Todd Boyce’s career spans over four decades, ignited by a childhood love for the silver screen and a knack for mimicry. From playful beginnings to commanding stages and screens worldwide, he is currently starring in Sleuth which is on tour nationwide
You’ve had a diverse career spanning over four decades. What initially drew you to acting, and how has your passion evolved over the years?
Four decades seems…gosh…about right actually! Yeah, four decades…What first drew me to acting? As a kid I was always watching films – weekends and days off sick – I was always watching movies. I could name probably any movie star from the 40s onwards
when I was about 13 (in the early to mid 70s). There were some amazing films that were being released, like Sleuth by the way, which I saw when I was very young, probably 14. I just I loved watching movies. I loved clowning around with my brothers, and with my father, and with my friends, putting on funny voices. Our humour was very visual, and very silly. A lot of it has to do with being a good mimic I’ve got a good ear, like so many actors, and you feel you can inhabit another person. I was probably about nine years old when I asked my parents to enroll me in a drama school which was in our town. We kept driving by it, and I kept looking out the back window watching it fade in the distance. I
thought, “I want to go there,” so for about, maybe a year I would show up every week and pretend to be a coffee cup or a or a tree and that was my initial introduction into acting.
Your role as Stephen Reid in Coronation Street has left a lasting impression on viewers. What was it like portraying such a notorious character, and how did you prepare for the role?
I’m very up to date on everything going on in the street, so when I’ve returned in the past, it’s just a matter of walking onto the cobbles as Stephen Reed again. And at one point I thought, oh, my God, I’m a lot older than I was last time I did it! And I was sort of joking with friends saying, maybe I should make my voice older?! Which is ridiculous because, you know, essentially, you’re presenting largely yourself.
But when Stephen started to really become the ‘villain’, back 2022, I had a Zoom meeting with Ian McLeod three months before it happened – I think he just wanted to, you know, do me the favour of letting me know I was going to bump someone off. And then he said, you might have to kill someone else because you get yourself into some hot water, having killed the first person. I think the blood drained from my face in that Zoom meeting! All you can really do is play the material, play the words that are there, that are given to you. So, bearing in mind his backstory of losing his fortune and wanting to save face coming back to the street, I just really played with the material that I was given, and the writing is just so good.
I think just being open to the writing and doing the best you can with it is how I opened myself up to the experience this last time.
Sleuth is a renowned stage thriller with a rich history. What drew you to this production, and how do you prepare for a stage performance compared to acting for screen?
I was winding up a conversation with my agent, about four months before my contract with Coronation Street finished. I kept forgetting to say, give Bill Kenwright a call because I wanted to do some stage. I knew that Bill of course, had been in Coronation Street and was a huge fan of Coronation Street. So my agent dropped him a line and he came back immediately, “Bill Kenwright, got so excited when he saw what was happening for you with Stephen Reed – playing the villain.” I had worked with Bill before COVID on a production of the Exorcist with his wife Jenny Seagrove.
So he just basically bit my arm off, which was such an honour, because Bill was such an extraordinary man and, he was watching, most every episode of Corrie and was enjoying what I did. He immediately offered me a very elegant murder mystery called Murder With Love, to do at Windsor. And it was just too close to my finishing time with Coronation Street. And Corrie couldn’t let me go early, rightly so, so I couldn’t do that. But Bill said, “listen, how would you like to do Sleuth?” And I mean, I just was like, God, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes – a hundred times yes! Um, I saw it when I was young. As I said earlier, I love the movie, and it’s just a meaty part.
An interesting character, rattling around a big, huge, manor in Wiltshire, famous for writing murder mysteries, a lot of time on his hands and a very, very sharp mind, an extraordinary way with words.
And the difference between stage and screen? Uh, it just. I mean, it’s obvious, but you have to be louder. If you’ve been doing screen for a long time, you think you know that and you think that’ll take care of itself and it kind of doesn’t. You really have to adjust.
We’ve been playing 1500 seat houses, we’ve been playing 800 seat houses. We’ve been playing thousand seaters. We’ve been playing big, big, big venues. So it needs some oomph. And you’re presenting yourself in one direction, the cameras aren’t surrounding you. It’s all these things.
Essentially, your motivations and your preparation is identical in a sense, because you’re trying to get under the skin of the human being you’re depicting.
But it takes a lot of stamina. I’m running up and down stairs, six times every show, eight shows a week. It’s a different stamina than filming. Filming is relentless, but there’s a rhythm to the relentlessness of stage. And you have to be prepared for that. So, I tried to get as fit as I could for this.
Can you share with us some insights into your character in Sleuth and how you’ve approached bringing this role to life?
You just draw on, everything you have, every single thing that you’ve ever known, seen, heard, smelled, tasted. You use it all, and you funnel it into this character. You use what you need, to bring the character to life, drawing on everything, every experience, everything you’ve ever done, everything you’ve ever known.
In terms of his language, he has a huge amount of lines. And he’s not just saying, you know, “I went down to the corner shop and bought a pint of milk.” He’s very eloquent and it’s very, very elaborate and ornate.
His use of language, in most cases, you have to reawaken your vocal powers, which I was trained in RP, as most British actors are, and most American, most Australian actors.
I was trained in Australia at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. It’s just I’ve really, after all these years, leaned heavily on my vocal training. It’s amazed me how my memory for that training is there and how grateful I am for that training. Because this guy is a sophisticated, upper crust, chap – he’s no slouch when it comes to words and language.
The themes of human conflict and manipulation are central to Sleuth. How do you approach portraying these complex themes in your performance, and what do you hope audiences take away from the experience?
It’s as simple as vowels and consonants. It’s the writing. It’s saying the words initially, it’s all there. It’s Anthony Schaffer’s words.
If you say the words, you’re halfway there, because it just takes care of itself. It’s a masterpiece. There’s no question about that. So you’re in safe hands if you just say the words and say them properly and you find the rhythms in the sentences and you find the rhythms in the phrases and you find the rhythms in the scenes. It’s all there.
The amazing thing is, the better the writing, the less you have to do. So, in terms of me portraying complex themes, I think Anthony Shaffer’s portraying the complex themes.
I’m just a kind of conduit for a masterpiece. What I have to be able to do is to be able to act, hopefully! I don’t have to really portray anything except to do my job, which is to say his beautiful language and to move appropriately, and to act appropriately and to use everything, like I was saying earlier, every experience I’ve ever had to make that feel real to me.
What do you hope audiences take away from the experience? Well, I hope they’ve had a great night out. I mean, the play is funny, it’s full of extraordinary images, and you enter a world that you come off the street and you go into a theatre and you enter Andrew Weich’s home – you’ve gone somewhere very, very different.
I hope the audiences have been taken on a journey and I hope they enjoy seeing a masterpiece brought to life. And I hope they see actors doing as good a job as can be done with it!
We’re enjoying it immensely and just trying to just be characters in those circumstances every night
Catch Todd in Sleuth at Cheltenham’s Everyman Theatre until April 20th
