Tim Minchin On Revolting Rhymes, Rosencrantz, Witches, Psychic Children And Coaching An Orchestra To Play “F**k The Pope”

Tim Minchin is best known for his enormously successful career in musical comedy, including a recent stint as host of the BBC Comedy Promenade Concert, but he has also dabbled in the world of films and that’s as good an excuse as any for a Bleeding Cool interview.

He’s voiced the lead on Oscar-winning animated short The Lost Thing and written the music and lyrics for his own animated short film Storm, and the musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda which features music and lyrics by Minchin opened on the West End this week to widespread critical approval. Those critics are hard to get approval from, with the exception of Bleeding Cool critics who can be won over with a Bacardi Breezer and a discreetly passed tenner.

Corruption and bribery aside, Tim Minchin is one of the most popular comedians in the business at the moment and it’s been an extremely busy year for him. I caught up with Tim to see how he’s managed it all.

Bleeding Cool: You’ve already starred in a few films, including an Oscar-winning film, which is pretty impressive.

Tim Minchin: Oh yeah, I’ve got Oscars coming out of all sorts of orifices.

BC: Too many to talk about, really. Have you got any more plans for acting down the line?

TM: I don’t have plans for acting in that it’s not something I’m pushing towards, but … well actually that’s not quite true. I’m probably doing a play in about eighteen months because I don’t want to let that side of my past go. Having said that I’m not an Eddie Izzard … Writing stupid songs is my main thing, and films interest me a lot, and I’m some way down the path of talking to animated film studios in LA about musicals. I would love it if Matilda got made into a film and I would write some songs for them. I think the animated musical’s probably going to have a bit of a revival after the ten years of story-driven Pixar-style stuff. I think it’s time for another Aladdin or Lion King. But as an actor .. yeah, I’d love to do it more but I’m trying not to split my focus too much.

BC: What’s the play that you mentioned?

TM: I’m in a really annoying period in terms of talking to people about it, because a lot of it’s unconfirmed and so I have to be a bit cagey, but I’m trying to get a production of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead together. It’s just been on in London and I don’t really want to do it … I’d want to do it in Australia so that’s something I’m planning. It’s one of the best plays ever, it was made into a film starring Tim Roth and Gary Oldman in the early 80s. I’ve always wanted to do it, and have done it as a student, but I’ve always wanted to do it professionally. I’m kind of leaning on my … audience-pullingness [laughs] to make people cast me in plays.

BC: Have you seen the finished product of Matilda?

TM: Well, Matilda ran for three months in Stratford, so I saw that, but the West End reboot is still rehearsing, and I’m not really going to rehearsals much, I’m just sort of skulking round the theatre because I like watching stuff get built. I’m waiting until the opening preview to see what they’ve changed, because in terms of my job there’s very little tweaking musically, so I’m just staying out of their way really.

BC: How did you go about writing the songs? I know Roald Dahl liked to include nonsense poems and rhymes in his books, did you take your cues from them?

TM: No I didn’t. Well, I did in that that was licensed for me, and he used to write little rhymes and stuff, but he also wrote whole books, like Revolting Rhymes was one of my favourite books. He had a fantastically playful way with rhyme, and so when I was writing Matilda I didn’t feel I had to temper my own instincts to write in very playful lyrics, because that’s what I do best and I felt like it suited Dahl in general. It’s sort of Dahl’s world to play games with words and that’s why they asked me to do it and why I was able to just throw myself in without thinking, “Right, how am I going to approach this?” Because the answer to that question is, just approach it exactly how you want to and it’ll probably work out fine. So I didn’t use any of his words but as a childhood fan of Dahl I love the squiggly-wiggly made-up words and I’m inclined to that, and was probably influenced by Dahl originally.

BC: Did you have favourite Dahl book? Was it Matilda?

TM: No, Matilda came a bit late for me. I was eleven by the time Matilda came out and I was probably a bit old for those kinds of books. I was more likely reading Flying Solo or one of his biographies by then, so I didn’t really come across Matilda until I was an adult reading children’s books. No, that’s probably not true, I probably did read it in my teens, but the things that defined my childhood were more B.F.G. and George’s Marvelous Medicine and Danny, Champion Of The World and The Witches. I love them all but Revolting Rhymes was pretty big for me, and B.F.G.

BC: Did you see the film version of The Witches?

TM: No, I never did actually.

BC: It’s quite scary, I’d advise you to watch it with someone else.

