Christopher Eccleston Talks ‘The A Word’ and the Final Season of ‘The Leftovers’

Christopher Eccleston, Morven Christie, and Max Vento in ‘The A Word’ (SundanceTV)

We’ve loved him as Doctor Who and The Leftovers pastor Matt Jamison, and Christopher Eccleston is just as compelling as he tackles a first in his acting career with the new Sundance TV drama The A Word: He’s playing a grandpa.

The British actor portrays Maurice, a small-town granddad whose 5-year-old grandson, Joe, is on the autism spectrum. The new diagnosis rattles Joe’s mom and dad, and has a big impact on the rest of the family too, including the outspoken Maurice. The whole Hughes family, in fact, is not so adept at communicating with one another, leading to resentments, bruised feelings, misunderstandings, affairs, and more than a little humor, as The A Word is just as much an honest deep dive into the family’s dynamics as it is a thoughtful examination of autism and its effects.

Related: ‘The A Word’ Review: An Autism Drama With Humor and Love

A British adaptation of an Israeli series, The A Word is filled with fine, endearing performances, including an amazing debut for child actor Max Vento, and a scene-stealing romance between Eccleston and Pooky Quesnel, who, the actor shares with Yahoo TV, were once a real-life couple.

Eccleston also shares the challenges of working with such a young actor on such a complex topic and how Maurice is not your grandpa’s grandpa, and he offers a little peek at how his other great cable drama, The Leftovers, will wrap up its three-season run on HBO.

This is a wonderful family of characters to spend time with, and it’s great news that The A Word has been renewed for a second season.
Thank you. We’re very proud of it, and we’re all very excited to be going back to do more. Of course, what we can do… the boy will age, and the challenges change as the child with autism changes, ages. It’s going to impact [the family] in different ways, and we’re very fortunate to be able to explore that.

Will the story jump ahead in time, will different actors play Joe?
No. We’re going to be dictated to by [Max Vento, who portrays Joe] … he will be the actor who of course is not on the spectrum, but he’s performing it. He will be just over a year older, and so there will be changes in him, which we will use in the drama. I would imagine for Max it will be a different experience, because the first time around he was green. Now, interesting for me, that child will have had an opportunity to watch himself, like actors do. I’ll be interested to see how that affects him. Perhaps he’ll feel more ownership of the whole thing. I don’t know. It will be very intriguing to watch.

Was this his first big role?
As far as I know, yes. If he’d done anything else, and I don’t think he had, he’d certainly not done anything of this size, magnitude, no way.

What was that experience like for the cast? This young actor not only is inexperienced, but the whole topic is a lot for even adults to wrap their heads around.
What was it that W.C. Fields said? “Never work with children or animals.” It means a lot of patience. The boy, because of his age, didn’t really understand the notion of acting, so we would have shorthand for him. The big shorthand was, “Pretend to be dreaming,” because in the first few edits, Max did seem too engaged, was too socially aware. Obviously he gave a beautiful performance, but it was also a time for editing. We often shot the child when he was unaware, which is a thing that, for instance, [director] Ken Loach would do. [Catching] unguarded moments. … I don’t know what age you would have to be as a child to understand the notion of performing autism. It’s a difficult concept for a child that age.

And for people of every age — which is among the many issues the series deals with, how deeply and widely it affects everyone. Especially when parents Paul (Lee Ingleby) and Alison (Morven Christie) begin to fully understand that Joe’s differences are going to make his life harder.
Yeah. A friend of mine whose child is on the spectrum, he said a very profound thing to me once. In the first couple of years of understanding that his child was on the spectrum, he said, “You know, Chris, you worry about your children, you worry about what’s going to happen to your children when you die, but if your child is in some way on the spectrum, you worry even more.” That thing of who is going to be there for him. And, of course it can have a massive impact on siblings, in that sometimes they feel duty-bound throughout their lives to look after their sibling. I think it’s a very interesting area … we can perhaps cover the affects on Rebecca, the older sister, of that responsibility, of the sense that possibly she didn’t get as much attention. It’s a cocktail of a family, the impact. You’re confronted with your humanity time and time again with it, I think.

I think that’s what’s so beautiful about this story, too. It does address all of those things, how it affects Rebecca, Joe’s uncle and aunt, Alison and Paul’s relationship and their businesses, Joe’s classmates and teachers. There are no good guys or bad guys. You understand everybody’s reactions.
We’re all in a gray area. What it does when you’re a blood relation to a child on the spectrum, it makes you examine yourself eventually. With somebody like Maurice, in time he may start taking into consideration some of his own communication quirks, which are many. It forces the mother, the father, the sibling, the grandfather, to examine their own personalities. It’s an enormous sea change for a family, really the stuff of great drama, I think.

