Mackenzie Crook ‘I’m not an ideal chat‑show guest’
Mackenzie Crook, the self-effacing star of ‘Detectorists’, tells Craig Mclean he’s happiest when doing a spot of coppicing
Mackenzie Crook – precise, unhurried, self-effacing creator of a hit sitcom, Detectorists, that glories in its slowness – is, unsurprisingly, not a box-set binger. The increasingly default model of modern TV viewing is not for him. So, no, the actor tells me, he has not streamed every episode of his new drama, Britannia, offered up by Sky in one clamorous lump.
With a series as violent, crazed and trippy as the historical romp about an ill-fated Roman invasion of our fair isle, this is probably a good thing. There’s a lot going on in playwright Jez Butterworth’s first telly gig, from a Sixties psychedelic soundtrack to David Morrissey’s constipated general and Crooks’s “Dalai Lama meets Charles Manson” Druid. So much so that it’s probably better for us to watch it one week at a time, lest our collective heads explode.
Crook murmurs his agreement. “It gives you a chance to process it. Yeah, I’m very old-fashioned in my TV viewing habits. In fact, in my habits in general.”
The man who rose to fame playing stationery fascist Gareth Keenan in The Office is, these days, also a Bafta- honoured writer-director. The third series of his winsome nature-com Detectorists recently finished on BBC Four. True to nuanced form, Crook admits he created it as a “weekly treat”.
This is how the 46-year-old rolls: gently. We meet at a private members’ club in London’s theatreland, Crook is wearing battered jeans, boots, grungy layers and crumpled baseball cap. He smells of hand-rolled cigarettes and wood. Reports that his knapsack contained a flask of tea and some sandwiches, packed to sustain him on his journey into town from his home in Muswell Hill, north London, could not be confirmed at the time of writing.
This easy-going demeanour stood him in good stead during the fivemonth Britannia production. To play freaky shaman Veran, this mop-top dirty-blond had to shave his head daily and sometimes endure up to five hours in the make-up chair every morning. He’d be picked up from his hotel near the Czech Republic filming location at 3am and arrive on set two hours before all the other cast.
“And I did that 30 times for 30 filming days,” Crook says, adding: “It was gruelling, but not in any sort of unbearable way. It became a meditative process, this slow transformation in front of the mirror, seeing myself change into a Druid as they added five prosthetics – forehead, nose, cheeks, chin, and this big wrap around my neck – then painted those and added the tattoos and scarification. So that was my preparation, my warm-up. The skill of the make-up artists every day was incredible to watch.”
His character Veran brainwashes prisoners with mind-altering substances (at least they’re locally foraged, organic drugs). It’s a rare leading role for a shy man more used to playing, as he puts it, “the quirky character in the bigger productions”.
Even his start in acting seems accidental. Crook grew up in Dartford, Kent, the middle of three children and the only son of a British Airways employee dad and hospital manager mum. In his teenage years he was a volunteer with the British Trust for Conservation. “I could easily have become a conservationist.”
Instead, his other schooldays love of drawing persuaded him he’d be an illustrator or graphic artist. But when he failed to secure a place at art college, he says: “I left school and drifted. I’d always loved performing in school plays, so then I started doing comedy clubs and went that way.”
He spent his twenties on the stand-up circuit, then this slowburning, low-wattage talent was thrown into the spotlight, aged 30, in The Office. Soon after, he was cast in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
His life changed in other ways, too: the year The Office debuted in 2001 he married Lindsay, who worked in advertising. They now have two children, son Jude, 15, and daughter Scout, 10, their names reflecting two of his literary loves (Thomas Hardy and To Kill a Mockingbird).
Crook is an affable but jittery figure. Lean of frame and gaunt of face, you sense he’s happiest when pottering,
‘I love hiding myself away for an entire day… I’d not be a good chat show guest’
attending to his various hobbies. As well as a love of nature and gardening, he’s also a keen coin collector, metal detectorist and carpenter. He still draws, too: Crook has written and illustrated two children’s books.
That interest in passions that are “niche and detailed”, he reflects, “almost certainly” comes from his hobbyist dad. “He actively tried to get me interested in collecting coins and I just couldn’t see what was interesting about it at all. But then something shifted in my thirties and suddenly I got it.
“I’m seeing that in my son now,” he continues. “He just turned 15 and for his birthday he wanted a bunch of tools so he could start making stuff.” And what of wife Lindsay – is she, like his mum, a bit of a hobby widow? “To an extent,” he concedes, squirming slightly, “but I try to keep a lid on it. Things like metal detecting, that takes a whole day. So I only go once or twice a year.”
Reflecting an enthusiasm for a lost England that is in the DNA of Britannia and Detectorists, Crooks now owns an eight-acre wood in Essex, full of hornbeam, oak and sweet chestnut. “The woodland is a retreat, to instil in my kids a love for the countryside. My son suddenly got into the idea of managing it, so we’ve started going regularly to do a bit of coppicing.”
More woodspotter than trainspotter, Crook regularly lugs home logs and branches, for burning or carving. “Hornbeam is incredibly hard – they used it for cartwheels. It blunts your tools. But yeah, I do collect bits of wood. If I find a particularly straight branch I think, ‘I’ll make a stick out of that one day’.”
In his forties, he’s finally found his comfort zone, as a writer and allround craftsman, on and off-screen. “I love hiding myself away for an entire day in my office,” Crook says of the creative mancave. The rest of the time, we definitely won’t spot the lesser-spotted Crook on the celebrity circuit. “I’m not a good chat show guest. It’s cringey.”
His industry pals are of a similar stripe, blessed with a variety of interests and skills. He’s friends with actor/comic/writer Matt Lucas, actor/singer Johnny Flynn (who created the Detectorists’ theme song) and Elbow singer Guy Garvey (via his wife Rachael Stirling, who plays Crook’s partner on Detectorists).
When not hanging out with such “artists and polymaths”, he’s keeping himself busy writing a film script that, like the proudly middle-aged Detectorists, reflects a love of the English countryside, but it seems Detectorists really is gone for good. “I’m happy to leave it. I’m scared of it getting stale,” says Crook. “The nature of the show is ‘not much happens’. And how long can ‘not much happens’ keep on happening before it starts to gets samey or dull?”
Britannia is on Sky Atlantic on Thursdays at 9pm. All nine episodes are available at Sky TV on demand