Paul McGann: ‘Bristol uni students have a drink, watch Withnail then stop me in the street. I like it!’
I played Proculeius in the school production of Anthony and Cleopatra where you played the lead. Clearly you’ve had more success as a thesp than me! What can you remember about it and our English teacher Joe Hartley? caseballI can still smell the Tanfastic – the 70s fake stuff we’d smother ourselves in so we looked like Romans. I remember the excitement of having real girls over from Broughton Hall [Catholic high school, in Liverpool] to play the queen and women. Joe Hartley – his patience must have been saint-like. His love for poetry was infectious. I’d never heard of Rada until he mentioned it. I can remember him saying that Glenda Jackson went there and being really impressed, because Glenda was the Queen of England and also one of our own. [Jackson was born in Cheshire.] Without Joe, I wouldn’t have done it. Bless him. You played SAS sergeant Chris Ryan in 1996’s The One That Got Away, journalist and writer Andrew Morton in 2002’s The Biographer, and Conservative MP Sir Malcolm Thornton in 2022’s [TV series, Anne]. How does your approach to portraying a living person differ to that to a fictional character? VerulamiumParkRangerA fictional character will leave you alone. A living one might turn up to watch. Chris Ryan and Andrew Morton were around on set. Chris Ryan found it tricky disguising his disappointment. Before one take, he was pleading with me to pump my biceps. Malcolm Thornton never turned up, thankfully.What’s it like being handsome? TonyMcpheeI tell you what. It’s a bit easier than playing it. Sometimes you get a script and in the little character breakdown in the brackets, it says, handsome 40s or whatever, and the heart drops. Playing it is a pain in the arse.How chaotic/enjoyable was your Alien 3 experience? Sagarmatha1953Slightly chaotic, but mostly enjoyable because of the company. A young [director] David Fincher was quite dazzling. He kept us buoyed and happy. There was a psychodrama going on with the producers. I think they even took the film off him by the end. Anyway, he had the last laugh. He’s David Fincher. There was some green screen, but very little CGI. I turned up recently on the Doctor Who set, and it was all green screen. It can be a bit tiresome and slightly disappointing. But with Alien, it was all built sets and the monster was a fella in a suit.
You starred in Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s unreleased 1989 KLF film The White Room, filmed months after they’d had a number one hit as The Timelords. Eight years later, you became a Time Lord. Was there anything about this run-in that seemed spookily prescient? What sticks with you about this abandoned film experience? McScootikinsI’m honestly now racking my brain. Jimmy was a neighbour of ours back then in Stockwell in south London, but I don’t remember shooting a film. But as they say – if you can remember the 80s, you weren’t there! I wonder if I was any good?
When filming Sharpe in Crimea you broke your leg and were replaced by Sean Bean … Obviously devastating (and painful) at the time, but how do you think your life might have been different had that not happened? Chalet1313It was actually a ruptured cruciate ligament – the classic football injury – and misdiagnosed, which meant that I soldiered on for weeks doing more damage. A broken leg would have at least meant Sean could have started sooner. I don’t think my life would’ve have been any different. My career on the other hand …
Nobody, in the history of film looked as cool as you did in the leather coat you wore in Withnail and I. Did they let you keep it? JournalostI wish! I’d still go out in it now! We live in Bristol - Bristol is a university town and I live quite near the uni. It’s this time of
year – you can almost set your watch by it – the new students arrive and they must go through some sort of ritual. They get inducted, have a drink, watch Withnail and I, and I get stopped in the street. It’s already started. It’s happened a couple times already this week. I like it.
Really enjoying your acting in [BBC Scottish crime drama] Annika but was surprised you were in it. What about the part appealed to you? deepbluepete66Well, thank you. It’s nice that one can still pull off a surprise. The part appealed because it involved being magnetised by someone played by Nicola Walker. It’s just a joy.Back in 1983 you had a brief brush with pop stardom, releasing the single Shame About the Boy alongside your brothers Joe,
Mark and Stephen as synth-pop quartet The McGanns. Did you dream of becoming pop stars? VerulamiumParkRangerThat was the year we were in a hit musical in London called Yakety Yak!, based, on the songs of [Jerry] Leiber and [Mike] Stoller. It was so popular that we did midnight matinees so the rest of the West End could come and see it. The record was a kind of spin-off and it was mercifully shortlived. Ian McCulloch [from Echo & the Bunnymen] described it to me best. He said it was all a bit Radio 2. He was right. I can laugh about it now. We’ve only all worked together twice: in that and a big Sunday night period drama stick set in Ireland back in the 90s called The Hanging Gale. Our competitiveness stops when we work together, and only starts up again when we wrap.
I loved your work in the superb [1998 BBC miniseries] Our Mutual Friend [based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same name]. Did wearing all those Victorian clothes prepare you for the role of Doctor Who? GasparGarcaoI’m quite little and thin. One nice thing about being a skinny short arse is that old, period clothes seem to fit. So I wore some lovely old clothes in that. But did it prepare me to [do] Doctor Who? I made Doctor Who first. So probably not. Nice question, though!Despite having only three onscreen appearances, your incarnation as the Doctor has had 72 novels, over 150 audio adventures, 40 comics and a handful of short stories. How do you feel knowing that your iteration has taken on such a life outside of the screen? JcamtsI love it. How could you not? The fans call me the longest and the shortest. I’ll have it. Less than two hours of screen time in 27 years, but somehow still kind of everywhere all at once. It could only happen in Who world. I was recently in one of the Jodie Whittaker episodes. That’s the only time that the eighth Doctor got on to the telly. So it gave me a little taste for it. I wouldn’t mind doing some more.
Is your new film, The Undertaker, about the wrestler? TopTrampNow, that’s what you’d call inspired casting – casting me to play The Undertaker. No. It’s about a rather quiet, mild mannered undertaker who falls foul of some local gangsters who want to get rid of a few bodies for them.
Did I bump into you and spill your pint one Thursday evening at the jazz night at the Lion & Lobster in Brighton about 20 years ago …? whattoYeah, you did. And I bet I did that British thing of apologising like it was my fault. Have you ever met anyone like Withnail? garybookmanI think we all have. Isn’t that the point? When these kids stop me in the street to talk about the film, I say: “What do you like about the film? What is it about?” More than often, they’ll say: “I know him. I’ve met him.” Most of us have known a fucking mad character like Withnail who you can’t get away from. That’s one of the draws of the story.
The Undertaker is released 3 November. There will be a number of special screenings with cast Q&As, including at Watershed in Bristol on 17 October and Regent Street Cinema in London on 14 November