Before meeting Matthew Baynton, I was half-expecting to encounter a version of the Regency poet he played with expressive romanticism in the exquisitely popular BBC sitcom Ghosts. Or that the flamboyant rapping Charles II is just one of many historical figures playfully reimagined by the collective for the children’s TV series Horror Histories. Or even Mr. Fickelgruber, the incredible reptilian from the recent blockbuster Wonka. In other words, is the actor famous for playing Technicolor caricatures so good that he’s certainly a little big himself?
Instead, when we meet at the RSC rehearsal studio in Clapham, Baynton slides along the wall as if trying to disappear into the paint. “I don’t like entertaining people socially,” he says apologetically. “I was too embarrassed to dance at a recent wedding. I wouldn’t hesitate to take my socks off at a show and look stupid, but not at a wedding, thank you.”
Baynton, 43, will play one of the silliest characters in the western canon, the hapless and deluded aspiring actor Bottom, in the RSC’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This will be Baynton’s first theatrical performance in 10 years. The reason he stayed off the message boards for so long was perhaps predictable — a combination of commitments to the film industry and his family, he says. He and his partner, film historian Kelly Robinson, have two children, ages 12 and 8. But perhaps no stage role has ever made him think, “If I say no, he might spend the rest of his life wondering if he’s made a huge mistake.” It might be because of it.
He was relieved to learn that the Mechanicals, Bottom’s probably the least talented amateur theater group, were not the “beer-drinking, round-necked guys with West Country accents” he remembered from their mediocre productions in his youth. “What I feel about Bottom is that someone once said he was very good at acting, but that was enough to make him a monster. He has valuable experience. Not much, but enough to make me think I can do it all. My ass would be a total mess. But there’s something really sweet about his enthusiasm.”
Baynton is very good at finding sweetness in the patently ridiculous. It’s in Ghosts (which he co-created), about a group of mismatched ghosts trapped together in a crumbling old house, whose final episode after five seasons last Christmas attracted 6.6 million viewers. Did. In the 2013 cult comedy The Wrong Mans, co-created with James Corden, Sam Pinkett, a morbidly incapacitated Berkshire County councilman, had an endearing, clumsy charm. Fickelgruber wasn’t much of a threat either.