An Interview with Miss Scarlet's Simon Ludders
Miss Scarlet’s Barnabus Potts is frustratingly lovable, delightfully peculiar
— and now an adoring husband. In an exclusive interview with MASTERPIECE on PBS, Simon Ludders, who brings the mustached mortician to life, reflects on his character’s journey in Miss Scarlet Season 6, his marriage to the kind-hearted Ivy, and what it’s like to be part of the show’s close-knit, family-like cast.
Where We Pick Up with Mr. Potts in Miss Scarlet Season 6
"He's in [the house] now and he's got his feet under the table and that's how we first find him in Season 6. But he got quite a shock in the first episode because he lost his job at the mortuary after he criticizes the coroner, Mr. Wormsley.
He's been in a bit of a muddle and he doesn't know how to cope, really. So then he just bangs around in Eliza's house for a few episodes, not knowing what to do with himself. I think he's in a bit of state of denial. So he goes around cleaning everything and cooking everything and basically really getting under the feet of Ivy and Eliza. He also starts writing and becomes a writer.
Although I don't think he's got enough self-awareness to realize how bad a writer he is because he's an attention-to-detail person, [and his] writing is very dense and of no interest to anybody apart from himself. He's going through a crisis, he's a bit in shock, because the mortuary and his love for Ivy are the two things that define him more than anything else."
Ivy and Mr. Potts' Journey in Miss Scarlet Season 6
"There's a role reversal in that, but he's very pleased that she's got this job for all his kind of, what's his word? For all his old-fashioned values, I think he's very proud that she's got this job, although he never sees her. That's the other thing. I think that's a big bone of contention as well. He never sees her, so I think it's quite difficult for him. So although he's proud of her, he doesn't want her to work. He doesn't want to be the result of not seeing her very much."
On Mr. Potts Becoming Eliza's Roommate in Miss Scarlet Season 6
"It's really odd. I mean, sometimes he would be desperate to play a game of gin rummy and drink some port or whatever, and it's his idea of heaven with Ivy and Eliza. And other times he is hypercritical of how the house is run and what they do within the house, and how he wouldn't do it that way. He has his own particularity. Let's just say, like a lot of comedy characters, he lacks insight into his own failure. He has no idea of the effect he has on people.
He never imagined being in the same house as [Eliza], living on the same property. In the first season, he can't believe that there's a woman in the mortuary and he wants her to be gone because that's the rule. There's a bit of old-fashioned fustiness to that as well, that it's not the place for a woman.
So to go from where he was at the beginning of the series — single, and as far away from a relationship and as far away from being in the same house as Miss Scarlet as one can be...I think there's been a very nice, quite gentle journey."
What it's Like Behind the Scenes of Miss Scarlet
"We have a lot of fun. We often, as a cast, go out and eat and drink and socialize together. We don't lock ourselves away, and it's lovely like that. And we talk about the show, but we talk about our lives outside that as well, so that's really lovely. Because it's Season 6 now, there's a continuity. Obviously, people have left and then come back in, et cetera, but there's a very nice family feel to shooting [the series].
And we always try and make the guest actors feel welcome, because we know what it's like. I particularly know what it's like to be a guest actor in a show, and going onto the set for the first time and you don't know anybody...that can be quite terrifying."
