“I’ve got a special place in my heart for The Terror,” he says. “Because it’s still being discovered. It didn’t get a good outing the first time around. But there’s an incredibly loyal fan base, and it has gone on to achieve a kind of cult status. I’m not recognised on the street very often. Women of a certain age know me from The Crown. For men of a certain age it’s Morbius or Resident Evil. But with younger people it’s often The Terror.”
The Terror, it is safe to say, did not attract quite so much attention. “It’s amazing in that it’s out there and it’s constantly being discovered,” Jared says, “but it was poorly served when it first came out. I think the BBC were interested in it but they didn’t offer as much money up front as BT TV, who were trying to branch out from sports stuff, and of course they didn’t have anybody watching and they didn’t put anybody behind it.
“But yeah, it’s constantly being discovered and that fandom behind The Terror is exceptional. During the run of The Homecoming, loads of Terror people showed up at the Young Vic, and I mean these guys have got tattoos on their arms of the ships, and one of them has a tattoo on her leg of Hickey. Incredibly loyal. It was a really, really good piece, and deserved to get a better outing first time around but it’s achieved a kind of cult status now I think.”
— Jared Harris on The Terror and the fans (again!) [x]
New interview with Jared Harris talking about The Terror (briefly)
Interviewer: One show that I’m pretty sure, maybe 4 years ago? If I’d asked you what you wanted to go to bat for, you might have picked The Terror…
Jared Harris: The Terror, yeah, I love the Terror. Well, The Terror’s sort of suddenly got this new life now on Netflix. But it was—and then become a kind of a cult classic. It’s really good. It’s one of my favourite things that I’ve ever been involved in.
Interviewer: Is it?
Jared Harris: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause a great cast. Just fantastic, you know, good, solid… brilliant character acting, ‘cause great actors. And we all got along really well.
Jared Harris was interviewed on The Ryan Tubridy Show and briefly spoke about The Terror
Ryan Tubridy: We have to go, but I wanted to congratulate you on Chernobyl, of course—
Jared Harris: Thank you.
RT: Which you were so remarkable in. And, uh, everyone said The Terror, The Crown…
Jared: Yeah, The Terror’s a special one in my heart.
RT: I thought The Terror was great, because I—
Jared: Yeah.
RT: As a guy who kind of watches the Shackleton story closely—
Jared: Yeah.
RT: And, I thought The Terror brought it all…
Jared: I’m surprised— I was surprised that one wasn’t sort of taken up more in Ireland, given that the—
RT: Same.
Jared: You know, it’s about— Crozier is an Irish character—
RT: Yeah.
Jared: Who was sort of bumping up against the glass ceiling at that time of what— what was achievable in a career for an Irishman.
RT: Completely. And yeah, Tom Crean had done something—
Jared: In American culture— in English culture, yeah.
RT: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But it was a stunning piece of television.
Jared: Yeah.
RT: A very interesting piece of television, too.
Jared: Yeah.
Gordon has been sharing some of his favourite memories from shooting the series to mark the fifth anniversary.
A few choice extracts...
“My Budapest hotel room neighbour was Anthony Flanagan, who played John Morfin, and because we spent so much time together on set, we became good friends and would spend a lot of time wandering around together taking in the sights.
“I also remember getting an invite to Tobias Menzies’ birthday party in Budapest and thinking how much my life had changed, as Fintry used to be my cut off point for parties!”
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“It was a joy watching Paul Ready play [Goodsir] so compassionately and I loved sharing scenes with him. When you’re playing very emotional roles, you try to break out and have fun between takes to keep yourself sane.
We had a lot of fun between takes. For instance, the costume department would come around and take photos of you for continuity, then the next morning you would have a photo left in your trailer so you could make sure everything was exactly as it was the day before.
One morning I went into my trailer and looked at my continuity photo and Paul was standing in the background making a very rude gesture towards me!”
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“I was invited to a private screening of the first three episodes in London and after helping a very lost Tobias Menzies to find the venue, I sat down and watched the show. Within the first 10 minutes I knew it would be a hit: the writing, the direction, the music, the cinematography, the acting – everything about it was brilliant!”
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Gordon said he has never encountered such a passionate fandom, which he described as being an array of “extremely talented, knowledgeable and just plain lovely people”.
Still, there’s a dignity I find in both your heroes and villains — you can see their argument.
If you’re in the hands of a good writer, they’ve fully inhabited the world of every character. You’re the lead of your own life, and every human being approaches life that way. That’s one of the things I thought Dave Kajganich did so well in “The Terror.” And quite often, that’s not the case. More often than not, they’re just focused on the main characters, so you have to provide all that yourself. And sometimes that means you need to do a little bit of rewriting, ad-libbing.
If anyone is missing our weekly Terror Q&A antics, someone on twitter found a recording of a 2018 live panel with Jared Harris and Tobias Menzies from the Madrid premiere!
