How does your Fogg differ from previous incarnations? The Phileas Fogg in the book is rather inscrutable, quiet, ponderous, even aloof. He doesn’t portray anxiety at any stage of his round-the-world trip. But our Fogg is filled with anxiety and self-doubt. He’s not a man that believes he can do this at any stage, so he’s very different. Was the adventure modernized? It wouldn’t work to modernize it because you’d make it around the world in a day and a half. So it had to be of its time, and, therefore, the world was a different place. Our script doesn’t shy from the truths of that, but it finds some storytelling potential. We can look at it from a modern perspective and wonder, Has society moved on or backward? This version of Around The World adds a female character, Abigail Fix [Leonie Benesch]. I think that’s a huge addition. Abigail Fix does exist in the novel, but it’s a very different character. She’s a detective who’s tracing them around the world. Whereas Abigail in our story is a journalist, and a female journalist in that time, as you can imagine, was not the most common fixture in British newspapers. But she set her heart on this career and decides this is her leg up if she can tell the story of this journey around the world. So you see someone having to make her way in a predominantly male world. She has to work 14 times harder than a male colleague might, so there’s a nice bit of storytelling there. What does Phileas Fogg learn about himself on this journey? I think for Fogg, the whole thing is he really doesn’t believe; he worries that he’s not a real man. He used that phrase very particularly in terms of what that might mean to the society in which he had been brought up, the English public-school society. The idea of the stiff upper lip—that one isn’t allowed to feel anything really because that equals weakness. And, of course, he has felt everything and has subsumed everything, and is a man who has been really disappointed by life. For him, this is perhaps one last chance to prove to himself that he’s not the failure that everyone that matters has told him he is and that he clearly believes himself to be. I think he’s journeying in hopes that he will find himself not wanting, and yet that’s the struggle for him. His insecurity, his sense of worthlessness is a battle he’s got to fight. He’s got to find an inner strength that he doesn’t believe he’s ever had. Going on this journey is one last ditch effort to discover it deep within himself. But it’s a struggle. In episode two when he meets a little boy on the Italian train, he sees himself. That little boy who’s full of wonder, and fascination with the unknown, and what science might be capable of, and to where human beings might strive to get. He sets his own experience against that young boy who is as full of potential as he was. And then he sees himself now as this middle-aged failure really, who does nothing with his days because he has privilege. And, therefore, he’s just slipping into action in a last-ditch effort to find himself, I suppose, and he finds it terrifying. We discover he’s never left the United Kingdom before now, and yet in a moment of madness, he has decided to try and make his way around the world. So there’s an implausibility to it that he himself feels all too keenly. Did you have your own challenges with the role? It’s just finding that reality, I think. It’s just making sure that this was an extraordinary story. The idea that anyone would ever decide to do this, but particularly someone who’s so ill-fitted to it, I suppose there’s a deliciousness to that kind of fish-out-of-water tale, isn’t there? Someone who really shouldn’t be, who is so ill-equipped to be traveling around the world, that dramatically is very appealing. You’ve got a lot to play there. Not just a man almost rendered disabled by fear at every corner that he turns but someone who also has secrets. He needs to prove this not just to himself, but as we discover as the series goes on, he’s been disappointed by life, by himself within that. I suppose that’s the challenge, finding the reality in all that. That’s always the challenge. That’s always what any story is. But that’s certainly the challenge of this character. How excited were you to get the role of the Doctor on TV’s Doctor Who? As a child, I was obsessed. It definitely captured my imagination. I had posters on my wall and I queued up to meet TomBaker, who played the role, on a book signing tour. It was being excited by that storytelling that made me want to become an actor. Doctor Who has had this huge impact on your life. Not only was it the role of a lifetime, but you met your wife through it. The idea of playing Doctor Who very quickly became implausible because the show came off the air before I’d left drama school. So the idea that in 2005 it would come back, and then even more implausibly that I would get a shot to be in it, that was all statistically unlikely. The statistical likelihood was astonishingly small. But then I could pose if you factor all that in, the idea that I should meet my wife [GeorgiaTennant] working on it, and that she should be the daughter of another ex-doctor [PeterDavison], by that stage, the pile of unlikely statistical improbabilities is so large that you might as well put another one on the top of it. Yes, that particular program has run through my life like a vein through a piece of marble. Your career is so diverse—from Shakespeare to Doctor Who to Broadchurch to Good Omens to Around the World in 80 Days. When looking for your next project, is there something specific you’re looking for? I wish I had a better answer to that. But then I always find as an actor you don’t really make the decisions of what you’re going to be in. You might be fortunate enough to get to choose between two or three things if things are going particularly well, but really when you start out as an actor you just want a job. As you go along and you gain a bit of a career behind you, you gain a little bit of agency over your own decisions. But it’s still all down to the people that are making the shows to approach you and to allow you to come and play these characters. I never really felt like I’m carefully constructing a career; it’s always felt a bit more ramshackle. Although things come up, and it feels like if you read a script and it takes you somewhere, and you think, Oh, I don’t want anyone else to do this. I don’t want this show to come on and me not to be in it, that’s sort of about as good a rule of thumb as I can summon up. It’s hard to think tactically when you don’t really have all that many tools at your disposal as an actor. I suppose in recent years, I’ve done a bit of being a bit more involved at earlier stages, being slightly involved in developing things. But even then, I’ve almost felt a little bit like I get flung from one thing to the next. It’s more of a pinball machine than…I don’t know, what’s the opposite of a pinball machine? There are moments when you feel like you have some dominion over your choices, but really it feels a bit like a runaway train. If I can keep working and I can keep doing things that feel exciting, and challenging, and different, then I really feel extraordinarily lucky. Because I think anyone who goes into acting with any kind of soberness of thought realizes if you can pay the bills then you’re doing really well. Anything more than that is a delight. With that in mind about paying the bills, two of your children are following you into the business so far. Most recently, your daughter has a role in Belfast. Did you try to dissuade them? I would be pretty mean to dissuade them. Olive is still so young that it’s hard to know; it may just be a hobby for her. Obviously, I suppose my wife and my position in the business allow her access to it. Probably makes it feel possible for her in a way that, certainly, when I was that age, I wouldn’t have known how to be in a film. And that’s lovely and she is very much enjoying that. I think when you’re 10, that’s exactly as it should be. Whether it becomes her full-time career or not remains to be seen. Ty, our eldest, who’s 19 now, this is now his job and that’s what he does. I don’t know that we ever dissuaded him, but hopefully we keep him wide-eyed enough to see what he’s getting into and allowed him to make informed decisions about whether this is the right choice for him. And absolutely we can help with some of the practicalities of it. But I don’t know, I think to dissuade would just be unfair. Because the truth is, if you’re wanting to do it, you wouldn’t really be dissuaded. That certainly was the case for me. Years later, when I’d been acting for years, I’d hear my parents talk about how they tried to dissuade me, and I didn’t notice at the time. Also, for Ty and for Olive, on Georgia’s side of the family, everyone’s an actor. So it would be a bit weird to say, “I’m sorry, that’s not for you,” when both their grandparents on Georgia’s side are actors. There are actors everywhere in the family. If that’s what they want to do and they can keep their head on their shoulders, then why not? Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Absolutely not, because you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. If there’s something you need to change in your life, I’m not sure that the arbitrary change of date is the impetus. If it is, then probably you don’t have the wherewithal to manage it. But perhaps that’s a little Scottish Presbyterian of me.
