Peter Serafinowicz interview

Liverpool-born actor, comedian and voice-over artist Peter Serafinowicz made his broadcasting debut on radio in the early ‘90s and has since appeared in everything from The Simpsons and South Park to Shaun of the Dead and Star Wars.

As Peter prepares to bring his business mogul alter ego Brian Butterfield to the Philharmonic Hall, we find out which role sticks out the most and how he’s re-embraced his Liverpool roots

Words | Lawrence Saunders

Whereabouts in Liverpool did you grow up?

I lived in Belle Vale initially and then moved to Gateacre, right opposite Lee Park, nearly Netherley – ‘nearly Netherley’, that could be an alternative title for the Mad Max movies actually! I spent a lot of time in the area. My mum taught machine knitting at Netherley Comp. She would give us all our dinner and then go and teach the night school students. I did judo there as well, which was partially a way for me to be babysat whilst my mum did the class. It was full of kids I didn’t know. I enjoyed parts of my childhood in Liverpool but some parts not at all – there was a lot of getting my head kicked in! Back then, I didn’t really know how to defend myself and that’s a big part of life in Liverpool.

What was it like being back in Liverpool to film the new Amazon Prime comedy-thriller series Dead Hot?

It was my first time filming in the city since moving away when I was 19, and I just loved it. All of it took me back to when I was younger. We filmed in the summer as well, and it’s really beautiful looking in the summer. I got to sail a boat out of the Albert Dock, which was pretty cool. It was one of those moments of trying to access your teenage
self and say, ‘Look at what I’m doing now!’ I’ve still got family there and I come back quite often. And I’m a massive Liverpool FC fan as well. It’s lovely having that connection with Liverpool and I’d love to work there again.

The characters you play in Dead Hot and Netflix’s The Gentlemen both have strong Liverpool accents. Did you enjoy being able to perform in your ‘natural voice’ again?

I loved being able to do it. I just want to do all my roles like that now! You know, when I started acting 30 years ago and came to London, I sort of had to southern-up my accent. I’ve always been an impressionist and changing my voice is something I have the most fun doing but [playing these characters] I feel like I’ve really re-embraced my Liverpool roots.

When you were first starting out did you have to disguise your accent somewhat in order to get jobs?

I don’t know, maybe just a bit. You’re trying to fit in and it sort of wasn’t cool [to have a Liverpool accent] back then. I wanted to expand my vocal repertoire as well, in terms of the different accents that I could do. I’ve always enjoyed doing that. It frustrated me a lot of the time though that I was locked within the Liverpool or northern English accent rules that I wasn’t aware of.

I wanted to be able to flip into a London accent or just a neutral southern accent, and it took a few tricks for me to learn how to do it. It was about wanting to deceive people [laughs]. But I never spoke like my character in The Gentlemen anyway, I knew lots of people back in Liverpool who did though!

Apart from the opportunity to do something in a Liverpool accent, what drew you to Dead Hot and the role of Danny?

My agent read it and said, ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re going to make of this, but it’s this crazy crime drama set in Liverpool, and you play a detective who runs into some trouble with a bunch of twentysomethings and a horse’. And I said, ‘That’s right up my street’. Then I found out more about it. Anyway, I read my scenes, and I don’t know if I fully understood it, even while I was filming sometimes. But God, what fun that was to shoot. Everyone had this crazy energy; I just love that there were these scenes that had a rhythm. I’ve never really felt that before.

It’s not trying to be anything else; it is totally its own thing. And it’s actually partly quite conventional, it’s a who-done-it, but the rest of it is handled in such an original way. In a nutshell, I just thought It was so refreshing to see something that wasn’t some kind of rehash. It’s got such an original voice.

Can you talk a bit about your character Danny, and his motivations?

I suppose a lot of the people I play are sort of pretending to be something that they aren’t. So Danny sees himself as a shark, and he is powerful and bosses people around but really, he’s just a frightened little boy inside, like everybody. I drew on the tough characters that I used to see around Liverpool, like the older kids. He’s a bit of a wild card, and I encountered a lot of those growing up. I just kind of took elements from each one, you know.

Since you began acting in the 1990s, you have appeared in a wide range of different films and TV shows. Do any particular jobs or moments stick out when you look back over the last 30 years?

Recently, I have actually been realising what a mad career I’ve had and how many different worlds I’ve inhabited – and still am! For example, I’ve done a few Lego video games. I’d been playing them with my son, Sam, since he was about three years old – the Star Wars and Indiana Jones ones. I got a job on Lego City Undercover and Sam and I got to play it together, which was really cool. Later I did another one called Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 and I went to a Comic-Con as part of the promotion. I got talking to this Lego designer when I was there and he invited me and my family over to Denmark to visit Billund, the town where Lego was invented. It was brilliant! The Lego museum they have there is just the best!

One of the most popular characters you have played during your career is renowned businessman Brian Butterfield, who made his debut on The Peter Serafinowicz Show back in 2007. With Brian’s Call Of Now tour arriving at the Liverpool Philharmonic this month, are you excited to perform in front of your home crowd?

I can’t wait. I’m really looking forward to doing the Brian show at the Philharmonic. I haven’t performed there since I was in the Our Lady of the Assumption Primary School choir! Brian believes that every failure is just an opportunity to learn a new lesson. Having opened, and closed several businesses, he has learnt over 1,000 lessons and counting. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (for Brian) and he will be sharing his knowledge on all the key elements of business, including information on income tax, something he was unaware of until recently!

Peter will perform as Brian Butterfield at the Liverpool Philharmonic on Tuesday 21 May

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