Damien Molony interview: 'Vampires are addicts'
As he opens in a new play at the Royal Court, Damien Molony, star of the BBC series Being Human, tells Daisy Bowie-Sell how he got his first TV role.
2:20PM GMT 20 Feb 2013
Damien Molony has never seen Twilight. This would not normally be surprising for a man in his late-twenties, but it is in this instance: for Molony, the boxoffice-busting films adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s teen-fantasy novels are competition.
The actor is one of three current stars of the BBC’s hit TV show Being Human – which follows a werewolf, a ghost and, you guessed it, a vampire as they try to exist amid human beings.
But Molony insists the difference is clear between the vampire-human romance story that is Twilight and Being Human, which brings bloodthirsty fantasy down to earth with a thump. “Our show is based on relationships. It’s not a vampire and a ghost and werewolf, it is actually three people with curses or afflictions ultimately trying to fit in to society,” he explains.
Molony took over from Aiden Turner as the lead vampire for series four and five and will see the programme through to its conclusion later this year. He plays Hal Yorke, a 500-year-old vampire and, incredibly, it is his first TV role. There was something about the part which he understood from the very first moment, though “I knew what I was going to do, before I even read the script. I had this instinctive feeling that if they gave me the script straightaway, I could do the role,” he says.
Despite these seemingly prescient abilities, he’s never been a fan of sci-fi. But once he got the part, he realised how much of a loyal fanbase the show had and felt the responsibility of taking on the series’s lead, so he buried himself in a different kind of research: “It became obvious to me that vampires are addicts and that started me looking into drug addiction and the kind of rehab processes that [addicts] go through.”
He’s about to open in a new play at the Royal Court theatre in London called If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep by British playwright Anders Lustgarten. It sounds a world, or even two, away from ancient vampires.
Meera Syal and Damien Molony in If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep
Molony describes the play as “politically charged, provocative and eye-opening”. In the play, Lustgarten has detailed a collaboration between government and investment banks, where investors profit out of making society better.
This is definitely not sci-fi. On the first day of rehearsals, says Molony, Lustgarten explained how early trials of ideas featured in the play were already taking place in the UK.
Scripts about the economy are not new to the Royal Court. In 2009, Lucy Prebble’s play based on the Enron scandal had a hugely successful run at the Court, going on to the West End and then to Broadway. Could Lustgarten’s play be the next Enron?
“This is different,” says Molony, “It deals with not just one company but with the livelihoods of people in London. A few friends who work in the financial industry have seen it in previews and all of them have had their eyes opened.”
Molony has had an exhilarating time playing three characters within a cast that includes Lucien Msamati, Susan Brown and Meera Syal: “There’s no set, which has allowed rehearsals to be a hugely collaborative process. It’s been so exciting every single day for the whole five weeks of rehearsals.”
For the moment, it is Being Human that is Molony's calling-card. He clearly feels at home in the character of Hal, despite his strong Irish accent being hidden beneath a clipped but soft English one. On screen, he portrays the moments of horror with as much conviction as the one-liners, which are performed with nicely judged understatement.
But Hollywood hasn’t beckoned just yet. Once the three-week run at the Court has finished, he’s a free man: “At the moment, I have no idea what I’m going to do,” he laughs, “So if you hear of anything would you let me know?”
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