Mischief Makers Episode 1: Henry Shields
[Upbeat music plays]
Host: Welcome to Mischief Makers, your one stop shop for all things Mischief. Join your host Dave Hearn, as he finds out what makes Mischief... well, Mischief!Dave Hearn: Hello and welcome to the first ever edition of Mischief Makers. I am Dave Hearn and with me, I have the wonderful Mr Henry Shields. Hello Shields.
Henry Shields: Hello! How are you doing?
DH: I'm very well, thank you. How are you?
HS: I'm good. I should point out, I'm not actually with you...
DH: No.
HS: We are communicating via the magic of the internet.
DH: Yeah, it's pretty great! I imagine there'll be... oh, I can hear myself echoing again! That's exciting!
I was about to say I imagine there'll be some technical problems, and the listeners should know we're all going to try and do this in one take, because I have no editing experience.
[HS laughs]
DH: So all mistakes will remain! So, I thought I'd make this programme to kind of reach out to the fans of Mischief and help people get to know everyone in the company. So I'm going to begin with something that's on everyone's minds, which is the coronavirus. But I'd like to put a kind of twist on it, so can you think of a way in which the coronavirus has impacted you and affected your life in a positive way?
HS: Oh... that's a tough one, because no!
[DH laughs]
HS: A positive way... I mean I'm currently trapped in my flat on my own. My girlfriend's had to move out because she's got the coronavirus.
DH: Oh, I didn't know that.
HS: Yeah. Well we think she does, she's lost her sense of taste and smell.
DH: Oh wow...
HS: So there's not a lot of positive coming out of it! I was lucky in that I ordered a PlayStation 4 just before this all hit.
DH: Oh wow!
HS: So I've had lots of time to get to play PlayStation games. That's about as fun as it's got. I've just finished The Last of Us which is amazing.
DH: Did you enjoy it?
HS: Yeah, really good, really really good.
DH: It's quite a bleak ending, isn't it?
HS: It is. I quite liked it, I thought it was kind of hopeful and open-ended. I mean they're saving up for the second one aren't they?
DH: Yeah, well they were never going to make a second one and then quite a lot of fans in the gaming world were quite upset by the idea of making a second one. But I'm a huge fan and I've seen some of the trailers for it and it looks great.
HS: Aw, great. Yeah. So yeah, that's been a positive, a sort of positive. A less selfish positive (other than that I've just got to sit and play games!) is that I've definitely had a lot more contact with my family since becoming completely isolated from them.
DH: Yeah, it's weird isn't it?
HS: Yeah, yeah. I speak to my Mum and my Dad every day now. We've got a family WhatsApp that is buzzing with chat all the time now.
[DH laughs]
HS: And you know, before all of this happened, I probably would have spoken to them once a week or once a month even.
DH: Yeah. I think a lot of people are finding that. I'm finding that I'm connecting with people way more than I usually would, because the thought of it being taken away is quite scary.
HS: Yeah.
DH: And so the idea of just being like, "Oh, well I must speak to them however I can".
HS: Yeah, yeah. It's very true. And even though we're physically separated, we're all connecting a lot more than we were before, which is nice!
DH: Yeah. And Mischief (it should be said) are trying to... this is one of the projects that we're kind of venturing. We're trying to do some new stuff via the internet and radio, which is proving challenging. But hopefully, something will come of it.
HS: Exactly. I'm in the middle of editing our first episode of Cornley Cultural Radio... and we'll see what that turns out to be!
DH: I believe it's our second attempt at the first episode!
HS: Yes! The first attempt was bad! We tried to record... Cornley Cultural Radio is a sort of comedy in character, comedy radio show. And we tried to record one just sort of off-the-cuff over the internet, with all of us on headphones. And it was just a mess! It was just a mess of bad improv.
DH: It was carnage! We couldn't see each other, talking over each other.
HS: It was terrible. But then you, me and Henry Lewis got together over the internet and wrote a script and now it's much better.
DH: Yeah... that was weird! We did it over, was it House Party?
HS: Yeah, the House Party app.
DH: Yeah, that was a fun afternoon actually. Although it's weird, because when you come up with an idea and you sort of deliver it, there's a slight of delay on it!
HS: So you think it's gone terribly!
DH: So you've delivered the joke and then nobody laughs!
HS: You get a horrible silence and you go, "Oh I'm terrible at this!" But no, I think it's good, I think it's funny - what we've got so far.
DH: Great, well I look forward to listening to it.
So we're going to move into the first section, which is "Getting to Know You". But I mentioned before we started recording, I don't have any jingles or anything prepared. So for the different sections, I thought I'd ask you to make up a quick, three-second jingle. So could you give me your "Getting to Know You" jingle.
HS: "Getting to Know You" jingle... well I've got my piano here, so I can try and play...
DH: Great, go for it!
HS: [Sings accompanied by piano] "Getting to know you jingle. THIS IS IT!"
[DH laughs]
DH: I like that!
HS: That was a jingle for the jingle really.
DH: No, that was good - that was really good. And then we'll have that to close, so I'll let you know when we're going to close this section.
