Alfie Enoch | Normal Not Normal

oh hang on hang on then hang on [Music] no did you know that's not going to be the intro for this okay put the drum i've had a lot of people saying oliver we haven't heard the drum in a couple of weeks so i just want to show people that it's alive and well oh that's a funny drag about the trump it is yeah [Music] hola bonjour not one uh oh what was the new one i was going to say the other day oh shalom is that a new one no i did it i think whatever whatever way you want to see it everybody welcome hello to the normal not normal podcast with myself oliver phelps no it's like what i did there with him james phelps and me oliver phelps and i just remembered what i was gonna say aloha as they say over in hawaii yeah guys thank you so much for joining us this week as you say james has just been trying to confuse everybody he seems to be in one of those moods today i am i'm feeling a bit cheeky but that's because we've been speaking to a very dear and old friend of ours so in this series we explore what normal is and if normal even exist and so this week we are speaking to a very good friend of ours we are joined by alfie enoch who played dean thomas in the harry potter films now obviously alpha became a very good friend to both of us over the years and we've had a lot a lot of fun memories working with him but since harry potter he's been a very very successful actor you might have seen him work as wes gibbons in the long-running hit series how to get away with murder and also so to get away with murder which was a massive hit and i can't wait to ask him about working on that also staying in an american accent when he was filming but his dad is also an actor william russell who was actually in so many big productions during the 50s 60s and 70s notably the great escape an amazing movie superman an amazing movie but he's also the first assistant in doctor who there's a did you know very very good did you know so yeah as james said we had an amazing time so much so that i think if we put all the content all together we'd be this show would be well over two and a half hours long so it's been really really good fun so we thought there's actually a couple of things that you may need to know uh when we talk about it so just a few phrases which if you don't know them that's okay here's what they mean so a per diem is a money allowance which is given to you when you're on a works trip don quixote is spanish literature pretty much if you're going to look at any spanish literature start there and punting which is a relaxing boat ride and punting which is a relaxing boat ride where you use a long stick to create momentum rambling is a thing what a lot of people do over here in england when they've gone long walks or long rambles over the countryside as you can see we talked about a lot of random stuff during our chat with alfie but we had such such a great time it was so great to talk to him uh also again like everybody else we seem to be speaking to we never knew his story in getting into especially the harry potters and then going onwards from there as well in his career so it's really interesting learning how he got cast as dean thomas in the first movie and subsequently went on to play him in all of them but then obviously like i said since he's gone on to do very many great film tv and especially theater work all over the world it's absolutely fantastic to see our friend doing so so well and i'm really glad he was able to join us today exactly exactly it's been absolutely fantastic so guys we're sure you'll absolutely love it we did i mean to be honest with you we were speaking for that long it's quite funny the amount of stuff that we started talking about one subject you know you start talking about one thing and then you end up talking about something totally totally different well that's kind of where this whole chat with alfie went today and we're so so happy with it yeah and also just we brush on it slightly but alfie oliver and myself actually played for the same cricket team i have my hat there in the background on my telescope the bumbry cricket team uh it's a charity cricket team and we played well when we're allowed to before times that they are came about but it was we actually talked about how the one day we were playing with alfie the next week we turn up and he couldn't make it because he was away filming it turns out that that job ended up being how to get away with murder so it was quite funny that the one week he was playing qriket with us the second week he was no longer with us he was in the states becoming a huge tv star uh but before we join in with alfie oliver what have you been up to this week well this week has been very interesting because the weather's been actually getting quite nice i've been out and about going for walks and everything like that and i was very very surprised to see the amount of people who find it very awkward if you ever see couples going for a walk how awkward people can be holding hands i don't if you ever noticed that before but there's like a weird way like people seem to hold hands or some people don't i actually saw a couple fairly elderly couple who you would have thought all their years together they would have worked this out by now but this man was literally walking along and english went you're doing it wrong again you're doing it wrong again and walked off kind of a highlight of the day really seeing that well you really do live life in the fast lane don't you oh i'm telling you i'm telling you it's just it's nothing but go here nothing but you know and just yeah just enjoying stuff um getting into a lot of good interaction with people and the one thing i would say guys is that i really really appreciate and i think i'm speaking on behalf of james as well all the lovely kind words that have been sent to not just us but the whole team um behind the normal not normal podcast from everybody from saying how much it helps you going through you know a bad time if you're going through it or anything like that or if it's just the cherry on top of a brilliant week and everything in between we just want to say thank you so much for all the love so much for all the support because without you guys we wouldn't bother doing this really would we no we've had a real great time doing it especially like oliver says getting messages from everybody saying about how much they enjoy listening to it how it's an escapism how just how it's great to be part of a community because i know that you guys have started speaking to each other as well which is really nice to see and hear about so thank you so much for all the support and we really hope that you're enjoying it as much as we are making them exactly and one other thing as well i need to add in here i noticed that some people seem to be getting a bit offended if we don't say hello in your naked tongue um thank you for bringing that up and if i've got to be honest with you if we remember what you said when we come to do it we will definitely try we're always up for trying new things uh but please don't be offended if we don't say hello in your native tongue because we missed it there's quite a lot of ways to say hello but anyway guys we're not going to tease you anymore hope you're doing absolutely amazing this week and hopefully this is the start or the end whichever time you're listening to this of an amazing week for you so guys hope you enjoy the next i don't even know how long i'm going to say this is going to go on for guys we hope you enjoyed this episode with our feet take it away cool so alfie thank you so much mate for joining us today just thought i'd give you a little heads up right as to what we're talking about so basically in this whole series we're basically exploring what the word normal means and basically in terms of we're kind of coming to the conclusion that normal is just what's relative to you so in one way what would you say a normal looks like for you maybe maybe let's start right at the beginning say pre-potter but what we say like a normal sunday before we met three pot house i was gonna yeah i was gonna say so long ago it's gonna save comes the right person for normal nothing too interesting seems to happen in my lifestyle i'm going to be an expert on this on this topic um before potter what was normal um normal sunday was just like me i mean i was how old was i like 11 when we started doing potter so i wasn't up to anything very interesting probably like a normal sunday was just like sitting at home maybe if my parents managed to convince someone from school to come and play with me i'd have some company otherwise i'd just be sitting on my own in my thumbs i don't know pretty much that or just like reading or something um actually one thing that kind of jumps out from being from when i was really young and this kind of went through all of my childhood was like during during like school holidays like easter or christmas i would sit at home and uh watch like old movies with my dad my dad uh was an actor and he uh was in like the great escape and like movies from way back when so i'd always kind of sit down at the foot of my dad's arm chair and he'd be like oh that's blah blah blah blah oh cool yeah that's good it's just basically just a captive audience for him to talk about when he was working did he if you're watching films that he was in did he tell you that you weren't that he was in them or was it just you'd see him pop up on screen oh that's actually quite a good question i never really i don't remember him ever telling me but then it's quite an amusing thought to be like so just so you know we're going to watch this film and i'm in it that's a weird conversation to have isn't it i mean i always think of that bridge i always think if i have a kid one day i'd be that i wouldn't if potter came on i wouldn't tell them that i'm in it just watch them sit there again but then you run a risk right i mean what happens if uh they don't recognize you how do you think oh boy time's been cruel sometimes i remember a couple of years ago maybe about two years ago i was around at my uh my friend's house and i'm uh god godfather uh to two of his two of his boys and they just started to get into watching the the films so he would be how old would he have been the one lad he'd been about five at the time and they were they were watching the philosopher's stone and we sat down and uh i came on i came on it was when we were at king's cross and i said ah that's that's me mate there and he looked and went you're very old i was going to pick my heart off the floor and be quiet for the rest of it yeah and there's like no filter in it now at all there we go you've got that to look forward to i wouldn't i i'd give them i'd give them disclaimer at the beginning just say yeah certainly it was a long time ago a long time ago yeah really long time ago to be honest with my dad he must have told me not to be a harsh one here but like for example the great escape that would have been what like in 1960 or like there are thereabouts my dad is is old i mean he's 96 now obviously when i was a kid he was loud but i mean he was like whitehead and old and he's like a young fit you know air force somewhat or other navigator or something in them in the movie so i might not have recognized it um but for me it was just one of those things of knowing um i don't know it gives you like a closer relationship with the thing right i mean even though you got rinsed i mean it was cool yeah it was quite cool