RUSSELL TOVEY - No.56

Being Human In America

Mon, August 3rd, 2009 at 11:30AM

Ballroom 20 San Diego California housed one of the most popular panels at ComicCon – Rich Sands, editor of “TV Guide” magazine moderated a split session, with the first half devoted to BBC’s, “Being Human,” a supernatural drama about a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost living together in Bristol.

An enthusiastic crowd welcomed the writer of “Being Human,” Toby Whithouse, and his actors Lenora Chrichlow, Russell Tovey and Aidan Turner. Sands asked Whithouse to speak a little about the original premise of the show that, surprisingly, had nothing to do with the supernatural. “Annie was an agoraphobic, Mitchell was a recovering sex addict and George was someone who had anger issues,” he said, “We were getting nowhere with it and so we decided to have one last meeting and then if nothing came of that we’d just call it a day. And it struck me in this meeting, that George, the way that he suppresses his anger all the time, is kind of like a werewolf.”

The rest of the allegory fell into place naturally. “It’s more than a supernatural show. It’s steeped in humanity and realism and naturalism and it tackles issues I think that we deal with all the time,” said Turner.

Russell Tovey, who plays George the werewolf, seemed overjoyed to be at Comic-Con and had a bit of fun with the San Diego crowd, asking them to do the “Mexican wave.” “You’ve just fulfilled a dream for me, thank you,” he said. He was incredibly gracious with the fans, thanking them several times for coming and watching the show. It was obvious most of the audience had already seen the six-episode series via the internet even though the first episode premiered on BBC America just the week before. “So you’ve all seen my bum then,” asked Tovey. They had.

Three short clips of each character were viewed and Whithouse took the opportunity to give a brief description of them. “[Annie] wants to discover why and how she died, which she does about halfway through the series, because she feels when she’s done that she’ll be able to move on and complete her journey,” he said, although she finds out there’s more keeping her here.

“[George has] always been somebody who compartmentalizes his life, everything is very rigid and structured, everything is kept separate. The werewolf condition is something that happens to him once a month and that’s it. The moment it stops he never thinks about it again, or tries not to.” He struggles to accept his condition through the course of the series.

The floor was opened to questions and one fan wondered what Annie whispered to Owen in a key scene. When it seemed as if everyone on the panel but Tovey knew the answer, he exclaimed, “Why do I not know!?” Whithouse said he was reluctant to ever reveal the answer. “The thing that she told him was the scariest thing in the world and my scariest thing in the world is going to be different from yours and to everyone else’s,” he said. “So I think it’s probably best left undefined.”