Who Is This Dr. Daniel Clifford Character? Peter Gives Us A Preview

Note: This interview originally appeared on the PWFC Web site in 2006.

By Harlene

In September 2006, I had the opportunity to interview Peter via a long distance phone call. It was a sunny, Sunday morning in the U.S. and Sunday evening in England. Here is an excerpt from that interview.

HARLENE: Perhaps your medical background came into the decision when they were casting…

PETER: I know for a fact that it didn’t because I know for a fact that they didn’t know that I had done any medical training. So, no, the executive producer is a guy called Tony McHale, and I’d spoken to him a little before I taped the scenes for the audition and I spoke to him again after they’d offered me the job. And then when I actually came to England and met him, I mentioned to him that I had actually done some medical training and he roared with laughter. He’d had no idea at all. So I know that was not part of their thinking in casting me. They were very grateful. They were very pleased to hear it.

HARLENE: They wouldn’t have to teach you how to move like a doctor.

PETER: It’s very weird doing it. It’s getting on to 20 years since I left medical school. It’s a long, long time ago. So I don’t really remember anything really significant, but what I do still have is the sense of being a doctor and of medical practice and an ease and a comfort with it. I have a feel for it so even though I don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time… I really am not faking that at all. I really do not remember anything— For one thing I didn’t work very hard when I was in medical school. I was doing too many plays so there are lots of facts that were never in my brain to be forgotten. But also, medicine just moves at such an incredible speed these days. Lots of things that I learned are simply not true anymore or are not medical practice.

So for the detail stuff, I have no more to offer than anybody else that comes to the show. But what I do have is an ease with the idea of it. I’m not fazed by long scenes of medical jargon or doing operations and knowing what the things I’m talking about are or seeing a line in the dialog and knowing what that refers to. I’m very much at ease with that stuff …

But medicine, it is inside me so they can throw rewrites at me, they can throw long scenes or make me speak whilst juggling and I can do it because I’m not tensed up by the idea of having to say all these technical words. So that, I recognize, is very much a benefit of having done the medical training. I’m at peace with it.

HARLENE: … we’re wondering what you can tell us about your role as Daniel Clifford and the storyline for him.

PETER: I can tell you that he is a surgeon. He is a general surgeon and he is very bright, very smart. He thinks very, very quickly. He talks quickly, he is always doing three, four, or five different things at once. He’s — I’m trying to think what the polite term for this is — he’s a doo-doo disturber. He ruffles people’s feathers, he’s deliberately provocative to people just for the fun of it. I don’t think he has any malice in him at all. But one of the things that the director of the first two episodes said to me that I think really sums up the guy is that he thinks it’s the worst sin in the world to be dull. And so he is always just niggling people, nudging them, provoking them, trying to get a response out of them. Trying to say outrageous things. Being very much not politically correct.

HARLENE: Are you having fun playing him?

PETER: I’m having a lot of fun playing him, but I’m finding him exhausting. He is absolutely exhausting. My rhythm is much slower. I kind of sit back and I mull things over and I analyze and he is completely the opposite of that. He is decisive and instantaneous and he drives all the scenes that he’s in so far. And he moves and talks and is on the attack all the time. There’s such energy and such pace to what he’s doing that I get to the end of the day and I’m exhausted. I get home and I feel like I’ve drunk half-a-dozen triple espressos and I’m still wired when I get home.

HARLENE: How do you adjust your acting methods to this? How do you prepare for it? Drink lots of espresso in the morning and hope for the best?

PETER: No, I’m using music a lot. One of the other characteristic points to the guy that they have written is that when he operates, there is always music playing in the theater. He has music on all the time. It’s not kind of Vivaldi or something contemplative, it’s 1980s punk rock and it’s very, very energetic. And what I have been doing, I have my little iPod Shuffle with me all the time and I have songs to pump me up all the time. And before takes when I am in the operating theater, I am jumping up and down and bouncing and singing. I am kind of exhausting to be around.

HARLENE: You sound like a little kid…

PETER: I am a little bit. It’s a very exciting job for me, for a whole series of reasons. But one of the things about it is that I know I get to play him for a whole year. And it is like an acting class. It’s like going to film school for a year because I know that all the stuff that I’m doing, I will, in a couple of days, be able to go look at and see what’s working and what isn’t and see how if I change the preparation… or if I change the tune that I listen to… if you can see that. That’s a great thrill for me.

You know, I’m not Adrian; I didn’t play every day on Highlander. Throughout my career, I have come in and done intensive periods on different shows, playing different characters, but I’ve never played the same guy for a solid year and played pretty much every day seven in the morning to seven-thirty at night and this has been that for the last two and a half weeks and looks as like will continue that way for the foreseeable future.

PETER: I don’t appear on TV until the end of November. My first episode goes out November 28th.

HARLENE: That was one of my questions. Now we’re going to be looking for that.

PETER: November 28th, 8 pm on BBC One.

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