Happy HAL-loween Molonians!!

This is all treat and no trick - a new interview with Damien on our beloved Being Human full of insights and nostalgia, the perfect way to celebrate the season of monsters!

There is a new two-part Being Human feature in SFX Magazine with exclusive new interviews with Damien and Lord Toby. Damien’s interview is featured in the second part, which is in issue 365 of the December edition - I’ve already got my digital copy, and it's a must-read!

Here are some exciting tidbits from the interview:

Damien’s Audition and Preparation: He shares insights into his audition process and the preparations he made to embody Hal Yorke

Musical Guidance: Director Philip John provided musical cues to help Damien portray both the good and bad sides of Hal

Pride in the Show: Damien expresses his pride in Being Human, calling it “happy memories and something to be proud of all my life.” ❤️

Funny Anecdotes: He shares hilarious stories about the fake blood used on set, which had me in stitches!

Memorable Moments: One of Damien’s favourite experiences was performing “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” One of our faves too - so iconic!

Mementos from Set: Damien and Toby reveal the props they kept from Being Human

Spin-Off Film Idea: Toby Whithouse reveals that the spin-off film he’d love to create is one about Hal meeting werewolf Leo. How epic would that be? 🐺✨

Here's a few quotes and screenshots from the feature!

It was young Irish actor, Damien Molony, in his first TV role, who was cast as Hal, a 500-year-old vampire, trying to give up drinking blood through various near-OCD coping mechanisms. “I remember auditioning and just thinking, I want to play this guy like Alan Rickman, as the sheriff of Nottingham, recalls Molony. “With a sense of great insecurity, but also real swagger.“

Playing addiction also appealed to him. While he went back and watched Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee films in preparation for the role (“Hal was an Old One, and an old character, so we didn’t want to go down the Twilight route “), he also took inspiration from James Frey’s ‘ A Million Little pieces’ , a fictionalised account of addiction recovery.

Molony thinks another little detail may have helped him in the audition: “I was doing the play ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore up in Leeds, my first ever job. Every night my character was covered in gallons of blood for the last scene. I don’t know if I had some blood under my fingernails from the night before, but it couldn’t have hurt my chances. “

Hal was the complex character, which required Molony to play both good Hal and bad Hal, and flesh out his history in various flashbacks. The director of Molony’s first two episodes, Philip John, gave him some musical guidance to help him differentiate the characters. “There was the mathematical precision of Johann Sebastian Bach for the buttoned up, strait-laced Hal, and loud, dangerous rock music for wild, Hal.”

Molony is keen to emphasise “just how proud I am of the show and how much fun I had doing it,“ and says one of his most fun moments with the song and dance routine for “putting on the Ritz“ in the final ever episode. “When I opened the script and it said Hal does this musical number - this is chef’s kiss, Toby, chef’s kiss.It had to be one take, so there was huge pressure on. I’d never done anything like that before, and yeah, happy memories and something to be proud of all my life.“

Less fun was licking blood of a maggoty floor. “The smell of them, was the worst part. But I’m told they’re incredibly clean.”

He also reveals that there are two types of fake blood. “The blood that dripped from our mouths was so delicious. It tasted almost like mint chocolate. But the blood we drank from wine glasses was always beetroot juice. I remember going for a wee the next day and thinking I had something wrong with my urine.”

[Toby Whitehouse on being Human spin off] “…if there had been a spinoff, he’d like to have explored Hal’s time in the ‘50s further, revealing how the vampire met his Windrush generation mentor, werewolf Leo." “If I was going to do a film that’s the one I would like to have done, with Hal meeting Leo through the dog fights.“ 

Both Molony and Whithouse have kept mementos from the set. Molony has many of the dominoes the Hal used to twiddle through his fingers, some fangs, a nice suit and one of the posters of evil future Hal (from series four episode “Making History”). “It’s not hanging up, though, because it would be a very strange thing to have over the mantelpiece when people come over for dinner.”