BFI at Home | BBC Ghosts Q&A with Cast and Creatives

hello and a warm welcome to bfi at home a series of exclusive digital events my name is justin johnson and i'm delighted to welcome you to this very special event to celebrate the start of season two of ghosts which plays on bbc one on monday the 21st of september in season one we saw a young couple alison and mike inherit button house and after allison's accident she could see and speak to the ghosts that live inside back in april last year back in bfi south bank we had a special preview of series one but since then the show's been launched and went on to be the highest rating comedy show on uk television in 2019 i am delighted to say that we have with us the cast and creative team behind the show martha howe douglas lawrence rickard matthew bainton ben wilbon and jim howick hello hello hello thanks for having us uh i noticed that we have five out of six which is quite a standard one we've done events with you in the past that one of you uh takes that kind of you know rock and roll kind of moment to not turn up um and and today it's simon which has been the case a few times yeah i mean it's normally simon yeah he has taught me something it's been you know it's been ben and matt i think that the standard master and uh and larry and jim you've always been very very good you've always been i think you've got 10 out of 10 attendants i mean i can go and get a mop um we have done that in the past yeah without everybody yeah um yeah simon's off um is conquering hollywood simon's in pre-production on his um on one of one of his movies i think he's a pretty big deal he's a pretty big deal yeah so you must feel very you must feel very fortunate when he does deign to be with you oh yeah it's like a visit from the queen you call him that's a dental vision he always asks us what we do can i just ask you a quick question to begin with which is i'm not directly related to ghosts but it's about your your your grouping the six of you and i know that you know over the years you know once you were the horrible history guys then you were the whole histories and yonderland guys and then you the whole history yonder and bill and ghost guys but actually now you have a name for your collective is that right you are now them there is that as established and signed off thing the name of the company i guess that was the the sort of company name we've never really sort of sought to try and find a name for ourselves really that was tricky sort of like giving yourself a nickname at school that one no one would ever use it and also they'll go god who does this guy think he is you know because it's sort of our working together as something that's kind of bled out naturally over the last 12 years there was never that day dot decision to go right this is who we are this is what we're called this is what we're going to do it's just sort of happened and thankfully every time we've we've tried to do something together thankfully it's come to um fruition so it's almost it's not that we don't think it's a good idea it's just that it's kind of it is it may be too late in the day to suddenly you know announce ourselves as a new thing never too late to refresh your brand does it i mean you know no that have had uh you know an exclusive on the double t group name for a while so so why shouldn't you with them there now so take their crown yeah and their logo as well so um i refer to the fact that obviously last year um we had you and venue talking about series one and at that point the show hadn't gone out i wonder if you can just tell us a little bit when about when you realize that the show actually was the big hit that it became i don't know if if if it ever feels concrete really in that sense because the their numbers it's kind of abstract with horrible histories we had the prom where we suddenly had an actual audience in front of us and and sort of felt for the first time i think the sense of how big that show had got and how much the audience loved it and that's kind of continued through our work that we come into contact with our fans at events like the one at the bfi and it's always so wonderful because it's not necessarily about the size of the audience but the fact that you feel how passionate they are about the work that we've made um [Music] i mean i guess the fact that the bbc handed you a fairly unprecedented series two and three commission i mean that's a very unusual thing to happen and so speedily must show the confidence they had in the show yeah i mean i think they've been hugely positive and supportive from from the start when we sort of first went to them with the idea and then right the way through the you know piloting and the making of that first series you know there was no sense of oh that's good and it's worked so well done guys they were kind of they felt like they were behind us all the way through making it and it's just it's lovely for them and for us to you know put your faith in something and find that it pays off so yeah i mean that was that's a real great and very rare vote of confidence to get those two series straight off the bat and i think the bbc one sort of broad family sitcom slot is a notorious um killing ground yes lots of people have died on that battlefield and so i think you know we were trepidatious and obviously holding our breath a little bit to see if if it would go down okay but but if it does go down okay then um you know it's it's quite a rare thing in that slot i think so and you've very successfully um managed to include material in there that a has got the um ability to be a bit frightening obviously anything to do with ghosts can be frightening in sort of in a family sense but also um a lot of the gags in there um you know could fly over some some of the kind of younger audience's heads i mean one thing i'm thinking about is um and i don't know whether um this is just my perception but i definitely felt having watched the first episode of series two that martha's character name is used in a much more dublin tundra heavy way in the kind of are you being absurd sense than that i think that had been before that's all you just did yeah