I spent years avoiding moustache-twirling villains...Dick Dastardly’s the quintessential one
Jason Isaacs put aside fears of typecasting to play an iconic cartoon baddie, in the new animated Scooby Doo adventure
JASON ISAACS is no stranger to playing a villain. Harry Potter’s Lucius Malfoy, The Patriot’s Colonel William Tavington, Star Trek: Discovery’s Captain Lorca and The OA’s unhinged Dr “Hap” Percy are among his most celebrated characters with a considerable dark side.
But now he’s turning his hand to one of the most famous baddies of them all – Dick Dastardly. He voices the famous Hanna-Barbera antagonist in the new animated film Scoob! about the origin story of Scooby Doo and the Mystery Inc crew.
“I have spent a lot of years insisting that I avoid moustache-twirling villains because I try to create three dimensional complex, recognisably human characters,” Jason smiles. “But Dick Dastardly is the quintessential moustachetwirling villain.
“So I went as far over the top as I could dare to go and then the director told me that’s just the starting point, keep climbing.
“There was just one job, make Tony (Cervone, the director) snort. If he would snort, if you could get a double string of snot, you would hit the motherlode and that would be the take that you could use. Unless the snorting was too loud, in which case you had to do it again.”
But while Jason, 57, might be best known for some of his less-thanheroic characters, he says he always wants to find something to relate to in them. I’m not one of those people in lockdown who can say I learned Italian, finished my novel and practised on the bassoon, I’m treading water...
“I don’t think we respond to anything as an audience unless we recognise something human about it, even someone as outrageous and pompous and vain, narcissistic and self-serving as Dick Dastardly, you still have to recognise something that you know of yourself, in your worst fears, or someone else.
“He’s a man who should have had some more cuddles growing up.”
Voicing the character was a particular treat for Jason because he grew up watching Wacky Races (“Penelope Pitstop, my first crush,” he remembers fondly).
“When I was a kid there were no recording devices, so you had to watch telly when it was on and I was glued to the couch all Saturday morning watching. I was unbelievably thrilled to be part of bringing it to a new generation of kids.”
However, he is keen to point out that Dick has had something of an update.
“Dick Dastardly of old was this very wimpy, whining, whinging loser and
now he’s a very muscly, whining, whinging loser. But I didn’t want to do an impression of before, so we reinvented him in many ways.
“The thing about a 10-minute animated adventure is that it’s very quick and it’s over and you don’t need to take people on an emotional journey, you just need to have some fun, but in movies you need to be taken somewhere... It needed to be different from the cartoon.”
Jason looks proudly over at the Dick Dastardly action figure that is propped up behind him amidst a sea of merchandise from the movie, including some mugs shaped like Scooby Doo’s head.
“That is me right there,” he says gleefully. “I love being an action figure! I’ve got a few, the last one was Star Trek I think, and Star Wars Rebels.”
In spite of that, he does not like to keep merchandise and souvenirs from films on display.
“After this it will all be boxed up and put away,” he says, firmly, “there is so sign in this house that I’m an