I feel like an expressionist nihilist deep in my heart. And I think nihilism can stop the wheel from going around, around, around, around, around - saying the same thing, reacting the same way.
I mean, happiness is a slippery thing. What makes you happy one day can make you miserable the next.
I think a series risks straying into self-parody if you get into a fourth series... sometimes even if you get into a third, because the audience knows how it's going to go.
I felt quite confident - when you come out of drama school you feel like you're on top of everything. I always tell people to go to drama school even if they've already done movies or whatever because the way you encounter content is so different.
Yet everybody's experience is really interesting. Or, if not their experience, then their unlived life. Or their desire. Their id. Their curiosity.
I think there's a value in people talking, it's just that we're in this culture now where everyone wants to 'out' each other at every moment, for their unconscious bias or whatever, and people then don't feel free to just talk. Do you know what I mean?
I think 'The Musketeers' is probably the Dumas novel people are most familiar with, or if not that, it's 'The Count Of Monte Cristo'. I've always been a big fan of Dumas because, on the one hand, he writes a lot about revenge, but he also writes about the cost of it to the revenger - I'd always had an interest in that.
Regional theatres don't patronise their audiences, and they're not afraid to do big, bold things.
Sometimes people hide behind a kind of naturalistic milieu. But life is full of the most sharp, abrupt changes of tone, from the tragic to the absurd.
There are absolutely amazing people running regional theatres, and amazing regional companies.
I think, unlike other superheroes, what one gleans about the Musketeers, certainly from the source material, is that the good that they do happens in quite a spasmodic manner, in short bursts.
I remember spending time in Stratford growing up with all that company running round and putting on silly hats and just having fun all the time.
Doing a TV show where it's a very relentless schedule, it does democratise you in a brilliant way. It does chip away at the old ego and you do realise that you're only really ever as good as the words that you're saying, the people you're talking to, or more importantly, listening to.
You only have to look at Manchester's Royal Exchange or Home to understand the huge energy outside London - there's enough talent around the country to have a Donmar and National in every city. It just comes down to money.
I remember when I had to copy writing off the board at school it just looked to me like a magic eye picture, I could just see so many shapes.
The only thing that I can say with any degree of commitment is a reason to he happy is... moderate weather. But then even that gets boring and I find myself wanting a storm.
When I entered the profession, I didn't make a big deal of it. People didn't really know I was my parents' son.
But the fact I'm even getting to play a character that the producer, director and writers want me to play is a rarity in the industry. You'd think it happens all the time. It doesn't. There are so many hoops to jump through to get cast in something.
I got a pommel in my eye. A pommel is the end of a sword - not the sharp end, the other end. It wasn't actually a sword fight. I was rugby tackling somebody but we hadn't rehearsed with all the kit on so suddenly there's a whole other part of the equation and that did really hurt.
The Souvenir is an incredibly specific story, but people recognise the universal in it. Because, that's how stories work.
