PAUL: Hello and welcome to Regrets,
I've Had A Few.

I'm Paul Hunter,

Artistic Director of Told by an Idiot,
and this is a podcast where I talk

to friends and colleagues, delving into
what made them the person they are today.

Hello and welcome.

My guest this month is one of Britain's

leading theatre directors and he's been
in and around and responsible for some

of the best new writing in the UK
over the past 25 years.

He was an associate director
at the Young Vic Theatre

and Shakespeare's Globe,
and he's collaborated with some

extraordinary writers, including
Martin McDonough and Dennis Kelly.

His work has been seen

at the National Theatre, the Royal Court,
London's, West End and New York.

And I'm really proud and pleased to say he

also directed one of our Idiot favourite
shows of mine, The Fahrenheit Twins.

Welcome Matthew Dunster.
MATTHEW: Hi, Paul.

PAUL: Hi, Matthew.
It's lovely to see you and chat with you.

Obviously, I know you well and we know

each other well,
and I've had the joy of being directed

by you, so we'll touch
on some of those things.

But like I always do, I'm going to go,
take you back to the beginning, which,

correct me if I'm wrong,
was Oldham in Lancashire?

MATTHEW: Yes.

PAUL: So, obviously similar generation to me,

and I think probably
some things in common.

I know you're a very keen football fan.

Were you a keen player of football
when you were younger?

MATTHEW: Yeah, I was yeah, and I was well,

you know what they say,
the older you get, the better you were.

Yeah, I was.

I was a keen sportsman all around.

I was captain of the school football team,
captain of the Sunday League team,

Royton youth, played for the town team,
Oldham town team a couple of times.

I always felt a bit bogus because I only

live about 500 metres
from Oldham Athletic football ground.

But the estate I was brought up on was
an overspill estate,

as they sort of cleaned out a lot
of the slums in the 60s in Manchester.

A lot of those families moved to what had

previously been farmland, where they built
the estate I was born on and grew up in.

A lot of the families that arrived

were United or City fans,
and the family that I sort of latched

onto, they were City fans,
but I played it as well.

PAUL: As a very keen footballer myself,

we made a show earlier this year
that celebrated the greatest ever

achievement of my team, Aston Villa,
when they won the European Cup in 1986.

One of only five English
teams to do that, Matthew,

MATTHEW: Yeah, and my team haven't done it yet.

PAUL: Anyway, I'm going to jump
in with my first regret.

Do you have any regrets that that was not

something that you pursued professionally,
a life in football or not?

MATTHEW: Well, do you know what?

There was a guy on my school team
when I was a kid.

I was exactly the right age when

they started
the kind of first feeder system

for the national team through
Loughborough, in Loughborough.

I don't remember what it was called,

but basically we would have
been the first intake.

And I had a kid who played on my school
team called Mark Robbins,

who is now the manager of Coventry
and famously kept Fergie in his job.

And when you played with someone like
Mark Robbins, you knew there was no chance

that you're ever going to be
a professional footballer,

because it was just another
league, do you know what I mean?

And I don't really ever regret.

And to be honest,
a lot of the things that I used to do

that were sporting, once I started drama,
I gave them all up because the demands

of being in the drama group
at school, were such...

The teacher, one of the brilliant things

about him was he sort of rigorously
demanded such commitment

that things like Sunday league football
just all sort of drifted away.

So no regrets, really.

PAUL: I suppose that takes me slightly

to my next question,
which maybe is to do with

your earliest kind of connection
to theatre or performance.

Was there anything in the family
or was it through school?

MATTHEW: Through school, 100%.

Very powerful kind of moment, really.

I went to a comp,
so everything was mixed, I think.

I can't remember whether we were streamed

for English or not, or whether it was just
mixed like every other lesson,

but my English teacher
had a nervous breakdown.

I don't think I was anything to do with
that, but she had a nervous breakdown.

And the Head of English,
a guy called Colin Snow,

he came in and he said, "Right,
you got to read, I want you all to read

from this book," whatever
we were studying.

And everyone groaned, oh, God.