is how many we didn't do how incredibly disciplined we were about the number and type of fanny dublin also genuinely though a lot of those did come about by accident we'd just be sitting around the table sort of talking through plot beats and it's a word where when you put it in a sentence it makes you laugh so you know obviously there were some constructed ones in there but a lot of the time they sort of happen naturally and you go to take that out when it just came out as a part of natural conversation sort of feels like it's almost strange although i will say there's nothing accidental about writing a line like these people have paid for a glimpse of funny yeah yeah i'm okay does that mean that was probably martha and he's exposed that's what i was particularly thinking of fanny's exposed was that i think originally fanny's exposed was a change because it was originally fannies in the open somehow going back into the show for season two both from the writing and acting perspective um and knowing how well the show had been received before did that kind of give you an extra kind of confidence and did that kind of help you in terms of working out what worked well and what didn't work so well in the first series yeah definitely i think a second series certainly a a successful after a successful first series you do have a certain [Music] sort of swagger i think uh spring in your step a spring in your step you know rather than swagger i i wasn't struggling ben you're all swagger i had some jauntiness i was i had a bit of smuggler about me i i used to strut the house each morning yeah when you walk out your front door it does look like the opening of saturday night fever it certainly has affected me differently now because this time last year or just before the show came out i was nervous as hell yeah um didn't know what to expect didn't know what the audience would think of the show so i'm a lot more relaxed at this stage i think the writing as well you're sort of you can be a little bit more playful because you've established the characters and you know the audience have taken them to their hearts and so the scripts in series two are playful uh with the form as well you know there's a couple which kind of you you know that there's a consistency with the characters that the audience are familiar with and therefore you can change the shape of the format that you put those characters in and they'll go with you but you can't do that in the first series of something when you haven't already established that familiarity and also that that i you know because any sitcom you have to do that pilot thing of setting up the premise but in something like this which is one quite high concept there's quite a lot of premise and exposition to set up and where the troop is so large where we sort of got you know 10 11 characters um in that central ensemble there's a lot of work you have to do in those first episodes and with our with us actually across the first two episodes of the first series which once that's done once that's done so coming in on series two you can kind of you go into it with far more of a running start and i think the first couple of episodes um hopefully feel like they've kind of got the confidence that the show found as we got into the middle of the that first series can you just give us a little bit of insight into your kind of writing process i know that you have once again paired off to write the individual episodes that are in the series but how that kind of initial um kind of structuring of the series kind of works in terms of some of the different sort of storylines and stuff do you do those collectively and then go off into your pairs yeah yes storylining is all in the room and we spend a lot more zoom in the zoom now um but the more time you spend with story and structure the more delightful they are to write and that's just true of anything that you write so we have to spend a lot of time constructing the series arc and then the individual stories um and then you know you go off and uh again there's a further sort of whittling away at those stories and yeah but if you've done it into the homework yeah on that structural side it means that you can have yeah it's an awful it's fun and playful when you're then doing the actual script which helps the comedy particularly you know writing with martha because she's always drunk [Laughter] you have to you have to get the structure out of the way because otherwise i mean otherwise you know it's going to turn into some sort of free-form bath sort of experiment [Laughter] and then do you each bring your scripts back to the table and then all go through it and so forth and sort of i mean i mean do you have the kind of relationship where you can be truly honest in a kind of creative sense a hundred percent yeah yeah everyone the quality of the show is more important than any individual pride or ego and we all feel the same way about that so it makes for a completely open honest and collaborative process from day one to the yeah right you know you you're on set shooting and you're still talking about is that line could that yeah and it's not necessarily just offering criticism of each other it's asking for it for your own work um yeah yeah writing and performance you know often you'll turn to someone and say could i don't feel that funny yeah if you've got something that will help me you know yeah and that's that's an amazing thing to have because um that support because right all the way through the process it gives you that confidence to go in and say i'm not feeling this what am i what do i need here and there'll be somebody around on set even you go [Music] and then you can work it out in the moment yeah and again there's no right or wrong answer that's the thing you you're always shooting you think um maybe it's that i'll give it a go yeah it's just not often sometimes there's moments where the blo is simply the blocking that will yeah well you you may be in a scene where the writer of that script is in makeup or is isn't in that day so he's playing snooker with uh or playing always playing snooker with it with an executive but um you know you you