Arts > Theatre

Harry Shearer

04/09/14

Derek Smalls. Mr Burns. Seymour Skinner. All these fine and complex men are wrapped up within a bigger and finer man, Mr Harry Shearer, who has been acting and entertaining us in shows like Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons and Spinal Tap for many years. And now he’s visiting us here in Norwich alongside the momentous Maureen Lipman in a play called Daytona at the Theatre Royal. I was lucky enough to have a friendly chat with the great man himself as he got ready to leave for Norfolk. Here’s the full interview!

How did you become an actor?

I was taking piano lessons when I was child and my piano teacher decided to change careers; she had a teenage daughter who was an actress so she decided to use her contacts through to become an agent for child performers. She asked my parents if she could try to get me some work, which came out of the blue for them, as immigrants from Central Europe…they said “Suuuure”. Time passed, and when I got to be seven she called me for an audition for the Jack Benny programme. I worked for that show for eight years; I then quite the business to become a serious grown up and then came back to it later. It’s hard to know whether or not I would have gone into acting had it not been for that music teacher; certainly when I was a teenager I had no interest in acting, I was concerned with  bunch of other things in my life. I tried doing those other things and quickly came scrambling back to acting!

You’re in a new play with Maureen Lipman called Daytona. What’s it about?

It’s about love, revenge and betrayal, and Maureen and I play husband and wife who, with my brother, all went through the worst of the experiences of World War II and ended up in the States. My brother and I were business partners and then 30 years ago he suddenly disappeared without warning. On the day that play starts he shows up at our house at 10 o’clock at night to deliver what he thinks is wonderful news, and it turns out to almost destroy the family. And there are some laughs! Maureen and I make sure of that!

How has it been working with Maureen Lipman?

Oh it’s been amazing, she’s one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever worked with. She’s very smart, knows comedy instinctively, analytically and front and back, and knows theatre very profoundly as well and is funny as heck and is a total party! She’s got wonderful timing, and knows about blocking and staging…it’s rare to meet someone who so instinctively talented but also is technically adept. Technique is something you’re not supposed to notice; it only manifests itself when you notice what a natural performer that person is.

How did you come to be in the play?

Maureen suggested me to the producers, so they sent me a script and I thought it sounded great. I wanted to work with Maureen as we knew each other socially a bit. My wife was always prodding me to get into British theatre, as she’s a Brit so she loves spending time over here, as do I.

You haven’t acted on stage for 20 years; I wondered what the hardest thing was about returning to it?

Nothing really hard except we have to dance…as bad as that was, when we got to the theatre in London we saw there was a raked stage and we had been rehearsing on a horizontal stage. They are so different, it’s like dancing in high heels. So we had to work on that for a while, but everything else has been great. It’s hard to say this about a play which is so serious, but it’s a lot of fun!

Is there a big difference between acting in a film and acting on stage for you?

Oh my god, they’re two totally different crafts! About three weeks into the play I was thinking about Matt Damon who I’ve met a couple of times and I like him and respect his work… I don’t know which is easier but to create a performance which seems like it’s so of a piece, Matt does that in every movie I’ve ever seen him and when it’s all bits and pieces done at different times, in different places and in a different order it’s a totally different craft from sustaining a performance for two hours in front of people. For me, my experience of the two is that I certainly get to know the character more on stage, but it’s not just about being on stage, as I’ve been on stage back then in fairly amiable and clever pieces but not nearly this deep. Perhaps if I were in a film with a script like this I’d find I’d live with this character for a while. When you act onstage you get to do the whole thing day in and day out, week after week and you just keep finding new things, and new ways of doing things. It’s not something you do deliberately, it just happens and then afterwards you regard it and think, hmmm, that was interesting. I rarely have the experience, unless I’m doing the improvisational films with Christopher Guest where I just panic, of being able to get past the point of thinking about it and having the intention of what I’m going to do. On a film, you have maybe 10 takes in all and you have to pre plan it, whereas on the stage, you’ve planned it and you’re doing it day in and day out and you get past the point of intention to where it’s just coming out of you and you follow where it goes. The character and the play takes over. I was saying to one of my fellow actors, there are nights where that happens and there are nights when it still feels like you’re doing work. I describe it as some nights you’re driving and some nights you’re riding.

Your parents were immigrants from Europe as you said earlier; I wonder if you have been able to draw on their stories for this play?

I definitely related the emotional adjustments that these characters had made to their past to those my parents had made. It rang a bell with me and I felt I understood these people, as I lived with people very much like them.

