I like the fact that we're stripping the icons away. They're the WikiLeaks for the age that we're revealing, with the transparency of the characters. We're unearthing the truth beyond or underneath the myth. I love that aspect.

The great thing about films is that you have access to this whole world of experts who teach you the skills your character's supposed to have.

I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.

I also wanted to have fun with it. I wanted to have the scope, which I felt Merlin has, in his Machiavellian bi-polar way. He's not to be trusted, yet he is fighting for this great power and is really a master, to some degree, in orchestrating Camelot and King Arthur. He's a strange, dark devious character, and I just wanted to have fun, and get away from the cloak and long beard and pointy hat.

Merlin is really at the forefront, in that regard. We get a glimpse into the dark, Machiavellian corridors of power. I like the fact that, although he has powers, his powers are almost in his political guile as much as what he relies on, in darker forces.

I think religion might throw up a kind of resistance, but I think if one talks about conditioning we can all kind of understand that.

From the age of about five to twelve I was very bad, a hideous little terror who beat people up. I was a member of a Rough Gang - we went around and terrorised all the pupils in school.