RUSSELL TOVEY - No.34

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BEING HUMAN’s Aidan Turner, Lenora Crichlow, and Russell Tovey Are Friends in Real Life (No, Really!)

Posted on 06 August 2009 by Brent Hartinger, Editor

You’ve heard it a million times: the cast of a television show insist that they’re all the best of friends, and that the close friendship you see on the screen is exactly the way it is in real life. It’s not until years after the show has wrapped that you learn the truth: that the backstage squabbling was far more interesting than anything you saw on-screen. But the stars of the well-received new BBC drama Being Human, about a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost who share an apartment together, insist that they really are great off-screen friends. And after meeting them all and watching them interact at a gathering of the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, I’m convinced they’re telling the truth. “We’re so different, all of us, quite different people,” says Aidan Turner, who plays the vampire, of his off-screen relationship with his co-stars. “Russell [Tovey, who plays the werewolf] can be quite extroverted sometimes, and I’m quite the opposite in weird ways. [Our tight friendship] just happened. It’s a funny thing. I did another series after this one where it’s about a brotherhood in Victorian London, and we knew we had to get along, and we did [but it wasn't the same]. I don’t know why it works, why you get on with some people, and sometimes you don’t.” “No, I can’t stand them,” says Tovey when asked to confirm that he’s friends with his co-stars. “They’re horrible! They’re lying!” But when he’s done joking, Tovey says, “We are friends. I’ve been spoiled. I did The History Boys, and there were seven other boys, and we genuinely got on well.” Being Human is shot in the U.K. city of Bristol, and for the course of filming the series, the actors all live in flats next to each other. “Even while filming, we’d all end up in one of our apartments,” says Lenora Crichlow, who plays the ghost. “For different reasons. They came to my apartment to eat, we went to Russell’s to watch TV, and we went to Aiden’s to chill out and listen to music.” “It’s very much life imitating art,” Turner says. Tovey is quick to point out, “We are different from our characters. In the show, Mitchell is the leader of the house, and we’re like the squabbling children. In life, well, Aiden’s effortlessly cool anyway, I’m a bit more scatty, and Lenora’s cool as well. So I probably am the one who’s a bit more screamy and shouty.” “It’s such an easy thing to say, because you talk to any actor, and they say the same thing, ‘Yeah, chemistry was easy,’” Turner says. “But [the three of us] just get on, we’re just mates. We’ve been hanging out [even here at this conference] in each others’ hotel rooms, having drinks, talking, shooting the breeze. It’s almost that thing, immediately get comfortable with somebody, and you don’t need to talk, you can just hang out. I know when Russell is maybe not in the best of moods, and I wouldn’t even acknowledge it or say anything. We can just feel each other.”