STACK 132 October Issue

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with GEMMA CHAN.
2 13 4
How does Laura feel about Sophie
relating to Anita so quickly?
I think the fact that Sophie befriends
Anita and is completely at ease and
affectionate towards her so quickly does
trouble Laura and makes her feel left out
and a bit threatened within the family. I
think the fact that she mistrusts or she
doesn’t completely trust Anita from the
start, it all feeds into her slight paranoia
about Anita’s presence in the house.
There seems to be something quite
different about Anita, how does that
start to play out?
Well when you first meet Anita no
one really suspects there is anything
different about her but then certain
members of the family, Laura and Mattie
in particular, notice things about Anita
which are slightly strange. Her behaviour
is somewhat different to other people’s
synths, she seems to be a bit more
perceptive.
Tell us about being a synth, what’s
involved?
Well we have had a brilliant movement
director called Dan O’Neill who has
guided us from the start. Before we
started filming we did a few weeks of
what we called ‘Synth School. He and
Chris Fry (our producer), really wanted a
uniform language of movement for the
synths to have, so every actor who played
a synth had to go through it.
Synths are basically machines and
everything that they do is going to use up
energy or battery power, so everything
they do has to have an economy. As
an actor, it was about finding ways to
do things that are actually very counter
intuitive to how we would traditionally
do things: so it was really learning all the
basics, how to stand up, sit down, walk,
turn a corner. The things that sound so
easy but actually you have to really pare
back your physicality and do it in the most
economic way. It’s really hard actually
when you realise how many physical ticks
you have and you have to kind of strip
those back.
Was Dan with you on set for each
scene?
Thank goodness Dan was there every
day! He would be able to give you notes
and say “you know your feet aren’t
parallel” or “your left hand is fidgeting in
the shot”, so yeah we really, really needed
him.
What was the effect on hair and
makeup and styling? Did hair and
make-up take longer than a more usual
role?
Our make-up designer came up with
the hair and makeup which I think looks
great on all the synths. The synths are
meant to look perfect, so it’s a nod to a
kind of sheen on the skin and a flawless
finish to the hair and makeup. So yes
itdoes take a little longer and has to be
maintained throughout any given day, but
I think it really works.