TM: Oh really? Wow. It’s weird, during the Witches film Dahl actually walked off the set and the Dahls – Roald himself and his family and estate – have since not been happy with adaptations at all, and quite rightly so because they’re incredibly difficult to get right because of that balance. If The Witches is as scary as you say it sounds like they got the darkness but not the light. Somehow Dahl’s children’s managed to be horrific – Matilda especially because it’s a story of child abuse – but it’s not, obviously, it’s a story of pranks and tricks and magic and monsters. Somehow it managed to be be both.

BC: Did the Dahls approve of Matilda the Musical?

TM: Oh the Dahls love Matilda the Musical! That’s why we’re happy, I mean apart from the fact that everyone else seemed to like it too. Lucy Dahl, Dahl’s widow, came out with tears in her eyes and threw her arms around me. We’d never met, actually, until opening night in Stratford, and at the after-drinks she came up to me and introduced herself and gave me a big hug. They’re very very happy with this, I think they’re as happy with this as they’ve ever been with anything.

BC: You might have to fill me in on this because I don’t know too much about it, but you had a sitcom on Radio 4 earlier this year called Strings…

TM: Oh yeah, no one knows much about that.

BC: Was it just the pilot that they aired?

TM: Yeah, they made the pilot and then they asked me to write the rest and I said I didn’t want to. When you’re a comedian there tends to be two major paths you can take: one is to write a sitcom and the other is to host a show, a panel show or a chat show or something like that, and both of those things interest me a great deal. I’d love to write a sitcom and I think with my experience being a guest on shows and hosting Never Mind The Buzzcocks and things that given time and work I’d be good at that, but actually it’s come to my attention that they’re not really what I care about most. So when I made Strings I really liked the writing part of it, so maybe I’m just being lazy because it’s such hard work, writing fictional worlds as opposed to doing what I do which is just rant about stuff. And so I didn’t really like the product, I didn’t really like the result, and I think that given time I could make it better and make a series, but I’m … I’m quite good at writing songs and lyrics, and there’s nothing to say I’m good at writing a sitcom, you know. So I kind of pulled myself up and thought to myself, “When I’m eighty and looking back on my career, what do I think it would be good to be known as?” And I think that being a performer, which regardless of my self-loathing of my voice and my look and my everything … I think I’m a good performer in the context of live performances, and making theatre and writing songs and stuff. I’d love to do everything else as well but left to my own devices I think I’ll mostly focus on live performanc and writing.

BC: We do want to try and plug the DVD you’ve got coming out…

TM: Oh yeah, my DVD’s AMAZING! It really is!

BC: Great, we’ll put that in block quotes. In the headline.

TM: Fuckin’ amazing. Yeah, comedy DVD’s are … they are what they are, they’re souvenirs of a live experience. You can’t replace a live experience, especially with comedy where sitting in the room is the whole point. You write on paper all of Michael McIntyre’s material and you won’t laugh out loud once, it’s about the atmosphere you create in the moment, the collective experience. Having said that, my orchestra show was a ridiculously big, thorough production effort, you know, we tried to make something that was both incredibly stupid and sometimes crass, but also incredibly thorough and proper. The players are just incredible and the sound equipment was incredible and the lights … and when we filmed it we took that same ethic of not doing things by halves with the filming, so it’s one of the more extravagant live comedy recordings that anyone’s ever done. There’s 50 people on stage, and it’s the Royal Albert Hall, it’s completely epic and massive effort has gone into the post-production sound mix.

So even on its own, without having to get into talking about my material, the things I’m proud of are the fact that you can watch a lot of live music DVDs of very high-end acts that aren’t as good musically and phonically as this is. And yet I’m singing “Fuck the motherfucking pope” and a song about cheese. So I’m proud of how full-on it is, given the stupidity.

BC: What was it like having your own orchestra?

TM: It was amazing, it was incredibly nerve-wracking when I first did it because I was not a particularly trained musician, and I’ve always had a lot of insecurity about my playing, and all that sort of stuff. It’s been especially good for my confidence because they liked it, you know, I’ve played with lots of different orchestras in Australia, but the orchestras all really liked the songs and they all really liked playing with me, except for a few cases where people who didn’t like what I was saying in the orchestras, which didn’t mean that anyone stood up and walked out but you can tell when people aren’t comfortable shouting the word “fuck” in the Pope Song, which is on their charts. No, it’s was very interesting and an amazing experience, very boring answer but it it was profoundly cool for me to go, “Ah, I’m a muso and I can play with musos!” I’m not just an idiot.

If this is the first you’ve heard of Tim Minchin I’d recommend dipping your toes in by watching Storm, which is freely and legally available to watch here on Youtube.

Tickets for Matilda the Musical can be bought through the show’s official website.

Tim Minchin And The Heritage Orchestra is out on November 14th, but you can pre-order it on Amazon.