabus, Dongalor's aide) is "impossible not to love. Barnabus is Dongalor's right-hand man... a henchman if you will, so their relationship is central to the story. Luckily Alex and I really hit it off - we got on famously and became great friends. The characters of Dongalor and Barnabus both need each other, I think - they'd be ineffective without each other and are equally as ineffective with each other."
Matt adds: "Dongalor does feel like the first big villain that I've played. In Little Britain you might say Majorie Dawes was pretty villainous and Andy Pipkin can behave very badly but in terms of being a full-on despot I think that it's got to be Dongalor. If Dongalor were to be transported to the 21st century I believe that he would be there giving Donald Trump a run for his money."
But If Matt could possess the powers of the Eye of Gulga Grymna, what would he do? "I'd use it to irritate people rather than annihilate them. I'd just cause mayhem on a small scale as opposed to blowing up cities! I might just loosen the rails on the curtains for example just so they had to reach a little higher than they were able to, or push over the odd box of oranges as I walked past a greengrocers."
So not really a nasty guy, then!