HS: What, do you want me to play it again or will you loop that?
DH: No, I'll just get you to play it again. Definitely!
HS: Okay... I'll have to remember what that was!
DH: So the first question I've got is... I'm using my insider knowledge, you see! So some people may not know this about you, but you know how to fly a hot air balloon. Is that right?
HS: That is true.
DH: So tell us about that. How did that come about? How did you get into that?
HS: Ah, is that what the fans want to know?
DH: No, that's just what I want to know!
[HS laughs]
HS: Well legally, I'm not allowed to fly a balloon on my own (I should say).
DH: Oh no.
HS: I'm a trainee pilot and I've been desperately trying to get my full license. And actually I was supposed to be in Italy in a week's time doing an intensive course to get my license. That's obviously not going to happen now, that's fallen through. But it started out with my Dad, he is a hot air balloon pilot and has been since he was about 30, before I was born. And so I was in the basket from probably three or four months old...
DH: Oh wow!
HS: He took me for my first time. And I've been flying all the time ever since, originally as a passenger and then when I was a teenager, he started teaching me. And I've probably piloted 50/60 hours, something like that in a balloon.
DH: Wow, that is long.
HS: So I can fly a balloon, I'm just not allowed to fly a balloon.
DH: Not allowed too gung-ho with the gas.
[HS and DH laugh]
HS: I'm not allowed on my own. Like, I could physically fly it if you put me in it. If there was an emergency, if you and me were in a hot air balloon with a trained pilot and the pilot had a heart attack, I could safely land that balloon.
DH: I mean that is impressive. I wonder what you and I would be doing in a hot air balloon though!
HS: Having a romantic hot air balloon flight together.
[DH laughs]
DH: Yeah, you, me and the pilot. That would be fun! So your Dad took you up when you were three months old?
HS: Yeah, there's a story he tells all the time where they used to put me in a harness that they would attach to the side of the balloon. And I was probably a little older by the time this story took place, maybe a year old. And they sat me on the side of the basket while they were in flight. And at some point, they were all just looking away and I just fell out of the balloon!
DH: Oh my God!
HS: And was dangling a couple of metres below on a rope. And no-one noticed! They all just completely forgot I was there.
[DH laughs]
HS: Apparently I didn't make any fuss. I was just convinced that that was part of the experience!
DH: Wow!
HS: So I just hung underneath the balloon for a good half an hour before anyone wondered where the baby had gone and looked over the side and saw me just dangling there.
DH: That's absolutely crazy! What irresponsible parenting?!
HS: Oh that's just the start of it! My parents are quite irresponsible, yeah! I've got a lot of stories of when I was kid being left places: my Mum left me at the bank once, went home and came back for me and I was lost there! I once got locked outside the Eastbourne Leisure Centre for a couple of hours, because I was too small to push the door open (it was quite a heavy door).
DH: Oh wow!
HS: I'd somehow gotten out into the car park, they'd gone inside. And a couple of hours later, I was discovered outside the door - desperately trying to push it, trying to get back in! Really, really bad parenting!
[DH laughs]
DH: Yeah! You sort of ended up being a bit like a sort of domestic cat, trying to get into someone's bedroom.
[HS laughs]
HS: Exactly! Just clawing at the door, hours! By that point they'd raised the alarm I think, people were searching the building.
DH: Wow. And do you remember these tragedies fondly? Or did they scar you in any way?
HS: I don't really remember them, I think they've probably been blanked out of my memory because they were so traumatising at the time! But now I can look back on them as if they're something that happened to someone else, because I have really no memory at all of it happening.
DH: Wow, that is amazing. Well let's fast forward from your childhood a bit. Were you training to be a nurse before you became an actor?
HS: Yes, I was.
DH: Why the change?
HS: Weird isn't it, that I was a nurse. Well I came out of college, I was very ill for a while - I was hospitalised with Leukaemia and that sort of put my life on hold. That happened on my 18th Birthday, I was hospitalised. That put my life on hold for about a year, a year and a half. And after that, I really didn't know what I was going to do with myself and was in a bit of a loss, because there's been this massive speed bump in my life that just threw any plans out the window. And any kind of enthusiasm I had coming out of college was gone, I didn't really have much drive to get on with life. So I think my Mum just suggested, "Why don't you try nursing? That's something." And I was interested in medicine, so I went for it. I trained at King's College London for about four or five months, in which time they did put me into a hospital ward. I was working at St Thomas's for a couple of months in Care for the Elderly. And then eventually, I came to my senses and I realised that it really wasn't for me and it was a really hard job. Being a nurse is an incredibly difficult job, I was just exhausted the whole time. You're up at 6.00am and you don't finish until 7.00 or 8.00pm. It's incredibly long days and really hard work, really draining, morally draining... morale I mean, not morally!
So I gave it up and I applied for drama school and got in there.
DH: Wow. And so living through something like Leukaemia, which I imagine is a big impact on your life, do you find things like the coronavirus to be less concerning?