And this girl called Elaine Cordon, said,

just "if we're going to read, can Dunny
read?" Which was my nickname,

and I think it was probably because
I was the only one who could read.

So I read out from this text,
I genuinely can't remember what it was.

And after the lesson, he said,
"Come here, we're doing a school play.

I'd like you to be part of it." and it was
Kez and I read it and I thought,

I hope he doesn't want me to play
the kid who falls in love with his bird.

And he didn't, because he had
a more established 14 year old.

And he asked me to play
McDowell the bully.

And I loved it.

And I can remember being on stage, Paul,

and it's that bit in Kez, you know
where everyone gives their fags

to that poor little kid to give the
headmaster a message.

And we were all stood in a line.

I looked at these other
three actors stood in line.

I thought they're just stood in a line.

I'm acting here and I can remember sort

of digging my foot into the
floor as if I was bored.

I just remember thinking,

I'm really good at this,
and it was that instant and that was it.

PAUL: How old were you, Matthew?
MATTHEW: 14.

PAUL: Okay.

MATTHEW: And I had lots of other stuff going
on in my life that wasn't great.

I've written all about it
and You Can See The Hills, the play that I

wrote about me and so there's lots
of tough stuff going on and I think it

just landed at exactly
the right time and I loved it.

So I definitely did it before I saw it.

I think I might have seen pantos,

but I became a fan of theatre through,
again, this teacher taking me to more

and more challenging and serious
stuff as I went through school.

PAUL: Well, it's interesting because it's a very
similar experience to mine, again,

an English teacher who provoked
me into being in a school play.

But your school play sounds much cooler
than mine because I was in a production

of Androcles and the Lion
by George Bernard Shaw.

So it sounds like I went to school

in about 1875, but yours sounds much
more Royal Court and cutting edge.

And then was there a
youth theatre as well?

Did you join a youth theatre?

MATTHEW: No, we didn't need to because
the school was just so full on.

We did four or five productions a year.

When we were 18,
we took two shows in the same, in 1988,

when I was in the 6th form,
we took two shows

to the National Student Drama Festival
Orphans by Lyle Kessler, really

rough and ready, American, three hander
and the year below me was the brilliant

actor Paul Hilton,
who's now about to play Iago.

So I was a year above him and we
just did everything together.

We were Blood Brothers, in Blood Brothers,

I was Riff and he was
Tony in West Side Story.

So the two of us just went through this

sort of incredible journey playing all
these lead parts and we went to the

National Student Drama Festival when we
were 18 and there was RADA there

and actually, did you go to
Middlesex Poly or Lester Poly?

PAUL: No, Middlesex.

MATTHEW: They were both there.

They used to go to, they were always a big

presence at the
National Student Drama Festival.

PAUL: When you went, was it Scarborough.

MATTHEW: When I went, and I'm going to finish
the story just because of my ego.

Me and Paul won the Best Actor awards.

I honestly, that's the level
that the school was at.

But no, I went to the last one
in Cambridge in '88, but then I went back,

we took
another show when the people that hadn't

got into to drama school,
we carried on doing stuff on our own

with this teacher and then we took
Bouncers to Scarborough

in 1991 and then I basically went
from Scarborough to Bretton Hall.

I went to Bretton Hall because of NSDF.

Because at NSDF, the three main presences

were always Bretton Hall,
Lester Poly, Middlesex Poly.

PAUL: Because John Wright,
used to go there a lot.

I remember going up and doing some
workshops up there with him.

MATTHEW: Yea, he was a presence.

PAUL: This is quite interesting as well because,

obviously, have you worked
professionally with Paul?

Have you directed Paul?

MATTHEW: Do you know what, we sort of drifted apart

and I think we sort of semi fell out when
we left school, not in a big radical way.

And he went off to Welsh College,
and I went off to Bretton Hall

and then we both ended up, weirdly,
having played all these parts together,

brothers in Orphans
and all the rest of it.

I mean, always the two sort of male leads.

We both got a job in The Daughter in Law,

directed by David Lan at the Young Vic
playing the two brothers.

