A quickie with... Stephen Mangan
So, what’s Hang Ups all about?
It’s the story of therapist Richard Pitt, whose group practise has disastrously folded a few weeks earlier, so he’s reinventing himself online. But what’s almost more difficult for him is that he’s made a catastrophic decision to borrow money off somebody when his last venture failed, so that is coming back to haunt him.
Much of the action happens on online video calls – what was it like as a filming experience? Did you have to act to a blank screen?
No, we deliberately didn’t do that. Every conversation was being recorded, both sides at the same time. We shot the whole thing basically in one house in Queen’s Park. I’m downstairs in the living room, and they’re in sets we built upstairs. The first Sarah Hadland session we did, the first take was 25 minutes long! We just let her talk and talk. That was a joy – these conversations, the improvisations, were done for real. Charles Dance is in all six episodes, we shot his entire series in one morning. Richard E Grant is also in every episode, we shot his entire series in one morning as well.
Did you take your inspiration from Lisa Kudrow’s US show Web Therapy?
Yes. I was asked if I’d like to do a British remake and I said no, without even looking at it, because for me, ideas have their best incarnation by the people who thought them up. But then I watched it, and realised that the format allowed for a lot of improvisation, and was so brilliant that I just had to do it.
Is it fair to say that Richard is as screwed up as most of his clients?
Yeah. I think he’s not a great communicator. For a man who’s trying to get people to open up and examine themselves, he’s not honest with his own therapy. He’s not honest with his wife. He tries to push problems into tomorrow rather than dealing with them today. It’s a difficult balance to get. Lisa Kudrow’s therapist was clearly an appalling therapist who was only out for her own selfish ends, which is very funny! But we wanted to see if we could make the therapy a little bit more genuine.