Modelling Other People

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights, and this week we're joined by our special guest, Ed Kingsley. And this week we're discussing modelling other humans. I thought that was reasonably slick.

Speaker B: 00:00:29

Yeah, not bad. That's about as slick as I get. You're a pro, Fred. He said that bit. He said it. He said it 200 times. And he still cannot get it right.

Speaker A: 00:00:38

I feel under more pressure with Ed here. I feel I've met him before. I know. He's a bit, yeah. Okay. You're a pro here, Fraser. You can't play it anymore. I'm already looking bad. Absolutely. Okay. Nick, perhaps you would care to introduce our special guest for us, please?

Speaker B: 00:00:52

Sure. Yeah. So obviously in our line of work, one of the things we have to do quite a lot is think about the way that people are going to behave, whether they're heads of governments or whether they're people in organizations, what they're going to do, or individuals or informal groups. It's something that's obviously of quite fundamental interest in the world of politics and business. And we tend in our company to take a very analytical approach, which is quite statistical and doesn't really go much further than trying to measure what it is that people do and draw inferences from that and be uncertain about it. But it occurred to me. Now, Ed, I've known for many years and he is an actor of no small renown, has been in many things on TV, stage, in films, and also behind the camera. And so I'm interested in whether actually what can acting tell us? Actors do this, right? Actors have to think about what it is that characters are going to behave and then do that. So I'm interested in how they do that and whether we can learn something from it.

Speaker A: 00:02:00

And so one question I have, so starting with yourself, Ed, is, is one description of acting, is it modeling other humans? I'm sure it's other things as well. But is that one way to look at it? Is that one of the things that you do?

Speaker C: 00:02:16

I think that's pretty central to, I mean, it's called lots of things called creating a character it's called. But I mean, but I think it is the central thing about acting for me is stepping into somebody else's shoes and exploring as fully formed another human life as you can and sharing it with a room full of strangers in the dark or whoever it may be. It's interesting what you were talking about, about, about that analysis and prediction and because the first thing you get, which I suppose might be similar to when you're looking at data is the script and the script isn't a play and the script isn't a film and the script isn't a TV. It's just what a character says and some suggestion of where they are.

Speaker B: 00:03:13

Which is you might think was a very small aspect of someone.

Speaker C: 00:03:16

It's almost, it's almost like, like the sand in the, in the oyster. And I think then you have to, you have to build from that, from a good writer will put enough into what a character says and where they are and how they interact with other people that from then you get, you get a sniff of what, what a fully formed human around that would be. And there are lots of, now when I say an actor does this, I'm only really talking about myself because I think there are many, as many different ways of approaching this as there are actors and some people are entirely instinctual and just read it once and something pops into their head and they do it. I tend to do quite a lot of actual pencil and paper stuff as soon as I get the script.

Speaker B: 00:04:01

What sort of, what are you working out?

Speaker C: 00:04:03

Well, the foot, the big things you can try and work out is what does the character want overall, which if you're being technical, you could call a super objective. So what do they want throughout the entire entirety of their story within each scene, you have an objective and then you, this is all stuff that draws on that kind of method tradition that came from Russia and then went to America and then came to London. And then I break up a scene into what into what's either called beats or beads depending on which translation you read. And as a, and there's an objective within each bead and then beyond that, on each line, you try, I try and find exactly what that character is trying to do to the, to whoever they're talking to with that line, with that, even down to the individual word sometimes. And, and that's sometimes that's called actioning. And the, what I do, what actioning is, is try and find the, what's the proper word for it, the transitive verb for each action. So, um, could be, and it's better if it's not something like to, to tell it's something that transforms the other person. So it could be to excite or to amaze or to stroke or to flatter. It's something that the character, your character is trying to change in the other character. And if you can find a pattern of that, and it, there are arguments about whether it works for everything. I think it's a useful tool for everything, for monologues, for, because you're always talking to somebody, even if you're talking to yourself, if you're talking out loud, you're trying to change something in yourself. But it's particularly useful if you've got a scene where there's back and forth, where two people have different objectives and you're, both of you are trying to change something in the other to try and get what you want out of it. And if you can map that out, that actually, for me, is the, is the most useful tool for starting to build a character.

