Peter Capaldi says there was a specific moment he realised his casting had transitioned from affable geek to bad guy. It was during an advert for butter.
The 66-year-old actor, who’s been called the world’s most terrifying actor, told Sky News he had the realisation he’d “gone sinister” while recording a voiceover for Anchor Butter.
About to reprise the role of serial killer Gideon Shepherd in series two of psychological thriller The Devil’s Hour, it’s a quality the Scottish star is making the most of.
Capaldi explains: “I don’t quite know how that happened… When I was a young actor, I always played sort of slightly geeky and pleasant, easy-going sort of people. And then somewhere – probably around Malcolm Tucker time – I began to change.”
He played tyrannical spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in BBC sitcom The Thick Of It for seven years, as well as reprising the role in the 2009 movie version.
Widely considered to have been based on spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who was aide to Tony Blair during his Labour leadership, Capaldi’s portrayal was ripe with ruthlessness, ranting and extreme profanity.
The role was a fan favourite, turning Capaldi into a household name.
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Capaldi goes on: “The key moment for me was doing a voiceover for Anchor butter, which [culminated in the line] ‘Anchor, tastes like home’.
“Then one day, on what I didn’t realise was my last voiceover, they said, ‘Could you sound a little less sinister?’
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“I thought, ‘Oh no, I’ve gone sinister, and I don’t know how that’s happened’. But then I thought, ‘Well, if people want to buy it, that’s fine’.”
‘A time travelling timey-wimey kind of character’
In 2013, the year after the final series of The Thick Of It, Capaldi became the Twelfth Doctor in sci-fi classic Doctor Who.
A fan of the show as a child, he was widely praised for reinventing the role, with a heavy dose of grumpiness at the outset, transitioning to kindness by the end of his four-year tenure.
He says he wasn’t worried about time-travel typecasting for his role in The Devil’s Hour, which also sees him bounce back and forward in time.
Executive produced by Steven Moffat – head writer of Doctor Who during Capaldi’s stint – along with Moffat’s wife, acclaimed TV producer Sue Virtue, the actor credits them with being “very gifted” programme makers.
Capaldi explains: “I think they probably felt with a sort of time travelling timey-wimey kind of character, I might fit that. And that’s fine.
“I guess I’m able again for some reason to kind of plug into a kind of cosmic vibe, so that was useful for Gideon, and I’m quite happy to do that.”
‘I’ve got terrifying and cosmic things in my toolbox’
With early gigs in theatre, before TV and film roles followed, Capaldi looks back to his youthful knock backs as his building blocks for latter-day success.
He admits: “The thing that stops you getting work when you’re young, is often the thing or things that will bring you work when you’re older.
“It’s your individuality. It’s the things that are odd, the things that are different. And if I’ve got terrifying and cosmic things in my toolbox that are mine then that’s good, they get me work.”
Capaldi labels himself a “lucky” actor, explaining: “Life is unpredictable.
“You can be tootling along thinking things are going fine, and then some difficult challenge can suddenly floor you.
“By the same token, the stars can align, and your life can be transformed in a very positive way, through nothing that you’ve done.
“Certainly, in my experience, things have happened to me that were pure luck – I just happened to be in the right place at the right time or available.”
Brutal and violent – but not gratuitous
Other recent roles include a morally grey police chief in Criminal Record, supervillain The Thinker in Suicide Squad and tragic war poet Siegfried Sassoon in biography Benediction.
He’s also been announced as one of the stars of the next season of Black Mirror, which will air next year, and while details of his part are yet to be confirmed, Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology is unlikely to be full of rainbows and sunshine.
But it’s his latest role in The Devil’s Hour, playing a criminal mastermind who “remembers the future”, that is the darkest so far.
The storyline involves multiple murders – including those of children – terrorism and domestic abuse.
But while the crimes are grisly and brutal, they’re not portrayed gratuitously on screen.
‘I’ve got a grandpa thing going on’
Like his co-star Jessica Raine, Capaldi admits his tolerance of depictions of violence around children in TV and film hit a wall when he became a parent.
Father to one daughter, now 30 with two children of her own, Capaldi says: “I feel that very powerfully. But that’s the business we’re in.
“I think we’re all very warm and concerned and protective of our children. But at the same time, they love Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
He goes on: “I was just about to say maybe everything should be Disneyfied. But then, you know, all of those old fairy tales are full of the most terrible violence and horrors.
“There’s a kind of fine line between trying to keep children safe and keeping them aware of the world. It’s not all Disney.”
Then, after a beat, Capaldi adds: “Although I am available if Disney are watching… to bring my cosmic and terrifying but cheerful toolbox.”
After five decades of success in the notoriously fickle world of showbiz, Capaldi’s chameleon-like nature continues to bring him work.
And always looking to the future, he adds: “I’ve got a grandpa thing going on now, that might be quite useful.”
Season 2 of The Devil’s Hour is streaming on Prime Video from Friday 18 October.
Season 3 of The Devil’s Hour, which has already been filmed, will air in 2025.
Zayn Malik paid tribute to former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne as he kicked off his solo tour.
