Soap doc talks about his elevation to god in Supernatural and we give away season five DVDs

How does one make it from Albert Square to LA?
I has always been interested in working out in the States. American television seems to be going through some kind of Golden Age, really fantastic writing. Obviously the possibilities in terms of film are fantastic. I also have family out here in California.
I have had a manager out here for years, I just thought after EastEnders I would come out and see what was buzzing out here.

Were you surprised to leave after less than a year in Enders?
I had a break clause in my contract at around the same time I got my Green Card, which I had been working on for a while. I just thought that the two things coming together seemed right. 
My storylines seemed to be quite small, not much to do. It is always frustrating as an actor to be engaged on a project and not used much.
 
Did you anticipate juicer storylines?
Yeah, there is certainly a plan with the writers and the producers and so forth but when you do a soap and there's lots of interest in characters that have been very established you have to wait your turn to get in the bigger storylines. I totally understand that set up. It just seemed that instead of my storylines getting bigger they were getting smaller, from the rather medium state they started at in the first place.
Also Al, as much as I love him, there is nothing harder than playing a nice guy. I have played a lot of bad guys in my time and I find them infinitely more fascinating
The Americans are very good at this, you need to sort of imbue good guys with anti-heroic qualities to make them interesting and I don't think Al had any of that. He was just a straight down the line type of guy.

How did get the job on Supernatural?
I was blessed. I arrived in LA and I started casting around and I think in about a week they offered me the part in Supernatural
We shot it up in Vancouver over the time of the Vancouver Olympics. It was great. Not only was it my first job in the States but to head over to Vancouver and be there for the Olympics, get all that vibe at the same time...
 
What can you tell us about the role?
He is Baldur, the Norse god of light. In terms of the research I did on him his one special quality is he can't be killed. In Norse mythology he was so beloved and full of light and intelligence that his mother Frigg worried that people would get jealous of him and want to do him harm. So she went round all of creation and made everybody and everything, animate and inanimate, promise never to hurt him. For sport the gods would throw spears and rocks at him and they would just glance off.
Enter Loki who knows the one thing that Baldur's mother Frigg didn't manage to make promise was lowly mistletoe, which she either forgot about or just thought it was of such low importance it could never do him any harm. Loki fashioned an arrow and got Baldur's brother, who was blind, to fire it at him and this killed him.
Christmas is not a good time for Baldur.
 
You have dark hair and dark eyes, not terribly Norse looking.
I guess the idea is that gods are immortal so they travel through history and their look changes through time. They are modernised versions of the gods.
 
Is Baldur a good guy or bad guy?
It is a little hard to tell but it is interesting whatever he is. This is what I am talking about the quality of the American writing, it sort of three-dimensionalises the characters.
 
Did you get any fight scenes?
I certainly did, not with the lads, but with another character. I love all that. I love the action stuff. It is just such a break from having to deliver lines. One of my favourite things was in a movie ages ago where we did wire work and it made us be able to do huge jumps and fly around and all that.

What did you make of Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles who play Sam and Dean?
Jared, he is enormous isn't he? I couldn't believe it. When they both walked in I assumed they would be pretty normal sized guys with Jared a little bit taller. But Jared is six foot four and Jensen is six foot two. They are pretty imposing. You don't expect it. You constantly think every actor is off It's A Small World. The guy is a giant.

The cast and crew have been working together a long time, did they welcome you into the fold, or play any practical jokes?
Everybody on the show was very welcoming. The lads are practical jokers but there were a bunch of us for this episode so there weren't any.
They were also a little distracted. Jared was in the process of organising his bachelor party in Vegas and has subsequently got married (to former co-star Genevieve Cortese who is now appearing in Flashforward). He was on his phone all the time.
And Jensen was not far behind. He will be married soon (to Danneel Harris, best known for One Tree Hill). Plus they were really, really long days so we didn't really do a lot of partying.
Saying that my cousin was in town who was the coach of the Italian snowboarding team. At night he had VIP access to all the clubs in Vancouver so I went out with him and hung out with some Olympians.

Did you get mickey taken out of you because Britain only won one medal?
To be fair we weren't represented in a lot of the events. This winter excepted we don't have that much snow to practice on. Saying that we do have this propensity to really pull it out of the bag. I think one of our cyclists who won at the Olympics a few years ago had basically been training on a stationary bike in the shed at the bottom of the garden. That is so English. There are no huge teams, people pumping you full of all the right vitamins and nutrients. Our guy goes to the bottom of his garden, gets on his stationary bike.
That is what I love about the English, their fantastic eccentricity.

