Rebecca Front on being in The Thick of It
Throughout its run, the The Thick of It team will be sharing their experience of show here on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Comedy Blog. Last week the Producer Adam Tandy gave a handy overview of the story so far, and this week we're delighted to hear from new star Rebecca Front.The last time we heard from Rebecca, it had just been announced that she was joining the Thick of It team as the new Minister for Social Affairs, Nicola Murray MP. Thankfully she lived through the process and survived to tell us how she found the experience:
Rebecca writes....
First day of filming and I felt pretty relaxed. I knew my lines, and just went for it. At the end of my part in the scene, with Chris, James and Joanna still performing, I walked off the set and round to the area where Armando was watching the monitors. "Oh look," I remember thinking," He's watching The Thick of It." And that's when my knees went a bit weak.
The point is that the show is as much about the camera work and direction and sound quality as it is about scripts and acting. There's an unmistakable house-style, which is in no small measure created by the extraordinary work of Jamie Cairney and his team of guerilla camera operators. They nip in and out of rooms, hide in corners and frequently run full pelt to catch a particular moment. It's impressive to behold, and what makes it more impressive is that you frequently don't behold it. They seem to be invisible. Like Jeeves, they shimmer in and out of rooms, only very occasionally crashing into a filing cabinet.
The upshot of this is that when you're doing a scene, you really feel as though you and the other actors are alone in the room. This meant that scenes, particularly with Peter Capaldi, had an intensity that I hadn't expected. I never quite knew where emotionally we would end up.This is what acting should be like; it's as close as TV ever gets to live theatre, because Armando never allows the mechanics of making a programme to get in the way. And all of that informs what you see on screen. The pace of the jokes, the pressure of the situations all stem from that sense that Armando and the crew create of this being real and now and ghastly and funny and true.
The Thick of It is on Saturdays at 10.10pm on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Two.
Out of The Thick of It
Did you know you can get Out of The Thick of It by pressing the red button directly after each show? You can! If you don't have a red button (and whether you do or not really isn't any of our business), don't worry - here's Saturday's bonus content:
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