because there's never been anyone who i've actually known since they were like a dot and then like i probably met him when he was probably about three or four days old and i used i used to see them virtually weekly as well when they used to live a bit closer um okay going back on tracks so yeah well so while we're talking about that your dad obviously was an actor and being on industry so you know all so did you have much sense of the entertainment world before then because of your dad and if so was that the reason why you wanted to go into acting or were you like a few of us where we saw the potters coming up and we thought let's give it a go that could be fun um yeah it was let's give it a go let's understand it really bad yeah i was gonna say the best punt in history oh i might as well i'm not doing anything for the next 10 years give it a try um no i was i was definitely more in the camp of that looks like fun i want to do it for a living do you know what i mean i was like i knew because i knew acting was a thing i guess it sounds like such a like banal way of putting it but i think that's a real thing i think a lot of people don't consider it because maybe they don't know people who are actors or that it seems like a really distant far-off dream something that happens to other people um whereas i knew that was a viable career and maybe naively because obviously it's not viable for everyone and it's you know you're lucky to be working at any given point but um but i already had that desire to do it um and that was definitely that was definitely from from him but still i didn't have much of an idea of the industry you know i mean i i had this kind of notion that that would be a fun job um and i was kind of empowered to feel it was possible but i wasn't like you know a pro you know i didn't know about auditions or agents or anything really i mean before potter i'd done one thing um which was a play which was amazing it was it was a play that was at shakespeare's globe and then it did a tour um i don't know like one of the first plays i remember seeing was my dad was at the globe in the opening season and so that was a really kind of cool thing for me but um but it wasn't like i didn't have a sense of the industry in any kind of way you know i mean i i hadn't like yeah i hadn't like like dan or devon who had like worked before and done you know like a tv and film and it wasn't like that for me i was just it was it was all still pretty new i had no practical kind of sense of what it was yeah it sounds like going obviously for the audition and stuff like that was that an open call or was that a set audition for to play it's playing d thomas in particular or was it just any any wrong no so it wasn't so there was a couple of things with that it was um it they had an open call at my school and they basically auditioned everyone because which was westminster was that yeah that was westminster underscore so that was like the prep school before that for those of you who are listening is one of the best schools in the country alfie's just going to modestly nod that off but it's like put me on blast i was just trying to hope that wouldn't come up yes and that was uh westminster school was it was supposed to school yeah i've got like massive guilt big big privilege girl um no so so yeah so they came so they came to my school to the to the prep school um and basically auditioned everyone and we had all just started reading harry potter basically so it was that was a massive deal like everyone in my year and pretty much the whole school maybe had like read the first book and maybe the second book had like just come out maybe if i'm not getting my chronology first the first three and the fourth one was just on its way really was it no it was because i remember yeah when we were going for the audition the fourth one was was coming out because i remember we had read the first the first book we listened to on audio stephen fry when you used to get the tapes the cassettes which come in like six huge like in like a ring binder and then there was the second book it was an hour of stephen fry in the audio booth i'm just like respect to that bear it was really really good really good um yeah so yeah the first three were definitely out that's interesting because my my memory was i think maybe i hadn't got the third one yet but i had read the second one and the second one was like the first book that i stayed up all night reading i was like just completely gripped i just remembered the bit where they kind of entered the chamber of scenes i was like this is terrifying and amazing and it was like blowing my little mind i was just like having the best time um so when they came with the auditions you know that was obviously massive massive news but despite the fact that i'd already done this play i didn't audition because i thought this is never going to happen do you know what i mean i had had like a couple of thoughts about this firstly i was like this is going to be a massive massive film it's they're not going to cast any of you idiots i was thinking about all my friends who were auditioning and i was like and they're not going to cast me either at least i'm not so idiot that i think they're gonna and so i didn't i didn't audition um but it just so happened that the play went on tour and then someone saw me in the play and so i got asked to audition so when when i then got a call like in the summer i was like oh how's that with us that's nice to be asked you know it's like okay did you go back in and we were you saying to all the other kids there yeah so you all auditioned didn't you and i didn't but i'm gonna yeah it's funny that you oh that's just interesting in all serious though were there any like jealousy or anything from from any of your mates because of that or was it more you jammy sod yeah it was more you jeremy's son was it did a bit more of it come about off when you were leaving the room going like that yeah probably probably you probably have to ask them for a more honest reaction um but i don't know i wonder if to some i don't know i guess in some way maybe this is me like tuning my own horn a bit but [Music] i don't know if it sort of made sense to my friends in some kind of way because they knew that already by then like i wanted to be an actor i think that was some so i don't think i don't remember anyone else wanting to be an actor at the age of like 10 11. and i'd already done this play at the globe and like we had something at my school called the reading competition i was took it like super seriously and everyone else was just like whatever what is that what is that i've got a good idea what it is [Music] [Applause] [Music] i was gonna say if it's not stephen fry i'm not interested no no it's hard he pull out like a mr men book two too many words in that spot the dog spot the dog that's great i'd love to do a dramatic group maybe you could do that and do that for us have you ever heard though he's not there there's no plot to it at all i think this is brilliant surely it doesn't exist in audiobook yeah taking the piss yet i think there may even be one in the house should i go find one this is what the people want though it's all about generating good content and that is that is good content that's good while away the lock down hours boy oh boy um well so i was going to break break the reader competition sorry yeah for those who didn't get the get the gist um no but actually secretly i'm delighted that you've asked me this because the reading competition even though it was something that i engaged in at the ages like in year four year five and year six are some of the things i'm most proud of because i won it every year and i don't usually get to say that because mostly people don't ask about you know the reading competition at westminster underscore um so so was it still close again yeah okay very good very good um so basically it was you had to pick a passage from a book you could they would have a theme every year so it'd be like i don't know town and country or life and death or whatever um and you'd go away and you'd pick a passage or a poem and you'd read it and for the first round you read it in front of your class and then some people made it through the next round you did the next round i don't know it was like three rounds or something the final round was in front of the whole school it was like a special assembly and you had to know it by heart by then you had to kind of perform it sort of um yes you were literally performing a monologue when you were what eight years old in front of the whole school yeah it get if it didn't sound precocious enough anyway um when you break it down like when you put it into like that it's not a i expect i am when you said reading competition i thought it was like my school where you sit in the like the teacher wants half an hour to herself so you get you get a book and as this is how good i was at school i thought great it's half an hour of nap time yeah no i used to do the same thing right i remember i remember we started when we were in secondary school this was they used to do like english one one day a week an english lesson so a whole hour would literally just be reading and they'd never test you on the book they'd never ask you questions on it it would literally just be quiet time reading a book and i remember going to school having to go to school didn't have a book to read and i saw lying on the side my dad had kevin keegan's autobiography so i just picked it up right and just sat there for about a whole term pretending to read this book i've read it i read it probably about what 15 years later [Music] i know we're going completely off topic here i know that he had an injury when he was a a club and they couldn't figure out what card was his leg and it turned out that his first car the the clutch pedal was so stiff that he hurt his left leg no and it was only when someone went to move his car they were like oh that's still yeah that is such a bizarre injury talk about like weird man this football club's invested like that much money and afford capri ruins your career imagine that happening nowadays like leo messi yeah faulty clutch he's out through maybe that's what happens at virgil versus my hamstrings go all the time since automatic cars the hamstring injury has gone down a lot anyway back on topic sorry back on something yeah the reading competition my great and my great victory why did i even get onto the reading company i was just trying to shoot horny very proud right i am very i won i won three times we had the reading competition every year so and and in the first year uh my monologue was again it sounds absurd because i was like eight years old um was uh from henry v it was what it was the saint crispin's day speech so i mean maybe someone was doing spot the dog and maybe that's how i won because i imagine everyone else standing up to read and they've got like we've got billy with spot the dog we've got such a we got i don't know ben with charlie and the chocolate factory and alfie's going to ring king lear i come on with an old wig it wasn't too far away from that really should have been like actually that would have been good so do you remember your your first day on pot at potter like we were the reasons yeah you were weren't you yeah i was in the room which also is comical man like a lion but it was nice to feel included but it's just only now has that really landed for me i was like what was i doing at the read-through that was bizarre