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It’s like we’d never been away. The cast of Relativity were back together in the recording studio in Acton, just as we had been back in the spring of 2017 and a more delightful group of people you couldn’t hope to meet. It was all the same crew with one exception (plus one of the characters has died- no spoilers) and it both felt like last week that we’d last been together and 150 years.
We have to record four episodes in four days, and Alison Steadman is only with us for the first two days (so she either hasn’t died or I have introduced a ghost into this series), so we’re recording a little bit out of order. We got all but one scene of episode one done and a third of episode 2 (basically all of Alison’s bits). And we wrapped 50 minutes early.
It’s a very skittish crew of actors and we spent a lot of our time trying not to ruin takes due to corpsing, usually when we were called on to provide background bits of conversation to go under the main dialogue. I think I felt less intimidated by the undoubted brilliance of the rest of the cast, although still made some rookie errors like turning to the people I was talking to so I could “act†with them and thus going off mic.
Acting is so much harder than it looks. You have to read a script AND face in the right direction.
I hope the show makes people laugh half as much as we laughed at each other’s silly antics (usually off-mic). But aside from the difficulty of having to do a full day’s work the day after a podcast record and a desire to just go to sleep, it was a lovely social occasion. A bit like meeting up with your family. Even if this show is people pretending to be part of my family.
More HOG spoilers- And what’s this? I have been on a TV game/quiz show and not lost? It’s the first sign of the Apocalypse. Tonight episode 2 of House of Games aired. I don’t remember too much about the recording and I was on the train when it broadcast, but I did manage to see myself on iPlayer, winning by one point, after almost squandering an early lead and failing to remember Martin Freeman’s name (due, I suspect, to constantly calling him Tim from the Office). I think I might have choked a bit too, convincing myself I was going to lose and I certainly looked like I thought I’d blown it. But I won a hip flask (well I didn’t because it never showed up) and more important than that, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, rather than the other way round.