Has it whetted your appetite to do more stage acting?

You know, it’s certainly whetted my appetite to do more work that’s as fascinating and has as many areas to explore as this has. I’d love to do a musical; there are a couple that have expressed an interest in working with me, but I haven’t had the chance to get involved with them yet, classic musicals….I’d love to play Dr Pangloss in Candide and Fagin in Oliver.

I understand you live in New Orleans some of the time. The people of that city really love their city, just like we do here in Norwich. I wondered why you think the place inspires such passion, and I wondered what you thought of the TV series Treme which was based there, post Hurricane Katrina?

I don’t think the music and the Mardi Gras Indian scene in New Orleans will ever be portrayed in fiction with as much verisimilitude and regard for accuracy as they were in Treme. They were absolutely dedicated to getting it right. There are so many TV shows and films that get it wrong that the people in the city said “You care enough about us to get it right thank you cherished that show It only showed one slice of the city, you know, you never saw people in Treme getting up at 7 in the morning and getting to the office by nine. That does happen there! I think people love New Orleans because of the people there. It’s not a city that’s blessed with great natural beauty, like Los Angeles, but the built environment is gorgeous, the architecture built there over the last 300 years is amazing, French and Spanish influence, profoundly, and the music and the food, blah blah blah, but you could take away all that and if people still acted the way they do it would still be a wonderful place because it’s something that it basically honoured more as a metaphor than a reality these days, and that is to say it’s a community.

I believe you also have a home in London and your wife is Welsh. Are you looking forward to seeing more of the UK whilst you tour with Daytona?

Yes, I’m very much looking forward to it. I’ve become less of a fan of hotel living than I used to be, but I always look forward to seeing more of the UK, as I’ve been basically London bound every time I’ve been here. I did take a road trip with my wife through Scotland and Wales, and Christopher Guest and I went up to Nottingham a few years ago, but there are big swathes of the UK that I haven’t visited yet. 

Well, you’ll enjoy Norwich…it’s an ancient city with a castle, and two cathedrals, and was once the largest city in England..

Really! And is Alan Partridge still there?

I like a lot of the Christopher Guest films and I feel like his work is very British in it’s sense of humours; I wonder if you’d agree with that?  I wondered who your comedy heroes are as well.

I’ve been told a lot, and also by my wife who’s British, that my sense of humour is more British than American and I guess that would be true of Christopher as well. I regard it as something different; he trusts us; we therefore trust each other, which is why the improvisation thing works, but the whole thing is based on trusting the audience. You don’t have to hit the audience over the head with a joke, they’ll get it, figure it out, or spot it. I don’t know if that’s a particularly British thing, or whether it’s particularly ambient in American comedy these days. I mean, there’s also a lot of British comedy that will hit you over the head, god knows. When you ask about my comedy heroes, there are Americans you’ve probably never heard of; Stan Freberg, who was a satirist when I was growing up, Tom Lehrer, Bob and Ray who got me through my childhood with their amazing stable of characters. Then over here, I got into The Goons, then Pete and Dud, Jennifer and Dawn when they started out… I’m a big fan of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse and Armstrong and Miller. And Peter Sellers of course.

What’s been your favourite role to play?

Derek Small in Spinal Tap. Until the guy in this play, Derek was the guy I played most often the most times, so I felt I knew him better than anyone else.

I just wondered if you feel a great pressure to stay on The Simpsons as you play so many parts on there that it would fall apart if you were no longer on it? (Harry voices Principal Skinner, Mr Burns, Reverend Lovejoy, Dr Hibbert, Lenny, Kent Brockman and Smithers amongst others)

That’s an interesting question. I don’t regard it as pressure. It’s an interesting time right now as we’re at the end of our contract, so the question will arise sooner or later, and you know, it is a complicated subject… it’s fun to be part of one of the most amazing phenomena in the history of global television, and it’s still fun to do those characters, so what would keep me there is nothing that I would describe as pressure.

What’s your favourite Simpsons characters to voice?

C. Montgomery Burns.

Finally, why should people come and see Daytona?

When we were doing the play in London we used to go to the bar afterwards and talk to people and see our friends who might have come along, and then when we see people backstage at the Haymarket, we found the same thing; people, when the show is over, are still immersed in the characters, in what happens next, trying to figure out the alternative endings to their stories. Something about this play means people get so sucked into that it starts living in their heads. It’s not a nice little two hours and then it’s gone, it stays with you. As they used to say about a certain kind of American comfort food, “It’s stick-to-your-ribs good!”