um but that was actually one of the nice things i guess it was that everyone was i remember that being the i think that was the first day right and everyone meeting and it was sort of it had that kind of meet and greet energy and everyone being like excited um it had been a bit of so i was just thinking who i'd met before then i probably met probably just david heyman and chris columbus doing the audition and actually i'll audition for lee jordan um but i remember thinking when they when that came through because i like knew the books and was really geeky about them i was like that's not going to work lee jordan's much older you know i was all like i was like that's this is silly um but i read that and they said we'd like you to play thomas oh wow cool um so that was so i think i had met i mean we all met presumably for the first time at the read-through right like none of us met yeah that's what i remember right right um i remember that day just being so we were out in that building sort of near the entrance yeah they didn't want to let you all the way in and it was such a weird building as well it was almost like a cause it had like a stage it was almost like a town hall or like a little like remember did have a stable i couldn't tell you what it was actually used for because it was on an old aircraft field for one thing yeah so bizarre dances in the wall the old dancers used to be there but seriously maybe it was that maybe they did yeah was well i could imagine it would be and it was and we were down we weren't on the stage where we were this tables were also yeah it was in like it was in the middle bit yeah yeah on the old dance hall as it was god well that's actually that's actually where we that's actually where we did the dance lessons for the fourth movie though in there as well yeah i did not remember that my memory is horrendous this is a big this it's actually really helpful talking about this with you guys because i didn't remember there was a stage people ask me questions about potter and i'm like [Music] my memory is so bad genuinely i'm like i'm horrendous i remember they do all blend into one though don't they after a while yeah i think yes they must do and and that one is sort of in a very murky distant past i can't really say that honestly yeah they blur into one very hard to remember one um but i just have these like little flashes of thing you know just like odd moments but hearing something like that about the stage brings it back to me i remember just something i'd never i've never remember i remember something else for that day actually we used to probably you guys were we're too old for this but i remember some of us just like running around really like excitedly i remember wanting to and my dad reminded me i'm 14. [Laughter] followed by followed by something like and they've just brought some ice cr some uh some ice closed donuts over there yeah remember that see if i don't know it's five o'clock remember that five o'clock when the sandwiches would come out gosh that was an important time of the day probably conditioned me i still get that hunger five o'clock every day maybe it's because apart and not because of my general overeating um boy oh boy yeah that first day it's funny remembering that because because that is one thing that i do it's misty but i have i come back to it just that just the energy of that day just thinking like oh my gosh this is gonna happen at the tempo do you think yeah i think it did i think it also the way that we were given a bit of freedom you know it didn't feel like didn't i was at least i cannot speak for myself really but like made to feel really comfortable and i think that's one of the things looking back on potter that i'm most amazed by is that that we were given so much kind of space to be kids and sort of do you know it didn't feel like we were getting told off all the time and you just think of what a stressful place a film set is and having something sort of like it's now don't you think you look back now and you think like you say how much um creative let's call it creativity we're allowed to express offset and just have just like you say still be kids obviously we're all very respectful that we're on a working site essentially um especially when we're on location so our first things were on the special in the first movie were location weren't they so they were away for like a month or two to start the film which i think knitted us together even more [Music] i think so i think that was a really i really missed the locations when they went because i basically i basically didn't have any more location stuff after the third or four i think they probably just realized this is mad we can't take a troop of kids like around the country every like five minutes to shoot in a cloister or like whatever let's just build it um but i remember but you say we were all respectful and like but i remember going away to go through which is where we did that first bit of shooting and i just remember being on the plane and just being so like hyperactive and excitable and like i just had this memory that we were and again you know ollie was probably reading kevin keegan and you were probably you know we weren't even on that we didn't go on the plane did you not no because we were coming from birmingham so well instead of driving to london to then get the plane up to home to to gotham this village in the middle of the yorkshire moors and i remember that i remember this day we were chatting to this this guy driving there and there was oliver myself and my dad and it was literally like hammering it down with rain when we got into the moors and this was before satnav really or a very primitive role of sat nav sort of yeah 2000. i remember we finally found this town and the person opened or villages and the person that opened our car door when we got there was michael stevenson right he's like a legendary assistant director in the film industry unbeknownst to us how big he was but then i remember we saw this guy drive off into the the distance into the rain and i always wonder whether he got back home in the end because he was like he's so witnessed he was that bad like apocalyptic exactly was he not did he not anyway you're never gonna remember that i was like was he not on unit did he not stay no he wasn't he was uh no he wasn't a unit driver right okay that's interesting god that's how funny you remember because again realizing now that that flight that you want on them was like the first like us going to do the first bit of shooting and it's funny those kind of initial things actually probably have stayed with me more clearly and we were just behaving horrendously i mean we were we were like behaving horrendously we were just being hyper and we were we played this game where we like i don't know they were like you know when they had those like fake credit cards that they used to have in magazines just to be like you can apply for credit cards we all like found those and then we just started like trading them more i don't know what we were doing but like i just remember it was very excitable and i just thought that must be so irritating for everyone else film sets are stressful enough places and then the bigger it is the more stressful and intense the experience is for like the a deep basically every department right there's so much going on imagine doing something on the scale of potter and having to deal with like 350 kids i mean it's mental you're just i'm trying to like schedule a day's shoot around like tutoring i'm just like what i look back at it and i'm just like i would have been having an epi the whole time well also i mean i remember i remember because a lot of us were in i think we were in like the s it was it's pretty much a b and b wasn't it on where we stayed in goatland yes and he was like i remember it being like really not hollywood but not saying that that's a bad thing disappointed you wish you'd stayed upright no i wasn't i remember we were almost in like the loft room and it was really cool but i remember they had like a little dartboard downstairs in like a bar area and we were all just playing in that i remember doing that when we when we finished filming um as you say random things that you remember i remember they had like coke on draft but it was more like just syrup it's like everyone was just like bouncing off the wall right afterwards oh my god it's ridiculous with that as well ridiculous but it's only through talking about it that that's coming to my head you know that's so funny that like the darts board and the coke on the coke are just things that are just completely you know i would that would never have come and i'm just like oh gosh i could see it we used to play duck did they have a snoop did they have like a pool table as well they did yeah yeah yeah yeah i remember everyone was trying to break into their pediums together to be able to pay for the uh get the balls out splurge it all on a all night pull contest yeah but so apart from apart from like flat flat flat coke and stuff like that what would you say would be like any standout memories probably i'd say more later on then be it like actually on set or anything like that boy i just this is how bad i'm if you if you guys would start talking about if we would start talking about stuff i'd be more likely to remember something it's something that just came into my head because i am just that bad so one question alfie i've always wondered i know that when we're filming you carried on into education higher education and then you went to university and you didn't just go to any university where did you go to university alvie oh come on this is just like no but it's impressive that's why it's impressive mate it's impressive yeah but it's ah okay yeah i'll i'll tell you a story about it being impressive um i uh i went to oxford um and i've tried my best not to do what i'm just going to tell you about in a second so i i live with mine from oxford um and um i felt now i'm saying the name like every five seconds and i'm like i should have just said uni should have just said you'd but we we were we were finding someone someone his mate who he answered the flat with basically moved out and we were finding something and um and we were chatting with uh i said she's now our new roommate when we're just getting to know each other and he was just like oh just see if we get on and all the rest of it and she was asking us she was like so how did you guys meet and we were like oh we we uh and he started slightly stammering and he was like [Music] uni and she was like oh what uni did you go to anyway oxford and she went oxford [Laughter] and it was exactly that i mean they have a joke in the states um about people who go to yale saying they went to new haven and it is the same you can't really be like i went to uni in oxford sure i mean i don't know you wouldn't really be able to but it always gives me a little bit of a sense of like just i suppose because because i think it carries such a reputation and yes it's a fantastic university and i really enjoyed it and i was like to go and all of that but i think the kind of the expectations that people have around it are unrealistic do you know i mean it's not unrealistic it's it's it's that the marketing is great it it's a great university but it does it's got history isn't it yeah and it's got his but that's what it is it's like it's an institution that you already because you've heard of it and you know it's fantasy that doesn't necessarily