And weirdly because I'm a year older,

whenever we were at drama, at school,
I was always the older brother

and I felt older than Paul because a year
at school is a big deal,

isn't it? But when we went back
to The Young Vic,

he played the older brother
and I played his younger brother and

it was just extraordinary
coming back together.

I think Paul described it as like just

slipping into a pair of old shoes
that you'd forgotten how comfortable they

were and what a treat,
do you know what I mean?

To have grown up with someone playing

brothers and then gone
away doing your own thing.

And when we were in our early to mid 30s

we got to be brothers again
professionally, which was great.

And I directed him,

he was my Doctor Faustus when
I did Dr Faustus at the Globe.

PAUL: Okay,

that's a fascinating journey that you had
someone that was that close to you

at school, that's gone on the same
different journey,

but essentially the same journey and then
have been very successful.

And then I think about Bretton Hall
and obviously you and I have talked about

this before and I think about
this in relation to where I went.

Hayley and I were at Middlesex and I think
there seems quite a lot of connection

between the training at Bretton and the
types of people that came out of Bretton.

So not necessarily a pure acting training,
but theatre makers and

Middlesex above us was people like
Phelim McDermott and Julia Bardsley.

And then, of course,
around and in your time was

an extraordinary group
of performers that we both know.

Mandy Lawrence, Richard Katz,
the League of Gentlemen.

Were you conscious of that kind
of atmosphere of those types of theatre

makers, or was that new to you
when you arrived there?

MATTHEW: It was new to me and I needed to be
sort of be seduced by it, really.

I mean, I'd seen it at the NSDF

and obviously the experimental stuff
that those universities were doing,

rather than what RADA was taking there or
what Bristol Old Vic was taking there,

obviously pricked some
part of my consciousness.

I thought, yeah, I want a bit of that,
but to be really honest,

I couldn't get in any
of

the
drama schools, so that's why I went to Bretton Hall.

But, yes, I was conscious of it.

I was very lucky because of this

NSDF Award, between the ages of 18 and 21,
I worked professionally in London.

I worked at the National when I was 20

and did a job at Paines Plough
and what was then, Soho Poly.

So I arrived like Billy Big Boots

as a professional actor
who had decided to come and train.

I think what really blew my mind there was
dance, because there was fantastic dance.

I mean, Bretton was just the perfect

mixing pot, because
it had three theatre degrees,

community theatre, theatre arts,
that I was on, technical theatre.

Then it had fine art, sculpture,
dance, classical music and pop music.

So that was it.

So the people you were hanging around
with, the people that you got to make

theatre with, it was just sort of built
into the bones of the place, really.

And I really enjoyed dance.

And there was a company
set up by lads who were in third year when

I was in the first year, called Fecund,
who I think are the kind of great lost

company, really, the companies that came
through your generation and Frantic, etc.

And Mandy (Lawrence) was a founding member

of that, and they were the first people
I performed with when I left Bretton.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I sort of craved
the experimentalism of it.

Once I'd seen it.

I didn't know it existed.

It has to be put in front
of you, doesn't it?

Otherwise you just do George Bernard Shaw.

PAUL: Of course you do.

I was very good in it, Matthew,
by the way.

But I think I had a very
similar trajectory.

I didn't get into any of the established

drama schools and I went very
reluctantly to Middlesex.

Very reluctantly and quite angrily.

I think, if I look back,
and it was only encountering John

who opened my eyes to what theatre could
be and what it was, and then, obviously,

fortuitously meeting Hayley in my year,
that changed how I looked at things.

And I often think when I look at your work
and also having been directed by you

and I'm thinking probably more shows like
Troilus and Cressida when I did

that with you, I think maybe
my question is

it feels to me that that combination
of stuff that's quite experimental in your

background and in your training has kind
of continued into the way that you look

at lots of plays, whether they're
Shakespeare or a piece of new writing.

It.
Would that be correct?

MATTHEW: Yeah, I feel actually probably more free
when it's Shakespeare or when devising

something like I did with you guys,
Fahrenheit Twins.

And you saw the work of a company
that I had for a while called The Work.

