All Creatures Great and Small’s Cast on their (Animal) Co-Stars
The stars of All Creatures Great and Small share their funniest, most moving, and most unnerving animal anecdotes from the making of Season 1. From the boot camp to the bull, you’ll find out what it was really like to work with the animals both great and small … hint: mostly great!
- 1.
The Animal Boot Camp Experience
Callum Woodhouse (Tristan Farnon): Andy Barrett is a vet who actually worked with the real Siegfried, Donald Sinclair, at his first [veterinarian] practice. And he was our on-set vet, which was incredible! So before shooting began, he took us for this one-week course, like a boot camp, with the animals.
Nicholas Ralph (James Herriot): Andy’s just been brilliant throughout—he’s priceless to have on set. He’s the guy you make a beeline for every time you have a question, and he’s great for simple things like how to approach an animal, where the danger areas are, and little vocal tics you can do to soothe it. We were straightaway up close and personal with cows, sheep, and horses, going through the motions of the procedures that we’d be doing in the show. With the cows, we were out there with a stethoscope, doing this triangle from heart to lungs to stomach, to check every organ. With the horse, for Episode One, I was doing the cleaning out of the abscess in its hoof.
Callum Woodhouse: We do a lot of work with some incredible horses—just the most amazing animals, so majestic—and we were on the way to meet them. So we pulled up to this farm, and Andy said, “We need to be careful of these horses. They’re gorgeous, but they are very dangerous animals.”
Nicholas Ralph: Andy told us, “The guy who owns these horses, he used to be a farrier, so he used to do this all the time. But unfortunately, he can’t do it anymore, because when he was farriering a hoof one time, it actually came down on him and broke his back.”
Callum Woodhouse: He said, “And you will notice that the farmer’s got a bit of a limp, because actually he was putting a horseshoe on or off one of these horses, it just sat down on him and broke his back. Anyway, let’s go meet them.”
Nicholas Ralph: My first reaction was, “Andy, pick your time to tell your stories, tell me afterwards.”
Callum Woodhouse: I’m like, “I’ll just stay in the car, actually.” But they were fine and we all survived the encounter.
Nicholas Ralph: That didn’t fill us with the utmost confidence…but we were grand, anyway!
- 2.
The Calves of All Creatures Great and Small
Callum Woodhouse: During the boot camp week, we got to meet these gorgeous calves. These farmers kindly let us onto their land to meet their animals, and as they were showing them, their hands just casually went down, two fingers went inside the calves’ mouths, and the calves started really suckling on these farmers’ fingers. We were like, “What’s going on there?” And he told us, “Well basically, they think it’s their mother’s udders, and they think it’s where they’re getting their milk.” They’re just sucking really desperately on these fingers, almost like a baby’s pacifier. They were like, “Go on, have a go,” and we were all like, “Don’t know if we want to…” But we ended up doing it, and honestly, it’s the cutest thing in the world. It sounds like it’s going to be really weird and sort of gross, but it was so cute. And whenever there was a calf on set, we were always like, “Right, let’s go meet the calf, let’s go meet the calf!” They were so, so cute.
Matthew Lewis (Hugh Hulton): So at the start of 2019, I gave up beef, purely for the environmental reason that it’s unsustainable to keep farming beef at the rate that we do. And then we got to making this show, and there was this one little calf on set. It was early in the morning, and it went to sleep—just standing up, fast asleep. I took a picture of it and texted my wife and said, “Any chance of me ever going back to beef is done, is out the window.” I know that we’ve got to be careful about anthropomorphizing animals, but when you look in their eyes, particularly cows, there’s so much emotion there. So in terms of a profound moment, you know that John Cusack movie, Grosse Pointe Blank, when he looks at that baby and he has a newfound respect for life? It was like that, like I’m looking into this calf’s eyes and he’s looking back at me, and “Under Pressure” by Queen was playing! [Laughs] But no, seriously, I did look at him, and when he opened his eyes, it was very cute and very thought-provoking. I can picture it vividly now, even a year later.
