We met Sam Witwer a couple of weeks ago, lead in the Syfy remake of the UK’s Being Human, and he spoke to us about his character’s role on the show. “The character is Aidan, named after Aidan Turner, the actor who plays Mitchell on the original Being Human. My character is a 200-year-old vampire, the metaphor being addiction. The way we play it is somewhere between sex addiction and heroin addiction, and where other shows might have a very glossy, sexy take on the whole vampire thing, ours is very unglamorous and unpleasant.”
Witwer continues. “He’s an ex-junkie and he’s got some real problems – he’s a real tortured guy, but at the same time, we maintain his ability to be upbeat and funny by realising that he’s 200 years old. And if you were 200 years old and had to hide who you were from the world, you would get very good at compartmentalising. You would get very good at hiding who you are or what you’re feeling. So he may be in the very depths of despair and about to cry, and if someone comes up and says, ‘hey’, he’d be like ‘hey, how are you doing?’ and snap out of it. He’s almost scizophrenic in that way but it’s very fun to play. I guess in how it’s different from the British series – I’ve only seen one-and-a-half episodes of the British series, because when I decided I was going to do this, I knew I had to stop watching. I didn’t want to mimic what Aiden Turner does, because he’s such a wonderful actor, that I would be tempted to. I wouldn’t be able to help it because I’m kind of a mimic anyway, so my plan is to watch it all after we’re done shooting the 13 episodes. I know that we start in a very similar place, then we end up diverging as the show goes on, much like the American Office.”
Are you looking forward to the US version of Being Human? Sound off below. We’ll have a full interview with Sam Witwer on SciFiNow.co.uk later in the month.
