The Sunday Express – 1st November, 2015

The Jekyll And Hyde star is quite composed about his role in the “show that killed the watershed”…

By David Stephenson

Richard E Grant plays Sir Roger Bulstrode, the head of the secret service department MIO

Who do you play?

Sir Roger Bulstrode, the head of the secret service department MIO (Military Intelligence Other) which, itself, is a secret. It deals with supernatural threats. While people are sleeping their nightmares are, in fact, a real threat. Bulstrode ensures when they wake up their dreams remain nightmares, not reality. He is also a megalomaniac and power crazy.

Some say the stories are too scary. What do you think?

It’s in the British DNA. In spite of the darkness there’s this filigree of humour running through that makes Jekyll And Hyde buoyant and implausibly plausible.

Everyone seems to have two sides in the series. Is this true in life?

We all have a thin veneer of civilisation. There’s a list of people I don’t like but equally there are people I absolutely love and adore but that’s just the nature of being a human.

You have to learn to be unselfish, compassionate and kind. As for Bulstrode, he’s just a real odd cove. He dresses fairly extravagantly and is a collector of all sorts of peculiar things in bowls. Monstrous curiosities.

The MIO It deals with supernatural threats

Bulstrode himself has got quite a look going on…

All the men have one costume so I am in a three-piece tweed suit. Then I have this cashmere camel coat with leather gloves, tan hat and a fake fur collar and that’s the costume he wears throughout.

He also has a very big desk to sit behind. Bulstrode doesn’t stand up for many people. There’s a large Art Deco brass sun motif behind his desk so he looks like he’s sitting on his own self-appointed throne.

This man has a very large ego.

What about the 1930s setting?

You can shamelessly crib anything Orson Welles did in Citizen Kane. Low angles, high angles and with a nod to the classic movie “The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari” and those expressionist films of the 1920s. Going in at odd angles is justified.

And because Art Deco was so curvy and angular by turn, it fits that style. People smoked as well so you can pump smoke into every scene. That immediately gives it a period atmosphere.

And the monsters?

There are giants, vampires and a man whose face is made of wax that you can physically mould.

A treasure trove of monsters, cyclops from Greek mythology. And the premise is that all of them have always been with us. The magic happens inside the heads of the writer, Charlie Higson, computer graphic artists and animators.

Have you ever had an experience you cannot explain?

No. I am a Darwinian rationalist. I believe in the here and the now. You have one go in life and that’s it.

Jekyll & Hyde, ITV, tonight, 6.30pm