What specifically attracted you to the story and to playing Maurice?
Maurice was the first opportunity I had to play a grandfather. I’ve played dads, but I’ve not played granddads. There was a comedic element to Maurice, which I have not been given the opportunity to explore. I’ve not done that. I’ve been Mister Intense all my life, really. There’s a lightness that is required that I really enjoyed. And I think you could possibly suggest that Maurice himself may well be on the spectrum. Some of Maurice’s communication tactics are questionable, to say the least. Peter Bowker’s beautiful writing … Peter created the character, Maurice, and it was just a gift to an actor, really. A gift.

There are a lot of lighter moments throughout, especially for Maurice, running through the mountains to deal with, or avoid dealing with, his feelings, taking singing lessons. Were those fun parts of playing the character?
Yeah. I have identical twin brothers who are eight years older than me. Both of them were grandfathers by the time they were 52, which was my age when I played Maurice. They were both still very physically active. The sexual relationship between Maurice and Louise, the piano teacher … we wanted to say, once you get into middle age, it doesn’t all stop, at all. We felt there was a really interesting area to have middle-aged people discussing having sex, because the culture is so youth and beauty obsessed. There’s some comedy in it, but there’s hopefully some sweetness and some humanity in Louise declaring that she has sexual needs, and Maurice’s insecurity, the kind of insecurity you’d have as an adolescent boy. I’ve forgotten the question, I’m sorry, I just started rambling.

No, that’s great. And there is a lot of sweetness between Maurice and Louise as they embark on this awkward new relationship. Without spoiling anything specific, there are some things that happen later in the season that make that relationship more complicated. Do you think there’s hope for them to repair that in Season 2?
I don’t know what they’re going to do script-wise, but certainly when you play a character you have instincts, and I felt that the challenge that Louise offered to Maurice, in being herself and being so strong and standing up to him, I think that excites him. I think there’s a side of Maurice that is very open to change. I think it’s quite a nice idea that this suddenly retired man thought, “I know, I’ll go and have singing lessons.” He didn’t go there for predatory reasons. There was nothing predatory about it. It was just a bit of self improvement, “I’ll go and have singing lessons,” and his life changes. The strength of Louise and her directness, I think he’s in love with her. I don’t think he knows it, I don’t think he recognizes it, but I think he’s in love with her. Maurice will be doing a lot more running after Louise, I would imagine, in Series 2. It’s [about] whether she wants to be caught.

Is it true that Pooky Quesnel, the actress who plays Louise, was your girlfriend when you were teenagers?
We dated. I was from quite a tough school. I went to this sixth form college, and suddenly I was thrust into this very middle class environment where people weren’t interested in fighting; they were interested in learning. I was able to come out of myself, and I became a bit of an extrovert around the college, and a drama teacher said to me, “If you’re going to mess around out there, you might as well come and mess around in here.” He cast me in a comedic musical called Lock Up Your Daughters, and I played the romantic lead, and I fell in love with the girl who played Hilaret. The girl who played Hilaret was Pooky Quesnel. I asked her out, and we had a chaste relationship for nine months, then she broke my heart into a million pieces. We didn’t see each other for about 10 years, and then I found her, and we were both in other relationships, and we have this enormous, very, very deep — because we’ve both had challenges in our lives — friendship, and then we were cast opposite each other as lovers, and there is complete trust between the two of us. The filmmakers were unaware of our history. Yes, she’s one of my best friends in the world, Pooky. We were born within a couple of miles of each other. We are very close. For us to do this now, having done a play 33 years ago, is a real gift.

There’s great chemistry between the two of you, and Maurice and Louise. They’re a very attractive couple.
Thank you very much. It’s trust. The chemistry comes from trust. We can speak to each other between takes, with the director, and I’ll take notes off to Pooky, and Pooky will too, because we know each other. Pooky once said to me, “You’re really good when you don’t try too hard,” and that was a very good note from another actor. Just throw it away a little, relax on it a little, take some of the intensity out of it.

How did you find out that you both were going to play these characters in a romantic relationship?
I was cast, and I spoke to Marcus Wilson the producer, and I said it was very important who is playing Louise. He said, “An actress called Pooky Quesnel,” and I just kept my mouth shut. I thought, “I’ll just leave this until it’s absolutely signed and sealed,” because sometimes people go, “They know each other? Is that really OK?” As soon as it was signed and sealed, we told them all. They were delighted. I have a very close relationship with Peter Bowker. This is the third drama I’ve made with Peter. There’s a real sense of unity between us all.