HS: No. Well I normally would, I generally have quite a stoic attitude I think, towards things. However the coronavirus, because when I had Leukaemia I went in with Legionnaires' disease and pneumonia - that's how my disease presented and how they caught it in the first place - that means that my lungs are quite weak and have always been a bit knackered from then on. So the coronavirus is particularly dangerous to me annoyingly, so I do have to take this one very seriously which is why I'm properly isolated, completely on my own. And why my girlfriend as soon as she thought she might be sick, immediately moved out to not get me ill.
DH: Yeah, yeah, because that would be pretty awful if we lost you... we wouldn't want to do that!
[HS laughs]
HS: Yeah... that would be a shame, at this point.
DH: Well let's brighten it up a little. We actually talked about this very briefly, but you and I both share a keen interest in computer games. Just talk us through one or two of your favourite games.
HS: Ah, favourite games! Well you and me are both pretty obsessed with RimWorld...
DH: Yup, yeah I am. I should point out that it's not a kind of... sexual game!
HS: No.
DH: Even though it sounds like a sexual game!
HS: I don't know who named it RimWorld, because they've made an amazing game and they just fell at the last hurdle when they thought, "We'll call it RimWorld!"
DH: Yeah! [Laughs]
HS: Sounds terrible! But it's great!
DH: Yeah, like a horrid sex world.
HS: So you and me will often sit in the dressing room playing RimWorld side by side over what our colonists are up to in there. That's a lot of fun.
DH: Yeah. I really enjoy sharing a dressing room with you, because people might think it's a party in there, but it's not!
[HS laughs]
DH: It's two silent men!
HS: It's very calm and very quiet and very... it's quite geeky! A sort of constant low-level of chat. I quite like it.
DH: Yeah. It is nice. So RimWorld is one and you mentioned The Last of Us.
HS: So The Last of Us I've just finished, which I really enjoyed and had a great storyline. I'm not usually into games that are heavily story based, but that one is and it's brilliant. And yeah, the Total War games I'm also pretty obsessed with and I've played all of those. And big into the medieval history, medieval military history.
DH: Is that because you grew up in Hastings?
HS: It's not... because of that!
[DH laughs]
It would have been no matter where I was born I would've been interested in it!
DH: Nah, blame it on Hastings!
HS: Blame it on Hastings! Well Hastings does have a rich medieval history and I could tell you all about the Battle of Hastings and everyone involved... I don't know if that's the kind of thing that anyone would care about at all on this podcast!
DH: I feel like they would care about you. You know, they could just Google "Hastings".
HS: True!DH: But could you give us one, have you got a favourite fact about the Battle of Hastings that you'd like to share?
HS: A favourite fact about the Battle of Hastings... no-one is quite sure how Harold Godwinson died, that's an interesting one.
DH: Okay.
HS: Because the Bayeux Tapestry which is the best record of what happened in the battle, the part where it describes how Harold died, it has written in Latin... I can't remember the Latin! But "Death of Harold" in Latin, whatever that is! But it depicts an image of someone getting killed with an arrow in their eye underneath the name Harold, but underneath the word death is a depiction of someone being killed by a man on a horse with a sword. So no-one is quite sure which of those two was supposed to be Harold: was it Harold or was it the man dying? Or was it some combination of both, maybe he got hit in the eye with the arrow and a guy on a horse went, "Ah, I'll get him and take the glory!"
[DH laughs]
HS: "I'm not letting that arrow get away with it!"
DH: "I'll poach that kill!”
HS: Yeah, exactly!
DH: Okay, great. And something else you're also a big fan of is reading. Do you have any book recommendations for our listeners while they're isolated?
HS: I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy... you're probably starting to build up an image of an incredibly geeky man in your mind, because that's what I actually am!
[Both laugh]
It's all computer games, medieval military history and books, and sci-fi. So I'm reading the Broken Earth trilogy at the moment which is really good.
DH: What is that?
HS: It's a high fantasy, sci-fi thing, I think set in the future (it's not entirely clear yet). It's about these people who can control seismic activity with their minds.
DH: Okay, wow.
HS: It's the only sci-fi series to win the Hugo Award for Science Fiction three years in a row. It's written by an American woman, it's brilliant.
DH: Okay. You'll have to (separately to this) send me that, because I'm looking for some new stuff to read. But I do like a fantasy.
HS: Yeah, yeah. And Brandon Sanderson is also excellent, have I got you on to reading any of those?
DH: No I don't think so. What are they?
HS: It's a high fantasy, sci-fi thing, I think set in the future (it's not entirely clear yet). It's about these people who can control seismic activity with their minds.
DH: Okay, wow.
HS: It's the only sci-fi series to win the Hugo Award for Science Fiction three years in a row. It's written by an American woman, it's brilliant.
DH: Okay. You'll have to (separately to this) send me that, because I'm looking for some new stuff to read. But I do like a fantasy.
HS: Yeah, yeah. And Brandon Sanderson is also excellent, have I got you on to reading any of those?
DH: No I don't think so. What are they?
HS: The Mistborn series in particular. Again, high fantasy books - but you'd really, really like those ones.
DH: What's a low fantasy book?