Payne died last month of multiple traumas and “internal and external haemorrhage” after falling from a third-floor balcony in Buenos Aires, according to a post-mortem.
Images from Leeds’s O2 Academy on Saturday showed Malik – who delayed his Stairway To The Sky tour due to Payne’s funeral on Wednesday – shared a tribute.
A message was displayed with a heart on a large blue screen behind the singer reading: “Liam Payne 1993-2024. Love you bro.”
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Rapper Ye – formerly known as Kanye West – has been accused of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit that alleges he strangled a model on the set of a music video.
Warning: This story contains details that readers may find distressing
The lawsuit alleges the musician shoved his fingers in the claimant’s mouth at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City in 2010, in what it refers to as “pornographic gagging”, Sky News’ US partner network NBC News reported.
The model who brought the case – which was filed on Friday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York – was a background actor for another musician’s music video that Ye was guest-starring in, NBC said, citing the lawsuit.
She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages against the 47-year-old.
A representative for Ye was approached for comment by NBC News on Saturday.
The New York City Police Department said it took “sexual assault and rape cases extremely seriously, and urges anyone who has been a victim to file a police report so we can perform a comprehensive investigation, and offer support and services to survivors”.
The lawsuit alleges that a few hours into the shoot, the rapper arrived on set, took over control and ordered “female background actors/models, including the claimant, to line up in the hallway”.
The rapper is then believed to have “evaluated their appearances, pointed to two of the women, and then commanded them to follow him”.
The lawsuit adds the claimant, who was said to be wearing “revealing lingerie”, was uncomfortable but went with Ye to a suite which had a sofa and a camera.
When in the room, Ye is said to have ordered the production team to start playing the music, to which he did not know his lyrics and instead rambled, “rawr, rawr, rawr”.
The lawsuit claims: “Defendant West then pulled two chairs near the camera, positioned them across from each other, and instructed the claimant to sit in the chair in front of the camera.”
While stood over the model, the lawsuit clams Ye strangled her with both hands, according to NBC.
It claims he went on to “emulate forced oral sex” with his hands, with the rapper allegedly screaming: “This is art. This is f****** art. I am like Picasso.”
Universal Music Group is also named in the lawsuit as a defendant and is accused of failing to investigate the incident.
The corporation did not immediately respond to a request for comment by NBC.
Jesse S Weinstein, a lawyer representing the claimant, said the woman “displayed great courage to speak out against some of the most powerful men and entities within the entertainment industry”.
Actor James Norton, who stars in a new film telling the story of the world’s first “test-tube baby”, has criticised how “prohibitively expensive” IVF can be in the UK.
In Joy, the star portrays the real-life scientist Bob Edwards, who – along with obstetrician Patrick Steptoe and embryologist Jean Purdy – spent a decade tirelessly working on medical ways to help infertility.
The film charts the 10 years leading up to the birth of Louise Joy Brown, who was dubbed the world’s first test-tube baby, in 1978.
Norton, who is best known for playing Tommy Lee Royce in the BAFTA-winning series Happy Valley, told Sky News he has friends who were IVF babies and other friends who have had their own children thanks to the fertility treatment.
“But I didn’t know about these three scientists and their sacrifice, tenacity and skill,” he said. The star hopes the film will be “a catalyst for conversation” about the treatment and its availability.
“We know for a fact that Jean, Bob and Patrick would not have liked the fact that IVF is now so means based,” he said. “It’s prohibitively expensive for some… and there is a postcode lottery which means that some people are precluded from that opportunity.”
Now, IVF is considered a wonder of modern medicine. More than 12 million people owe their existence today to the treatment Edwards, Steptoe and Purdy worked so hard to devise.
But Joy shows how public backlash in the years leading up to Louise’s birth saw the team vilified – accused of playing God and creating “Frankenstein babies”.
Bill Nighy and Thomasin McKenzie star alongside Norton, with the script written by acclaimed screenwriter Jack Thorne and his wife Rachel Mason.
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The couple went through seven rounds of IVF themselves to conceive their son.
While the film is set in the 1970s, the reality is that societal pressures haven’t changed all that much for many going through IVF today – with the costs now both emotional and financial.
“IVF is still seen as a luxury product, as something that some people get access to and others don’t,” said Thorne, speaking about their experiences in the UK.
“Louise was a working-class girl with working-class parents. Working class IVF babies are very, very rare now.”
In the run-up to the US election, Donald Trump saw IVF as a campaigning point – promising his government, or insurance companies, would pay for the treatment for all women should he be elected. He called himself the “father of IVF” at a campaign event – a remark described as “quite bizarre” by Kamala Harris.
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Bill Nighy ‘proud’ of new film on IVF breakthrough
“I don’t think Trump is a blueprint for this,” Norton said. “I don’t know how that fits alongside his questions around pro-choice.”
In the UK, statistics from fertility regulator HEFA show the proportion of IVF cycles paid for by the NHS has dropped from 40% to 27% in the last decade.
“It’s so expensive,” Norton said. “Those who want a child should have that choice… and some people’s lack of access to this incredibly important science actually means that people don’t have the choice.”
Joy is in UK cinemas from 15 November, and on Netflix from 22 November