Did it feel like you became a family making this project?
Yes, it did. I could certainly locate elements of Alison’s behavior in Maurice. I think Alison is the only woman, the only human being, that Maurice is slightly scared of. It’s an interesting dynamic. It did feel like a family, yeah, it really did. We were fortunate, because we all got along, and that doesn’t always happen. Chemistry is often about luck. Sometimes you get unlucky, and we got very lucky on this one, very.

When will you begin filming Season 2?
March of 2017. Which will be a relief, because we filmed through the winter [for Season 1], and it was very tough on the lakes. The idea that we’re going to go through spring and summer is going to make it an easier shoot for us all. It’s an extreme environment up there. When the weather is against you, it can get really challenging, in terms of achieving your day and achieving your call sheet.

It is a beautiful area, though, and it really was like another character in the story.
It is beautiful. That sense of isolation was important as well for the family, the idea that we weren’t in an inner city. It gave us something.

Where exactly did you film?
We filmed in the Lake District, which is in northwest England. It’s quite a hilly terrain, it’s quite a rugged terrain. You get a lot of rain. I used to go to the lakes as a child, on holidays, because I’m from Salford, which is maybe a 90-minute drive from the Lake District.

So you were familiar with that area already. Good for all those times Maurice was out there running up and down those mountains.
Yeah. You’re doing very short takes, but I do that kind of thing anyway. I am that kind of lunatic. I’ve done about five London marathons. For 25 years, I ran 10 miles a day, seven days a week. The last couple of years I’ve stopped that, and I do five miles a day and go to the gym, because I’m getting old.

Maurice doesn’t look like what we typically think a grandfather might look like, and that’s a cool aspect of the story too.
It is. As I was saying, my brothers, Alan and Keith, when they became grandfathers, they didn’t look like grandfathers, so it’s not unusual to me. My father is passed now, but my mom and my brothers are very fortunate. They look a good 10 years younger than [they are]. We wanted that for Maurice, because we wanted his physicality and his sexuality.

Eccleston in Season 2 of The Leftovers. (Ryan Green/HBO)

I also have to ask you about The Leftovers. The third and final season is coming up. Have you started filming?
Yeah. We started in May in Austin, Texas. We did two full episodes, and we did some interiors for Episodes 3 and 4. We started shooting in Melbourne, Australia, about one month ago. Six episodes in Melbourne. I go out there on the 23rd of July until the 1st of October, to film my involvement. We’re only doing eight episodes. It’s always been part of Damon [Lindelof]’s plan for Australia to be part of the story, and I’m very excited to go out there. We are like a family, actually, on that show, too. Again, we were very fortunate with chemistry, no divas.

And that’s really, I have to say, down to Justin Theroux. He has led us impeccably in terms of his punctuality, his generosity, his sense of humor. The crew loved Justin, and that’s very important for a leading man. He sets the tone for every actor stepping onto that set. If the leading man is as polite and generous as that, then we’ve got a chance. It’s all gone under the radar with Justin, but I think when these three seasons are [completed], critically they’re going to look at what he did, and it’s a very, very truthful and subtle performance, and it doesn’t get enough attention, for my money, anyway.

Are you sad it’s ending, or do you feel like it’s time?
No, me and Justin have already had a teary moment about that. We are very sad. Damon has said to me he feels it’s the best work he’s done in his career. We’ve put a lot of emotional investment in the characters, because they’ve gone through so many extremes. So much has happened to all those characters, and it’s been written very truthfully.

The first season, we were kind of vilified critically, and nobody watched us, but HBO, to their credit, had faith, and then the second season … I’ve never seen a television show reviewed that well. It was across the board, but unfortunately we still struggled a bit with viewers. HBO has recognized Damon’s talent, and they’re going to allow us to finish the story. I feel like in five, six years, people will look back at the three series of The Leftovers as a little bit of a benchmark. It’s a credit to HBO that they’ve let us tell this story, complete it. That fires us up as a crew. We’re like, “OK, they’ve looked after us, so now we’re going to give them something special.” We’ve got to try and top Series 2.

We know we had problems in Series 1. We know that. We’re not fools. We also know that with Series 2, we really delivered. Now we can’t let it drop. The pressure is really on us now. We’re never going to be giving answers about whether it was a religious thing or whether it was a natural phenomenon. We’re not interested in that. What we’re interested in is the journey of the characters and where they end. Where do they end emotionally? Of course, they won’t end. They will kind of do what we all do: They’ll hit another stage of life, and they’ll either go on or they won’t.

The A Word airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Sundance.