Making a killing
MEL GIEDROYC AND SUE PERKINS ARE BACK WITH A SECOND SERIES OF ASSASSIN COMEDY HITMEN. CHECKS IN
I take it you were chuffed to get a second series of Hitmen?
SUE PERKINS: Oh so chuffed.
MEL GIEDROYC: The first series had great moments but we thought it’d be great to get a second series to make it better, and go a bit deeper into Jamie and Fran’s friendship.
SUE: In this series we get to play a longer narrative, which involves the disruption of their friendship with a third party, Cat, who’s played by the brilliant Katherine Parkinson.
How did that work out?
SUE: She really showed us how acting’s done because I had no idea. She’s perfect because she can do seething villain. Half the time you’ll see I’m turning away laughing because she’s so good.
MEL: We had an amazing array of guest stars such as Mathew Baynton, who was phenomenal. Then Lucien MacDougall, who’s a physical comedian, who had the thankless part in episode three where I ram a bog brush down his throat.
Are you trained how to fight or use a gun? SUE: Not fighting, which might be evident. We have stunt guys half our age and weight so you’ll be lumbering with gut and boobs in a frenzy and then cut to my back, which is lithe, and a stunt person running at high speed taking somebody down. But we did learn how to hold a gun in a convincing way and how you discharge a nine millimetre.
Do you work at your best when you’re together?
SUE: When we’re together there’s a permission to be so expansive and childish in our loved-up bubble of idiocy. We might not make anyone else laugh but we make each other laugh. MEL: We stayed in the Premier Inn in Bromley while filming this series so it was like the old days, clocking off from work then spending the whole evening together watching telly.
SUE: We’d do that on The Great British Bake Off. We’d watch senseless drivel every night until I heard Mel snoring.
What it is about your characters killing people that’s just so funny?
SUE: Part of it, I think, is because we’ve come from Bake Off, which is the most sweet, saccharine, 1950s England show. In the first series of Hitmen we were worried about how people would deal with it. But what I enjoy about this series is we don’t have to explain why we’re killing people. Our characters can have an intense emotional conversation and then realise we’ve forgotten to blow somebody’s head off. MEL: There’s something ludicrous about two perimenopausal women playing hitmen. The nature of the friendship is so normal and then the counterpoint to that is this crazy job we happen to do.
And everybody needs a laugh right now… SUE: Yes, it’s been tough – we’re in the grip of such seismic changes to our world that I really do think it’s time to find enjoyment in simple things like two old birds killing people.