In this interview, he discusses the defining work that not only allowed his acting talent to blossom but also nurtured his natural storytelling ability. Masterpiece PBS: Shaun Evans On Endeavour Season 8, 26 August 2020 Masterpiece PBS: Shaun Evans Interview - Endeavour, Evolving, 24 August 2020 Masterpiece PBS: Shaun Evans reveals 4 surprising things about Endeavour season 7, 6 August 2020 The Herald: Shaun Evans on the return of Endeavour, 8 February 2020 Weekend Magazine: Morse's Code, 6 February 2020 The connection is terrible, the hum and the crackle a memory of rotary phones and heavy receivers, of analog, slow time. [laughs] I don't know what I'm saying anymore. It’s fantastic. So I thought well, it's happened so swiftly and fortuitously that I should just embrace it, run with it, you know? [laughs] I would like my work to get attention, and of course there's some degree of yourself that you have to put out there in order to facilitate that, to make it happen, but I'm not interested in letting people know about what I had for breakfast. I never want it to be too easy to return to the character, so this time before we started again, I actually went back to the books and read some of them again. My hope would be that your work as a storyteller evolves regardless of which hat you're wearing, do you know what I mean? It seems that some of your scenes in Endeavour were self-directed well before you assumed the director's role. I wanted to remind myself what I found initially engaging about the character and incorporate that as much as I could into it this time. Aussie indie rockers, Floodlights' debut From a View is a very cleanly, crisply-produced and mixed collection of shambolic, do-it-yourself indie guitar music. I was doing a bunch of research into that and thinking how that would fit in with both how I see why Liverpool itself, as a place, is useful and important to me, and how it could be important to this character that I was thinking about having in the story. - yeah, I know what's going on in the world, I suppose is what I'm saying. Even though, having watched you work, I would say there's a little bit more of you in him now than it used to be... but I might be mistaken. Why would I not want to be earning this money? If that makes any kind of sense. I've sort of flirted with Instagram and Twitter and all that, but it's probably only purely from a voyeuristic point of view. Do you find it easy to get back into the role? ", MORE: Endeavour season eight will have a major problem - find out why, Russell Lewis, who writes the show that is a prequel to Inspector Morse, also added that the show's end could be on the horizon. How did you approach this as director of the film? Everything had a flow. As a result, I knew that I wanted to produce and direct more, and the only way to do that - I knew that ultimately wanted to direct an episode of Endeavour! We’re very lucky that we’re afforded that luxury now. There feels like there’s been a social shift, with politics coming to the forefront and the dawn of women’s liberation. The actor has been in the hit crime drama since 2012 – find out what he said about his character's future here…, Is Endeavour's Shaun Evans in a relationship? I find that so interesting, and I think the show works best when it does that, in a very subtle way of course. Yeah, I think she won it. We also see him doing up the flat himself, which is a nice touch. But... yeah, I suppose it modifies [your outlook] and then, hopefully, your work evolves. And, I suppose, this goes back to the question you asked me previously as well about [my] ambition as a storyteller. So I frequently went down to just see the river, and like I said, I always have a camera with me. We're with Shaun Evans, a British actor who plays the title role in ITV's Endeavour series. They sent me a couple of pages of the book and asked me - because I'm also from Liverpool - if I would be interested in making a quotation for it. That's probably an element to that too, subconsciously. It’s almost an impossible city and there’s such a mystique around it, which wouldn’t have been the same in another city. You can sort of acknowledge that we haven’t come miles away now in terms of our attitudes towards immigration, women’s rights, equal pay etc. Activate HELLO! That's why you have to keep pushing yourself and keep challenging yourself both as a director, as a producer, and as an actor as well. And the world interests me. There's hundreds, there's really hundreds of photographers that I really like. You have a fresh pair of eyes on what you have shot, to see if it's still in accordance with decisions you had at the beginning, though very rarely is that the case: oftentimes, something new will happen and you'll see a new avenue and follow that if it's more interesting than the original idea. Most of the time, he's alone with his guitar and a haunting mellotron. Blue Note Re:imagined provides an entrance for new audiences to hear what's going on in British jazz today as well as to go back to the past and enjoy old glories. How is this touched upon during the series? I really love acting, I think it's an amazing job, but I've begun to be interested in different ways of telling stories that didn't involve me physically. I felt like I learned so much last time and was desperate to come back and put it into practice. His goodbye wishes are many and warm, as if to equip one for a long journey. In the fall of 2018, an exhibition of our behind-the scenes photos ran at the Jam Factory in Oxford. That's a really good question! There was something about that which was incredibly invigorating, particularly after the more traditional way we’d been telling the story. Not everything needs to be explained. That's something I'm up for doing next, to make an exhibition and make a book of the prints that I've done. - is just singularity and a bit of agency over what I do: this is the story that I want to tell in these words, and this is the story that I want to tell in these images, or, this is how I see this particular thing, you know? And as I got