I think you saw Project B.

And that's where I really feel free,
because I do think, actually,

the other reason that I direct is I kept
being in things or I wrote things

and being very disappointed
with how they were directed.

So I didn't leave college
with any ambition to direct.

I was very happy writing and acting

and had a pretty good,
successful career in both those areas.

But I sort of became
a director by default.

But it is connected because I guess

the thing that I felt people
weren't doing was taking risks.

But you've worked with me.

Somebody came and wrote a chapter in their

book about Troilus and Cressida
rehearsals.

And

one of the things he said that really
struck me was that I directed you

completely differently than
I directed everybody else.

And I think that's about being sensitive

to what an actor,
A, needs, but B can provide,

based on their experiences and their
confidence and their influences.

And I just realised that you
needed to dick about.

Yeah,

And that was and then so what you do
with someone -

and I don't say that dismissively, I
think that's about play and that's about

Yeah

And then I'd wait and then
shape your material.

And, you know, particularly with you

and Hayley,
I don't really like being in the room.

I set tasks and go,
I'll be back in half an hour.

Let's see what you got.

You can't do that with everyone.
PAUL: No.

MATTHEW: I'm very negligent.

PAUL: And of course and I think, in a way,

it brings me back to football, really,
because I think about really good

coaches who, they're not coaching
every player exactly the same.

I mean, they're saying to one particular

player they might be giving much more
direct, tactical kind of instruction

and to someone else they're giving
a different type of freedom.

And I think you're right.

I think that's certainly when I direct,

I feel that's something that feels quite
important in a way, to both build a group

but also be able to negotiate
with people in different ways.

I remember seeing you in stuff

and particularly loving you in a wonderful
Richard Bean play at the Royal Court,

which I'm now going to forget
the name of where you aged over -

MATTHEW: Harvest.
PAUL: Thank you.

I absolutely loved that play.

It's the first time I saw
-its a performance I really liked.

Adrian Hood was in it and I thought
your performance was amazing.

And I suppose obviously you articulated
why you fell into directing, if you like.

Have you ever had regrets around
not keeping the performing going?

Or is that now a thing of the past?

MATTHEW: No, it strikes me, actually,

how emotional I feel when you ask
that question, because it really is

a regret and weirdly,
that performance at the Royal Court.

I never really left the stage except to

have a bit of makeup thrown on my face
and get in a different wheelchair.

I played him from 18 to 109 and
lost my legs during the play.

I used to just run off stage.

People would pick me up because my legs

were tied up, and lift me out of one
wheelchair,

stick a different wig on and put me in
another wheelchair and wheel me back on.

There was one night I had a secret wall
that the audience couldn't tell because

there's no way I could always get out
the door, but in the blackouts,

I could push the wall,
and it was on a - and it was hinged.

And one night I went up to this wall.
Nothing.

Didn't move.

I'm trapped in a wheelchair.

Can't get out, can't get out.

And I just basically smashed
my way through the wall.

There was no other way of doing it.

I've got to get changed.

There's a completely different decade,

and that's the last time I ever went
on stage. So

to do something that big and then stop is
really sad in a way,

but it just happened to coincide
with when I started directing.

And you'll know this.

As directors, I mean,
I know what I'm doing in 2024

because we get booked in advance
because we're in the brochure.

So it happened so quickly, the directing,
that there was just never any time. The

young Vic did a 50th birthday thing
recently,

and they asked me to do a monologue,
like, I don't know, ten pages.

And I learned it and I did it.

There was two days at the end of Lockdown,
and that was terrifying.

To come back on stage
having not been on stage for 16 years.

PAUL: Wow.

MATTHEW: And doing a monologue where no one can
help you, was absolutely terrifying.

But I loved it and I miss it.

Very rarely, very occasionally,
some young director rings me up and says,

we're doing a workshop will you
come and do it? And I'm like, yeah.

And I just skip there.

I just can't believe it.

PAUL: And also, I find,
as someone who has continued to do both,

I still very much enjoy the sense that,
and I've always believed this,

and maybe it comes back to me enjoying
dicking around, in your words.