HS: The difference is I think high fantasy means that it's an entirely fictional world, like the physics of the world are imaginary and it's an entire new civilisation on a different continent or whatever. Whereas low fantasy would be something set in this world, so low sci-fi would be like E.T. for example. It's this world, but an alien has come to it.
DH: Okay, I see, I see. That makes sense. Well that's good.
Okay well shall we wrap up the "Getting to Know You" section with the "Getting to Know You" jingle?
HS: Oh yeah... I've completely forgotten what it was!
DH: I think you could probably make up a new one. I think it would be okay.
HS: Yeah?
[Finds pitch with piano. Plays a completely different jingle to the first time.] "Getting to know you jingle. That was it!"
[DH laughs]
DH: Very good! Okay so we're going to go straight into the next section which you might be able to help me with this, all I've got is "Questions from the Web".
HS: "Questions from the Web".
DH: That's what it is, it's people who have sent in questions from Twitter and stuff like that.
HS: Okay, do you want another jingle?
DH: Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, yeah.
HS: [More choral, heavy piano music] "Questions from the Web".
[Both laugh]
DH: Why did you say "web" so weird?!
HS: It's really hard to get the note right when I've got headphones on and I can't quite hear the piano.
DH: ...could you only just hear one half of it? "Weee-b".
[Both laugh. HS tried to sing "web" once more, in tune]
DH: You going to go for it again? Please do!
HS: No, no, no. I've moved on.
[Both laugh]
DH: So we'll start with writings, we've had a lot of people asking questions about the writing of the shows.
HS: Where are these questions coming from?
DH: Mainly Twitter... only Twitter.
HS: Are they coming to you specifically? Are they saying, "Dave, find this out for me!"
DH: Yeah, there's a lot of keen beans! No, I tweeted yesterday saying, "I'm interviewing Henry Shields today and Henry Lewis later. Do you have any questions for them?"
HS: Were there more questions for Hen than me?
DH: I sometimes think people think you're the same person, because you're both called Henry.
HS: That's probably true, yeah.
DH: So and EXCLUSIVE on this broadcast. Henry Shields and Henry Lewis: different people.
HS: Yeah, people often come up to me thinking I'm Henry Lewis and if I realise that they think I'm Henry Lewis, I'm incredibly rude to that person on Henners' behalf!
[DH laughs]
DH: "Get out!"
So these are some of the questions geared towards writing. One of them is what's the kind of process of your writing? Do you plan stuff out before or do you just kind of improvise it in the room?
HS: That's an interesting question. It's a bit of both, is the answer. I think because there's three of us, we have to accommodate each other's needs and desires. I know that Jon [Sayer] really prefers to just start writing and crack straight on and get some stuff on the page and then figure out where we're going from there. Whereas I am much more, I prefer to plan things out, I prefer to know where I'm going before I start. So it's a bit of both.
At the beginning of the process, you just start writing. I go with Jon on that and we just start writing and see what we get. And then as soon as you've got a little bit of tangible, "Okay, I start to feel like we know what this show is or this play is or whatever", then we sit down and plot out the storyline. And then you when you've got a vague shape of a storyline, then you pick a point that particularly interests you and then you start just randomly writing again. You just sort of get clay on the wheel, start writing a few pages of dialogue, see what that bits like. And then go back to planning and re-plan based on what you've found.
DH: So it kind of sort of morphs from what you originally thought it might be?
HS: Yeah. Plans don't last long. You make a plan, you think it's brilliant and you know exactly what the play is and then a month later, 10% of it is remaining. [Laughs]
DH: Yeah!
HS: It just changes constantly; as you write, things constantly change.
DH: And so as stuff morphs and I know we've spoken about it before, out of all of the plays and stuff that you've written, what's been the hardest moment to kind of finalise about a play where you have to kind of make a decision? That this particular moment is going to be like this? Because I imagine there are quite a lot of options for each different thing.
HS: It's always the ending that's the trickiest. We very rarely as a three agree on exactly how a play should end. Not necessarily the big end of the arc story, but the final scene or the final moment is often very, very tricky to get right. Because there's so much weight on whatever the final moment is in a play; you really want to get it just right. So we always disagree on how a play should end and we have 10 different versions of every different play that we try out until we find one we settle on. I mean you remember The Comedy About a Bank Robbery had that... very dark scene originally?
DH: Oh yes. Well some people may have seen that scene.
HS: May have, yeah. Originally, that play ended with a man being burned to death!
DH: Yeah, Ruth poured vodka over all of the apartment and then dropped a lighter on it or something.
HS: Yeah and set fire to him, which was very dark!
DH: Yeah, it really killed the end of that show!
HS: It really did! At the end of a light, breezy, comedy play, you just heard the audience go, "Oh..."
DH: "Oh no!" Yeah, I do remember that.
HS: And then blackout! And people quietly start clapping, "Okay... it's okay?" That lasted about a month before we changed that one to the much preferred ending now, where she just handcuffs him and leaves.
DH: Yeah, it's a much cleaner ending, I think.
HS: It is! But we've had that with a lot of the plays, we've always struggled to get the ending just right. The Play That Goes Wrong, we had that whole slow fade ending for a while. Do you remember that?
DH: Yeah. That was poor.
