In Emma Reeves’ revival of The Demon Headmaster, Jordan Cramond plays Tyler Warren, the bullied younger brother of Lizzie Warren, who has an amazing capacity for forgiveness, as demonstrated by his interaction with his former nemesis, Blake. Paul Simpson caught up with Jordan to discuss his alter ego…

How did you get involved with The Demon Headmaster?

I was asked to attend the auditions by my agent, and I met with Rob [Kelly], the casting director, twice, and John McKay who was the director, and I was lucky enough to get the part.

What did they tell you about Tyler when you went for the role?

They told me that he was Lizzie Warren’s little brother who was being bullied at school and also a bit of a geek – and he likes magic tricks as well. That was pretty much the gist of what they told me.

So once you got the part, did you find out from the scripts you were given, or more as you were going along?

I kind of found out more as we were going along, to be honest. Originally I didn’t know that much about The Demon Headmaster, but luckily my parents remembered it from the 1990s. They’d added a lot of the 90s episodes on BBC iPlayer so we all sat down and watched a few of them to get a bit of the flavour of what we could expect.

What did you think of the 1990s series?

I thought it was really good, really well done. It was quite grown up in a way, compared with other stuff on CBBC, it was quite dark.

Do you think your show is the same?

Definitely – I think the show is sinister, has a darker twist. It’s brilliant.

What do you think of Tyler?

Tyler as a person has a lot of will to him. He goes from being this bullied kid at school by Blake to eventually facing his fears of water, and overcoming them. He’s quite strong willed, and then eventually has the sympathy for Blake to involve him in the group. He sees the good in people and I really do think he would support them, encourage them to do well.

If you met Tyler in real life, what would you think of him?

I definitely think we would get on because we’re so alike. I think we’d be pretty cool pals to be honest.

Are there things you do when you’re playing Tyler that are things that you do in your everyday life?

Definitely trying to see the good in people. He looks for the best in folk, and unlock their goodness. I can relate to those, and we’re quite funny as well, quite humorous.

Have you suggested a line to the director?

Yes, quite a few times when on the script I was looking at a line and thinking “Would I really say that?” I would give a few suggestions to John and ask him, “Instead of saying this, can I say that instead? I think it’ll really help the development of the character and sound more natural.” They totally took it on board, and a few of them are used in the final cuts.

When you see that do you have a feel of “that’s mine!”?

Yes, that uniqueness of a look, or an action, or something very detailed, something that’s natural to me, I’m quite proud of seeing that.

There were a few points where me and [Ellie Botterill who plays Lizzie] especially would sit down and go, realistically if we were brother and sister, we worked through scenarios, so when we did a scene we’d be thinking about these scenarios and that gave us a bit more depth to our characters, made them more realistic.

What’s been the most challenging part of playing Tyler?

Trying to remain in an English accent. Tyler was brought up in England but I’m obviously Scottish, and the majority of the actors are speaking in a Scottish accent. It was quite difficult to tune out my natural accent and remain in my English accent.

Have you done English-accent parts before?

I have – it was quite easy to try to do an English accent but after a time it gets quite hard. You do need a quite high level of stamina and determination to pull it off.

Did you stay doing it during breaks or lunch?

I’ll try to remain in the accent as long as possible, even at lunch, at home I’ll speak to my mum and dad with an English accent. I would listen to folk with an English accent, so if there was a word I wasn’t too sure on, I would ask Ellie or Dijarn [Campbell] and they would help me with the pronunciation and diction. It was quite interesting – I’ve never stayed in an English accent before.

What’s been the best part?

Getting to do the obstacle course, I get to swim underwater, that was fun. I liked getting to be the stowaway in the Headmaster’s car, and hanging out with Robo, interacting and dancing with him, that was quite fun. After a while I think I began to think Robo was a human being, how I was interacting with him.

Also hanging out with the rest of the gang between takes – we had a lot of laughs and a lot of fun off set as well as on set.

The Demon Headmaster continues on Mondays at 5 and 8 pm on CBBC.

Thanks to Ciara Mongan for her help in arranging this interview