You could now find yourself in demand on the Supernatural convention circuit. The fans can be quite enthusiastic.
When I was on EastEnders Laurie Brett, who plays Jane Beale, said 'You do know that your life is going to change now?' I was like 'yeah, yeah, yeah'. And she goes 'No, you are not hearing me'. Anyway I was on the bus one day and this 'Ere, aren't you that doctor from EastEnders?' was shouted across the bus. Suddenly everybody on the bus was now keyed into this. And it travelling at 30 miles an hour. And the doors were firmly closed. I was mobbed. On a bus.
I bought a motorbike after that so I could ride around in a helmet.
It is weird though. You walk down Oxford street and people stop you for a photograph and the mate you are with is being asked to hold all the bags and take the photo.
I am mortified when my friends are asked to hold the bags. Most often the mate offers and before you know it they're a coat rack.
You have just got to be polite. If people really enjoy the show you just want to help promote that show.
The author Kurt Vonnegut put it pretty well, he said television is providing artificial friends and family for people who don't have any and I think that really holds true, There are a lot of people in the world who are lonely for whatever reason and you come into their lives, maybe daily, maybe weekly, and fill a gap I guess.
There are times, and I have noticed this more with theatre jobs, that there are certain fans who come to the stage door who are a little bit desperate in a way. I believe in treating everybody with respect, I think that is the only way forward, but there are times when you think 'this is a little bit intense'.
 
Is there a chance for a return visit to Supernatural now it has been picked up for a sixth season?
People are constantly dying and coming back or disappearing and coming back in it so I guess, should they like what I have done and should they see a need for him again...I'd go back in a flash.
 
Were you a fan of the show?
I hadn't really watched it until I knew I had the job and then I got all the discs out and had a good look at it. My good friend in London is probably the show's biggest fan and she literally flipped out when I told her that was my first job. She filled me in with all the details.
I had a couple of photographs taken with the Chevy Impala and sent them across to her and she was like 'I can't believe it'. But I have got fan cards from the guys coming to her now so she owes me big.

How did you get into acting?
I was always interested in being an astronaut oddly enough and then after a while I realised the reason I wanted to be an astronaut is because I had seen it on films and on the telly. When it was explained to me what it was an actor did I thought 'well I can be astronaut and I can be other things too'. So I got into school plays and so on, went to university and studied for about four years.
 
You are originally from Zimbabwe.
My folks are English but I was born and raised out there. I went to high school and uni in South Africa. A Welsh director by the name of Sean Mathias was out there casting for a play he had written. The play didn't happen but he said 'Why don't you come across to London and be in my next play, which is Antony and Cleopatra with Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman?'
So I came over to London and, thankfully, just kept working.

You don't have an obvious accent.
It just became clear to me it was quite limiting having a South African or Zimbabwean accent in the UK. I mean, how many parts are there for those? It just made sense to lose it.
But I think I have got two of the major villain accents covered, English and South African. They are always the bad guys.

Was it hard leaving friends and your girlfriend behind in London?
It is always hard. I have done it a few times, I have done it Zimbabwe to South Africa, South Africa to London, London to LA and it gets a bit much. Saying that, air travel is relatively cheap compared with what it used to be, then there's the internet.

What are your plans for the future?
I want to be wherever the work is. I love the work in the UK but at the moment there is just not that much of it around. Everybody takes the strain of the recession, there are budgetary constraints everywhere. This enormous mushrooming of reality TV, where are the dramas?
In the US although there are more actors there is more out there in the offing.

Can it be quite ruthless in America with pilots being made and not picked up or shows bring cut after a few episodes or one season?
You can't take things personally. You just have to keep on keeping on, accept jobs and see where that takes you. A lot of actors say 'I'd never do that' but artistically you can never tell what you are going to learn, what skills you are going to get and what contacts you are going to make from a job. George Clooney was in Return of The Killer Tomatoes!, one of the worst films of all time and now he is one of the major players in Hollywood.
A wise American said to me 'don't protect the career that you don't have'. Good advice I think.

The first 11 episodes of season five of Supernatural have just been released on DVD this week which sees the Winchester boys dealing with the fact that Lucifer is on the loose.
Things take a turn for the apocalyptic with the coming of the four horsemen, there is a demonic bounty on Dean's head, the Devil wants Sam's body for a meat suit while the archangel Michael wants Dean's, pitching brother against brother.
Supernatural Season 5 Volume 1 DVD will include: Sympathy for the Devil; Good God, Y'all!; Free to Be You and Me; The End; Fallen Idols; I Believe The Children Are Our Future; The Curious Case of Dean Winchester; Changing Channels; The Real Ghostbusters; Abandon All Hope; Sam, Interrupted
It has 43 minutes of extras and a deleted scene from The Real Ghostbusters. It is released by Warner Home Video and has 15 certificate.
We have five copies of the DVD to give away.
For your chance to win one just answer this question.

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Email entries are free. Competition opens April 28, 2010 and closes May 5, 2010. Open to UK residents aged 18/over only. Please ask bill payers permission before entering. There is no cash alternative. Std Trinity Mirror rules apply see www.trinitymirror-midlands.co.uk/rules.