HS: That was poor. We finished the play, Greg [Tannahill] said the last line as Jonathan and then we would have a 30 second lights fade [laughs].
DH: And I think they came back up as well, didn't they?
HS: Yeah, yeah. They'd go and go and go and then come back on and then go again! Really, really long and slow which I think is actually really funny, but definitely was a terrible idea!
DH: Yeah, that was a poor ending.
HS: Again, you just want the play to end. You want people to just know it's finished and start clapping. It's not the time to start messing with the expectation there. You get people confused like, "What is going on?! When do we start applauding?!"
DH: I've got to say it's one of my bugbears about theatre is (mainly directors) but in shows where it's just not clear where something's finished. You're sort of sat there.
HS: Yup, you've got to have strong blackout points. We know this.
DH: It's why everyone loves musicals, especially British people! Because it's a clap trap! We like to know what to do, we like to know what the etiquette is.
HS: Yeah, exactly.
DH: Song finishes, you applaud.
HS: No-one wants to be in that awkward position where they want to applaud and they're not sure if they're allowed. Or they do applaud and then they realise they shouldn't have. That's poison to a British person. They can't handle it.
DH: Yeah, that's the worst. A sort of retracted applause.
HS: Yeah! And that's terrible, because that's like a booby trap for your best audience members. If you're doing a play with people who are really on side, who are really willing you to do well will be the first people to applaud. And if you put something in there that they go, "Yay!" [Rapturous clapping] And then realise, "Oh no... there's more!" You score an own goal there.
DH: You've sort of tricked them and siphoned away their enthusiasm.
HS: Exactly! Yeah, punishing your own audience!
DH: Well that's probably not an exclusive to this, whatever this is! But we often have a lot of people compliment our work and say how much they enjoy it. And they're often seeing the final result of a lot of hard work, especially in previews with our theatre shows. But what often people don't see is the sheer amount of poor stuff we come up with! And just cut away.
[Both laugh]
HS: No-one ever sees all of it. Unless you come to every preview, you never see all of our terrible ideas, because we spread them out. We try everything and we get it wrong a lot. But I think that's an important lesson in creativity generally. A lot of people I think are intimated away from creating things themselves - from becoming writers or playwrights or authors or whatever - because they only ever look at the finished product.
DH: Sure.
HS: You only ever look at this brilliant novel or this fantastic play and think, "God, I could never do that. How could I possibly make something so brilliant as that?" But you're only seeing the final, finished product. You're not seeing the months and months and years and years of getting it wrong that gets it to that place.
DH: Yeah, I think that's really true because I've written a play and I'm also working on a TV thing with Charlie, and I just have absolutely no fear because I know it's going to be shit.
[Both laugh]
DH: So I know it will get made better. And I'll like send it to you guys and we'll do like R&D and we'll talk about it and get directors in and producers and people will pull it apart and we'll just make it better. But at the moment, I'm just like, "Oh yeah, it's going to be bad for a little while, until it's not bad". But I'm not really scared of that.
HS: No. But I mean the reason you can not be afraid of that is because you've had the experience of seeing the creative process and seeing first-hand how long and slow and difficult it is to create something that works.
DH: I've also been one of the people that's had to deliver some of the bad ideas.
[HS laughs]
DH: To 600 people and received silence!
HS: Quite often! You get yourself into that situation by being very open and strong-willed, I think.
DH: Yeah. I'm game!
HS: As an actor, we know when we're writing something we can just go, "Well we'll give that to Dave..."
DH: "He'll have a go!"
HS: He'll have a go and it'll probably die, but at least Dave won't be upset with us!
DH: Yeah, he'll know. We'll all know if it's bad or not.
HS: Yeah, and Dave will take it on the chin.
[Both laugh]
DH: On my now ruined chin!
HS: Yeah!
DH: So in terms of writing new stuff, I think this is something that we've actually discussed as a company and I think a lot of people want to know. And actually it might be a question that you guys find quite annoying now as writers, but have you ever thought about doing a musical that goes wrong?
HS: Oh! We have had that question quite a lot. We thought about it, we even chatted about it, knocked around some ideas of what that might be. And we do have a vague idea of what that could be. I think the reason we haven't done it is that firstly, we don't want to keep doing more and more Goes Wrong stuff to the point where people are sick of it.
DH: Yeah.
HS: And I think having just done Magic Goes Wrong and now in a position where we're working on the second series of The Goes Wrong Show, there's certainly more than enough that if we were to do a musical now, I think we would just be over-saturating the market.
DH: Yeah.
HS: And I think if we hadn't done Magic [Goes Wrong], we probably would've done a musical. But Penn and Teller came along and suggested a magic show, so it superseded it. So you know, one day it could happen. But certainly we'd want to have a good, long break from the Goes Wrong stuff before we tackle it.
DH: Yeah. And I know we as a company as well have talked about not only doing Goes Wrong stuff and making sure we have a breadth of work that we can be really proud of. I suppose you don't want to get too entrenched, especially as writers as well. You guys writing stuff, you don't want to get too entrenched in writing not the same thing, but similar stuff.