Rachel Shenton (Helen Alderson): There was one scene where Siegfried and James come to the Alderson farm to tend to this little injured calf. So I’m stroking the calf—she’s just lying there completely fine as I’m stroking her face. Then Brian, who’s our brilliant director, came over and whispered in my ear, “Do you mind not stroking her between takes? Because she’s falling asleep, and she’s got to look distressed.” I thought, “This is amazing. We’ve got a little calf who feels completely comfortable around us—it’s brilliant.” I’m really proud of the way that the animals were always treated with the utmost respect. There was always an animal welfare officer and animal handlers, and thankfully no animals doing anything that they didn’t want to, which is absolutely how it should be.
- 3.
The Most Unnerving Animal Experience
Rachel Shenton: I had one of my first scenes with Jester, the big bull (character name Clive). I’d said to Dean, the animal handler, “Can I go and meet him?” because the most important thing for me was that Helen grew up on the farm—she was a toddler around these animals, it’s second nature to her, and I have to look entirely comfortable. So I went to meet him. I got in the field and I thought, “He’s absolutely huge!” I called my mum afterwards, and said “Mum, his head is like the bonnet of my car, he’s gigantic.” And I wished I hadn’t asked, but I said to Dean, “So how much does he weigh?” He went, “I’m not sure exactly, but it’s close to two tons.”
Then we were on set, and it’s the scene where Helen comes out of the stable, a chicken tucked under her arm. She gives the chicken to James and ties Clive up, very heroically, and then marches off while James is up on a wall being a wimp. But Jester did not want to stand there. When a bull that weighs two tons doesn’t want to stand somewhere, he doesn’t. He kept just wandering off, and then Dean would have to wrangle him back around into position. Of course, you can’t just nip a bull back into position, he’s massive—you have to walk him all around the courtyard to bring him back. We must have done this about four times! I knew we needed to move on, so I said to myself, “Right. If he does it again, I’m going to wrangle him around and then keep it as part of the scene,” because then, they can keep rolling—they don’t have to call cut and reset. “That’s what I’m going to do.” I remembered Dean telling me, “Look, when you’re around the animals, the most important thing is not to let them know that you’re scared, because they sense it, and then they’ll act up.” And I had no idea what a bull acting up would look like, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. I braced myself—and also, just to point out, I’m like 5’1″, I’m a very petite person. There’s no match, there’s only one winner with Clive.
So we were just about to do the scene, and he did it again. I thought, “Right, that’s it.” I’d seen what Dean did, so I got Jester and wrangled him around the yard. My heart was beating out of my chest as I wrangled him around and tied him up. And I turned to James, and for one split second, my mind went completely blank and I thought, “Oh no, after all this, I’ve forgotten my line, because my adrenaline’s pumping so much.” But thankfully, I remembered it, and we managed to get it in that one. So that’s my brave story.
Samuel West (Siegfried Farnon): We worked with very well-trained animals who can pretend to be asleep, or just lie down. And that’s fine if it’s a cat—although, it’s very delightful watching a film set trying not to disturb a sleeping cat. You stroke it, and it lies down, and then the animal handler gently puts it on its side and strokes it. But you’ve got these 17 stone [lighting technicians] with hot lamps tip-toeing past. Then you’ve got about five seconds to get the shot of it being chloroformed, with the muzzle, before the cat gets bored and stands up and goes away. So that’s fine…when it’s a cat. When it’s a racehorse and it gets bored, and gets up and walks away, you have to move very quickly, because it’s not sedated in any way. It’s been brilliantly told to lie down by its fantastically talented handler. But then at some point, it just thinks, “Salt this!” and gets up, and then you move. It treads on you—which happened once—or it falls on your knee, which happened once. It was quite close to being a broken leg, I expect, and actually, I’m just stroking my legs as I think about it. That was a little bit close.