Speaker A: 00:06:09

Yeah, this is, and that's really interesting for me, because. Because, sorry, before you come in, because this sounds like some of the things that you've talked to me about that you'd do, especially the very first thing that Ed started off saying was, which is finding the, what was it, the super, the super objective is super objective, which is something that you sort of from home again and again and again is, well, what's your point? What's your overarching point? Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:06:30

And then when we, when we've done red teaming, which is when you, where you are trying to anticipate what the actions of another, of another personal group is, you start with, you know, you start with working out what their objectives are, because you can't, you've got nothing to go on if you don't have that. And so it's really interesting to me that they're actually the very, very similar process. And, but I mean, it strikes me from what you're saying that actually the skill of being able to work out what a character is trying to achieve and drawing that inference from their words and stuff is actually, do you feel like that's quite separate to actually being able to enact it or are they closely related?

Speaker C: 00:07:07

Well, I think that's the next. So once you've got that, once you sort of have a feeling of their pattern of behavior of whether they're somebody who's trying to engage somebody or whether they're trying to squash somebody or what, you know, if you've got a page full of and all of your notes, say things like punch, roast, then you get a sense of that, of what, of how that person interacts with the world. And from then, from that, you've got, you've sort of got a sense of their motor of their, of their attitude of, and then you're not kind of plucking things out of the air about what a character might be because you're actually looking at the way they behave and then you can fill in any gaps that aren't texts that are, um, that are sort of around what they say or, or even the way they move because people, often the way people interact verbally is very similar to the way they interact physically, or it might be at odds with that, which could be, you could have somebody who's apparently very still and calm, but then brutal with their way. So from, from that sort of character skeleton, I can't think of a better way of describing it. You can, you can put a, you can discover, or you can feel, I suppose it gives you, it gives you a sense of what's, what choices are right and what choices are wrong about the rest of the character.

Speaker B: 00:08:19

So when you're actually performing, is that a conscious process? Uh, so do you think, right, ah, now this person is attempting to influence that person, so they're probably going to be standing quite close to them. So I'll move towards them. Or is it, is it more that you are kind of, you're attempting to simulate being that person? I mean, and, and you, and you're trying to, you don't have to think about what would they do because you're trying to be them.

Speaker C: 00:08:41

I think hopefully by the time you've got on stage or in front of the camera, you've done all of that work and you've found that you've sort of, you've been, you've found the pattern and then you don't have to think, and now I amaze you. Like it's, it's, and that's what rehearsal is as well. Rehearsal is getting all of that conscious bits into something more intuitive, more subconscious that kind of drives the whole thing.

Speaker D: 00:09:06

During your preparation work, do you ever, outside of the script and outside of the direction you've been given, do you ever experiment with your characters to say, well, put them in a novel situation? So perhaps when you're waiting for a bus or something, you slip into character and say, what would my character try to do right now, given his super goals that he's trying to achieve, just presented with this particular bus driver, how would he perhaps react to this person?

Speaker C: 00:09:28

Yeah. Well, you're taking your character out for a walk. Yeah, it's, um, yeah, that's quite a useful thing. I mean, sod's law means as soon as you do it, you bump into somebody, you know, you go, sorry, I'm being somebody else. Um, but it's very, and there's, and there's also things that happen in rehearsal rooms or things you do yourself, kind of hot seating where you sit them down and you ask a load of questions and put them in different situations and, and sort of, yeah, you do try them out. And you, and actually it happens anyway, even if you're not thinking about it, you start realizing that this is quite a, you know, whoever the character might be, thing to do.

Speaker D: 00:10:04

And particularly some, some, some projects that you probably have an opportunity to develop a quite a close relationship with the original author or the screenwriter. Um, and so do you, there's an opportunity for them to check with them and say, when, when presented with a situation, what do you think your character would do? And to get a bit more sort of depth from them about their character and perhaps even try out that character on them and say, look, if I pretend to be this person, does that kind of correlate with how you'd expect them to be?

Speaker C: 00:10:32

Funny thing with, I mean, yeah. And I've worked with some, I've done quite a lot of, well, screen stuff tends to be new writing anyway, but in theater as well, I've worked with quite a lot of living writers. Um, and sometimes they're a brilliant resource, but quite often the way a writer thinks about a character is it's not that it's at odds with the way an actor has to think about it, but it's, it's not always because they're thinking about the character as a part of a whole. And especially if it's a writer with a kind of political agenda, what they, what they want that character's actions.

Speaker D: 00:11:11

They've got a sort of role within this wider thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:11:14

And they meet and they mean something in a, in a sort of literary sense that character. So, and that's useful and it's useful to know what they're, what you're, it's vital to know what your part of the, of the whole piece is. But in terms of kind of fighting your character's corner, that sort of outs because we, well, I, I don't know if in real life we go through life knowing what our, what our part of our function in the whole piece is. So you can only, you can only fight your characters. You can't act the whole piece, I suppose. And a writer sort of wants to sort of wants the voices in their heads to come out on stage.

