PHASE page 6

So I finally hit the set. It was a totally professional production with a crew of about 20 people. The director of photography was a guy who had done a commercial for my gym a while back. He was good. Really good. People ran about, to and fro. It was totally full on.

Sky had been really smart about organising me. It was a four day shoot. On the first day I had one scene and an off-screen voice conversation. The scene on page 1 where I find the letter, read it, then have an angry moment then head off to work. The last thing I had to do was play the other side of a phone conversation with Phillipa (Nicole Nabout). I spent the rest of the day running around the set helping people, holding lights and grabbing stuff. It's the stuff I do when I don't have to do anything. I won't just stand around like window dressing. If I'm there I'm going to do what I have to in order to get this baby over the line.

It was the best thing I could have done.

The crew couldn't believe I was one of the actors. They'd never met any actor that would help out like I did - which doesn't say a lot for actors in general. For the rest of the shoot they totally bent over backwards for me to help me out. Whenever I needed anything (coffee, food, chairs, space) they went out of their way to get it as quickly as possible. Suddenly I was surrounded by twenty friends instead of twenty strangers. It put me totally at ease. They were also instrumental in communicating to me what was going on. The jargon, the pacing, the set ups. It meant that I was totally on the ball. I almnost looked like a professional.

And when I had nothing to do, I held lights and studied what Asher was doing.