tally with it's it's not the best university for every course do you know what i mean it's not it's just them along with cambridge the most prestigious and everyone's heard of it but i mean it leads to things like i remember afshan saying to me who played paddler um and she said to me once and she would maintain this she was like that i was the cleverest person she'd ever met i was like this is nonsense she was like you go to oxford i was like that doesn't mean this is silly so that's kind of my reticence around the whole thing so you so i was getting it is that you went there and then but that was to study because you are fluent in portuguese and spanish i love the way you did that and spanish yeah yeah i wasn't saying you're really clever i was saying you conned your way in yeah so yeah other people applied you didn't apply and you're standing outside the door one day just speaking the language on the phone to my mum they were like [Laughter] um yeah so that is that is my i was going to say little chief massive cheat um i did modern languages um which also you know this is to like refute which obviously i don't have to do to you guys but because you know but uh ashan's notion that i'm sort of super intelligent or anything modern languages had the highest acceptance rate of any course that oxford would apply okay so it was 43 which like you know people doing like history was like 10. english was like eight you know or whatever um so if you're listening and you want to go to oxford and you're good at language yeah exactly make sure just pick a language to speak already apply for that and you'll be fine um yeah that is that's pretty much what i did because i speak portuguese right so i'm i'm half brazilian my mom's from brazil i speak portuguese with my mum um and so i applied to do portuguese and spanish and so lest anyone thinks that spanish is a language that i sort of actually learn spanish is like as similar to portuguese as you can pretty much get um so i basically dost it that was that was that's really it i think you're i think you're selling yourself short there mate but i was supposed to feel bad you just feel bad that you outed me about speaking portuguese studying i already spoke no i was hey i've always been impressed about how you could just adapt to any situation you're in especially when we're filming especially when the girls around they always seem to flock around you for some reason [Laughter] just dropping in a bit of fortune again [Laughter] doing shakespeare in portuguese but yeah no honestly what i was going to get at was how you went to are you you're doing all that still while we're filming weren't you yeah yeah yeah so i was so that was again that was all right really i mean i think it probably sounds more intense than it was um because uh yeah because filming i i guess by that point they had you know i remember on the first movie i had a lot of dates and i think we shot a lot more stuff than we used but i think i suppose as time went on we got a they got a better sense of what they would need and you know certain characters didn't come back and you know they they kind of streamlined the thing um so by by sort of the end when like academically the stuff i was it was a bit more demanding i suppose i was doing fewer days anyway so it was a bit more manageable um the other thing is that i would use i would basically use my school also being very academic and very kind of proud of that and insistent of that were really kind of hard-headed with the with with with potter and were kind of like um said i couldn't miss more than x many days so occasionally we would sort of have stuff then a few guys would remember this but scenes would be shot and i wouldn't be into like the beginning of the scene when they were like doing the wides or they'd like shoot a bit and then i would sort of come in for a bit of it so i was i was essentially doing less work than everyone else um and i always think there's a really funny moment which always like i'm not sure if this is actually what it was but makes me think of that in the uh fourth film obviously put it in put it oh we can do it we can flag it no no that's all right i'll open to my mistakes um but i said there's a bit where um i think it was emma says he's an aura or something or someone says he's a yes yes i remember the uh horror and then the conversation but it always makes me creep because the whole scene of that conversation is shot sort of at the point of time where you can't see me so you can't see me and everyone's having this conversation and then you just get the reverse and i just go aura okay we could but we remember we can't we kept winding everyone up because we're saying is it a raw but we can't we can't make it our different ways of saying it just confused just about people panicking of what is how it should be pronounced that is so deep because especially and this is to this day it's something that i find so difficult which was essentially you think i would have got used to it after 10 10 years but you know because the films are so big there's so much you know dean thomas is like a part of it but it's as i say it's like i'd like a line a movie basically so it's something like that aura well i was like that's like all i say in the scene and you're just sitting there in the scene just like here it comes don't ruin don't ruin it forever all right sorry everyone can we go again so after all the filming and everything else i mean well one thing actually i remember while we were talking about the filming i remember uh donald gleason and myself went to watch villa against west ham away and we'd all been filming um back at when it was in park yeah yeah and i remember we went because we we'd finished filming a little bit earlier and both of us had prosthetics on and we thought there's no time we'll take it off on the way so we got a car to take us to um baker street and then we jumped on the underground to get across to my kickoff i had my fake ear on so george was missing here donald looked like he'd been attacked by a werewolf so we had scarceless down his face and i started to peel it off and thought i forget it's too much fat i'll do it when i get back to the hotel got on the underground and no one would stand by us because we look like thugs i remember going into the stadium and watching the game and i remember seeing you and your pals about four or five rows further ahead i had forgotten this we were there on the same day that upton park that i remember that ashley young okay yes ashley young scored that amazing goal he cut in from the left wing yeah and just put it in the far corner and just my god you two sound like old people now i remember when we just said just saying just saying when we were doing well um but anyway anyway apart from that some listeners some of this may know this or don't but i'll right try to use a segue here into stuff in common and um so some some listeners may know or not but we are all members of the bunbury cricket team so it's a charity cricket team made professional cricketers sportsmen actors singers basically any other vagabonds who want to join in um i remember when we were playing a game back in so we played quite a few games throughout a couple of summers when we just finished filming um and i remember we were playing in 2014 and we were in the uh in the locker room and won the first earlier games and i remember the guys in the change room saying you know is alfie playing today and we're like he's he's doing some showing and some new show in them in the states and that's all we knew but that turned out to be your role as wes givens in um right abc's massive how to get away with murder so how can you describe like how one getting into that that role because obviously as you say like going from say i know you did stuff at like the edinburgh fringe and everything like that in between but going from dean thomas as you say which is like i think playing it down with just one line of film but going from that to leading man um you know and everything on the front because i remember being in new york in the taxis and you came up telling people the highlights of what to do in new york and this is before i'd seen the show and i was like what the hell what's happening in this game so what's the so what's the like was it what was it like first of all being able to work on on that type of show um and yeah leading to the role and everything like that yeah that was it was it was mad as you say i mean nothing really could have prepared me for it and uh even though you know you kind of think you're prepared before something like that happens you're like yeah i could do that it's not a big deal but i just had this moment where i think it was the third day of shooting for the pilot and we'd started and it was all sort of going well and you know it was just like a lot of stuff i was like shooting quickly and there's a lot going on you know i hadn't really done much tv before then i'd done like uh uh i'd done a pilot which um i ended up not doing the series uh which i'd done like three days on i did five days on a show called mount pleasant with david bradley um yeah which was really fun um and five days on sherlock and that was it so all of a sudden doing this like massive network television show which although admittedly at that point we didn't know if it was going to get picked up or not and so three days in we were shooting this big group scene everyone left and it was just this big scene which is me and viola davids and i just remember i just remember kind of pacing around running my lines and i just looked aside and someone had just like set out our chairs and there was just the chair that said viola davis the chair next to it they said africa and i thought don't [ __ ] this up i was just like oh my days um but i mean it was so exciting it was so exciting i mean it was it was a lot of pressure that i put on myself um kind of with everything but specifically with the accent because i've never worked in an american accent before i didn't you know i'd like never even done one in like a student play or anything i just like hadn't done it for like a couple of auditions and the auditions for that so i was just like i have to be on point you know i was like it's not i'm not doing it for english people this is going to be on abc everyone else is american and oh my gosh and i could get recast and it was this massive world so i would be i was like doing the excellent work before i went out there i started i remember on the on the flight we've been given this book as reading by the show runner pete know he could send us like these books just to help us give us a sense of the world and i was sitting there reading it a lot usually like if you're like traveling for work i think they flew me like business class and i was like usually i'm like oh exciting i'll like get all the food and the free shipping i'm turning left on this plane exactly that feeling of like and i'd like watch all the films i just sat there with the book reading out loud in the american accent because i was just like that pranking out about getting it wrong um and i would like go to sleep with the radio on and i mean like that so it was like it was a lot of work that i wanted to do to prep for it and i wanted to do to feel like you know i could i could do a good job and like my key thing with that sorry to interrupt did you stay in in the accident throughout your whole time from getting on the plane to set everything yeah so that so that was the plan