Interview: I was a Shaun of the Dead Zombie Two
Carrying on from yesterday, more chat from Shaun of the Dead's one armed zombie, Tim Baggaley...
What is your favourite memory from the movie?
Filming on Sunday morning in Crouch End was funny. We started early and were shooting as people were wandering out to get the papers or nip down the shops. Between takes, the roads were open and people were walking or driving by and there was me and assorted other zombies lurking about. We got some looks. There were a few drivers who were staring out of their side windows for far too long, I was sure were going to see an accident.
The last filming I did was the bit were Nick stoves my head in with an ashtray. It was getting on on what had been a long, hot, hard work day. On the first take, the ash ray was full of ciggie ash as well as butts. I got ciggie ash in my eyes and mouth, plus I was wearing all the blood and guts make-up (and it gets uncomfortable when you’ve been wearing it all day, you feel like you’ve been living in the same clothes and mud for a week, without washing). I had the rig on to squirt my brains about and we did several different camera angles and a several takes on each of those. I was falling over, getting up and falling over all over again. By the time I fell on the crash mat for the last take I felt like I’d been knocked over and dragged by a dustbin lorry. As the crew picked me up off the mat and Edgar said we’d wrapped it, everyone on the set gave me a great big cheering round of applause. That did make me feel that I had done a good job and that they appreciated my efforts. That was a buzz and it is great motivating memory for me.
How did you first get into acting?
Ha! Now that’s a crazy tale… I fell off my motorbike in March 2001 and lost my left arm. I’m a keen dancer, especially ballroom and Latin and I’ve been doing it for years. After I’d got back on my feet and back to working. I went back to my regular Monday night dance class. I got on fine with it despite my left arm being missing. One of my fellow students in my dance class, Sarah Hughes, is a casting director for the BBC. One night, she asked me if I had ever done, or thought about doing, acting. I hadn’t. Sarah explained there was quite a market in film and TV work for amputees but very few amputee actors, and if I was interested there could be work for me. Guess what I said.
About five months after that conversation, Sarah cast me for the part of the demon Kaa-Jinn in Strange. The casting was so specific – they needed a left arm amputee with the arm missing at the shoulder – that I did not have to do an audition. The director, Richard Lingard, called me and we chatted, I e-mailed him some photos and the next thing I had knew I’d got a BBC contract for a character actor part. So for my very first professional acting role I was centre stage at Ealing Studios wrestling with Samantha Janus and strangling Richard Coyle without so much as an audition to claim as experience. In at the deep end, eh?
Obviously, your website emphasises the fact that you're an amputee actor. What challenges has this brought you in the acting and modelling communities?
Far from being a challenge, it’s my disability that’s got me into the performing arts. If I hadn’t had the accident, I’d still be working nine-to-five in an office. And if that isn’t enough, I’ve got into acting just as there’s a move within the industry to employ more disabled performers. It seems we are the last under-represented minority and now casting directors are interviewing disabled performers with a view to casting them in non-disability specific roles. Honestly, I can’t imagine my disability working any more positively for me.
I have to laugh. There are so many aspiring actors with degrees from RADA and a life-long love of the performing arts struggling to get acting jobs and then there’s me. I fall off my motorbike and lose an arm. It’s not been two years since my first job (Strange) and in that time I’ve done character acting roles on prime time BBC and ITV and a nationwide cinema-release film debut. There are actors out there I know who are seriously considering chopping limbs off…
Other than Shaun of the Dead, what work are you most proud of?
My three sexiest jobs so far have been Strange, Murder City and SotD and I’m proud of them all for different reasons.
With Strange I expected to be crippled with stage fright and needing a pee every ten seconds before going on set (which would not have been easy in full-body prosthetics!) but I wasn’t. A very supportive team helped me relax enough to take direction and concentrate on the role and not flap about like a headless chicken. I’m proud of that because I held it together far better than I thought I would and enough for Richard Coyle to be very surprised when I told him I’d never done any acting before.
Murder City (I was the Reverend Skipper in episode three) was my most recent job. I was booked for three days work but we shot my scene in a morning. Director Richard Spense gave me very clear direction and I played it as he called it. With about two takes per shot and we were done before lunch. I’m proud of that one because I felt like I knew what I was doing and that I got the job in the can with the sort of ease and efficiency any pro would be proud of.
SotD I’m proud of because it was such a cool project to be involved with and because it has done so well. Because the casting agency, Jina Jay, got in touch with me, I knew nothing about the film when I was first approached. From there, I got to know more about the cast, crew and the project as a whole bit by bit. I did not realise at the outset how huge this film was going to be. Even now, I still can’t believe I’ve managed to make my film debut in such a fab flick.
