David Mumeni interview
David Mumeni plays the great character of Mario in Sliced...
You've been popping up on our screens a lot in the last few months, all fun comedy. Death On The Tyne, Dead Pixels and now Sliced. Your character in this one is quite outrageous!
Mario is the owner of a low rent, backstreet pizza parlour constantly keeping Joshua and Ricky on their toes. He is defo outrageous.
He has absolutely no filter. He says what he wants and does as he likes, shouting at everyone. I think that's what's so fun about playing him. He's the character you both hate and love at the same time. One of the funniest parts I've ever played for sure!
There was some fast-paced dialogue to deliver we note. Did it take many attempts to get some of the more complicated bits filmed? Samson Kayo says you improvised some of it?
Yeah, a lot of stuff in that first scene with Samson and Theo was improvised when we shot the initial teaser for it. Phil Bowker and Samson were really generous with that and allowed us to go with any instincts we had.
We did have to have quite a few attempts at scenes sometimes, but that was mainly because of all the corpsing! I'm really bad at laughing when I'm not supposed to, but Samson should win prizes for it! Someone give him a badge.
We had to turn him around at one point because he kept laughing so much, but we could still see his shoulders moving up and down, so Al [director Al Campbell] had to ask him to leave the room. I just had to aim some of my stuff at Theo and the back wall! But we were all bad. But you can't help it sometimes. I take it as a good sign, that the show is funny!
How much pizza did you eat on set? It looks like it was all around you!
Yeah, there was quite a bit of pizza eating. Lucky for me I like pizza! It was cold. But I like cold pizza. Pepperoni and buffalo mozzarella is a bit of me!
Things get quite messy for Mario when he goes on a date in the second episode. Hopefully you've not had any nights out as bad as that?
Ha! Yeah not as bad as that, but there were several years of being single and I had my fair share of terrible dates. One involved; a confession that she had just broken up with her boyfriend the day before, tears, Pina coladas, and me giving advice about how there was still hope and that she could still maybe patch things up!
The cast list is full of great people. Phil Daniels as Scott - a man on the brink - looks like he was particularly fun to act alongside?
Yeah, it is a great cast of both funny and lovely people. Phil is a bit of legend and I loved working with him. I loved Kathy Burke's Gimme Gimme Gimme when I was growing up and my favourite episode has him playing a funny, dangerous ex-con in it so was really excited when I saw I was going to work with him. We had a lot of fun filming our scenes together!
Sliced looks like it has lots of potential to become a long-running show. Presumably you'd be up for returning as Mario?
100%! Honestly, one of the best times I've had on a set. And I love playing Mario!