i decided that would help me because i didn't for two reasons i didn't want the moment where i was like how do i sound you know i didn't want everyone to be like oh if you can do it like that you know i didn't want those looks or anything if it sounded bad so i wanted kind of to be used to it myself and to everyone to be used to it and not to have to have that awkward switch the other thing was i just wanted to spend more time in the voice so i wasn't ideally thinking about the accent i mean at all and i could just play the scene um so especially shooting things you know it's not like a play where you do the scenes over a long period of time you get to know them and you you know you're kind of discovering the thing on the fly when you shoot especially if you're shooting quickly um so i thought that would really help so that was kind of my my thing with the x but i remember i ca i'd done it in the plane and i was reading out loud and i was like talking to the air hostesses like massively like self-consciously and then i um i got to the hotel i pulled up after you've been talking out reading your book out loud yeah yeah yeah they were like who's that english guy doing the bad american accent talking to yourself or champagne i think you've had enough sir i was offered that's how diligent i was trying to be but i was just quickly i was the person that i the like we pulled up in the car and i saw the first person i saw was matt mcgorry um who played a character called asher and he'd been on orange is the new black and i'd like to google that and we had sort of obviously knew that we were both in it and he was just like oh hi and i just went hello hi i just like dropped the accent like i just was like i cannot this is too [ __ ] awkward sorry excuse me it's like this is too awkward um but i ended up three days later i just like did the even more awkward thing of like suddenly switching and i just like i'm gonna do it's gonna help me this is gonna be so awkward this morning but i'm gonna do it and i walked down and i was like hi everyone as you maybe can hear i'm doing the accent i'm gonna do this now everyone was like all right i was just like god i look like such a [Music] but i basically just kept it up but it was all about just trying to be as prepared as i could yeah and did you get because did you i was going to say did you get did you get coaching in the accident or was it a case of where you where you started with one accent and then go from it so i always remember that there's always a thing where if you ever see a certainly a like a high school star play at an english school for some reason all the accents are really new york it's like almost like oh my god you know they're really over the top because because i suppose because you know we never really taught to do generic general american so was that always in your head to do that like did you google that beforehand or did you get help before you you went into it so yeah i think in terms of people doing really kind of over the top were like super distinctive accents to the like most intense degree that's in a way it's it's sort of easier to hear the differences and it's easier to do that you like mimic the most intense thing when you're like starting and to do an accent sort of subtly or lightly um is i think more challenging because you have to be really really specific because otherwise it just doesn't sound like you're sort of doing the accent maybe or it sounds a bit in and out so you have to be really precise with the vowel sounds um i was told they they asked me specifically to do something that wasn't like um i've been remembering this right like very regionally like new york or like southern or like they wanted something that sounded a bit more and then so that would give them i think a bit of leeway about creating the backstory of the character and deciding where he was from and that kind of stuff which they ultimately did later and maybe to some degree fitted it with the accent but again it was an accident that it could have been from many places you know i mean we didn't have like strong regionalisms in that way um and i worked with the dialect coach in london another dialect coach when shooting the pilot in philadelphia and like a lot and uh i had another dialect coach who i worked with over like courses of the time that i was on the show who was amazing in la where we where we shot the thing and she was brilliant and i would basically just sort of check him with her at the beginning and i would do that to the end because i'd been doing it for like three and i would speak for seven months after the year in that accident i mean people didn't know how i sounded like in my sort of other life because to call it real life it feels weird because like three years i spoke more like that than i did like this so it was it was there was a bit of a trip but um but even then i would be checking in with my diamond christians because there's always something that you've just never heard something that's just said differently you know or something that you you could say in the accent but it's stressed differently it's like um like we say frustrating whereas the stress pattern in america is frustrating you know i mean like little things like that you just wouldn't you just might not know you might not pick that up yourself so it's always like invaluable to have someone who could kind of guide you with that stuff so i was always really kind of trying to be diligent with that stuff definitely so the show is produced by shonda rhimes who complete legend like she's done grey's anatomy scandal uh bridgeton the new netflix hit what was it like working on a project with her and what what is your your character in it can you describe him and the summarize the show in general oh boy okay um [Laughter] so she i mean to work with someone of that level of skill and ability who'd created so many successful shows you know i mean i remember doing the pilot and i was like being sort of super green i was like god we you know we don't know if it's going to pick to get picked up and we hope so and from my friends just like turns on the show just tempted she was like viola davis is playing the lead and it's produced by shonda rhimes we're getting picked up you know she was like that's obviously gonna happen and you know she was completely right but i you know so many things get made and don't go to series and and you know when you're sort of in the stable of uh of of of a producer who's sort of has that known track record knows what works and can you know guide it so it kind of reached the level of success that it did you're in much better hands so that was an amazing thing and part of why it was such a kind of exciting opportunity you know even unbeknownst to i didn't realize you know quite what that meant at first just because i was so green but as my friend said we're getting picked up and so we did um so that was that was incredible um she wasn't actually the show runner on our show she didn't she didn't write and create it that was pete no who had worked with shonda on um on grey's anatomy i think no on a show called private practice maybe he had written on anyway he he worked with stronger before and so it was so he was sort of part of the family um even though it was his show um and his idea and the basic idea of the thing was that you you meet these young law students who are just starting law school um and they're bright-eyed bushy-tailed you know looking forward to their future and um the other thing so you see that in kind of one section of the story and the other section you get these flash forwards to a night where they're disposing of the body and so just the simple like structural um question the obvious structural question that's asked is what how did these people get there and so the whole first season kind of leads you up to the discovery of and you discover at the end of the first episode who the body is and then you'd then you kind of see how do they get to the point where they're disposing of this body who killed it and then it kind of leads on to there with like you know what do you do next because you know once you make a mess and try and sweep it under the carpet it certainly only tends to sort of get bigger and bigger and so that's the kind of and and i should say this is all kind of presided over by viola davis character who's this sort of i don't know if it's too early to say something like that but feels like a really kind of iconic character this this because she's kind of like he's in terms of like the character on that i think it's great because she's obviously a teacher but she's using the kids for their own her own end like obviously that's that's kind of how it goes but i think the cool thing i i loved about it is how obviously you need differences in characters but how the characters are so different you know that's the the draw to it really you've got all these different elements which you could see happening at a top law university where that would happen but also how they play themselves about it but then you've got like a cliffhanger at the end of one of the episodes and you're like hey hey and then luckily yeah exactly it would just like roll around but so when when that came out did you did you notice the difference in terms of like people coming up to you in the streets and saying wow that's amazing i've seen you in a taxi in new york know or just i love the show because i remember we were i was going through photographs of um a bumberry game and my pal uh was like hang on he's he's british yeah yeah and again i suppose that's the thing goes back to the accent just speaking about it all the time i think she must have seen some behind the scenes stuff but you were still in the accent then so that so so if it was behind the scenes stuff it might have been but if i ever did an interview or press i would always speak i was i was always kind of careful not to be i would be happy to tell people that i was doing that um or to meet people one-on-one i would talk in the accent but if i ever did any press i would do it in british because because i didn't want to look like i was trying to pass myself off as something as i was do you know what i mean even though i was working in a cowboy hat [Laughter] i told you when you start with accents you do the most extreme things i stopped doing that after a couple of months the hat and the boots went yeah saying howdy may not be the best thing to do but i mean that thing about people so so yeah so for the most part i was talking kind of my accent as i would as i would do press but it it would be strange because i wouldn't have spoken like that at all for like three months and then we'd start doing press for like the launch of the season and i'd i would sound weird i would like sound weird to myself it would feel weird to do it but ultimately i thought it doesn't really matter to me if i sound weird in my own life if the more important thing is that it sounds right in the show um but but it does lead to people occasionally oh i was doing a play up in manchester and some and and two girls they must have been about 16 or something came up to me and they were like oh my god what are you doing in manchester i was like i'm doing a play and i'm like do you like england and i was like what do you mean it was like is this your first time and i was like i was born in london they were like i was like i'm talking to you now i was like i'm not doing the accent now what do you mean they're like oh cool enjoy your