HS: Well exactly. It's the curse of success, I think. We've been really fortunate and we've managed to create this thing, stumble across this concept that really works and create these characters that are incredibly successful beyond anything we thought they would be. Not to be too arrogant about it, but they have done really well and the plays have been so successful all over the world, that when you have that level of success in one thing, it's really hard to convince anyone to not do that. You know? All anyone comes to us with is ideas for more Goes Wrong stuff, which is totally understandable because even the other stuff we've done that has been really good like [The Comedy About a] Bank Robbery for example (which I think is one of the best things we've created) has never had the same level of success as The Play That Goes Wrong or Peter Pan Goes Wrong and will never have that success, because they're in a different category really.
DH: Yeah.
HS: That massive worldwide spread of success is just not going to be replicated. So anyone who comes to us with a new idea or wants to produce a new show isn't going to be gravitating towards the new material.
DH: And it's quite easy to latch onto the Goes Wrong thing, isn't it? Because once you understand the concept, it's so simple. And like Bank Robbery is a style of comedy, whereas Goes Wrong is much more accessible I think, in terms of creating stuff.
HS: It is. It translates so well, it's real classic, slapstick stuff. So I can tell why, I can see why it's so successful and I don't begrudge of that at all. But I'd be surprised if we were able to achieve the same level of success with anything other than a Goes Wrong. I mean it happens once in a lifetime really that someone gets to create something that does as well as the Goes Wrong things have done. So it seems unlikely that we would think of another idea that would have the same reach.
DH: Yeah... we'll keep trying! Stay tuned!
HS: Well I mean we will. We have got other ideas and we are working on other things. I think that like most things are, they'll be more niche. They'll be brilliant for a small group, rather than brilliant for everybody.
DH: Yeah, sort of a cult following.
HS: Well yeah. I don't even know if it's as small as cult. It's like when you look at anything that's successful, pick a good TV show that you like, like Peep Show for example. I love Peep Show, I think it's brilliant. That only ever had a viewership of around a million people per episode, which is pretty small and it's absolutely brilliant. I think it's one of the best things that's ever been made on TV, it won so many awards and things, it was really, really great. But it didn't have massive wide appeal, so isn't considered the same level of successful as something like (I don't know) Mrs Brown's Boys for example.
DH: Yeah. And Fleabag was quite similar wasn’t it? It didn't have a huge following.
HS: Yeah. It had relatively small viewing figures, not reflected by the quality of the show.
DH: For those of you listening: if you've not watched Peep Show or Fleabag, do watch them. They're very good.
HS: They really are!
DH: I quite like this question, because I actually don't think I know the answer to it. Why has Gwyneth Paltrow appeared in two of your plays?
[HS laughs]
HS: That is a good question! I'd like to say it's just coincidence... but I think it's because she's kind of in our minds a bit, because she annoys us I think. Because when we're in the writing room and we chat, occasionally Gwyneth Paltrow in the news will have done some mad thing or created some ridiculous herbal remedy that's poisoning women or something like that.
DH: Yeah, what was the latest thing? It was about curing cancer or something? With a crystal?
HS: Oh yeah, I mean it sounds like her. It could be anything like that. There are so many, I don't allow myself to read any examples anymore! But Gwyneth Paltrow did just get on our nerves a little bit, I suppose. It was the eggs and the vagina thing that she was particularly criticised for.
DH: Yes, that was it.
HS: And now she's come out with her TV programme: The Goop... Factory or something like that? The Goop Lab?
DH: I though you said the Gutch Factory.
[Both laugh]
HS: No, that's a TV programme that you and I would watch!
DH: Yeah, no definitely!
HS: I don't really have anything against Gwyneth Paltrow. It's not my world, you know, it's just a completely different... I'm not the target audience, I understand that. It does bother me when she tries to actively damage women to make money, but I don't think that's her intent.
DH: No, I don't think it is. But I know what you mean. Who is she to give sort of medical advice?
HS: Yeah, she probably shouldn't be giving medical advice.
DH: No, no.
HS: So I think that she's seeped into our sub conscience a bit! So when it got to the point where, "Well we need to make fun of a celebrity... who shall we pick?"
[Both laugh]
HS: "Well, obviously Gwyneth Paltrow!" I don't know, we don't really make fun of her, do we? We did a bit in Groan Ups.
DH: Groan Ups you sort of link her to Moon, and by association it's a gag. And then what is it in Magic?
HS: In Magic it's just Gwyneth Paltrow because she's in the crystal ball. But that genuinely is just a look into our psyche; that's just us in the writing room, being unable to think of anything other than Gwyneth Paltrow!
DH: And there is something funny, Henry Lewis saying "Gwyneth" is quite amusing.
HS: "Gwyneth Paltrow!" Yeah, it doesn't have to be Gwyneth Paltrow. It's one of those things where you write it and then as soon as someone laughs at it, it's that forever. You know? It would be easy to change it to another celebrity, but now people are attached to it, we can't do that.
DH: If it was another celebrity, who would you do?
HS: Appearing in the crystal ball...
DH: Keith Chegwin?
