Julian Barratt: 'Mindhorn is my revenge on pompous actors... but there are elements of me in there’

The Mighty Boosh star wrote and stars in the brand new thriller crime comedy 
Comic creation: Julian Barratt says Mindhorn is his revenge on pompous actors
Jennifer Ruby5 May 2017
The Weekender

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Julian Barratt says his new film Mindhorn is his ‘revenge’ on pompous actors, although there are elements of himself in the lead character.

The Mighty Boosh co-creator, 49, wrote and stars in the new comedy thriller about a has-been actor who gets recruited by the police to reprise his role as a 1980s detective to stop a serial killer.

“I think he’s slightly ridiculous and hideously pompous and self-regarding,” he told the Standard.

“It’s a little bit like the John Cleese thing where your best comedy characters are yourself but without a sense of humour, what you would be without a sense of humour. So there are elements of me there, I’m quite pretentious.”

Barratt said that the character is made up of numerous encounters with showbiz insiders over the years, which he has been “recording in his brain”.

“You experience a lot of pomposity in this business and a lot of pretentiousness,” he said. “I like to use that to create these monstrous creations and then you have your revenge that way.”

Barratt, who has had roles in A Field in England and last year’s critically-claimed Channel 4 show, Flowers, joked that he gets away with it as he doesn’t see himself as an ‘actor’.

“The profession is rife with fear about your age, about your validly, longevity, appearance. It’s vanity and it’s hard to sort of avoid all those things, they come at you as an actor.

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“I don’t really see myself as an actor so that’s how I get out of it.”

Barratt rose to fame in Channel 4’s Nathan Barley and the cult hit series, The Mighty Boosh, opposite Noel Fielding.

He describes Mindhorn, co-written by Simon Farnaby, as one of his more ‘mainstream’ ideas.

“We knew it was a good idea because it stayed alive all the years that we were developing it and people were still excited when we told them about it. It’s one of those ideas that you stumble upon that is quite rare.

“That was our sort of magnet, electro-magnet and everything was just sort of charged from that idea and kept going throughout the whole development process. We made something out of it which I think is no mean feat, to actually make a film.

“The film is a comedy thrillery, crime comedy… I don’t really know, something like that.

“It’s got action. It’s quite a tough genre to sell, which is why it took so long to get made because it’s got to balance the tones of a comedy and a thriller and it’s really hard to get that right. I do like it when they work, those films, but I’m not to say whether it’s succeeded or not, it’s the audience.”

Mindhorn is out in cinemas today.

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