Saturday, 14 June 2014

Terry Molloy: "I probably know too much about the character now"


(Apparently the formatting went wonky? Ah well, here's another go.)

Ooh, another interview, at The Brag. Rather good, more at the link, but here's the DW-related stuff. 

"Molloy was given his chance in 1984 when he assumed the role of Davros opposite Peter Davison and the character who gave this writer her name, Tegan Jovanka. “Doctor Who started when I was 16 years old so I was at the key age of watching that program,” says Molloy. “I watched it through the Hartnell and Troughton years, but then I went off and started to do other things and started to lose touch with it. In fact, when they offered me the part of Davros I didn’t have a clue who the character was. So the director sat me down in front of Michael Wisher’s initial 1975 portrayal and said, ‘Look, this is it. Do you want to do it?’ and it was as simple as that.”

"Although the role has now been taken over by Julian Bleach, Molloy has no issues with passing the figurative mantle, particularly due to his multi-decade portrayal. “I was the third person to play Davros and I’ve actually played him 17 times. Three times on television, once onstage and the rest on audio. So I think I’ve gotten a bit of a track record for him over the years. I probably know too much about the character now.” 

" When asked whether he is empathetic to Davros, Molloy asserts, “You have to have compassion for a character you’re playing. People ask, ‘What’s it like playing an evil character?’ and I reply with, ‘Who’s to say what is evil?’ “When you look at The Revelation Of The Daleks, Davros has solved the problem of starvation throughout the galaxy. Sure, they’re using dead bodies to feed them, but he can’t see the moral problem there.” He laughs. “The only problem he sees is the consumer resistance if people found out. Obviously there is the other side of it in that he is using some of the bodies to create Daleks in order to dominate the universe, so he slips there. “From his point of view, and I had to play it like that, it’s perfectly reasonable. He thinks, ‘What are you getting hung up about? What’s your problem? I’m doing good here. I’m called The Great Healer, not The Great Destroyer.’ So I always tried to play him so that people would have a little sympathy for Davros.” 

"Molloy says there are crucial similarities between the Doctor and Davros. “For me, the fascinating thing is the mental chess game, the psychological battle between the Doctor and Davros. They know that they’re intellectually equal and they both know they’re alone. They are the one of their kind. In fact, in one of the big finishes Davros admits to the Doctor that he is the closest thing that he has to a friend, which is an amazing thing to say, because they’re mortal enemies."

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