stay i was like no i said i'm never mind it was like it was so bizarre because that's because i think people associate you with what they know and if someone has watched all of how to get rid of murder you know watched how many hours of tv and like their only contact with me is that you know you you kind of hear what you expect to hear to a certain degree and so that's i think that's what happened and me talking for like four sentences with the wasn't enough to kind of rejig that they just thought oh weird he sounds kind of british today that's strange anyway you know bizarre so weird i feel like i'm not answering any of you guys's questions i'm like just like veer off yeah we've got questions written down but i've i'm yet to go to them just when you talk about that about when people speak to you of um you know fans interaction all that kind of stuff but i just had a flashback to i remember i was in an audition room years ago and you walked in do you remember when was this oh this is like oh what what are you doing well we go to the same place and then you walked in and i completely forgot what that time i walked into the audition i completely forgot what the hell i was there and the casting lady was saying oh so oh so how do you know outfit oh we're in potter together and got talking about that i think i did though three goes and then you and i went for a drink and asked afterwards i was thinking probably didn't go to i think i'll call back but i don't think it was i don't think i gave the best show of myself oh no i'm sorry i like scuppered your audition what was it was i auditioning for it as well or was i just rehearsing there i have a sort of vague i can't i assume i assume that you were auditioning because it was a uh casting office right okay i must have been presumably not for the same thing i don't know anyway yeah well not for the same part probably who knows um who knows anyway back to our podcast yes sorry the catch-up's nice but let's answer the questions so this is called normal not normal what does normal the word mean to you normal means are comfortable familiar and boring but that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing i think i have a bit of a prejudice against the word normal i'm like norm it's normal who wants to be normal you want things to be interesting or different or exciting but probably i think i'm coming to accept more and more that i like normal i like doing quite like comfortable chill things yeah but i do feel like it's there's a part of me that like wants to be doing things that are exciting different and it feels like that's kind of kind of counter energy to normal but um what would you say then would be the most normal thing about you exactly yeah it's very low-key very low-key um the most normal thing about god it's like where do you even start um i like oh this is a good one i like walking that is normal and and again i mean more it's almost not normal because it's so boring it's all beyond normal and to just really dull um when you say walking do you mean like rambling or just like going forward yeah love that like i like i went with my girlfriend for a walk when the lockdown lifted last year like up the thames we walked to oxford and i just parts of me when i wasn't just having to i know yeah it's like 40 miles or something like that oh more than that it's if you go directors it's like 50 i think we did almost 100 because we'd followed the river with that property yes i had to imagines of you walking with like a wicker picnic basket going come on let's go i'll take you out for lunch where are we going oxford oh okay we'll go we're going to do some punting when we get there marvelous kind of we did go punching what we've got but it's is fun that is just a fact um but yeah it was a bit i mean no but my girlfriend is very tolerant of and actually she enjoys it too but like i i'm like let's go on this walk she's like okay i think she's more like she likes going for runs and she's more active than me and i'm just like oh it's a bit hard work walking is just nice but i but part of me is in conflict with with like my younger self that was articulated actually the other day i went for a walk um again along the canal along regions canal in london um and i just came across this bit just coming up to king's cross it should sort of cross over because there's a tunnel anywhere you go like angel people don't need to know that um but there's this other bit where you're backed by the canal and there was this little girl she was sort of throwing a bit of a strop and she just kind of turned around to like the adult she was like this is boring we're just walking we're just it's just boring and i just looked at her and i just thought i used to think that and now that's how boring i've become i was having the time of my life so that is probably the most important thing about me the best holidays i have are walking holidays i think so i completely they're great they make it good it's just time and space i did i did a pilgrimage like three years ago i did the um the camino de santiago which is another one in the northern spain exactly yeah it's incredible incredible 30 days you start i started pyrenees i ended up in the sea you walk from the mountain to the sea doing like so where'd you go through that like bilbao santander no there are there are various routes so you can go from the south of spain you can go from seville and there's one called de la plata which is like that one and there's the camino del norte which is the one that goes along the coast and then there's um then there's the coming of france it's called which again is the one that you crossed the pyrenees the beginning and traditionally a pilgrimage you started your house right i mean you just believe it's just you're just trying to get there but um but i started just in france across the border the first day i went through burgos pamplona sorry i'm doing that like it's annoying thing where people like it's like like can i have a glass of rioja please that's the worst i get rid for that by people and rightly rightly um so yes and and you finish in santiago but um i've done it again i said it's just the worst it's just the worst um yes i think there was a pamphlet anyway i'm going to stop because i'm learning yes ma'am it's saying that saying saying that you're doing it though i've noticed though that so i think you should try and at least pronounce a city or a town how the locals pronounce it so i think that's one thing to do well when we were in when we were down the south we went to valencia i remember that's how they said it they didn't say that they said it would be at the beginning of the regional accent but whatever if you're not going to know where you mean if you said valencia yeah they're not going to no no you but then you try and say a word all right and you'll get corrected on it what like if you're saying it correctly no no no okay so say something you're starting to valencia someone's like valencia yeah yeah but never i mean like instead of saying instead of saying um instead of saying like gracias you'd say as an english person speaking in spite in spanish you'd say gracias right then we have people to go no no no it's not like that yeah i was like well i'm trying it i am trying here not that this has haunted him at all it's amazing the amount of place work doing i remember when we did a drive around europe and we were in italy and uh roop was with us and we were in this tiny little town and we were trying to speak in very very broken italian just be respectful really you know could we you know sit down here and you know we're trying our best with it but he said it is can we speak get down on the camera and you want me to sit across and the girl and the girl starts speaking english to us no no no we're trying we're trying this is a really difficult thing isn't it i think it i think it is important to to like try to show willing i think it's sort of respectful do you know i mean to some degree i hate going to countries and not being able to speak the language also because i'm lucky and i tend to go to places where i speak a little bit of the language i mean especially as you learn the languages and studying in oxford you know you should i do always i'd always want to say that if when people say if you could speak to your 10 year old self what would you say i would definitely say pay more attention in french or spanish or some kind of like learn learn a second language because it may not seem that important to you at that age but when you're 10 years time you can get so much further and have such better experiences speaking because i think when you can have a conversation with someone in another language i'm yet to do so but i imagine it is such a rewarding thing especially when you're in their country trying to learn stuff like just asking where things are like it can go a long long way it's amazing it's amazing you get to know a place in a in a in a different way i think one of the difficulties that like ollie obviously has come up against is that is yeah english people tend to be really bad at it english-speaking people have the luxury of going anywhere and basically people excuse the pun we speak the lingua franca of the world right so people speak english much better than we speak any other language in general and so firstly it's more convenient and easier for them just to talk to you they it's like cool this is great but i'm you know you're waitress i'll get your coffee if you want but i'm not going to give you an italian language class that's it i mean it's like it's like there's a there's a thing like you know when you go to a uh a restaurant and you're like well i'm gonna actually tell like we were in germany and we went to the oktoberfest and my fellow and i sat down and again like the lady spoke to us in german when we got there we must we must look a bit bittering or something we're in the later houses and everything ah so we're like yeah yeah we sat down and then she came over and goes uh uh start speaking and we just like look at him just pick up pick up the menu we're like far too proud to ask for the english menu like um uh dry bear yeah she came back with three bears she came she came back she came back right with three steiners she was trying to choose like we were trying to point out which one of this thing we wanted so my power just chose one turned out yeah so it's like a massive steiner we had three of them each because originally we just wanted two because we'd have so we didn't have to go back up to the bar so we had three each and these things had the volume of like a bottle of wine and we were like still too proud like yeah yeah i can't i couldn't easily say yeah danke yeah crossed i found if i go away with friends who don't travel too much they are the brits abroad and don't even try and speak slowly i have a table table table it's like crosstalk yeah a friend of mine i'm going to put him on blast here this is actually quite deep my friend actually who uh who i who i live with um and he said yeah but he said the other day he's been with me to brazil um and i think he's been on he's been on his own as well anyway so he fancies himself as knowing a bit about brazil not really but he would make a joke of it amongst ourselves but he was kind of negotiating with doing some work i don't know whatever it is he does with with some brazilian partners and at the end of the call he just went abrogado guys which i just think it's just so bad it's almost better not to i mean