How did you first get involved with Walking With Dinosaurs?
I got the call from Global Creatures who asked, "Would you like to be Huxley our palaeontologist, our storyteller?" I said, "Yes, thanks very much, I would." It's always nice to get an offer when you're an actor and be invited to come on board. It then of course went up to Europe and the UK, where there are different Huxleys and it came back to me for the North American tour, which was from June last year.
How does Walking With Dinosaurs compare to theatre acting? It's all based in the same sort of storytelling, in the same sort of truths, we're entertaining, engaging an audience. The show is like a snapshot of the past. Bringing that past and putting it on to the arena floor, asking an audience to just see what it was like to be in that time. I get very close to these giant dinosaurs and also the suited dinosaurs - the life-size Utahraptors and the baby T-Rex - but the conflict within this story is it's a fight for survival between herbivores and predators.
Do you get a chance to improvise in the show at all?
Now, talking to me you might think that I do, as I ramble. But no, it's very tight, there's a little period for some improvisation, but it's very tight, the whole thing is very much like a score. The composition of the music for Walking With Dinosaurs is quite amazing in itself, each of the major dinosaurs have a light motif, I cite something like Star Wars - you know there's a creature coming in that's darker than the others, the "Darth Vader" sort of situation. So the dialogue that Huxley has really sits in amongst the choreography.