Speaker B: 00:11:56

Like, yeah, I guess you, you, but you, a character doesn't know, doesn't know all the other stuff in the world. And in a way that might well interfere with the realism of your performance. If, you know, if, if you start letting the, what is going to happen in the next scene, in fact.

Speaker C: 00:12:12

I think that the great sort of impossible trick to pull off is that the actor knows everything that's going to happen so that they don't fall off stage or walk into the scenery and the character they're playing has no idea. And if you can do those two things at the same time, which I, you know, it is impossible, then you don't, you know, it's that thing of, you see people walking on, you, it's sometimes an actor will walk on stage and they're playing the crisis at the end of the scene, at the beginning of the scene, they walk on in a sort of state and then you think, why are they in that? Oh, I see. Because they, they're getting to where they need to get, but they've done it all off stage. Whereas actually you want to sort of go on the, you're discovering things in the moment, you want to take the audience with you on the journey the character's going through. So if you do it all in the wings, for my money, I'm not, I'm not in danger of being rude about people, then I think that sort of short circuit set and the writer knows everything. So they know where they want the character to go, they know, but you have to sort of, I don't know how to describe it, sort of feign ignorance or ignore the things that you know.

Speaker D: 00:13:18

You need to become sort of like carried on the tide of the narrative. In a sort of ignorant way, like, like a real person would be and sort of come across a situation as if it's novel.

Speaker B: 00:13:29

So I think we've just demonstrated that the inferiority complex that writers have is completely justified. Actors really do look down on them. No, they're brilliant.

Speaker C: 00:13:37

Writers are fantastic. We couldn't do anything we do without writers. It's just that their, their perspective is different to ours and it's not always, it's not always useful. It's often very useful.

Speaker A: 00:13:47

I've got a question for you, Ed, and then I want to bring it back round to you guys, but bringing it back to the first question we asked was about modeling behavior and actually, certainly for me, it was quite surprising that it actually did sound quite analytical what you were saying to me, but what are some characters more difficult to model, some behaviors, some, can you, can you tell me the ones that are more of a struggle? Can you talk to me about those?

Speaker C: 00:14:14

The hardest thing to do is if somebody goes, oh, it's this, well, it's just like you, that's the, the hardest characters to play because you can't, because that analysis is very difficult because it's really hard to turn all those tools. You don't get to see yourself, right? Yeah. And, and, and then, and also there's that thing, you know, like, um, I think of it like so-called naive painters and you try and look at the painting and there's too much detail everywhere because you're not quite sure where your eyes supposed to go in every single bit. It's not that any of it is badly painted, but every single bit is kind of full of detail and popping to the front. And if a character is very close to you and you sort of think, well, I don't need to do anything. And then that kind of the other, the other, the other bit of acting, which is having generated all of that character choosing which bits are then important for the story or for the scene or for the audience. That's very hard to do if, if, if you've got everything, you know, if, if, if every last Twitch stutter thought is, is yours and the characters, then choosing, then that kind of dramaturge in a dramaturge, it's, it's, it's much harder to do. So those are the ones that I think are tricky. If it's complete opposite to you, it's great. That leap into, into, into, into some, some, somebody who isn't you, who does things that you wouldn't do is much easier and more exciting.

Speaker A: 00:15:45

Peter.

Speaker D: 00:15:46

Something occurred, something just occurred to me that this around the analytical process you go through to understand your character and develop it and sort of model it, if for a better word in your head, seems quite sort of top down in that you're sort of, you're given a bit of a brief, you do a bit of research about the character and then you emulate how they might behave. And I'm just sort of trying to, I'm trying to grapple towards trying to understand if acting as a sort of activity is useful for analysis. If, if for example the, the, the, the intelligence people within defense might use actors and say, okay, here's, here's what we know about Kim Jong Il. Can you get into character and help us understand what he might do when presented with a new situation? It seems like you're sort of starting with that end state and working kind of back, whereas analysis would start with all the detail about what they have for breakfast and you know, how his favorite color and what, what, what socks he likes to wear. And then you'd have to sort of build a character up from there. I'm wondering if they're, if that's, if that's right, if they are sort of two slightly opposing approaches.