Nicholas Ralph: I went up to meet Mark Atkinson, who rears and trains the horses, for the scene where James has to treat the horse’s hoof, and he said, “Unfortunately, your stunt double can’t be here today. But production would like a video of the horse going through the motions, because they haven’t seen anything yet. Basically, we’ve trained it to rear up and then kick out.” So we meet this horse, and he’s a massive racehorse and he’s rearing up, almost hitting the roof of the barn and kicking out, and Mark asked, “They want a little video. Do you mind going in?” I told him, “Mark, my stunt double will be doing this—I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere near this horse. But if you don’t mind, can you go in and I’ll film it?” And he said, “Yeah, no problem.” So there’s this horse, rearing up, then crashing down, and he’s diving, rolling out of the way…and I’m just slowly edging my way out of the barn.
On the day, the rearing was taken out, because they thought it looked too much like a Western. It was changed to just a kick-out, and because the horses are so well trained, they can kick to the same distance, with the same force, every time. So my stunt double did it, and then I said, “I think I’ll give it a try. I want to give it a shot.” I went in and thankfully, got the timing right, and that’s what’s used in the episode. I was chuffed with that!
- 4.
The Funniest Animal Experience
Samuel West: My favorite thing that happened with any animal concerned a very nice dinner suit, white tie, that I had. It was beautifully fitted. We had hired [rented] it, so we sent the dinner suit and the tail back to Cosprop, the period costume house. But then we had to shoot some extra scenes because we were running under [time] on a particular episode. Cosprop has, literally, hundreds of white tie tails for gentlemen, but we had no record of which ours was. They started looking through their stock, and then Ros, our costume designer, got a call from somebody at Cosprop saying, “Have you been working with somebody with very short red hair?” I said, “Yeah, I think that’s Lazarus.” They said, “We’ve found the suit.” Thank goodness they hadn’t dry cleaned it yet, so it still had cow hair on it. They were able to find it again, and I’m very pleased they did, because otherwise it would have been another fitting, another suit. So, God bless Lazarus. That was rather fun.
Callum Woodhouse: Well, the storyline in Episode Four is that this dog, Clancy, this huge Alsatian, has got a really vicious and ferocious bark, and looks absolutely terrifying. His owner served in the war and has lost a lot of his hearing, so he can’t really hear any of his bark. He initially sees Siegfried, but Siegfried can’t get near the dog because he’s terrified of getting bit, so he passes him over to me, and I don’t want to get anywhere near the dog either, because he’s too vicious. It ends nicely—the dog’s actually lovely; he’s just a loud dog. But it was an absolute nightmare to shoot, because basically, in the scenes where we’re all supposed to be scared of him and he’s looking really vicious, this dog, Sheila, is, I swear, the friendliest dog I’ve ever met in my life, and just wanted to be cuddled and petted and to lick your face. We’re trying to do these scenes, but all she wants is to be hugged and stroked and given little kisses. And obviously, I wanted to just have a cuddle with her! But we finally got the scene, and it’s really funny: that was the one and only time where the animal went against what we needed it to do in a scene, and that’s just because Sheila the dog was too lovely.
- 5.
The Overall Animal Experience
Matthew Lewis: It was incredible, brilliant. I got to work with animals all day. I think the animal department were going completely insane because they were trying to get these animals to perform and settle down, and I’d be picking up the kittens and trying to talk to the parrots and just being a bit of a nuisance. They say don’t work with children or animals, and if you want to get home early, then they’re right. But I absolutely adore animals, and having the privilege to be around them all day, on the farm and in the fair episode, when we had ferrets and rabbits and puppies and kittens, it was fantastic. It was a dream.
Callum Woodhouse: Dogs are my number one favorite of all time, so the amount of dogs I got to hang out with, and getting to have a dog just chilling with us in the green room—that’s just my idea of heaven.
Rachel Shenton: I am such an animal lover. I think animals are nicer than people, and this is like my ideal job, just to be in the country with a load of animals. It’s amazing, and what amazed me every time is that you get back with an animal what you put in. So if you treat the animal with respect and show them that you’re not fearful of them, and that you’re just there to work with them, bizarrely, they respond to that. But it’s not bizarre, is it? Because they’re living and they’re feeling, just like we are.