HS: See I can't imagine anyone else now! It's Gwyneth Paltrow in my head, it can't be funnier than Gwyneth Paltrow now.
DH: Yeah, it's true.
HS: I'm sure it could be, but I can't see it. It's like Duran Duran in The Play That Goes Wrong, which I always thought was maybe not the right song. Maybe we could have a different band and a more recognisable band for the younger viewers. But because it's always been that way, I don't think we'd ever be able to change it now.
DH: Yeah, I hope that The Play That Goes Wrong is still going in 50 or even 100 years and it's still Duran Duran. And people are just like, "What is this?"
HS: The Play That Goes Wrong in a 100 years, if it's still going in a 100 years then that will be Duran Duran's claim to fame by that point!
DH: That's very true, yeah, yeah.
HS: The play will have beaten their actual music! They'll be known for being the songs in that play!
DH: And it will have outlived all of us.
HS: Well speak for yourself!
DH: That's true!
HS: I'll be dead.
DH: I'll definitely be gone.
HS: I'll have uploaded myself to a machine by then, that's the plan.
DH: That's a good idea. Okay, so this is quite a nice question, these are more sort of Mischief-centric rather than writing-centric. What is the best thing about being in Mischief?
HS: The best thing... it's a really good friend group, I think. And having seen the friends I knew from school and college, having seen them grow up and seeing what their lives are like, I am able to really appreciate how great a friendship group Mischief is. Because there are a lot of us and we're all really close and we all really get along and find each other very funny. And you know, a lot of my friends who I still am in contact with from school have very small friendship groups - they all have two or three people who they see regularly - which from our perspective, seems like very few people at all. Like, how do you get by without a massive gang of friends?
[DH laughs]
HS: How did you not have a huge, creative group of people at your beck and call? So I think that is the best part of it, the fact that we are a big group of friends. And it's gone on for so long and has taken over my life so much that now Mischief is my social life.
DH: Yeah.
HS: Which is a good thing and a bad thing, I suppose.
DH: Yeah, I find in order to kind of have something social outside of Mischief is quite an active effort.
HS: Yeah, I have to work hard. I do have friends that I know from school, like I say. But I do have to really work to see them; I have to really book in time and get groups on the WhatsApp and get everyone to agree to it and we all get together and we bring wine and food and stuff. But it's always a bit of an effort, you can only really do every couple of months at the most.
DH: Yeah, yeah. I think it's the same, it's kind of weird, you sort of realise that not even through choice - the people in Mischief have become your best friends.
HS: Yeah, that's it.
DH: And yeah, that's it. We're done, forever!
[HS laughs]
DH: And if the company ever splits up, I feel like we'll all just shut down!
HS: Yeah... I don't know what we'd do!
DH: That would be so weird...
HS: Because of that, I don't think the company really can end. Even if people stop watching, we'll just keep producing whatever the hell we're doing!
[DH laughs]
HS: It'll just be for us.
DH: We'll just be grinding it out in people's gardens!
HS: I wouldn't mind! It'll just be you and me doing mile gigs!
DH: Yeah, going up in Edinburgh!
HS: Do some improv on the mile, it doesn't bother me.
DH: "We've pre-sold four tickets!"
[HS laughs]
DH: "Two comped!"
HS: I mean if it all fell apart, if everything ended up you know... if we never saw the other side of the coronavirus, if all of the theatres never recovered and we didn't get the shows back on, I'd be up for going back to Edinburgh and doing improv again. Wouldn't mind.
DH: Out in the streets, two metres distance improv!
[HS laughs]
HS: Gigs on the bus, audience at the back.
DH: Yeah, that'd be great! So in terms of your now quite long stint with Mischief, what is the thing that you are most proud of?
HS: Of our creative works?
DH: Yeah, creative works or an achievement from Mischief or something you've done yourself or something you've written.
HS: I think The Comedy About a Bank Robbery (as I mentioned earlier) is probably the favourite thing of mine that we've done. I don't necessarily think it's our best work, it's just that I am most proud of it because we really pushed ourselves to do something completely different and really achieved it that time. I think it's always very hard to move away from something like the Goes Wrong thing, to move away from something you know and have been doing. It's very difficult to push yourself into a completely unknown area and we did that. And I love Bank Robbery, I'm very proud of everybody's work in that. I think it really came together and the sort of melodrama aspects of it, the physical theatre, it's just so very different. I don't love it because it's the best thing we've ever done - I love it because it's the most unusual thing that we've ever done.
DH: Sure, that's a very good answer. And I quite like this question as well: in your opinion, who in Mischief would be the best to have for a zombie apocalypse?
HS: Oh that'd be you Dave, you know this.
[Both laugh]
DH: You'd have me, yeah!
HS: Yeah, I mean obviously.
DH: I feel like we've had this discussion.
HS: Yeah, I think you and me probably would have the plan already formed for a zombie apocalypse! I think you'd probably be good with a gun, I think you'd probably know how to get a gun. [Laughs]
DH: Yeah. Both of those things.
HS: I think you've got the fitness that would be required to move quickly. And you'd have the ruthlessness...
[DH laughs]
HS: You'd know when we'd need to leave one behind!