I've always been firmly of the belief,

as you know, that performers shouldn't
carry responsibility at all.

You have a responsibility to turn up
and to listen and to engage,

but you shouldn't carry responsibility,
whereas the director should and needs to.

MATTHEW: Responsiblity is crippling.

I've probably spoken to this about this

before as a mate,
but the amount of anxiety and therapy

that I had to get through when I started
directing, I mean, I'd just never sleep.

I felt so responsible for the whole thing.

I managed to get on top of that a lot,

but, I mean, actors often don't like it
when I say this, because, again,

it can sound a bit sort of dismissive
of what they do, but it's really not.

I do think it's the difference
between being a parent and a child.

You want your children to play and you
want to shield them from responsibility,

but that doesn't mean you think
they're sort of infantile idiots.

Yeah, you shoulder that responsibility.

And I love the notion of actors
finishing at six and going to the pub.

That's very important.

PAUL: No, and I think it's an interesting thing

because I haven't touched on a huge part
of what you do, and that's writing.

And I think that clearly is something

that you are really passionate about and I
imagine also informs so much of how you

think about things, whether it's adapting
something like Saturday Night

and Sunday Morning, or, as you say,
writing your original work.

Do you think that sense of you as a writer

has helped you when you've gone
on to collaborate with, I

imagine, quite strong,
I've only met him very briefly,

but quite strong personalities
like Martin McDonough.

Do you think your own sense of being
a writer to helped you with that?

Or not? Or it doesn't matter?

MATTHEW: I don't know.
I mean, with Martin,

it was just about getting I don't know why
I was sort of so awestruck or scared

of him, because the way I
met him was really good fun.

He was in Paris.

Of course he was.

And I got the Eurostar and we
got absolutely smashed.

And then I got the Eurostar home and just

before I got the Eurostar, he said, let's
do it, which was when I directed Hangman.

I'd never met him before and I realise
now, that was probably my audition.

PAUL: Yes,
MATTHEW: But when we were auditioning for Hangman,

I was auditioning with Amy Ball,
the casting director, so the three of us.

And then every time there was like

a proper break, me and her would run out
of the room, desperate for the toilet.

And I said to her, Why do you
always wait till you're desperate?

And why do you only go
to the toilet when I go?

And she's like, because I don't want to be
left in the room on my own with him.

And I was like, that's why I waited.

Because he's incredibly, on one level,

imposing,
which is about, I think,

a kind of projection based on
just the weight of his craft.

I mean, he's absolutely one of the best.

PAUL: No, it's phenomenal.

But I also think, I remember seeing your

brilliant production at the Royal Court
of Hangman, and I went with another writer

friend of mine, Carl Grose,
and we watched it and loved it.

But I think you and I talked about this

afterwards, but it won't surprise me if I
refer back to one of your colleagues

from the Bretton Hall days,
because that production contained for me

one of the finest piece of physical
comedy that I think I've seen.

And that was obviously Reece Shearsmith

in that moment towards
the end of the play -

MATTHEW: with the chair?
PAUL: Yeah, utterly phenomenal.

I think you answered this,
but I want to ask it again

for the listeners,
how you negotiated that moment as

a director with the obviously brilliant
instinct of that particular performer.

What was that negotiation?

MATTHEW: Do you know what Reese will say to you?

And it's really disarming.

He'll be approaching a moment and before

he does it, he'll go,
how funny do you want it?

And I'll go really funny.

And he'll go, Are you sure?
It's a bit like that.

Have you seen that thing where
he's improvising behind Peter Kay?

Oh, you got to watch it.

That thing where Peter Kay just drives

that woman to work and there's always
a different person in the back seat.

Watch the outtakes.

It's sensational. Anyway.

And he can just turn it up.

It's like he's got some sort of dial.

But I remember
again, it's a bit like working with you.

You watch someone playing,

you feedback what choices
that you think work the best.

But the great thing about it was that was

sort of irrelevant, really, because
it occurs when a chair gets kicked over.

And that is so unpredictable.