into town, the light was just particularly incredible, it kind of was amazing. Yeah, perhaps it's not very clear to me. After that, you work with the composer: you watch it - well, this is how I tend to do it - silently first and stop at points where you feel there should be music, or there should be something to either help the story along or to give it bit of a background to help tell the story from a sonic point of view. I do love film, but the last time I developed a roll myself was when I was ten years old. With that, brings a load of baggage in so much as starting a romance with someone, starting new friendships and ending older ones or calling people out on their actions. You make all those decisions up front, run them by your team, and then you get to shooting: on each day you prepare where you're going to shoot, what the action is that's going to take place, how it's going to take place and how you can cover the scene in-camera. Given the turmoil of the era, you might expect Lydia Loveless to lean into the anger, amplifying the electric guitar side of her cowpunk. "We know the cards that remain in our hand, and it's very much a case of arranging the order in which they're played in order to bring about the desired 'grand slam.'". What was it like filming the scenes in Venice for Film 1? I think both of these guys have been in each other’s pockets for many years now and they’re just getting on each other’s nerves. From creating the title role in The Wiz to winning an Emmy for Ain't Misbehavin', André De Shields reflects on his roles in more than four decades of iconic musicals, including the GRAMMY and Tony Award-winning Hadestown. in Rock-Solid Book on Storied Career. And both photography and writing I really enjoy as my own pastime. - the Börse prize. Yeah, I think you're right. The day to day drudgery of the work that they do can be incredible, but then there’s this aspirational urge in Endeavour for art, opera, music, travel and literature which he doesn’t get at work. Oh, and there's a stray question about "Apollo" that I wanted to ask. The first time I ever had a job was in a camera shop! Oh, that's a good question. [ten seconds of s i l e n c e] You hope, as an actor - or I hope, as an actor - that you create the environment where you can do work that is believable and potentially inspired, right? That’s a place that we keep revisiting, so they had to keep doing it as other productions were working in the house as well. Would you say they bond over a shared interest in the finer things? Wonderful. A good director will allow actors - and every department, actually - the room to do their own work. Was there anything today, even if very small, that made you look, made your heart skip a beat, but you haven't told anyone about it yet? Yep, we are good. That's the director's point of view. The exhibition was titled "Endeavourneverland", and we share the pictures on social media under the same name; we are, one might say, a tiny creative collective. There's something about it which just works for me. You touched upon the fact that we do see some romance for Morse this series. Oh no, I never argue! What effect does this new friendship have on Morse’s long standing friendship with Strange? There was talk of us having a scene with him shaving it off, but it just felt surplus to requirements. You can't work in isolation, like I said, I feel like I'm always consistent about collaborating and talking about big and little things. Why not the opera? Photo of Shaun Evans by © Natalia Kutsepova and Nina Kharchenko (2018). Or even just a little book, perhaps, of short stories... and maybe the photographs would be accompanied by short stories. Endeavour's production design has always been impeccable, but in "Apollo" the environment is elevated to a language rather than just a well-crafted background. Restless tenor saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi runs his four-piece combo through some thrilling jazz excursions on a fascinating new album, A Time and a Place. So, of course, if I've done all that homework, it limits the options: you know what the scene's about, you know the most efficient, the most interesting way to tell the story, and so you are kind of... oh, I don't know, it's tricky what I'm trying to say now. It’s interesting, because in the later books and the Inspector Morse TV series, Thursday is never mentioned, so we need to give a reason for that. But you have to be strict [because] we shouldn't be milking it. The director has an enormous amount of things to think about, and if you're playing one part, then what you have to think about is different, and you think about it in a different way. I think that's important. I love directing because, whereas acting’s quite elusive in its way, – there’s no real right or wrong – with directing, it’s a skill that you can learn how to be better and more economical in telling the story. [laughs]. Ever since the moustache appeared, Shaun had been asked about it in every single interview, without fail.]. It was incredible and very refreshing, because when you’re working on something like this, there’s usually a big unit which travels around with you which is great and a massive support. Sir Richard Worsley (Lady Seymour Worsley husband) in The Scandalous Lady W (Sheree Folkson, 2015), an 18th century drama detailing the scandalous life of Lady Seymour Worsley,based on Hallie Rubenhold's book, The Scandalous Lady W: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal and Divorce. I see that as my task. If you wish to change your mind and would like to stop receiving communications from hellomagazine.com, you can revoke your consent by clicking on "unsubscribe" in the footer of the newsletter. Originally, they asked me for a quote. I’m really pleased that we’ve shown that part of his life, and it feels symbolic of where he’s at. It’s a financial thing, but also to do with his aspirations about things – his travel and experiences bring so much to the table has not been brought before. Basically, you have a script - along with the rest of the team.