MONDO EXTRAS

TWoP: Any exciting guest stars?
Lyn: One of our lead guests is Peter Capaldi who plays a government civil servant. Do you know who he is? He was in one of the episodes of Doctor Who. The Pompeii episode. He's just such a fantastic actor. He plays quite a character who as an audience member you can be quite ambivalent about. He's very ambiguous about whether he's a good character, a bad character, his objectives. Is he Torchwood's enemy or is he their friend? I think in Russell's writing and in the way we approach the show is that we never wanted to have villains who easily were dismissed as bad characters. Human beings usually have equal measure.

TWoP: Even the Weevils are kind of nice occasionally. They look really horrible but you know they have feelings too.
Lyn: [Laughs]

TWoP: You have worked with Eve on Doctor Who. Was it exciting to work with her again?
Lyn: Absolutely. I first worked with Eve about ten years ago on a kind of family drama set in Wales called Belonging. I've tried to work with Eve so many times. She's always busy. She's at the RSC, she's in theatre, she's doing Charles Dickens adaptations. She's forever working so to get the chance to work with her again is amazing. She is so full of life and passion and soul. It's always nice to have a friend. Somebody to sit with who understands you.

TWoP: What was it like being the new guy on set?
Lyn: Cardiff isn't a huge place and the industry is quite small there. Lots of people on the cast and my team were looking forward to it. It was very much like working with your mates.

TWoP: Now how was it working with all the children?
Lyn: [Long pause]

TWoP: No comment?
Lyn: [Laughs] You can't work in a series called Children of Earth without expecting to direct a few children. The lead kids in it were a dream. They're really talented and they're something special. And then lots of the big background scenes we've got with kids we keep coming back to were really tough because it was just so many of them. In the first episode you can see them all frozen. Two hundred kids in the playground, frozen, not moving, and in the background there's one of them scratching their head, so we used CGI to freeze some of them.