If I have one New Year’s resolution for 2012, it’s to be more like Nick Blood. This man has no ends to his talents and abilities. Not only does he have a string of formidable screen and stage credits under his belt and run his own award-winning theatre production company, he’s also achingly handsome and charming to boot. Makes you sick, doesn’t it?
You might not recognise his name straightaway, but his face probably looks familiar. If you’re still lost, your little sister will help you point him out. He’s had a string of supporting roles on prime-time TV in the last couple of years in the BBC’s Material Girl, Sky One’s brilliant Trollied and E4′s ever-popular Misfits.
Right now he’s rocking and rolling away in the Duke of York’s Theatre, London as the fifth member of The Beatles, Stuart Sutcliffe in the “play that has got music in it” Backbeat. And he can’t even play an instrument. Impressive, no?
I managed to catch Nick in between rehearsals and matinees to find out what it’s like to be one of the UK’s rising acting stars.
How are you finding being part of Backbeat?
It’s very cool. We’re a few months in now, so I don’t have any other life. I keep thinking “Next week things will settle down and I’ll have more time to do other things”, but then there’s understudy runs which you come in to see, and all sorts of things going on and there always seems to be something to do. But it seems to be going well. The audiences love it and are really responsive, so you don’t get much chance to become bored.
Have you done West End musicals before?
No, I’ve not done anything West End before, and I don’t think I’ll ever get to do a musical again because I am not musical at all.
Then why perform musical, if you’re not a musical person?
When I first got the call about the audition, I thought, ‘What, playing a person who’s in a band?’ Because this is not a straight musical – it’s a play that has got music in it. And I don’t play an instrument, I don’t sing, I don’t do anything like that. So I thought there would be no point in me going, but my agent persuaded me it was a good idea. I already knew the story of Stu Sutcliffe from when I was young since my Dad grew up just around the corner from him – it’s the untold story of the Beatles, but I was always aware of it. Then it started to feel a bit like fate, like it was meant to be. And I loved David Leveaux the director form the off. And the production team seemed to have faith that I could do it. I had to go for a bass lesson to see whether I could learn bass and the musical director thought I had the basic ability to do it. And I thought there’s a connection with [the musical and] my Dad, and I’d lost him last year, so it felt like it was meant to be. As well as that I thought, ‘When am I ever going to get the chance to do something like this again?’ Because I’ve never sung in a performance before – the first time I ever sung in front of people was during my drama school audition, and I didn’t even understand that you had to sing to notes. I love music, but I never ever ever partook in any singing. And this is kind of like the musical that isn’t strictly a musical, so I can get away with it.
Could you tell us a bit about the story of the musical?
It’s set in the early period of the Beatles when they first formed, and it’s less about the Beatles and more about the relationship between John Lennon (played by Andrew Knott) , Stuart Sutcliffe and Astrid Kirchherr (played by Ruta Gedmintas). That’s the real story and The Beatles is the backdrop to it. When they first formed they went to Hamburg, and lots of bands from Liverpool were going over there. It was largely to do with the fact that the city had a lot of American soldiers there who wanted rock ‘n roll music. The Beatles got the opportunity to go over there and just played ridiculously long sets, six hours long, seven days a week playing rock ‘n roll music.
The story starts with Stu being persuaded to join the band by John Lennon. Stu was an artist out of college and could play bass. John persuaded him to join the band, he left Art College, he went off to Hamburg with the band, fell in love with Astrid. But he also couldn’t leave art behind, and made the decision to quit the band, stay in Germany with Astrid and pursue his art. He then tragically died of brain haemorrhage at 22. It’s quite a dramatic story, but it’s a play that survives without the music. You take away the music and it’s still a story, it’s still a really good play. The Beatles are added extras really. Like most plays and films it’s about relationships and those three central characters – John, Stu and Astrid.
Even Beatles fans wont know much about the story – how would you encourage Beatles fans to come and see the play, considering any misconstrued expectations that they would have?
I think it shows a completely different side of the Beatles. I think the perception of people my age and probably most generations, even those that were around at the time, will be of this sanitised pop group. And although they still had lots of character and balls about them, they were clearly marketed as a clean-cut bunch of young men who played nice pop songs. And that changed as they progressed as a band and certainly John Lennon rejected that later on. But this really shows where all that came from. It’s kind of you makes you stop and think, well of course! John was this angry young man. There was so much passion and ambition in him, and he could be a bit of an arsehole. I don’t think anybody can reach those heights and that level of fame without that drive and ambition. And to have ambition, you have to have a certain cut-throat attitude that you want that over all else with everything secondary to it. Certainly as a young man he had that. And it shows you how young they were. John and Stu were 21, Paul McCartney was 19 and George Harrison was 17. They were just young guys, in a foreign country, away from home for the first time – they got drunk, they did drugs, they had sex, they got into fights, they were just this ball of hormones just ripping through Hamburg. You learn about where all those songs come from and what they’re about. A lot of rock ‘n roll is a euphemism for sex, you can look at rock ‘n roll tunes and so much of the language they use is about sex.