The chair might not fall over,

it might slide a foot,
it might nearly go into the audience.

And to watch him find a new bit of comedy

based - like, sometimes it would move
an inch and he would just sit on it.

I don't know why, that was hilarious, but,

you know, he just always - he's just
a very, very instinctive clown.

PAUL: Of course.
And I also think what you said was why

the audience loved it so much is
that the audience,

even if it was only subliminally,
conscious of it,

they were conscious of something that was
genuinely happening in the here and now.

So it wasn't a piece of choreography or

a piece of blocking or - it was genuinely
a performer responding to something.

And obviously that really appealed to me.

And then you went on to work with

Martin McDonagh,
again on the Hans Christian Anderson.

MATTHEW: Yeah.
A Very, Very Dark Matter, yeah

PAUL: And which I was working and didn't see.

But how was it returning
to something very different with it?

Because I imagine that play is
very different to Hangman.

MATTHEW: Well, by then we were very close and we
were friends, so we cut a couple of scenes

from A Very Very Very Dark Matter during
the previews.

I don't think I would have dared
profer that in the first relationship.

It was good.
I mean, I really loved that play.

He's less proud of it now.

I thought it was very interesting because

it's a kind of sister play to his greatest
play, The Pillowman,

because they're both essentially about
the freedom of the writer

and whose stories
- I guess, the Pillowman is about e

verybody needs to tell stories, and that's
your first responsibility as an artist.

And a Very, Very,

Very Dark Matter is really about
colonialism and whose stories get told.

The people whose stories tend to get told

and retold are the old white men like Hans
Christian Anderson or Charles Dickens.

What Martin proffered was that they had

black women enslaved in their attics
who were probably writing the stories.

Obviously a metaphor for the fact that

white men historically for a time,
have collected folk stories

dressed them in a different
way and made fortunes.

It was a sort of radical idea, really.

It was great.

And again, work with Jim Broadbent,
who again just needs to play.

And again, in a weird way,
I don't - this might sound dismissive,

but he's kind of undirectable. You've
got to let him get on with it.

I mean, really let him get on with it,

because
directions just seem like to slightly

block him or confuse him because he's
working something out on his own.

And that was a real sort
of privilege to watch.

And again, that comes
with age and experience.

I think if I tried to direct Jim when I

was in my mid twenties, I would have
just dissolved into a pool of anxiety.

PAUL: But it's true, isn't it?

As hopefully as one gets older.

When Kathryn Hunter directed me
and Edward Petherbridge

in My Perfect Mind,
Kathryn for me remains for me one of our

great stage actors and indeed on film,
increasingly more so.

And she was such a big - as a young actor
when I saw her in some of those early

Complicite shows - in The Visit,
I thought, this is astonishing.

So even though we'd become pals, it was
still quite a daunting thing at times.

We asked her to direct that play partly

because Edward Petherbridge was very
prickly around who was going to direct it.

Hayley said, what about Kathryn?

And Kathryn, obviously,
had played Lear and had played the fool.

And it takes time sometimes, I think,

to get over, I find, when you're so,
not in awe exactly, but you admire someone

very much and then suddenly you're
collaborating in quite a close way - it

takes time for that journey
to go on, doesn't it?

MATTHEW: Absolutely, yeah.

It's a shame in some ways because it can

be crippling and it makes me wonder
whether everyone goes through that or if

it's just people from our kind
of backgrounds that go through it.

Some people just seem to bound into any

scenario with anybody
with a great load of confidence but you're

talking about respect for talent and being
in awe of someone I totally get that.

That's my favourite Idiot show.

I just love that show.

PAUL: Thank you very much.

It's very close to us.

I think that it was so lovely that it
seemed to affect a lot of people.

Because on one level I thought,
this is about acting and theatre,

all the things that I don't
really like to see on stage.

But it was also about, obviously,

friendship and more than that,
so I, I'm really pleased you like it.

MATTHEW: It was about a very kind of key piece
of humanity which is about identity and

who we are, what makes us who we are

And when potentially a big element
of that starts to fall away and unravel.

It was really brilliant.
PAUL: Well, thank you.