have to we sort of have to have a sort of certain amount of trust and respect for each other in respect we'll be able to do the right thing i i always say like changes in the moment i always um prefix my comment with you know i respect you but and that's how it sort of plays out and also you know because that help with ben says that if ben no no it makes it worse somehow because then you know that what's coming is gonna be i mean often he'll say you know i respect you and then just lift the script up and tear it into like yellow pages you know it doesn't it doesn't take the stinger to it yeah i don't respect it yeah yeah yeah and he'll pull out yeah he'll pull out a lighter and set fire to it and he doesn't smoke he's bringing that lighter to do that this is not actually too much to say these terrible lines i'm going to say what i want i mean you must all have a sense of kind of ownership over the characters that you know your individual characters now that you play and when you see a script that somebody else has written and there are lines that you're going to say do you have times you just think well my character wouldn't say that and you kind of have them plenty of time in the scripting process like the rigor is so is so uh intense that you know that what they you can always sort of offer those even those details no matter how much you try and have an eye over that because there's so many beats to hit in a script that's serving you know 10 characters there will always be the moment where you go that's the b and you will have accidentally written it quite boldly and it will take the person who plays him to go that you know that doesn't sound like ladybug yeah and you go yeah yeah no you're right of course it doesn't and though those again they're fine they're the fun tweaks to make in those later drafts because you're bringing more character and often more laughs to it so you know no one no one minds or resents that and the flip side to that as well is that often it's a delight to read the scripts that other people have written from your character point of view because they'll see the character ever so slightly differently that's true it might take a line or a story or or a moment in the direction that you wouldn't have if you were writing it for your own character that's pleasantly surprising you know or gives you you know other ideas for the character yeah that gets naked for example yeah i can't do that i would i would never write that but julian gets naked simon would presumably always ride yeah we spend a lot of time cutting do you like it well he does it a lot for someone who doesn't like it put it that way yeah and um when you're actually shooting by that stage is the script 100 there and you and it not to be touched or actually you still tweaking things on the go as well we are but not as much as i think people believe i mean the script has to be there because throughout the pre-production process everything really has to be locked down the director's had it by that stage and this blocking so but you know in individual performance or if there's a funny line that you come up with you think might work you can introduce yeah you're never going to completely rewrite a scene i think there's just always an attitude of can this be better and so sometimes the writing will be tweaked on set you know in that spirit but also there are certain markers which we know from the very beginning of a script where you go that is a bit where you'll do some alts yeah um some of the scenes are just you know that it's word for word it will work yeah and there's others where i'm thinking like for example impressions club and things yeah there are certain scenes where you go well pat does an impression so just roll cameras let gf defend different versions and the same in your series two with the um there's kind of some uh amateur radio station oh yeah you've seen and those we you know to a degree you go here are some words on the script that can be guidelines but we are very aware that these will not be what i said and nor should they be you know also they need to allow a lot of time for jim and matt i was yeah it's a shame actually we didn't have an awful lot of time to do that scene on the day which is probably a good thing yeah because had that been the first scene of the day we wouldn't have finished the day because and this is because you and matt as martin touches on have the reputation in the group for being the kind of the corpses if you like people are good i think i'm not i don't think i'm the corpser i think i make people corpse and i kind of enjoy making people um all jim has to do for me is if i'm if i'm lining up for a shot and he's not in the scene uh but you've got the camera ready to go all jim has to do is just do that above above my eyeliner down again you already know what's gonna happen what's gonna work you know corpse wise matt and i are writing a script for series three at the moment where pat tells a story and i know that it's gonna take a while to do it because everyone's there and it's gonna take ages yeah and in terms of the other four kind of principal actors who you work with bearing in mind obviously you're the six who kind of you know you run the show you write it you're in it you're exec producers um does that mean that um they have to be careful working around you are they allowed to kind of a very tyrannical kind of relationship yeah we we try and instill fear into them every day um no very much i think because we've all been in that situation where you go onto a set particularly of a you know an existing show and you're a day player or whatever it might be it can be a bit daunting i think we're all really aware from the outset to be as welcoming as we could because we are an existing troop but also you know particularly you know jim had worked with lolly before we'd all worked with katie from you know horrible histories and before and so um yeah in a lot of ways it didn't sort of feel like it was new people coming on it was just a chance to expand the troop and i think they all they all embraced the kind of the tone of the set as well and you know well i think it's as we just