Survivors returns to Big Finish after a short absence with two new box sets, A New Dawn. Set twenty years after the Death, we find the characters in very different places – Abby has been in Scotland, and Jenny is now part of the government. To mark the occasion, Paul Simpson chatted with Carolyn Seymour (Abby) and Lucy Fleming (Jenny).

There are mild spoilers for the set up of Survivors: A New Dawn

 

 

Does it feel slightly different coming back to Survivors now that the world has actually been through almost a Survivors type pandemic?

Lucy: I think it does. It’s extraordinary how people every now and then say, ‘Weren’t the credits for your show something to do with a man getting on an airplane having dropped a vial maybe from China?’ and I say ‘Yes it was.’

I think the pandemic has made us all think hugely about our lives generally and in some ways made us all slow down but just to revisit the characters, of course they haven’t gotten out of the pandemic…

Carolyn: We’re still in it! (laughs) The characters are still in it.

Certainly there’s more panic about it in America which is interesting. People are really are panicking over there still about it all.

I’ve just come back from France, I spent ten years there. People are very calm about it in France. They do what they’re told – they have rules and nobody says, ‘But these are my rights’ – except for the English who are in France. The French absolutely behave and wear their masks and get jabbed and do all of that. They’re [usually] resistant to jabbing in France, they don’t like having vaccinations.

It’s interesting because I think it’s here to stay for us and we have to learn how to behave. We have to learn different hygiene and different ways of socialising and all of those things.

Lucy: But of course, in some ways, our characters have been living with it for quite some time and so are more into it than present day people, I think.

This series, we pick things up quite a few years later. Did you think through for yourselves what your characters have been up to in that intervening period? Because obviously Jenny is now in the seat of government whereas Abby seems to have jumped down and pulled the sidewalk over her head up in Scotland…

Lucy: I think they’ve been getting their heads down and working hard and getting these diverse communities together, sometimes successfully, sometimes not successfully. I think they’re just getting on with it and maybe getting used to the world of people being shot and the world of being attacked from all sides but desperately trying to make things better. I think that’s what Jenny’s been doing.

Carolyn: Yes, Jenny was the sensible one.

Lucy: That sounds very damming (laughs).

Carolyn: No it’s lovely, she was the much more practical one in a way. Abby went to Scotland because of grief really, and had to get herself organised up there, to rearrange her brain and get herself sorted. I think the solitude for her was what she needed but she was certainly ready to come back and be part of it all.

She seems to take people to a certain extent with less suspicion than some of the other characters might. In two of these three stories she’s almost taken in by people who are not what they first appear…

Carolyn: Yes she would. I mean, I can’t elaborate on that except that’s what she was always like. She was a very pragmatic creature on a certain level and she liked people and then suddenly she didn’t and it was all betrayal, which is why she had to go and think about it. I think that we’ve had some extraordinary episodes in this series that we’ve done and it’s been hugely gratifying to do them.

Lucy: Yes, hear hear!

Carolyn: I mean doing the [TV] series, the one that I remember most of all, from that first series, was Law and Order when I had to make some decisions about capital punishment to which I’m vehemently and violently opposed to, which is a sort of oxymoron! I’m glad I didn’t have to make those decisions again because it really did affect me for quite a long time, that I really tried to change that thing but it didn’t work. I found it very difficult but these scripts have been very sensitively written with regards to our characters on the whole. It’s been a great time.

Lucy: Maybe when we were younger and doing the television series we were not so sensitive as we are now. We’re a bit older and I think that affects you. Also the world has changed: things are not the same in the way of sensitivities as they were in the 70s.

If we say that the Death was contemporary with when it was broadcast and the audios are now twenty years later, we’re still talking about the 1990s. Do you think that the society you’re in now in these new episodes has moved on the way you might have expected?

Carolyn: How interesting…

Lucy: I don’t know the answer to that personally. I think we do seem to come up against these people who want to look after their own territory and…

Carolyn: Dominate.

Lucy:…and rule the world, and you can sort of understand why with the lack of communication there is generally compared with the communication we have now. I think in some ways things have changed and in some ways they haven’t.

If you think back to the 90s a mobile was the size of a brick, email didn’t exist etc. So we had a very different sort of communication then.

Lucy: True.

