In the new Anderson Entertainment podcast series created by Nicholas Briggs and Jamie Anderson, First Action Bureau, Genevieve Gaunt – star of the Big Finish Original series The Human Frontier – plays the central character, spy and assassin Nero Jones. Paul Simpson caught up with her to discuss the new role.

How did you get involved with First Action Bureau? Did Jamie [Anderson] and Nick [Briggs] just ask you if you’d like to do it?

Yes. They told me about this project and they wanted me for the lead. I said yes without even reading a script, which I would do with them because I’ve worked with them a lot. I just love them and everything they write.

When I did read the first script I just thought it was so refreshingly funny – it’s nice having a sarcastic heroine/spy.

Before you read the script, did they give you any idea of who she was or did you wait until you got the script from them?

I just knew it was a spy drama.

Have you done that sort of thing before? Obviously you’ve done the science fiction element of it because we’ve talked about it but going into the spy world…

Actually yes, in The Prisoner I played a double agent.

Oh yes, the Russian spy.

A kind of Villanelle

Yes, without the clothes sense.

Yes it was more (does Russian accent) ‘I am very nice woman and then I will absolutely kill you’. So I’d done that but I never played a more Bond-like spy.

Is it the sort of role you’d have looked for if they hadn’t brought it to you?

Well, she’s just great. She’s so fearless and smart and she’s got something a bit flirty and as I said, sarcastic and yet… We go on a journey with her I think and I think she’s vulnerable because as you will be aware I think by episode three, the questions of fake news and deep fakes start to loom in the frame and then she starts to question her own sanity.

The listener starts to question what’s real and I think for a spy, if your stock and trade is intelligence and information and you don’t know who to trust or what’s real, and you start to doubt yourself and your own sanity, then that’s really frightening.

I liked her outward strength and I liked the struggles that she had to navigate but of course I think a part like that is a dream part for a woman.

Did they give you all the scripts for all ten episodes or did you find out about her journey once you’d already started recording?

I had all the scripts before we started recording.

Were there elements in there that when you read them you went “Ah, OK that’s a key note for the character”? Or was it very much a logical progression through that made sense as you read it?

I had questions in each episode, like any listener would. ‘What does that mean? Where’s that going?’ and it’s only once you get to the end of the journey that you can look back and go ‘Oh my god, that’s clever’. Because everything that you assume about every character at the beginning I think is turned on its head by the end.

I definitely felt that Jamie and Nick were a step ahead of the listener in a way that makes it really fun. and I know that if I find it fun to read that other people will find it fun and interesting to listen to.

Yes and that always comes across in the performance and in the final product. If the actors are unsure then the wrong sort of uncertainty can sometimes come across.

Of course I called Jamie. I had a couple of questions and it’s always handy when we can iron that stuff out because then you can be absolutely solid about what you’re saying and what you’re doing.

What’s unusual, and I think this is really clever: it is supposedly a utopia and yet it shows that even within a perfect world that has the technology like Minority Report to catch crime before it starts, human beings are still so immensely corruptible whether they can fly to Mars or not.

There’s always a power dynamic and that got me thinking about how most dystopian universes are sci-fi. I was thinking of A Quiet Place or Her and Ex Machina obviously. They’re all about societies where we have the technology to make a utopia but the human condition is such that we always end up making a dystopia even though we live in a world that gives us god-like abilities.

How long did it take to record all the episodes?

We did it all on one day; we started early and ended late.

A bit like running, I think we got into our groove, especially for me because I’m pretty much in every scene. Once you get going, it’s really nice to keep going. One of those problems on set is stopping and starting whereas when you’re doing audio dramas, and when you’ve got a lot in one go, you can really get into it and into that world and not be pulled out of it. So that was good.

By the end of the day I think we all felt a bit tired but I felt more exhilarated than tired, it was just quite exciting. I’ve done lots of work from my home studio but I hadn’t yet done a multicast audio drama from my home studio so I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. It’s so lovely working at Big Finish and lots of us working together and acting with each other across the room but it’s amazing. What’s that expression – necessity is the mother of invention?

Yes, or life gives you lemons and you make lemonade.

Exactly. We just adapted; we got past any technical hurdles and we just made it work. Then weirdly, when you’re listening, it’s almost like you can start to see the other actors. Paterson Joseph and Sacha Dhawan and Nicola Walker, they’re so fantastic to work with, they’re such brilliant actors. I feel like we were all very tuned in with each other doing it over the line.

So did you have Zoom running at the same time or were you purely doing it audio.

No, just audio.

What were the particular challenges for you of doing it that way?

The thing about audio is that we have a brilliant sound engineer but they’re obviously not actually with us, they’re over the line. So the fear is that if you’ve got a problem on your end, how do you diagnose what the problem is? But luckily, we didn’t really have anything like that. We had a bit of a test run at the beginning and had a few sound issues and then it was fine. Of course, that’s the fear.

That’s the only challenge that we usually don’t have to worry about as actors, we don’t have to think about, where are my files recording to? Am I sound proofed? Is this working? So you feel like there’s a little bit of a pressure there but actually they were recording via Cleanfeed. That actually records the audio so I was recording on my laptop just as a backup. To be honest, they did it so professionally and so well, I feel like there were lots of safety nets in terms of getting the audio, getting it clean and getting it safe.

That’s the other thing about Nick and Jamie: they’re so experienced and they’re so talented, it makes them really relaxed and lovely to work with because they’re so in command of what they’re doing.

That’s why we all love working for them, it’s such a lovely experience, we do have a giggle too.

Is it open ended enough to an extent that there could be more adventures for her? Would you like to do some more?

Oh definitely, I really want to do another season. There are so many cliffhangers that I know they have the answers to that I’d like to know, I’d like to find out. It’s a great project and I love Nero Jones, I think she’s wonderful. I think it would be great to give her another season.

Obviously these are being done in just under ten minute episodes, rather than something like The Human Frontier which was an hour or more per episode. You could have more of a gentle rise and fall dramatically with that but with this, there’s that element of they’ve got to get the listener back next week, almost back to the old Flash Gordon serials. Did it feel different because you’d had to have that different pacing?

I felt like it had the same intensity as the other dramas. It was just shorter, definitely more intense. I think that will suit listeners who want to have juicy ten minute instalments, and it’s such an accessible format using Spotify. I think it’ll bring the story and the adventure to more ears, which is really what we want.

So what’s next for you? What else are you up to at the moment?

I’m working on audio dramas and audio books. I just did a project called the USA Trilogy for BBC Radio 4 which is an adaptation of a great American novel by Jon Dos Passos starring Tom Bateman and Sheila Atim.

 

Thanks to Henry Gewanter for his help in arranging this interview

Click here to find out how to access First Action Bureau

and here for our review of the first three episodes