touched upon a couple of minutes ago we try and keep things light and you know they happen to have that same approach as well and so i think it was a it was a really easy really natural fear and um when um a script is kind of coming through and you've you've all received it you know do you count your lines to make sure there's even no yeah if simon hasn't got like you know simon's got three lines less than everybody else is that gonna be a problem simon doesn't simon's not our read through simon's agent comes to our read through yeah he counts the lines we think it's simon's own yeah bobby simon's agents it could be his u.s representation i don't know i always think if you don't turn up to one of these affairs and it's fair game that you become the person everybody you know kind of does the uh the the ribbing to be fair we do the same when he's in you know we what we're gonna say i mean it's one of the reasons he doesn't have any trousers on to be fat and i wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about um obviously we've been through or we are going through at the moment uh this pandemic which has caused a lot of productions to uh to sort of stall or have to kind of close down how far during the making of series two were you when it all kind of really kicked in we we started shooting at the beginning of very beginning of the year and we we actually finished just a few days before lockdown began mid-january we closed down on the penultimate day of our schedule we um so we had to start everything into that day and yeah the weird morning scenes and yeah i think going in on our second to last day and just sort of had that um we need to all pop in for a meeting and you know i think walking in there we didn't know whether they were just going to go that's it we were so long shoot this very long yeah had it been four days before our schedule end then we probably wouldn't have finished we probably would have gone back to it and pick them up strange shooting through that time i remember when we were in the first week of rehearsal someone i think it might have been katy um sort of you know reading the newspaper or something on her phone and sort of seen about this thing in china and half the people in the room hadn't really heard about this even being a story something that was happening and then by the end of that same production it sort of you know it literally shut us down um so it was a very very very strange final rap moment because it was so much more significant than this is the end of shooting this series it was everyone entering this unknown period especially crew thinking i don't know when i'll work again you know we we were so lucky we'd already had series three commissioned and we knew at the very least we would we would get to work writing these scripts yeah but the crew in particular were all just facing a completely uncertain yeah future beyond the end of that shoot so there was a very it was just a very heavy goodbye yeah it's much more emotional you know it's always a bit emotional because we love i you know i hope that everyone involved in our show feels this way but we we are a family while we're making the show and we we um it's always sad to say goodbye but it was a particularly profoundly sad moment wrapping this series we never used we usually get a chance to have a party afterwards and a screening prior to the second series and we haven't had any of that so hopefully we'll be able to make up for it in series three and and when you're writing seriously will you have to now um sort of i mean would that be a factoring in process of what you could or couldn't shoot or you're just going to have to just go on as normal and just hope that things are sorted yeah we've been bearing it in mind in terms of you know not writing scenes with a ton of crowds and things like that um to some extent we have built in to the show as a number of favorable circumstances the biggest one being that it's all shot in one place you know we don't have to move the from uh to different venues and move the base and um you know close streets down yeah and everything that's involved with with all of that and and um so we we're already a little bit of a bubble in the way that we do it but um yeah we we're bearing it in mind from certain production point of views but also we're still just writing as imaginatively um uh unmuzzled as we can be yeah it's kind of it's thrown up a new challenge really we're trying not to sort of quash the ambition of the of a third series [Music] and at the same time as matt said just um finding inventive ways to keep the magic of the show right well having having now brought you down to that very low like very low moment we um we um put out a request on social media for people to send through possible questions that i could ask you on their behalf so i now say these are um these are i'm married that doesn't stop everybody jim and um um i'm going to ask pretty quick fire questions i don't think you'll need to spend too long um pondering over them too much i'm going to just um just throw them out there so uh the first question is whose initial idea was it to do a show about ghosts me me [Laughter] okay that's good we talked about a number a number of ideas ghost was the one we kept coming back to yeah so i think it was yeah and uh have you experienced any paranormal stuff on set no oh uh somebody did who was it oh what didn't i someone in makeup said that i felt a presence in my trailer but it was martha [Laughter] and what has been or is going to be uh from the series to your favorite episode it's the name of episode three and we love it it's a lovely it's a lovely episode six there is a nice ending it's a lovely ending episode four is um are these all your episodes uh i was trying to keep quiet and not yeah there's a stunning turn from uh uh this year uh quite the quite the performance okay if you were a ghost which famous person would you most like to haunt simon farnaby because i'd just love to know what he's up to if you could bring one hard to answer that question without sounding like you know for somebody yeah just to be clear when i said simon i meant it in the purvy