it is better to try but that is when he said i think he didn't really say that he did i was like wow next time just add a chaps to the end of it as well that would be oh gosh i mean it's a shocker but but you've got to start somewhere but i think it it is it's that double-edged sword that people want to practice their english i think one and people and frankly people's english is going to be often better than you're whenever you're trying to learn to speak with your report and the other thing is we just don't we're spoiled in that way we have that option so we don't have to learn if you have to you do yeah exactly you know it is that sink or swim isn't it completely and i think with languages it's it's it's it's really difficult in that way to kind of to create that need i mean for me with my spanish the most i learned spanish was when i was in spain i lived there for like five months and i and i said to myself i'm not i'm pretty much not going to speak english my friends probably spoke english but not not as much as i spoke spanish and i just either speak spanish all the time and it's just like it's you know it's completely it's completely different so you have to kind of find that discipline and that opportunity and where'd you get that but i mean the flip side of it is you get to see a place in a completely different way you know it's worth that effort because you have a completely different relationship with it so regarding guys uh yeah since um since half that's gonna have to be edited yes so since all of us ask what's the most normal what is the least normal thing about you just remembering what we were actually talking about chatted on i'm the worst i'm so sorry alex this is gonna be a nightmare um what is the name and an espana one of the most useful words in spanish that you could have that's that's that's about the extent of my spanish right now see is that really that's a good exaggerated trick i was like when there's any kind of difficulty hit it with enthusiasm yeah um so the least the least normal thing about me how uh much of an old person i am at heart i think i'm really um and i've thought about this i think it's i think it's my dad's fault my dad's my dad's 96 now and so i think generationally i'm actually of a different generation than i appear which is unhelpful being only 32 quite young and looking like i'm about 12. um so i saw you benjamin button exactly that's actually quite felt great um because like genuinely i grew up in a house where my dad referred to the radio as the wireless you know i mean that's like watching like war movies from the 60s like i remember we slightly had this on potter when like i always felt like so like dumb about popular culture i felt like there was so much that everyone would talk about like actually no that is or i've never actually seen that film or i'd like i'd like never seen back to the future i remember like i think maybe you guys and matt were like what have you don't see that or like whatever it was and i and there was so many things like that that i would sort of always have crying up and i think that's still that still like lingers in i'm coming into myself with my with my walking growing into my old age um but i mean beyond that it's like technology like i'm technologically useless i mean for someone who is i think 32 or maybe a millennial i don't know but i'm i'm that describes me in no accurate way i like i i hate technology deep sort of deep down inside like if i could so a uni i hand wrote all of my essence like that was like meant to know and no one did that i hand wrote them and like crossed stuff out and like just people were like why don't you just use a computer i was like can't type don't learn i'm okay i was like i'm living my best analog life and i remember when actually it was oh you guys got iphones quite early on didn't you like straight away we had this trick yeah we had uh we had like first or second generation eye pods yeah on the yeah i don't even know the difference second film i think it was maybe the second film yeah it was i remember used to get it and it came with a charger a stand um like a hard case basically everything it doesn't now yeah it came all came in yeah that's so but i remember this stuff but i remember being like oh and like and maybe it was that one that fake memory of you guys talking about when the iphone was going to come out maybe and i remember being like probably won't get one for me and i tried to like resist getting a smartphone for like the longest time i was like still playing snake two yeah like in like 2012 or something um i need something for the red books 20 for the rip yes but i can't like i don't know the functions on phones as well i'm the worst player i barely know how to i like when i like go to the theater or something i will switch the phone off then on again then often because i'm like maybe day alarm i'd like check the alarms that i'm on but i know the alarm's not going to go off when it's switched off but i check it i just i just live in fear so that is probably it's probably not normal for a 32 year old adult um not to be able to do basic technology but that is that's me brilliant so what would you say uh alfie is coming up next like what are you excited for uh coming up in the future so you've got your foundation on uh on your tv um and what are you currently filming is it picture i was to say i'm really looking forward to jack coming back from injury that's what um of course yeah that's my most happy authority yeah um alfie and oliver both support the bad team in birmingham the bad team at least on the relegation zone to the division one the bad team yes exactly that's not very accurate accurate description the way we're going this these these days um no what um in terms of work yes foundation so foundation will be coming sometime this year i mean like so many things with foundation they had the most like rigorous testing i mean they had their own like covered unit and it was it was incredible i basically haven't felt so safe during the whole pandemic there i mean i was tested before i went um we were doing some shooting in ireland i was picked up in a car one of the unit drivers drove from like a cross island took a ferry came to like chichester where i'd been doing a play stayed the night picked us up took us back the next day it was like 12 hours because that was more secure than getting the plane um we were tested beforehand um we they had their own units everyone was tested every two days we had to quarantine all the same i mean it was like it was very very very rigorous um and sort of amazing that they managed to kind of do it and kind of still shoot through that um through through all those challenges but i mean obviously foundation i think would have been along soon or if it wasn't for everything because even though they managed to do that you know there was points in which that wasn't viable or possible or allowed um but so it's it's it's probably i think people who know the books and and like azimov's writing might feel has been a long time coming um and even more so now because of this but um but i'm really genuinely the scripts are fantastic to look forward to really so yes so foundation for sure the socially distance thing was was was different was um something called a picture of dorian gray yes which is yeah which is a sort of it's been called an online play or the last one was called a play for the online stage um which is actually a really good description i mean i've talked to friends who are like it's just an online play then it's just a film i was like i was like if it's on the screen i was like no but it sort of isn't and and it really doesn't feel that way it feels theatrical um so there was one i did last year called what a carver which was an adaptation of a novel by the same name um uh but the adaptation was very very clever it was written by henry field bennett and he basically takes the end of the novel as a starting point and tells the story of it through the perspective of the son of the lead character who's kind of trying to piece together what happened as a kind of homemade true crime documentary thing so it had a really kind of clever conceit and that was that was brilliant and a lot of fun to do and actually i wore this exact t-shirt people are going to think i don't have i don't have any other clothes you stole the wardrobe i stole them stole the wheels i don't know that's the best bit of the job isn't it come on most like i don't buy clothes anymore just to hope for more employment um actually i did steal this but not from that so this was a photo shoot for a play that i was doing last summer so um i say still i'm pretty sure i asked the designer sorry i didn't um so that was great so anyway picture of dorian gray is the next one of those um the next one it's not it's it's a similar thing with the same wonderful director tamara harvey who's brilliant so much fun to work with um and again henry field bennett made the adaptation so that's the team from what to carve up and it's an adaptation of the picture of dorian gray and i that's that's i could say that's why i had this massage the truth is i did this for my own it looks good man pleasure does look good yeah it looks alright i do i do feel like i do feel like you need like a hot a tough hat though i was genuinely i was i was half a beat from a top hat on dory and gray some of the costumes i i got to wear were outrageous i basically sat back being horrific and and kind of entitled them i was like speaking like this the whole time it was great yeah yeah yeah so much fun takes me back to the old ditch yeah right um so that was a real who so i got to do that for two days with a fantastic cast as well like steve stephen fry um he's the interviewer and it this one has a slightly different uh kind of dynamic so it's set up as a kind of more official documentary and so there's an interviewer and there are two characters that are interviewed and there's lots of found footage um but it's like essentially me and joe and alumni getting interviewed and it sort of tells the story through that and it's bits of sort of found footage yeah i think um that will be on the internet oh yeah i forgot you're not getting into it on the interwebs put your dial up in yes exactly because if you won't be able to hear it'll be engaged um right so now i'm going to ask you my 3am questions which i actually sent you guys yes i was going to say good i'm prepped i'll be more concise okay great anyway i'll try um first of all alfie what is your favorite book my favorite book at the moment i have to say at the moment uh can i have three you're gonna say no but i'm gonna just give you three anyway oh cool um are the wolf hall series by hilary mantel wolf hall bring up the bodies and uh the mirror and the lights which i read last year and they were like probably the highlight of my year which again makes me sound normal and boring but that was genuinely just like as as much of a thrill as you can get you know going anywhere i've got images of you walking to oxford with a wicker basket reading out loud in an american accent [Laughter] reading reading about thomas cromwell an american accent boy oh boy it's um it's like a horrible collage of things other people don't need to have in their minds but yeah i'd say i'd say those three books were i mean genuinely i felt like i was like had lived with thomas cromwell i mean people have loved those books but i'm just like i said this to a friend the other day i miss him i genuinely