Catch up with Todd Boyce
Join us as we sit down with Todd Boyce to discuss Stephen's next moves!
He is becoming more and more creative. How is he managing to talk his way out of everything?
He really is, he explained away the missing roof box by saying he drove into a car park and wrecked it on a low barrier. He always has an answer. He has ingenious ways of getting out of situations. He is such a good liar. I think he must have always had that in him. On youtube I watched an old scene with Stephen and Alma where she slaps him and I was really surprised that I was doing the exact same slight adjustment with my voice that I do for him now when he is in a tricky situation. It seems without knowing it I have walked right back in where I left off, I wasn't really aware I had done that until I watched that old scene. There is something about him, he is and always has been smart and he is also manipulative, he did it in the scene with Alma she was saying to him that he was a big successful businessman just patronising a little country mouse, she had the measure of him!
What happens with Rufus?
He has gone to the hotel to try and get Rufus to sign the deal and Rufus offers him some drugs which Stephen turns down saying that they don't agree with him. Rufus offers him some LSD and Stephen is quite shocked and points out that LSD makes you see things. Rufus collapses in the room and is taken away by the paramedics and this sex worker turns up, having heard Rufus speaking to his wife and being all lovey dovey that he can use this as evidence against Rufus to force him to sign the contract. So he gets the sex worker to record this message about their hook up and he steals the vials of LSD, although at this stage he doesn't have any plans for what he is going to use them for.
He has now killed two people, Leo accidentally and now Teddy not actually premeditated but definitely not accidental. Do you think he had thought he could have once more talked Teddy round?
Yes he has got a little cocky in that he truly believes he can manipulate everyone into believing what he is saying. He thought he was smarter than Teddy but when that didn't work he panicked, he thought he was superior to Teddy.
Is he having sleepless nights about what he has done?
It doesn't seem that way. As time goes on he seems to be less and less uncomfortable about what he has done. He has had moments when it looked like he wanted to confess but that was only because he was certain he was going to be found out, the whole roofbox saga was almost the end and he did think he would just rip of the plaster and tell everyone what he has done, but always in the nick of time things come good for him.
Having got away with murder, this week there is a shift in his behaviour when he starts drugging Carla. How does he feel about Carla?
She has done the worst thing that anyone could really do to Stephen, she has made him look and feel small in front of other people. She had him working in packing when Dick Haversham came round and he was so humiliated. He really wants to harm her business and her reputation and he has no qualms about what he planning to do.
How does he know about Carla’s previous mental health problems? What makes him decide to drug her to make her think she is relapsing?
Sarah brought it up in the pub and it drops like a bombshell as far as he is concerned and because of the way she has humiliated him he knows that he can use it for his own gain. He comes back from the hotel having got the signature and securing the deal and she tells him that she is making him office manager. That is the moment that he has had enough.
Has he thought it through?
He has, this is not a premeditated plan to kill someone, this is to get her out of the way of the business. He knows there are the 50 centers with shares in the company and he just needs to mobilise them and make them think she is not capable of doing the job. It’s pretty ingenious and she has annoyed him so much that he doesn’t actually care what it is going to do to h
er. It is a relatively short term plan to start with just to sow the seed of doubt with everyone. He plans to do it over a period of time so it looks like she is having real problems.
Is he surprised how quickly it works and goes as he hoped?
He is, he doesn’t really know what the drug can do so he is playing a very dangerous game. You see him putting a few drops into her drink and then he just slips a bit more in for good luck when he thinks about how angry he is with her. He starts off in the factory in her coffee and by the time they all get to the pub she is clearly not feeling well so he goes for it and put some in her wine.
We have spoken before about whether he feels guilty. What is his mindset?
As I have said before his circumstances forced him into those initial actions but now he seems to have got a bit of a taste for it. Initially there was accident and panic with Leo, then with Teddy he calculatedly got rid of the body and even roped in other people to help without them knowing it and now he is doing this to Carla in plain sight and is feeling invincible and enjoying the power he has got over people.
Does he care for anyone?
He hasn't shown a lot of care or compassion. David has bugged him and got under his skin, it is a good job David is otherwise distracted, others may have been a real problem to Stephen. He has avoided spending a lot of time with his mum and is just using Elaine as we know. The couple of exceptions are perhaps Sarah who he does have a lot of time for and is close to but of course he saw much more of her in the past out in Milan. And he is still attracted to Jenny, that is really where it could go wrong for him if he gets distracted by her. He sees the life he could have had with Jenny and that is the life that he wants.
What sort of reaction have you been getting out and about?
People are always very polite, which is funny because maybe they are a bit scared. I saw two ladies in Sainsburys when I was doing my grocery shopping. I was in the frozen section and these two ladies in their late 60s behind me, I turned around and the blood just drained from their faces and one of them said “ooh I don't like you” and then she added “I guess someone has got to be bad”. I’m not sure if they were worried I was going to push them into the freezer whilst no one was looking! And then a lot of women will come up to me and say ‘my husband hates you’, they clearly don’t want to say they hate me themselves, or maybe they secretly like him!
He has managed to pull the wool over a lot of ladies’ eyes. He almost has a split personality. Do you play it that way?
Yes he is perfectly capable of being charming, he has got Elaine, Rita, Jenny and Sarah fooled but men can be a bit wary of him. It is such a veneer, he is pretty shameless.
Are you ready for the reaction to the Carla story?
Haha I am not sure. She is a very popular character. Up until now he has targeted people who are relatively new characters that people haven’t really got to know but this is different. Chris Gascoyne has been so lovely about it, he said “Oh mate you have no idea what you are in for when this starts”. Ali and I have had some great scenes together, really fiery scenes and I have enjoyed that and I think people have enjoyed her getting one over on him so they will hate it when the tables are turned.
Do you ask about what is coming up next for Stephen?
I did at the beginning whenI was first starting out but now I just wait till I get the scenes and read them and sometimes I gasp out loud. It is just so exciting. When I got the roof box scene I wrote to Iain Macleod as I loved it. I thought they were Hitchcock like scenes. After that scene aired a friend sent me a scene from Psycho where he pushes her car into the water and just watches it and it was so similar. Stephen is a great character to play, and I eagerly await his next move.
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