For this one Carolyn, in the third story you’re going back and you’re also playing Abby pre-Death (laughs) There’s no other interview where I’d be saying that but you know what I mean.

Carolyn: Yes.

Did it feel odd going back to that version of the character?

Carolyn: Not really odd but just trying to wrench myself back into that part of my life, that age, was tough. It’s been a long time and the memory’s not that good. So it was hard getting back there but…

We would like to think that the ‘good old days’ were always easier but they’re not, they weren’t. I think the problems as portrayed in the series during the pandemic were hideous and the tasks that Terry set up were almost insuperable but somehow, every time, there was this glimmer of hope that came through, that good will out and bad will be defeated. I guess, we just played it like that, I guess I just basically spoke the words. I didn’t think about it too much, it’s acting

I’m much less hot headed about any of the stuff than I was when I was actually doing [the TV series] (laughs). I was very hot headed in those days but it’s a simpler world which I think we could all go back to.

I think with this present pandemic, the real one, that is what’s happening. People are living in the countryside, they’re growing their own vegetables, they want greenery, it’s an interesting time.

You’ve lived with these characters on and off, for over forty years. What do you actually think of them as people? And of each other’s characters as well? Do you both think you’d get on with Abby and Jenny if you met them?

Carolyn: Yes.

Lucy: Yes, I do. I think Abby and Jenny are quite different characters.

Oh very much so, yes.

Lucy: And I think, as Carolyn said, hot headed about herself but in some ways I think Abby is very driven and I think Jenny is more of… not a goody goody but… she’s a softer side of Abby I think. But again I think the characters have evolved and come together more. What do you think, Carolyn?

Carolyn: Well I think the same way but I always see Jenny as the one who gets things done and Abby is the one splashing about on the outside. You’re the tidy one and I’m the untidy one but we match really well.

Lucy: You can’t see my studio here!

Carolyn: (laughs) But do you know what I mean?

Lucy: Yes.

Carolyn: And I think as a pair we really managed it very well as a couple of characters and I think we would be fast friends as we are now.

Lucy: I think so. Over the years too there’s become an incredible bond between the two characters which would be unbreakable, I think.

Carolyn: Absolutely.

Lucy: Because they have been through so much somehow together. All the stuff they’ve done together, all the battles, all the heartache

Carolyn: And the loss.

Lucy: And the loss.

With that, do you still find the characters or have you found the characters challenging in any way to play? Are there parts of them that are so outwith yourselves that you find them a challenge?

Carolyn: Not for me, it’s like an old glove.

Lucy: No, I don’t think so. And if the characters become more ‘something or other’ then that makes it great so you move with whatever the writers give you really and that’s always fun. It’s good to have changes.

Oh yes, if it’s the same old same old then nobody’s going to want to listen.

Carolyn: And I think the writers have been very sensitive to who we all are

Lucy: Yes.

Carolyn: I think they’ve done a really good job.

Was there anything in this first set of three that surprised you when you read it? Particularly in terms of where the characters are and what they’ve been doing?

Lucy: Well, I was quite surprised to be minister of whatever I am..

Carolyn: Justice.

Lucy: Law, yes, justice. See that’s great, that means the character’s matured and moved up in the world.

Albeit that she’s still doing stuff on the side with Jackie and seems quite easily persuaded into going on the run. It feels like the start of Thelma and Louise at the end.

Lucy: Oh good, that’s a good idea.

Taking the car over the cliff…

Lucy: Yes.

Carolyn: Exactly (laughs) Taking a car over the cliff… They could call it that, The Car Over the Cliff.

Generally, in your careers, what have you looked for in a script? Is it the writing, is it who you’d be working with? What has attracted you to a project?

Carolyn: Well, it’s never been who one’s working with really because that’s all over in the first 30 seconds, so it’s got to be the substance of the piece.

Lucy: I think it’s the part, the substance of the piece and certainly with theatre it’s location. If it’s a tour going around the Outer Hebrides and back via Newquay, it might be a no, now.

Carolyn: It would definitely be a no now!

For me, it’s always been whether or not the script has held me. If I want to put it down after the first 20 pages I’m not interested in doing it because whether I shoot it or whether I’m going to be acting in it, in theatre, I’m not going to want to show up every day and that’s a terrible palace to be. It’s got to be well written and it’s got to be a good story.

Survivors: New Dawn is available now from Big Finish

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