Speaker C: 00:16:53

I think, well, I mean, like I said, that's, that's very specifically the way I start as an actor. There are lots of actors who the first thing they'll do will be what they have for breakfast and what their favorite color is. And lots of actors talk about finding the right pair of shoes. And I know that sounds daft, but there's something about, um, like a person's direct relationship with the world around them, which I think that, and I think the finding a balance between those two is a great. And so from that analysis of action and, and intention in character, if you then get a sort of whiff of the character or a feeling or a certain walk or a certain something that's physical, it is, then that's, that's then where kind of instincts and everything else take over and you can, and that's when you can take them for a walk out into the world and, and, and discover other things. So that, that sort of very precise analysis can only get you so far. And then you do have to do that. Yeah, I think so.

Speaker B: 00:17:59

It seems to me like superficially my, I would, I would imagine that being able to think about what someone is going to do in a certain situation and having the skills to behave like that, they, they seem to me superficially, but totally different. But you could, you might, you might be able to, um, you know, no, it's a bit like the difference between, you know, a critic or someone who really was really good at analyzing images might be completely unable to reproduce one. But it seems to me that they're not. I mean, based on what you're saying, that actually the two things are really closely related and that, you know, if, when you are actually acting, presumably you in a sense, discover things about what that character is going to do. You, which you, which you wouldn't necessarily, you wouldn't necessarily be able to identify from a purely armchair driven approach that when you're being them in some sense, you're able to hijack some aspects of your, you know, neural architecture to, to discover things just like a simulation, to discover things that you, you didn't know and you weren't consciously putting in there.

Speaker C: 00:18:59

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there comes a point where it's just, you just know a character and you just know what feels right for them to do and what doesn't feel right for them to do. And you know, if you're pushing, like basically you want to get to a place where you're not doing any acting and you say, it's very easy, just stop going to auditions. But I mean, like if you can just like find, find as much as you can through analysis or whatever it is and of, of what feels right about that character and then just let them interact with the world, with the other characters and react and not push anything on, not push any sort of, wouldn't it be interesting if I did this kind of decisions? If you just kind of wind them up, let them go. Then I, that's, that's the sort of acting I really enjoy.

Speaker B: 00:19:47

So I had a question about the improvisation and, and whether or not improvising with a script or let's say just, you know, say normal acting with a script is basically, you know, it's kind of improvising with a little bit of a constraint or whether it's really very different.

Speaker C: 00:20:03

No, I think it's, I think, I mean, there are always things that are set. Stage tends to be, there's a bit more wiggle room if you're on screen, you know, you have to hit your marks and you, if you're doing several takes and you have to do the time. But within all of those, you know, what you have to, where you have to be and what you have to say, all of those things are set. But I think there always has to be what I suppose you could call improvisation or just a kind of living reaction to what's happening around you because those, because then it stops being acting and it starts being watching. Although it's a, it's, you know, it's a fiction. It's also, it's also real in a sense.

Speaker B: 00:20:42

You use the word skeleton. I feel like probably all those, the constraints feel to me like the skeleton. You know, and then you're painting the flesh on, which is actually the bit we see, you know? Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:20:53

So as analysts from, I mean, it's been a relatively sort of brief overview, but from what Ed has said so far, as analysts, what do you feel that he has talked about and his method that he's talked about that you could benefit from?

Speaker B: 00:21:10

Well, I mean, I would be really interested to experiment and to find out, you know, whether or not people asked to make predictions about what someone would do are going to be less accurate than trained actors. And my instinct is that they probably would be considerably less accurate. I feel, I feel like, I think the process that Ed's described feels to me like it is going to reliably produce, you know, a better insight into someone's motivation and behaviour. And I'm not sure whether that's the analytical bit of what he's talking about or whether it's the skill of being able to simulate someone else's behaviour. But I think I feel like, you know, it sounds obviously potentially really useful. The only thing is, having looked into the evidence, right? I've discovered that the world of acting is very, you're sitting down, lads. We've got a great pun coming up. Understudied.

Speaker D: 00:22:05

No, but it is.

Speaker B: 00:22:06

It really is surprising. There's very, actually very little. There's, there have been some studies done on, you know, what actors are experiencing. And it seems that they're not, actors don't actually experience the emotions that they're portraying, but they do, it is an emotional thing to do. But actually, I have to say, I'm not, I don't put much credence in most of this. So I think basically, my prior probability would be that actually, I would, I think actors might be some, you know, able to shed light on these kinds of questions and, but it's worth testing. Hold on.