We’ve had some hardcore Beatles fans come and see the show and they love it. Even the very hardcore ones are surprised seeing it, because it’s just a completely different side to the Beatles that you get to see. You learn where they came from, what they were like as young men and you get to see them as people.
Do you think that is what the fascination with The Beatles? That people want to know where they’ve come from and what they’ve been through?
What’s good about this show is that you get to see them in the flesh, in a way. We’re not doing Beatles impersonations, and there’s never been any attempt to recreate exactly what happened or to be a carbon copy of The Beatles. We’ve added our own flavours to it, and we’re reading a script which is not verbatim, it’s a dramatisation. But a lot of people have said to me that we’ve got the vibe of the clubs. People that were there have said that they really felt like they were back there. Those that were there at Hamburg, at the Cavern, and even my Dad’s family – they think it really captures that feeling. You just see this young band learning their trade and how they go from being a bunch of kids who want to be rock ’n rollers to actually being those rock ’n rollers and becoming the biggest pop group on the planet.
You’ve been quite busy recently – you were on Misfits recently, and in Trollied last year. These are all quite far removed from each other – how do you decide which parts to go for?
It’s more to do with what you get offered really. I’m not long out of drama school, so it’s not like I can pick and choose. I’ve got a good relationship with my agent, and he knows what I don’t want to do, so he generally won’t put anything in front of me that I wouldn’t want to do anyway. But I do feel fortunate that I’ve managed to do some really different things. The first thing I did was The Bill, playing a junkie kidnapper, and it was great to do something like that for a first job. Then I did a series called Material Girl where I was the camp fashion designer, which I was pleased about doing as a first big job because it was really different from me. That’s what I always worry about – I’m average height, average hair colour, average and with that you can just go into be the boy next door type, playing yourself. So from doing Material Girl as a first proper job, the great thing afterwards when you meet directors and casting directors who have seen it is that they see that you’re completely different from that person, so then they trust that you can do different things. I think that’s helped. Misfits was nice to do. I did that just after Trollied where I’d spent a couple of months in Bristol stood in a supermarket doing comedy. I got a part in a drama called Public Enemies with Joel Fry, who was in Trollied as well, and it was also based in Bristol. So literally a week after filming Trollied we were back in Bristol in this horrible part, acting all shouty with arguments over pints of beer – completely different from Trollied! It was so weird. We went in there with this really silly mentality and the tension in the room was just so powerful. Everything was high drama and intense feelings because of the subject matter. But it’s been great, getting to do a mix of things, with theatre and screen. I was afraid when I left drama school, since I’d done Material Girl and The Bill and I hadn’t had a theatre audition for a year. Then towards the end of Material girl I got a part in the Royal Courts’ The Priory which was a lot of fun to do. Fortunately after that, I’ve been able to do a good mix of theatre and screen.
Do you prefer one over the other?
That’s a tricky question to answer, because I think they’re completely different jobs in so many ways. In theatre, there’s a lot more collaboration with the director on the stage to develop the character or a scene. Whereas with anything on camera you tend to not have much rehearsal time, so it’s sort of what happens on the day a lot of the time. So you have slightly more autonomy. And then with theatre you get the rehearsal time, which is just incredible. Sometimes it’s the most enjoyable part of it. And then just the experience of doing it - you get one chance on TV whereas you can cock-up a bit of the play, one scene or one line but it doesn’t matter – it’s not recorded. You can’t watch it back and say ‘That was awful!’ When you’re on stage you have complete control over what you do, so if I decide that I want to run off or start doing it in a Swiss accent I can – not that I would, of course. I find after a while of doing theatre I start to think that I’d really like to do some film, and when I’m filming I think I’d really like to do some theatre. I like the camaraderie you get in both, but again it is different. You get to know people quite intimately in a play and rehearsals can be quite intense. When filming you tend to get the chance to have more fun and you go to a different part of the country. I really couldn’t pick from either of them.
You don’t just do acting, you get involved in all aspects of production. You’ve got your own theatre production company, haven’t you?
