Funland
Starts this autumn on 大象传媒 THREE
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Daniel Mays plays Carter Krantz
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Lives in: Crouch End in London.
Studied at: RADA.
What's he been in before? Played Sidney Drake in the Mike Leigh film, Vera Drake, and Max in the ITV drama Beneath the Skin.
Did you know? Daniel won Best Actor at the Palmare-Reims TV Festival for his role as Adam in the 大象传媒 TWO drama, Rehab, directed by Antonia Bird.
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It's been a fantastic year for Daniel Mays, who has appeared in Vera Drake and co-stars with Robert Carlyle in an ITV drama later this year.
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In Funland, Daniel takes on the lead role of Carter, a young man who arrives in Blackpool determined to avenge his mother's death and will stop at nothing until he finds the culprit.
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"Right at the beginning of Funland, Carter's mum dies in his arms," explains Daniel. "Her last words were Ambrose Chapel, Blackpool and Danger and she also gives him a key. So he sets out on a voyage of self-discovery to find out who killed his mother and also to unravel the truth about his past.
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"He hitch-hikes to Blackpool on a coach full of women on a hen do, who strip him, so he arrives in Blackpool naked apart from the key and a scrap of paper containing the words Ambrose Chapel."
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Having arrived in Blackpool, Carter doesn't know where to start to try and discover the truth. As he investigates the meaning of these two words, he is sucked into the most disturbing of mysteries and meets the intriguing array of characters who lie behind Blackpool's funhouse doors.
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Convinced that Ambrose Chapel is a person, he tracks down a man with a very similar name called Ambrose Chapfel, a gay taxidermist played by The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss.
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"Carter takes what he wants out of any situation," says Daniel. "The scenes with Mark are really great because he tries to seduce Carter and Carter goes along with it for a little while - but then he suddenly changes and turns on Ambrose because, for all Carter knows, this is the man who murdered his mum."
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In fact, Ambrose Chapel is a church which is now used as a nightclub called Sins, owned and run by the infamous Woolf family.
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"Carter very quickly gets involved with the Woolf family. He is sleeping with the daughter, Ruby (Emily Aston) and starts working for her grandmother Mercy (Judy Parfitt) and then Ruby's father Shirley (Ian Puleston-Davies), playing them both off against each other.
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"There's a really good relationship between Shirley and Carter: they are strangers and yet there's a real element of them sizing each other up and there's something between them that they can't quite pick up on.
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"They're really similar people, they've both got this silent rage in them and they're not complete as people."
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But Carter is only after answers and information from all these people and he just uses them all to get what he wants.
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"Carter can be this young, charismatic guy but there is another side to him, a more demonic and violent side. He's very instinctive and unpredictable. He's able to seduce people, scare people, please people and trick people at any given time. As an actor I have to decide when and where to reveal his true character.
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"You see this very early on in episode one, shortly after he arrives in Blackpool," continues Daniel. "He needs to find some clothes and goes into this charity shop and in a perverse kind of way he comes on to these two old ladies who work there in order to steal money from the till to buy a new suit!"
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Carter is a man on a mission and everyone that he meets is a suspect. As the series unfolds, he suspects everyone from Shirley Woolf to The Mayor and even Leo Finch of murdering his mother.
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He can't trust anyone and he doesn't give too much away to anyone that he meets. The only exception to this is Lola, with whom there is a definite connection.
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"Carter is a very closed-off person and as a result he's never really had a proper relationship with anyone. But when he meets Lola, there's a definite attraction there: she's the one character that he can empathise and identify with.
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"He recognises that they are both stuck in this situation and are both victims, but he doesn't understand why Lola is putting herself through all of this; he doesn't understand why she doesn't just get up and leave."
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All the time, Carter is having flashbacks where he is being pursued by two hitmen - so the pressure is on him to discover the truth.
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"He's absolutely petrified - he can't show this fear, but deep down he is really scared and he will stop at nothing to get to the truth."
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Daniel has clearly become very attached to his character.
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"I have loved playing Carter," he enthuses. "I have really enjoyed trying to make him as different as possible. The writing is absolutely fantastic and the way that Simon and Jeremy have collaborated is amazing because you get the dark, twisted humour of The League of Gentlemen coupled with the narrative element of EastEnders.
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"As soon as I read the script I couldn't say no!"
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Daniel graduated from RADA in 2000 and hasn't looked back since as his career has gone from strength to strength.
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"I've really tried to take on a variety of TV, film and theatre roles," he explains.
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"I have particularly enjoyed working with Mike Leigh on All or Nothing and Vera Drake; it's a totally different way of working and you get much more time to spend on the characters.
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"In some ways you're more than just an actor - you become part-director, part-writer too and I would love to get involved in writing or directing one day, but we will have to wait and see."
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