More zombie memoirs tomorrow...
What is your favourite memory from the movie?
Filming on Sunday morning in Crouch End was funny. We started early and were shooting as people were wandering out to get the papers or nip down the shops. Between takes, the roads were open and people were walking or driving by and there was me and assorted other zombies lurking about. We got some looks. There were a few drivers who were staring out of their side windows for far too long, I was sure were going to see an accident.
The last filming I did was the bit were Nick stoves my head in with an ashtray. It was getting on on what had been a long, hot, hard work day. On the first take, the ash ray was full of ciggie ash as well as butts. I got ciggie ash in my eyes and mouth, plus I was wearing all the blood and guts make-up (and it gets uncomfortable when you’ve been wearing it all day, you feel like you’ve been living in the same clothes and mud for a week, without washing). I had the rig on to squirt my brains about and we did several different camera angles and a several takes on each of those. I was falling over, getting up and falling over all over again. By the time I fell on the crash mat for the last take I felt like I’d been knocked over and dragged by a dustbin lorry. As the crew picked me up off the mat and Edgar said we’d wrapped it, everyone on the set gave me a great big cheering round of applause. That did make me feel that I had done a good job and that they appreciated my efforts. That was a buzz and it is great motivating memory for me.
How did you first get into acting?
Ha! Now that’s a crazy tale… I fell off my motorbike in March 2001 and lost my left arm. I’m a keen dancer, especially ballroom and Latin and I’ve been doing it for years. After I’d got back on my feet and back to working. I went back to my regular Monday night dance class. I got on fine with it despite my left arm being missing. One of my fellow students in my dance class, Sarah Hughes, is a casting director for the BBC. One night, she asked me if I had ever done, or thought about doing, acting. I hadn’t. Sarah explained there was quite a market in film and TV work for amputees but very few amputee actors, and if I was interested there could be work for me. Guess what I said.
About five months after that conversation, Sarah cast me for the part of the demon Kaa-Jinn in Strange. The casting was so specific – they needed a left arm amputee with the arm missing at the shoulder – that I did not have to do an audition. The director, Richard Lingard, called me and we chatted, I e-mailed him some photos and the next thing I had knew I’d got a BBC contract for a character actor part. So for my very first professional acting role I was centre stage at Ealing Studios wrestling with Samantha Janus and strangling Richard Coyle without so much as an audition to claim as experience. In at the deep end, eh?
Obviously, your website emphasises the fact that you're an amputee actor. What challenges has this brought you in the acting and modelling communities?
Far from being a challenge, it’s my disability that’s got me into the performing arts. If I hadn’t had the accident, I’d still be working nine-to-five in an office. And if that isn’t enough, I’ve got into acting just as there’s a move within the industry to employ more disabled performers. It seems we are the last under-represented minority and now casting directors are interviewing disabled performers with a view to casting them in non-disability specific roles. Honestly, I can’t imagine my disability working any more positively for me.
I have to laugh. There are so many aspiring actors with degrees from RADA and a life-long love of the performing arts struggling to get acting jobs and then there’s me. I fall off my motorbike and lose an arm. It’s not been two years since my first job (Strange) and in that time I’ve done character acting roles on prime time BBC and ITV and a nationwide cinema-release film debut. There are actors out there I know who are seriously considering chopping limbs off…
Other than Shaun of the Dead, what work are you most proud of?
My three sexiest jobs so far have been Strange, Murder City and SotD and I’m proud of them all for different reasons.
With Strange I expected to be crippled with stage fright and needing a pee every ten seconds before going on set (which would not have been easy in full-body prosthetics!) but I wasn’t. A very supportive team helped me relax enough to take direction and concentrate on the role and not flap about like a headless chicken. I’m proud of that because I held it together far better than I thought I would and enough for Richard Coyle to be very surprised when I told him I’d never done any acting before.
Murder City (I was the Reverend Skipper in episode three) was my most recent job. I was booked for three days work but we shot my scene in a morning. Director Richard Spense gave me very clear direction and I played it as he called it. With about two takes per shot and we were done before lunch. I’m proud of that one because I felt like I knew what I was doing and that I got the job in the can with the sort of ease and efficiency any pro would be proud of.
SotD I’m proud of because it was such a cool project to be involved with and because it has done so well. Because the casting agency, Jina Jay, got in touch with me, I knew nothing about the film when I was first approached. From there, I got to know more about the cast, crew and the project as a whole bit by bit. I did not realise at the outset how huge this film was going to be. Even now, I still can’t believe I’ve managed to make my film debut in such a fab flick.
More zombie memoirs tomorrow...
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