way yeah oh good good um if you could bring one horrible history's character into the series as a new ghost who would it be it was a good that's good question henry viii probably yeah churchill would be fun oh yeah that's a good one it says kiss marry kill julian the captain pat well that's for them marry pat surely yeah i'm married um i think we've answered this question how much the show is improvised yeah not very much 3.7 percent yeah little bits little bits here and there and point technically learning comes from improvisation sprinkling of it's all improvised but it's just improvised earlier in the process yeah that's that's that is actually kind of true it is true another question will the captain's sexuality be further explored in the future watch this space yeah i'm okay um i mean yes it's the answer watch this space face uh oh here's a technical one how do you film ghosts walking through people in detail starting now larry it's really really difficult walking through walls is really really easy walking through people you have to shoot them as separate elements against green screen and you can't just cross dissolve them they have to sort of layer them so that parts of the body go through ahead of other parts of the body so it's one of there's a reason we do it sparingly have you read any of the ghost fan fiction if so thoughts on the writing the what um have you read any ghost fan fiction the ghost fan fiction no but i guess that must be a part of the the dark web you might want them to at some point we did become aware of some fan fiction a while ago that was um nsfw and i've kept away from it ever since it's not safe for work justin oh okay not safe work no well yeah i think um i think a lot of fan fiction does tend to be intense on the unsavory side thank you yes about me because i'm married yes yeah that's why yeah um would you ever consider a ghost musical episode uh yeah yeah well funny funny we've already considered we've we yeah there is ongoing consideration of such a thing last question uh most embarrassing or funny moment on set oh i mean just so many in a day funny um julian there were some wonderful julian moments that caused considerable delays to the rapping on scenes on series 2. simon was very impish which was great um is it is it episode 2 when he says order oh my goodness yeah that but like embarrassing moments like do you mean sort of like falling over and blow-offs they they they haven't kind of expanded on that too blow-offs on set falling over that's the word i haven't i haven't heard the phrase blow off for a while [Music] my most embarrassing moment was probably when jim said blow-offs on that bfi are there any of you that take longer in makeup and dressing than anybody else oh barry takes ages in makeup i don't know why yeah yeah he must be really vain because it always takes hours yeah yeah yeah keep going um that's the end of the kind of quick fire around but just um just to finish off because i'm gonna i know you have um lots of other important things to do um series um three obviously you're starting to right now having that knowledge that you're going to move into series three um and it was already commissioned up front has that affected some of the storylines you've put down in series two in order to kind of pick them up again deliberately or have you just taken them as individual series in their own right um there are little things aren't there that we started to explore that we'll explore further and it one thing that it allowed us to do which is a luxury we've never had before is when you have a good idea but it's not quite sitting into the series knowing that you can rather than being desperate because it's a good idea to force it in there somewhere knowing that you can just pop it in the folder for the next series um it's been incredibly useful to have the next the next series in that respect it would be wonderful if the bbc would commission even more anything's kind of continuing into series three no we we said it's more characters as character touches and crucially death stories which is sort of such a key component of the mystery of the show and what the fans are excited about with that you get a sense with certain characters as well you go you want to explore that story but it's not yet it's too soon there's not enough bedding in and stuff things that you need to know for that to make sense or understanding a certain aspect of a character before you explore their backstory so there were there were um backstories we considered in series two which we held off for series three yeah and i guess in tv terms one of the biggest accolades you can get is when you're given your own christmas special and there is going to be a ghost christmas special as well um yes there is and that's all in the can and that was done when you did series 2 was it yeah and it's a really really beautiful thing which i can say because i didn't write that particular script oh i'm allowed well i fear yeah i can have fear that that is the time up for my my time with them there as i'm gonna make sure we keep going to you as so your brand is is confirmed so um uh just to uh remind everybody that uh monday 21st september is the launch for the show and i think all six episodes are going to be on iplayer on the same night is that right that's right i think it's amazing yeah so people can just binge away to their hearts content they will yeah well congratulations on the show um looking forward to uh all of uh season two christmas special and then season three at some point in the future so congratulations and all that and uh justin do give simon a big kiss for us all oh we will when you see him in 2022. thanks very much

Channel: BFI

Views: 29,075

Rating: 4.9634466 out of 5

Keywords: British Film Institute (Publisher), British, film, institute, films, movie, movies, cinema, BFI, BBC, comedy, Ghosts, Horrible Histories, Charlotte Ritchie, Martha Howe-Douglas, Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Lolly Adefope, Laurence Rickard, Jim Howick, Yonderland, Terry Deary, Button Hall

Id: MOC3IcV8X_Y

Length: 34min 36sec (2076 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020