I AM THE GREGMAN

Paterson Joseph reflects on his role as Greg Preston

Have you found yourself thinking about Survivors recently?

At the moment, every day, every time I go out! I feel like Survivors should be rewatched now. I certainly think they should put it on iPlayer again. But it’s a bit of a grim one, isn’t it? There’s very little comedy or lightness in it.

Was Greg a challenging character to play? We don’t know much about him in that first series.

He was a systems analyst, and that’s as far away from me as it’s possible to get. He was a slow-burner, even for Adrian, I’d imagine. Series two was a lot easier though, because it started with my backstory.

What are your favourite memories of working on the series?

I remember how striking it was to be on the motorway. There are some moments in life where you think, “I can recall that moment and it gives me such peace”. Being on that motorway, even with a fair-sized crew, I remember standing away from everybody for a second, looking off the road – and there wasn’t a bird in the sky, a plane flying, no traffic, and an empty motorway. It was the most eerie thing. And all through that shoot, on that motorway, you kept looking behind you for traffic. It was that feeling of an empty world that sort of haunted me, and I held on to that.

What do you remember of the cancellation?

I’m one who always thinks, “I’m not on this show until I’m standing on the set doing it,” pretty much. When a thing like that happens you just go, “Oh well” and you move on. Mourning makes no difference. But the amount of people who come to me and say, “Why did you stop doing it? I mean, you left it on a cliffhanger with Tom bleeding out on a plane! Why would you leave it there?”