Speaker A: 00:22:41

I've just, there's a business opportunity here because actors are noted for often being resting, right? He's done it, he's done it. He's used it, he's hit the cliche. But it sounds like there's, hey, there's a market here. All these people are wonderful at studying and knowing how humans are going to behave. We've got all these organizations wondering how, you know, what these people are going to do, what's going to happen. We've got all these actors sitting around doing nothing. Just hold on there. But hold on, I know Peter wants to come in with something and I'm sure Ed would like to respond to what I've just said as well.

Speaker D: 00:23:12

Well, likewise, I'd like to experiment because we know there's more evidence that the use of actors has benefit in other areas, such as training and development to provide a simulated environment for the people under assessment or people under training to have a realistic environment. So my sister's an actor and one of her sources of work is she does role play for junior doctors in hospitals. So she will be, recently she's had a good line of being a pregnant patient because she was pregnant until recently. And so, yeah, she would come in and be deliberately sort of, well, simulate a real person and perhaps sort of naturally be slightly obstructive or difficult or unable to describe their symptoms. So for the doctors to then practice elicitation and sort of questioning them in a useful, constructive way. So it's used in police and law enforcement doing a similar sort of thing. And it's generally appreciated as being a good way, a good use of it. So I think there's a shame really that the scientific arts and the artistic arts have been separated in this way. And of course, you know, we're rediscovering the sort of utility of this.

Speaker C: 00:24:29

I want to hear from Ed first. Well, just my only caveat to what Nick was saying about using actors to help analysis is that another part of the job is that we are always, of all the options before us, we're trying to find the most interesting choice, the most dramatic choice. So because that's the nature of a piece of theatre or a film is you're watching people in crisis making the decisions that are often in crisis because it's drama or they're in a particular moment in their life where there are incredible pressures on them. And the sort of choices they're making are the ones that lead to the next dramatic situation or the next farcical situation. So our instinct will always, if we're looking at someone will always be rather than something mundane. It will always be something dramatic and and that might skew our analysis of real world.

Speaker D: 00:25:30

I suspect if presented with an option of going to work for some slightly dusty old part of the defence to help them model how the particular people that you'll never get exposure for because the work you'll be doing is inherently secretive. A lot of actors are probably driven by exposure and fame.

Speaker B: 00:25:46

It'd be great though to have you know advisor to defence, acting advisor to defence. Top gun actor.

Speaker A: 00:25:54

We're actually fairly close to needing to wrap up but before we do there's at least one question I've got and I'm sure we'll have time for others. Quick question. Are you familiar with the Fraser method of acting? You probably know all sorts but I don't know if you know that one. Let me take notes. Okay, it's inspired by the Fraser method of analysis and decision making which actually to not do an awful lot this is more or less binary turn up go yeah it'll be all right. I'll go for that one. Okay so my question is this the Fraser method. Do you know, are there actors who you know of and perhaps who we might know of who are famous for just kind of because you talked a lot about the analysis that you do in the research you do into a character. Are there some actors who just rock up sort of yeah I can do that and give an amazing performance or however one might define that or are there actors like that who are kind of rather frowned upon in the industry and thought of being a bit hammy and a bit useless so can you talk to me a bit about that? He will never name names. I'm not going to name names.

Speaker C: 00:26:50

We want him to but he won't. Yeah and I think there's a lot to be said for I mean I if I have time to do that pencil and paper stuff I love it but quite often you don't get the chance to do it. Quite often the script has been rewritten that morning and you get it as you're sitting in the makeup chair and you have to be able to do it instantly and sometimes maybe quite often that quick instinct if it's a character you've got an idea about beforehand that quick instinctual reaction can be as rich maybe even better because it's because it's an entirely human reaction and loads of it. I mean the people the guys who do like soap act I don't know why people are rude about soap actors the way they work is extraordinary. I did a um casualty is not quite a sort of a soap but a casualty a few years ago and just the amount of storylines they have in their head and and they're filming in blocks so they've they're filming something that's from a different episode and going back and and they the speed that they get a new a rewritten script and respond to it and make it live it's extraordinary and that but that comes from knowing those characters very well situations very well but yeah I mean I think most most actors worth their salt will be able to go quickly into doing something.

Speaker A: 00:28:11

Right so there's still a chance there for me to make it then right. So before we finish off I've got one question I want to ask however some sort of summing up is anything either of you two would like to say?

Speaker B: 00:28:22

Well just an observation really which is that um you know we were talking about uh well could actors um help shed insight into the behavior of other people the one profession you might expect to do that which is psychologists are they will it's a bit like talking about resting in front of an actor if you say to them so do you know what I'm thinking or what I'm going to say they it's like that's the number one psychology cliche but why don't why can't they like you'd if psychologists can't do it well I say it's time to give the acting profession a shot.

