Simon Farnaby interview
Simon Farnaby pops up in many different roles in Yonderland, from the evil Negatus to the nice Vice Elder Flowers.
Hi Simon. How did the Yonderland project start?
From what I remember, Ben Willbond and Mat Baynton had an idea about an elf that came out of a fridge, a film along those lines but with a young boy. We all nurtured it and I think it was my idea to make it a mum because we couldn't work out how it wouldn't be annoying with a child in it.
Sky went with it quite quickly, so we were really pleased about that. We thought it was a funny and quite mainstream idea, but when I told a few people what kind of show we were making, they went, 'oh, that's weird'.
Have you ever found yourself in a fish-out-of-water scenario?
Most of the time, actually. I've been doing a documentary about people with amazing powers, travelling to Serbia, Croatia, Romania and Russia, so the last time I wasn't a fish-out-of-water was when I was with all the guys on Yonderland.
What was the toughest part of the shoot?
The sheer ambition. Because it's a first series and because Sky said use our imaginations, we came up with eight scripts set in different places within Yonderland, so that was challenging.
We should have had three or four months to film the show, it's like an epic film, but we only had six weeks and cramming everything in was tough. There was a lot of work to be done in a short space of time.
How much did you relish your role as Negatus the baddie?
Oh, it was great fun, mainly because Negatus has these three demons and I've never had minions before. I played a baddie in Horrible Histories as well - Death - but he didn't have any minions.
What was it like working with puppets?
The puppeteers are incredible, but the staging of it...
Once you start moving the camera around, you realise that puppets are not normal-sized and that they've got people underneath them, so that causes a lot of problems.
The guys were great, but they suffered - one of the puppeteers had to retire because his knee went.