DH: Yeah, I'd know when to pull the trigger. That's sad, but fair!
HS: It is, but you know you and me would be the survivors!
DH: That's true. Charlie [Russell] is convinced she would be the first to die. She was like, "I think if I saw a zombie, I'd immediately just kill myself. Because I know that I would slow everyone [down]."
HS: That's very honest of her!
DH: Yeah, that's very sweet. I think I would feel quite bad.
HS: Who would you pick?
DH: Who would I pick? Do you know what? I mean I would have to pick Charlie, because we're together. But assuming that she's already killed herself...
HS: Well I mean I would obviously have to pick Ellie [Morris], same reason. She would understand.
DH: Yeah. Do you know what? It's pretty close between you and Mike Bodie...
HS: Ah, Bodie would be very helpful.
DH: Because genuine survival expert. And I think if I asked this question to Mike Bodie, he would say himself again!
[Both laugh]
HS: Yeah, I think you're right actually. I probably should have picked Bodie over you, thinking about it now. He's a very handy man to have in a crisis.
DH: I mean I feel like you could just go into the woods with like Bodes and a knife and you'd probably be okay. He'd figure something out.
HS: You're probably right about that.
DH: Did you hear about his kind of intense Scouts thing? Where he had to go into the woods for literally three days, with like some tarpaulin and like a tin of tuna?
HS: No?! With the Scouts?!
DH: Yeah, he does this like... I'm going to interview him later in the week, so I'll ask him about it. He does this, it's sort of SAS of the Scouts and they kind of get these crazy badges for doing different things. And one of them is survival training, surviving in woods - I think it is for three days.
HS: Wow!
DH: With like really minimal stuff. And he did it. And I was like, "How did you find it?" And he was like, "Not a problem!" And I was just like, "Okay!"
HS: I didn't realise the Scouts went in for that sort of thing. I thought it was tying knots and maybe building a raft now and then!
DH: I think it's like when you get older, there's like a shadow syndicate of like the Scouts where you can do more extreme things.
[Both laugh]
HS: Scouts after dark, yeah!
DH: Well I think that brings us to the close of "Questions from the Web", so could you give us the jingle?
HS: Yeah, can't possibly finish the section without the jingle... what was it? I'll find my note this time. [Finds pitch with piano] "Queee-!" I'm not a good singer basically!
[Both laugh]
DH: That was very good!
HS: [Sings] "Questions from the Web".
DH: Again, you said "web" weird! [Laughs]
HS: "Weeee-b!"
DH: [Imitates] "Questions from the Web!" And then we're going to finish, we're going to finish with a quick fire round. So I'm going to ask you loads of quick... well, the questions might not be quick but your answers need to be quick.
HS: Yeah, I get that.
DH: You know how quick fire round works, it's not your first time. But do you want to give us a quick fire jingle?
HS: Aw, I've just moved away from the piano. This is going to be a slow fire jingle!
[DH laughs]
DH: Or you could do A Capella?
HS: No, I'm good, I'm good. [Plays quick paced tune] "Quick fire!" [Plays coda]
DH: Nice, nice coda! So I'll ask a bunch of questions and you can try and answer them as quickly as possible. If I get good at post production, at this point there will be some kind of dramatic music playing underneath. If there is no dramatic music playing underneath at this point, I have not figured out how to do that! Are you ready?
HS: ...yes.
DH: Good, here we go. What is your favourite colour?
HS: Green.
DH: What is your spirit animal?
HS: Tiger.
DH: Who is the bossiest member of Mischief?
HS: Nancy [Zamit].
DH: Who is the most likely to corpse on stage?
HS: Harry [Kershaw].
DH: Is a Jaffa Cake a cake or a biscuit?
HS: It's a cake.
DH: What is your favourite film?
HS: The Iron Giant.
DH: And finally, who is your comedy hero?
HS: John Cleese.
DH: Very good, excellent! Quick fire jingle?
HS: Oh God, I've moved away again!
[Both laugh]
HS: [Plays jingle] "Quick fire!"
DH: Nice!
HS: Just smashing the keyboard
DH: [Imitates] "Quick fire!" Well ladies and gentlemen, that is Mr Henry Shields... I might try and add an applause in there as well.
HS: Yeah, you said that like there would be an applause, but there's obviously not.
[DH makes noise of applause]
DH: Well thank you very much for joining me, Mr Shields. And thank you guys for listening. Do keep an eye out for our next episode, I don't know what order these are going out in - so hopefully this will be the first one, but it could be third or something... we'll find out!
HS: You introduced it as the first one, it has to be.
DH: Now it has to be.
HS: Are you going to introduce them all in order?
DH: [Laughs] I'm going to introduce them all as the first episode and confuse everyone! They'll keep thinking they've gone back in time! I'm going to announce it from my Twitter account, but also you can follow all the latest in the Mischief world on Twitter by following @MischiefComedy. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for listening. And thanks for making Mischief! Goodbye.
... I might not end it with that weird goodbye.
[HS laughs]
DH: Hold on, we're still recording! Alright, I'm going to stop recording... now!