Speaker A: 00:28:50

Yeah okay yeah I like that um well when the revolution comes and you know actors can yeah become the new psychologists um okay so here's my question I can't have an actor in the room and not ask about characters and favorite characters but make sure it's a character that we're all familiar with let's concentrate on a Shakespeare character okay so what I would like you to tell us Ed is either your favorite Shakespeare character in general or uh the favorite Shakespeare part that you have played um and and the reasons why and similarly for us I'd like us non-actors um to think about you know who our favorite Shakespeare character is as well.

Speaker D: 00:29:31

I've always been quite uh quite fond of Puck from Midsummer Night's Dream because he's just such a troublemaker he's a dick he's a dick yeah but he's kind of like a lovable rogue you know he's a lovable dick you know he just wants to mess things around and doesn't really listen to his boss or his boss's wife or doesn't really care what people think people yeah he just wants to mess around he's a low-key kind of character

Speaker B: 00:29:54

mm-hmm I think I think my uh mine would be uh John Falstaff ah you got there first uh sorry you got there first oh no I don't I won't say that name to do it

Speaker A: 00:30:04

it's all right it's all right no no well no because it might be very different reasons

Speaker B: 00:30:07

well I mean actually it could be because I I'm obviously not thinking about it in terms of what that character is like to inhabit but what he's like to uh experience as a viewer and um you know the I think of because he crops up in you know multiple plays uh you see the development of his character and and it is really it's sort of this fantastic tragedy of seeing this sort of once great you know heroic sort of um lovable center of the world's attention and you know uh gradually lose his status and and you know decline and and he just has that wonderful speech in um in Henry the fourth part two where he's you know reminded of the old times and he suddenly he sort of says oh you know the the the um he's talking about we've heard the chimes at midnight and reminiscing and sort of realizing how long ago that was and and that's the you see this moment where he you know he he um sort of suddenly realizes how sort of far in the world he's he's fallen against his own aspirations but um yeah sorry sorry ed i know i should have let

Speaker A: 00:31:16

the pro go first no i want to say mine um no so mine actually i'm going to break the rules from my own game um it's actually not a shakespeare character no one left by the time you get here no so i actually mine is um the pardoner from the pardoner's tale from Chaucer um because which i recognize it's not shakespeare character but um he's just he's not even in a play well but it's a story it could be acted out i'm sure actually no i've no it's play enough um he's just such a he's a just such a caricature almost villain bad guy and there's something quite sort of you know with his scrawny neck and and he's just so kind of oily and horrible but quite funny as well and a bit of a chancer and uh yeah he's the guy i like so that's one of my favorite characters the other one i was gonna say is actually again i'm cheating because it's not actually a character but from uh paperclips i love paperclips is from king lear because i just think it's such a great line that is shakes yeah i know it is but it's not a character wait so it's the line that i like not necessarily the character which is out vile jelly uh which i think is edmund i think is it and is it glostery does that too yeah when he's gouging his eyes out with his thumb or in some productions with a spoon um but anyway um ed well i'm gonna

Speaker C: 00:32:34

i'm gonna stick with full staff too uh but for lots of the reasons you said but i think and and it's actually it's also the pardon i think what shakespeare does brilliantly is those is the villains that we love like richard iii that even though we know what they're doing is terrible and appalling when they turn to us and tell us what they're doing they're so brilliant and witty and charming that we go along with what they're thinking and and we sort of want them to succeed and full stuff's not a villain in that sense although if you look at what he doesn't he does go and rob people and sends a load of people to war to be shot to pieces who shouldn't go you know he does some pretty appalling things but but there's something in him there's a kind of humanity and and and brilliance even though it's corrupted and pissed and sort of psychopathic charm well that's definitely true with richard um yeah maybe full stuff is as well but i think and i'm hopefully not going to play him for a few years but i think there's something really compelling about those and then there's the moment which richard iii has as well that although he draws himself back from it those some moments of insight into themself where you go oh you do know what you're doing but you still can't break the pattern that i think i just find him endlessly

Speaker A: 00:33:55

compelling which brings us right back around to sort of modeling human behavior and understanding humans and yeah so therefore it should be no surprise the insights that we could get on this sort of stuff of analysis of human behavior from an actor um so we'll wrap up there um thank you very much to all of you so we've been here with nick here and peter coghill of aleph insights but most especially thank you very much to our special guest ed kingsley thank you very much for joining us um and until next time goodbye