miss thomas grandma those books are written from such a personal perspective you feel like you get to know someone so intimately um they're genuinely i i feel that i miss it and one it was actually maybe end of last year i went for a little walk i was walking around the city near here and i i stumbled across austin friars which is where thomas cromwell had his house which i knew from the and i was genuinely so excited i was like this is it this is it and that was all the work of hillary mattel's amazing writing incredible books massively recommended to him who has you know 500 hours because they are tomes but they're beautiful what is your favorite song favorite song i'm going to say the best of my love by the emotions you know that one section how about it very good very good what's your favorite food black truffle that's such a this is bad isn't it this is this one picked up by a pig or just like any old truffle no black truffle actually is the is the least fancy of the two truffles there's white truffle um i was worried that with all the talk about whispers in oxford if i'd said white truffle i might not come across in the right way so i went for the black truffle which is a bit more relatable um no i just love it that is i'm sorry that is like the tasty i could have that truffle risotto truffle obviously those things are probably expensive but um but my days any time i'm like anywhere and they have anything truffling on the menu i'm like yes yes yes i love that stuff is your favorite film terrified of my answer and how long it can drag out right um my favorite film oh yeah i'm gonna say um something again recent fresh in my mind i saw a film last year called corpus christi um which is a polish film it's absurdly beautiful powerful good extraordinary i mean just everyone should find it and watch it it's oh yeah it's it is probably the minute my favorite film i mean i have a kind of long list of like eight favorite films but i'm not going to play with that but like but but also their films that everyone else says probably everyone says this now but this because it's relatively new it's just so worth finding and watching it's an extraordinary it's a masterpiece corpus christi i'm so glad alfred that describing those like all those words used to describe it there i think are really good descriptive words for films but one of my pet peeves is when you see an advert when a film comes out and they always so many films use it like an advertisement a triumph i was a triumph what are you on about triumphantly what's wrong how many times you'll see a film get advertised with a triumph they don't say best film you'll see this year or anything like that a triumph there we go a try absolutely successful film that's much better and what is your favorite quote my favorite quote um what a triumph a triumph i'm going to say i'm going to again just plow my photo a bit deeper and say something in spanish which means who would doubt it um it's a line from early on in don quixote because i i don't need to i don't need to do it i've already i've done it no no you should do you should do should they okay there's a massive fountain of him in in isn't there as well [Laughter] god like a local taking it back [Laughter] oh boy it's very it's i'm impressed i for one am impressed um yeah so it's it's it's he says um this is something that don quijote says to sancho um i'm mixing matching i'm all over the place at this stage right at the beginning don quixote is saying come out with me you can be my uh you can be my um i this is even worse i can't remember the word in esquire you can be my squire um and i'm a great knight and we're going to ride off and have adventures and sancho's a bit like not sure about this and i've got my wife at home and he goes no no no you should come the things that could happen he was like like what he was well it's very normal that uh my errands such as myself should go and through their exploits and their deeds become kings uh they get thanked by some far away king whose kingdom they save from a dragon and uh you know they marry the beautiful princess and they become the king and then to reward their uh to reward their uh squire they make their squire a duke or or you know but the worst the governor and sancho sort of goes oh i think i could be a governor he goes who would doubt it so that is the long-winded explanation of my favorite quote because it's sort of like why not believe it choose to believe something extraordinary i think it's very good what what a great quote very good thank you very much for that how was the quote again alfie i forgot the quote who doubts it who would doubt it very good why not basically why not why not why not alfie thank you so much for joining us today uh i've really really had a great time as i'm sure everyone else has once we've edited this down from the four hours that we're at um i'm so sorry no no it's okay i was actually before we before we came on today i was just so happened to this unnerdy i am i have i've got two laptops which died many years ago and they've just been sat at the bottom of a drawer so over lockdown i've been youtubing how to get the old the memory out of these dead computers so i can see what's on them and i found a load of photos of when we were it was like you ashan bonnie matt myself oliver and we were we went for a meal in london there's i've never i can't ever remember seeing these photos before but there's a video of you walking down the road pretending you're rock your apollo creed i actually remember this because you had like this leather jacket on or something but you look like apollo creed looking for balboa good times but mate thank you so much for joining us this week really appreciate it thank you guys it's been an absolute joy apology that was brilliant that still chuckling it was one of those yeah apologies if it we kind of go down a lot of random holes with that because we are just chatting to a mate and that is exactly i guess what happens when you're talking to a friend but a very very good laugh as always with alfie as you can probably tell no one's got a bad word to say about him because he's such a just a fun guy to be around exactly so he didn't actually say it but i remember when he was actually in spain studying i think it was in i mean i think it was in seville i think he was a ville he was a he was a tour guide wasn't he yes he was that's part he didn't he didn't allude to that so maybe if you've been on holiday to spain and you had a tour guide maybe it was the lovely alfie enoch that would have been something wouldn't it can't believe we didn't that's one thing we didn't talk about we talked about nearly everything else but it was absolutely brilliant having alf um on the show today it's really really good fun i think everyone can learn something from this episode which is no matter where you're going try and pronounce the town how'd the locals do okay well anyway did you know so alfie talked about how he likes to go walking right so did you know that walking 6 000 steps a day can help you improve your health but if you work the recommended 10 000 steps a day you will walk enough to lose weight and while you're walking another digital effect while you're walking it's good to have water right stay hydrated so did you know that hot water will turn to ice faster than cold water how does that work then i'm not a scientist i'm just saying okay another one another one so hang on hang on next the sentence the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog uses every letter in the english language what say again the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog very good very good everyone is every letter is used in that sentence but finally i'm going to end i need to come into it finally i'm going to end on a did you know fact which i'm sure some people will find very interesting and i'd like to thank shannon who told me a part of this on cameo calls the other day so i've alluded and gone even deeper into it so this is about pineapples okay pineapples yes pineapple i can't believe how many people think they come from a tree i know so did you know they were first known in europe at the end of the 15th century when christopher columbus he and his crew found them on guadalupe this spiky crown top thing made them look like the king's fruit so that's why i call them the king of fruit anyway so in the 17th century they were grown in hot houses in england and the netherlands in conditions that mimic the warm temperatures that they needed to grow in but they were in very high demand and in low supply so only the extremely wealthy could afford them so royalty like louis xv uh catherine the great and even england's charles ii had them in fact charles ii liked them so much they commissioned a painting of his gardener presenting him a pineapple so they came to symbolize luxury and the finer things in life and this too was was happening as well in the american colonies where they were in so much demand that pineapples that were imported from the caribbean could cost as much as eight hundred dollars in today's money but all right those who couldn't afford 800 so you couldn't afford one but you still wanted to look like you have got one you could actually rent a pineapple that's right people could rent a pineapple to show off to their friends for a dinner party or something like that but not eat it just show them that they had a pineapple then take it back to where they rented it from and so throughout the 1700s and the 1800s artists depicted pineapples to symbolize hospitality and generosity and so this is why if you look around london you will find pineapples everywhere even at the top of saint paul's cathedral but eventually they became more readily available and once they were imported to hawaii by james dale he started a plantation and then exported them all over the world which got the prices down to as low so everybody can eat them today at one point 75 of the world's pineapple supply came from hawaii so now everyone can have pineapples wherever they want them especially on their pizzas thank you very much that's my did you knows right so is that why just thinking about it when you said that they were depicted on lots of stuff is that why on the wimbledon's tennis tournament on the men's trophy is that why there's a pineapple on the top i've always thought that like what's the pineapple gotta do with tennis now you see since i read that and i learned about it whenever you walk around london especially but a lot of other cities but especially london because i've seen it quite a lot you will notice how many pineapples there are randomly everywhere so enjoy looking at them jolly good guys thank you very much for joining us this week we had a great chat speaking with alfie we hope you guys enjoyed it too i've been james phelps i've been oliver felt guys stay safe at the awesome amigos you

Channel: Oliver and James Phelps

Views: 91,998

Keywords: normal not normal, normal not normal podcast, harry Potter podcast, james and oliver phelps, normal not normal james and oliver phelps, normal not normal tom felton, weasley twins, fred and george weasley, harry potter, harry Potter cast, harry Potter actors, double trouble, double trouble podcast, wizarding world podcast, how to get away with murder, alfie enoch, bunbury cricket, oxford, reading champion, alfred enoch, dean thomas, alfred enoch harry potter, viola davis

Id: lS2S8Zw_3GM

Length: 102min 31sec (6151 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021