And also, I remember talking to you

because I think of you
very much as not all directors are,

but I think of you very much as an actor's
director, and some of that, obviously,

goes all the way back
to you being an actor.

And I remember you talking about actors
you admire, and now you're working

with some, as you always have been,
some fantastic high profile actors.

If you could direct anybody on stage

at this moment,
who would you cast and why?

MATTHEW: Oh, my God.

I don't know if I can answer it.

PAUL: No?
MATTHEW: Do you know what?

I wish I could remember her name.

This is really insulting that I can't.

There's an Irish actress who is

in Martin's new film,
The Banshees of Inisherin.

PAUL: I've seen it.
She played the sister?

MATTHEW: The Sister.
PAUL: She's wonderful.

MATTHEW: I saw her in some of Martin's early plays
and I saw her in a brilliant production

of Dennis Kelly's play
After The End at The Bush.

And then she moved out to Hollywood

and she lives in America now and she's
got a very successful career.

I think that performance in the

The Banshees of Inisherin
is just off the charts.

PAUL: Yeah, it's very good.
MATTHEW: Just beautiful and brilliant.

And I've been stalking her a bit because

she's been on a few chat shows in America
because of the film, and I've watched her.

I just think she just seems
just like a massive human spirit.

So - that's not very helpful.

PAUL: No, I think that's a really wonderful
answer, because I was thinking of someone

who I think, again,
I'd be slightly awed by it,

but if I was to work with this person,
whether that's directing or making

something or performing,
this will never happen.

But I think for me it would be
Mads Mikkelsen.

I think he's such an astonishing
performer and his background was dance.

He came to acting through dance.

Have you seen a film called Another Round?

MATTHEW: No.

I know the actor, you're
talking - he's wonderful

PAUL: I highly recommend it.

It's about, it's a Danish film and it
was my film of the year last year.

It's about a group of four middle aged,

ordinary Danish men who are going
through midlife and all of this.

And then one of them suggests that through

research he's done scientifically,
they will be happier if they keep their

alcohol intake topped up to a certain
level, so they have a pact to drink only

during the day, but to keep their
alcohol up to a certain level.

And I will only say that,

but it's joyous and funny,
celebratory and sad,

and the performances including Mikkelsen a
nd these Danish actors are brilliant.

MATTHEW: It's great to hear that he can do that,
because have you seen The Hunt?

PAUL: Yes, I enjoyed that.
MATTHEW: I mean -

PAUL: Enjoyed is the wrong word.

But he's brilliant in that.
MATTHEW: Yeah.

And that seems, in terms of an actor's

range, to be the opposite end
of exactly what you're describing.

PAUL: That's what makes me think, because I

found that film visceral
that film The Hunt, I really did.

I found it very powerful.

Matthew, I could chat much longer
and we should do over a pint.

We keep saying this, but now we've
reconnected. Let's do that soon.

I always finish with a few rapid fire

questions, random questions, if you
say the first thing that comes in -

MATTHEW: Kerry Condon is the name of that actress.

PAUL: Oh, brilliant.

I saw the film the other night.

And I thought it was amazing.

Really amazing film.

MATTHEW: Terrific, anyway, sorry, go on.

PAUL: Your first answer that
comes into your head.

Ray Winston or Javier Bardem?

MATTHEW: Ray Winston.

PAUL: Merlot or Rioja?

MATTHEW: Rioja.

PAUL: Cornwall or the Lake District?

MATTHEW: Cornwall.

PAUL: You have to put your prejudice
aside for this next question.

Matthew.
George Best or Colin Bell?

MATTHEW: Colin Bell.

PAUL: On that note, you simply couldn't do it.

That's a brilliant end. Matthew,
thank you so much for joining us.

People will love this.
It's really lovely.

And I mean what I say.
A round before Christmas.

Let's get together.
MATTHEW: Yeah, that'd be fantastic.

PAUL: Love to the family.
Cheers.

MATTHEW: See you mate, bye, bye.

PAUL: Dear listeners, if you've enjoyed this
Idiot podcast, please spread the word.