Noel Fielding on Bringing a Gender-Fluid Spirit to The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin
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The post Noel Fielding on Bringing a Gender-Fluid Spirit to The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin appeared first on Consequence.
Noel Fielding says that initially, “I didn’t want to be in” The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. “I didn’t know if I could do it,” he tells Consequence during a recent sitdown at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. The reason was, he says, that starring in the Apple TV+ series as the titular fictionalized highwayman pushed him out of his comfort zone as a supporting actor — a zone he never really stepped out of, he feels, even going back to his fan favorite work on the BBC cult comedy The Mighty Boosh, which he co-created with Julian Barratt.
“I didn’t know if I could carry a show, because I was always the slightly ethereal childlike sort,” Fielding says. “Julian carried [The Mighty Boosh], really, and I was the guy that flitted in and out. [Barratt] did all the heavy lifting. He was the Oliver Hardy. And it was very difficult after that to do comedy again, because it was very idiosyncratic and very specific, and we had complete freedom and we did exactly what we wanted to do and what we wanted to say.”
Since The Mighty Boosh ended in 2007, Fielding has kept busy with a variety of projects, including hosting The Great British Baking Show, which, he says, “I love for different reasons. It’s like an improv show for me, because I just get to chat with the bakers and I never know what’s gonna happen in those conversations. I love that, and I love working with Alison [Hammond] and Paul [Hollywood] and Prue [Leith]. It’s just a fun, nice vibe.”
But Dick Turpin is the project, Fielding says, that he was essentially waiting for after all these years, as it “would accommodate my weird whimsical notions,” with the deliberately anachronistic and irreverent period comedy “written specifically so that my comic clown can be the center of this strange world.”
Executive producer Kenton Allen, sitting beside Fielding for our interview, notes that the comedian is “the spirit of the show. He’s not only got an incredible imagination — there’s a childlike element to his imagination which is unfiltered, which is rather delightful. Because it’s not tainted by being an adult. You’re still in touch with your inner child. If you talk to anybody about creativity, often your most creative point in your life is when you are young, before you get burdened by parenthood and taxes and all of that. Noel’s managed to stay in touch with that childhood imagination.”
“I’m Pee-wee Herman,” Fielding laughs.
Dick Turpin isn’t a familiar name for American audiences, but in British history he’s a bit of a legend, a notorious 1700s criminal whose life story is very loosely the model for The Completely Made-Up Adventures. Think Robin Hood, with guns instead of arrows, and less interest in the whole “giving to the poor” bit — though in the series, Dick is a pacifist and vegan with a big heart and a fashion sense very close to Fielding’s own.
“Dick is much more grounded… I mean, he’s ridiculous. But it’s closer to myself, I suppose,” Fielding says. “He is also the audience’s point of view. So if someone weird or violent comes in, his reaction is the audience’s reaction. It’s difficult because playing a version of yourself is always tricky, because you have to then face who you are. Whereas if you’re playing a more unusual, eccentric character that’s a bit more two-dimensional, then you’re not revealing as much about yourself, in a way.”
That said, Fielding laughs, Dick Turpin can’t help but be personal to him, because the show embraces one key element of his persona: “I think I’m quite feminine for a man. I’m always interested in clothes and makeup and I’ve always been quite gender-fluid, in a way. So whatever show I do, there’ll always be a big clothes budget and I’ll always be interested in the costumes and I’ll always keep those costumes after the show,” he laughs.
Thus, Dick Turpin embraces that same attitude. For Fielding, this aspect “just naturally happened. I feel like Dick is just very loose and fluid and he’s like, yeah, whatever you wanna do. He tries to get the best out of people and if that’s what they want to do, he’s going to encourage that.”
Allen notes that such attitudes are “an excellent source of comedy. For a character of the 17th century to say, ‘I can see a time when men and women will do the same job for the same money,’ and for everyone to laugh — bringing those contemporary attitudes to the 17th century is kind of a comic gift. And if that makes you think about the issues, then often comedy is the best torch to put some of these.”
Fielding adds that their Dick Turpin might be “quite woke, but he is not preachy.” And as Allen points out, “woke just means being awake to other people’s feelings, and his sort of wokeness is just that he sees everyone for what they are and he wants for them to be happy. It’s a great source of comedy, because it sets you up for all sorts of interesting conversations about society.”
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin (Apple TV+)
And it all actually ends up being a good fit for audiences of all ages, especially kids. “I think that’s a great audience, isn’t it?” Fielding says. “I think [The Mighty Boosh] was like that. Kids liked it, and older people liked it. That’s the dream audience.”
Allen and Fielding reference a slew of the projects they grew up on — not just animated series like The Simpsons, but Blackadder, Monty Python, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Doctor Who. “All those fantastic escapist, fantastical stories. There’s nothing to offend kids in there,” Allen says.
Along similar lines, Allen says, making Dick Turpin palatable for younger audiences “was never intentional. It just was that we realized that we’re not trying to offend, we’re trying to entertain. If you try and entertain, you’re not trying to make an R-rated show. You’re trying to entertain as many people as possible, which is in the great tradition of The Princess Bride and Time Bandits and all those kind of seventies and eighties movies — they’re literally trying to entertain as big an audience as possible.”
What helps a show like Dick Turpin follow in that tradition, Allen notes, is that “Kids like to watch things that aren’t aimed at them, but respect them and entertain them. [Dick Turpin] is clearly an adult show, but it’s really silly and daft and playful and anachronistic, with a great cast.”
Adds Allen, “We’ve come through a decade or more of kind of cringe comedy — comedy that’s kind of a bit cruel and is all set in an office or in a house. And that’s being rung dry, and I think we wanted to make something which was joyous and an adventure.”
Fielding sums it up like this: “In a weird way, this vehicle — the Dick Turpin stagecoach — is a new way of extending that comic language. It accommodates the whimsy and the eccentric Python-esque sort of humor and it can be visual and silly. All of those things, really.”
New episodes of The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin debut Fridays on Apple TV+. Subscribe for a seven-day free trial here.
Noel Fielding on Bringing a Gender-Fluid Spirit to The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin
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