It’s been slow recently because I’ve been busy, but I set it up with a friend, Tom McCall. We won the Old Vic New Voices award in 2009 and got the play produced by the Old Vic at Theatre503 and it was brilliant doing that. I’m really proud of it. Unfortunately, because I got a job with Material Girl while we were rehearsing the play I had to step back from it. That was hard, because I’m quite controlling. It was my little baby that I had to hand over to the director, so it was a different beast to what I had intended it to be to begin with, but I was proud of everybody who did it and proud of doing it. We’ve done a couple of little things since then. It’s just really hard when you get busy because you have to really dedicate time to it. At the moment I’m writing with my friend Ben Deery (currently starring in The Woman in Black). We’ve got a short film in pre-production at the moment which we’re trying to get funding for as well as various other TV and plays that we’re writing. It’s all working progress at the moment.
You studied at drama school. Do you think that having that and acting and exploring different characters allows you to bring those things to writing that you wouldn’t necessarily experience?
I’d say a lot of it came from the Drama School I went to as a kid. It was all improvisation and devising. We never looked at scripts. You had a vague subject for the evening and had little exercises to do and by the end of it you’d create a mini piece of theatre. So when I started was doing plays at secondary school it was quite alien because a lot of the kids were used to doing plays in the conventional way. I was more used to using your imagination and coming up with something. At drama school I was taught by Mark Bell who taught Lecoq based methods, ‘physical theatre’. I hate using that expression, it conjures up all sorts of things in my mind – but it’s devising really and creating your own stories. He taught us a lot about comic timing and drama and how to capture an audiences’ imagination and allow your imagination to create the story that the audience can lock into without necessarily being full of fantasy staging or costumes.
Drama school gave me the confidence to write. If I’m given an hour to come up with something and I get five or ten minutes worth of material that entertains an audience, then there’s no reason why I can’t sit down and write something. That, and having an interest in my friends. I’ve got some funny friends, some mad characters and I use that in my work.
Have they ever seen anything of yours and turned round to you saying “That looks familiar”?
It has happened a couple of times, but I haven’t actually told anybody that I’ve based a character on them.
And they haven’t confronted you about it?
I’ve done it a couple of times and they would have seen it, but they haven’t picked up on it. With some of the stuff that we’re writing, there are a couple of relationships and friends that we have used. One in particular is very proud to have a character based on him. He features in something that we’re developing at the moment. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly flattering though. He’s charming, but he’s a bit of an oddball!
Although you’ve said you’re not musical, you are involved in the music scene aren’t you?
I used to manage a band called Friendship. I’ve known those guys for years, they’re a really good band. One of the band members, Will, wanted to start his own band and they needed a bassist, so I stepped in. We’re actually having our first rehearsal soon, so it’s very early days. But I reckon if we can get enough practise in before the end of Backbeat then we’ll be ready for our first live gig. We only have to do a short set four or five songs. It can’t be that hard. I’ve actually had a bass line to learn and I’d been practising it for a few weeks before showing Will, when he said “I’ve given that song to my other band now…”
Have you found that with bass playing in the play and putting that into practise with the new band, you’ve developed your own style with it?
You’d have to ask somebody else! I don’t know anything about bass playing, so I’ve no idea. Maybe I do have my own bass playing style. I’d probably describe it as slow myself. I’m actually quite good at it. Managed to become a good bass player. One of my friends who is a guitarist came and saw me, and was very impressed.
You’re a regular tweeter – do you enjoy using social media?
I hate Facebook. It’s one of those necessary evils. You can’t really keep in contact with people otherwise. I absolutely hate everybody knowing what you’re doing and photos of you being on there all the time, so I don’t really use that anymore. At first, I thought Twitter was a bit rubbish, and then after Trollied we were encouraged to use it as it’s good to help promote the show and get people involved. And I actually really liked it. If you were a fan of say, Trollied, you can contact somebody in the show and you would never have been able to do that before. It breaks down that ridiculous hierarchy between people on TV and those that aren’t. For example, there was a kid was doing her GCSEs and she wrote a message to me and Chanel (Trollied) not so long ago saying she’d had a really bad day. So we took a photo and wrote a good luck message to her. If you’re 15 it must be pretty cool to get something like that. I know when I was 15, if I was to get a message from somebody off a TV show I liked it would be pretty cool. Being able to cut down that barrier between people who watch stuff and the people being watched is a good thing. It’s great for news as well and if you’ve got other projects it’s a good way to let people know about it.
Is there anybody that you follow that you admire that would make your day if they Tweeted you?
Really? Mainly just my mates. There are a few footballers actually– I follow Louis Suarez and all the Liverpool players on there. If one of them saw something I was in… It’s pathetic really, isn’t it? The only people I get star struck by is footballers. I’ve worked in the music industry I’ve met some of my music heroes and never got too excited about it. It’s the same with acting. But I think if Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher were in the audience that would do it. Niall Quinn who plays for Sunderland was in the other night. I don’t even support Sunderland and I was starstruck!
Backbeat is playing at Duke of York’s Theatre now until 18th February 2012.
