Martin Clunes confesses he revelled in the surliness of Dr Martin Ellingham, the GP with no bedside manner, in ITV1's comedy drama, Doc Martin.
He's switched from the affable William Shawcross, the funeral director every one loved in William and Mary, to the curmudgeonly surgeon who's forced to give up his glittering career and become a GP in a sleepy Cornish hamlet.
Even the cast and crew were shocked by the vitriol with which Martin delivered his lines as a character who has no people skills, and no sympathy.
“I loved being loathsome, it is very liberating!” says Martin. “Martin Ellingham is a very rude man. In one scene I have to shout at a woman in the street to get out of my way. I made the poor woman jump, and the crew were quite taken aback too.
“Martin Ellingham is a brilliant surgeon, a vascular specialist. His patients usually come in flat, anaesthetised and not talking, “ Martin explains.
But the eminent surgeon develops a phobia about blood, which prevents him from operating, and forces him to look for a new career.
“Martin Ellingham functions fine as long as he in that theatre with people running around doing his bidding. Once that is removed, with the blood phobia he has, then he is sort of high and dry. He is not quite in control.
“He is aware of his lack of people skills. He has enough self-awareness to realise he can't now work in surgery. He knows he can't do nothing, and that he needs to work in medicine. He also knows he needs to work on his people skills. Portwenn would seem the ideal place to do it but he finds the people are too annoying. Equally the people of Portwenn are united in their horror about their new GP.”
Martin Ellingham applies to become Portwenn's GP remembering fondly the holidays he spent there as a child with his Aunt Joan, played by Stephanie Cole.
“Martin Ellingham is the unloved child of unloving parents. He was miserable as a child, and he is not a happy person now,” Martin explains.
Martin has shed the cuddly image of William Shawcross to play the slick, sharp suited surgeon.
“Dr Martin Ellingham is very different to cuddly William Shawcross, that is one reason I wanted to play him. I look very different to my character in William and Mary too.
“There's something about the precision and sharpness of the man, and the fact that he is quite studious about things, and that fed into the way he looks. He didn't strike me as a man who would waste time on his hair either, neither is he a man who would have messy hair, so he has what I call self catering hair, very low maintenance.”
Martin swapped the floppy hairstyle he has worn for years for a brutally short crop for his new role. The change of image also coincided with Martin's own health and fitness regime.
“I had been trying to lose a bit of weight and refine my thinking. It seemed appropriate for the part that I should lose a bit of weight too.
“It is really hard when you are filming to take regular exercise. I was getting bigger and bigger on William and Mary. Because we filmed in winter you want to keep eating to keep warm.
“So after we'd finished filming earlier this year I started working with a personal trainer for three months, which did make a difference. I got fit first, which is what I wanted to do, then the weight came off, and working as hard as we did on Doc Martin helped to keep the weight off.
“I just ate less. I also stopped the temptation on set of eating Cornish pasties in the morning, and sandwiches and cakes in the afternoon. I ate fruit instead. I feel better for it.
“I picked up with the personal trainer after finishing filming. I wanted to feel fitter and stronger.”
Martin became as meticulous as his character in his portrayal of the role. As Doc Martin is a man who prepares his own sushi, Martin took a short boat ride to nearby Padstow to learn how to prepare fish at Rick Stein's seafood cookery school.
“I got so involved in the character, and portraying him properly that I even insisted that they should use my hands in a scene where my character has to conduct an emergency operation. They needed my expertise! They were shooting with a second film unit and were going to do a close up of the operation with someone else's hands doing the procedure.”
There's a spark between the doctor and the local schoolteacher, Louisa Glasson, played by Caroline Catz. But they are hardly love's young dream.
“From the word go there is a mutual attraction between the doctor and Louisa. But they misfire and misunderstand each other, and stuff gets in the way of romance. There is never a string symphony playing in the background in the scenes between them.”
Martin did, however, fall in love with Cornwall. “Philippa and I moved to Cornwall for the 12 week shoot with our daughter Emily, and our dog, golden cocker spaniel Mary. Each evening when we finished shooting we were able to go to our home on the coast and watch the sun go down. It was a wrench leaving Cornwall, and it did make us think about living there. It would be great to have a place there.
“Cornwall is good for the soul. As Celia Imrie, who guest stars in the first episode, said to us “It is good for us to be here.”
“It is the third time I have filmed in Port Isaac, so I know a lot of the local people now. We invited them to our wrap party at the end of the shoot. Our crew all stayed in and around Port Isaac too, so they could walk to work.
“When we were filming in Port Isaac there were tourists milling around, fisherman's trucks going up and down, but filming there seemed the most natural thing in the world. When you are filming in a city like London you feel a bit self-conscious, and there are people trying to distract you and wreck the shoot by beeping their car horns.
“When we were in Cornwall Emily went to a local nursery. On her last day there the children had made her a card, and the teachers had compiled a book of photographs of her playing with everyone, pictures of what she had been up to for 12 weeks. She had an absolute ball.
“Our lives are going in a westward direction. From September we will be living in Dorset when Emily starts school there.”
Doc Martin is the second drama Buffalo Pictures has made for ITV. The first was Hunting Venus. Martin set up Buffalo Pictures on his own ten years ago with the intention of optioning a J.P.Dunleavy novel to make into a television series. He and Philippa, who he met while they were working together on the feature film Staggered, are now directors of Buffalo.
“We did feel a bit like host and hostess of the shoot in Cornwall! We did take 30 or 40 people away from their homes for 12 weeks so their welfare had to be catered for.
“Because Philippa and I met working, and we have worked together before, it seemed very natural for us to work together on Doc Martin. It was fantastic to see her during the day when I would not otherwise have done. It is great working with Philippa, ask any one.
“I feel a little closer to Doc Martin in a way, in a practical sense, because it is our own production company. When it came to the job of acting it felt no different.
“I had more involvement with Doc Martin early on in talks with Philippa, the director Ben Bolt and the writer Dominic Minghella.
“As the scripts took shape I stepped back and left it to Ben and Philippa. There comes a point where as an actor you have to jump and put your faith in the writer and director.
“A director once told me that actors have to keep one foot in the playground, and I have stuck to that. There have been times when I have been worrying about production details, and it does get in the way. So it is best to stay in the playground. That is what I do, I am not a producer. I am happy with this level of involvement for the moment.”
