Interview: Samuel Barnett, Tim Price, Scott Handcock And James Goss on Ghosts, Walking and A Missing Shakespeare Play in SAMUEL BARNETT'S UNKNOWN Podcast

Ghosts, a walking tour and a missing Shakespeare play . . . Put these three things together and you have Samuel Barnett’s Unknown. The podcast, written and researched by James Goss and directed by Scott Handcock, stars Samuel Barnett and Tom Price as versions of themselves taking a walking tour around London in order to solve the mystery of Cardenio, a rumoured lost work by William Shakespeare.

Recently, we had the chance to speak with Barnett, Price, Handcock and Goss about Samuel Barnett’s Unknown. We discussed how the podcast was created, what the research process was like and why they find the form of audio presentation so appealing for not only audiences, but themselves!

So, if you could start by introducing yourselves and the role you have within the podcast?

Tom: Sure, I'm Tom Price, and I'm playing the role of Tom Price. Finally, a role that I can almost play well!

Samuel: I'm Samuel Barnett, and I play a version of Samuel Barnett.

Scott: I love that you say “a version of” - Tom is just Tom.

Tom: Yeah, I don't have the nuance to do that. I just play me!

Scott: I'm Scott Handcock. I am the director and weirdly conceived the idea with James Goss.

James: Hello, I'm James Goss, and I researched Samuel Barnett's Unknown, coming up with a lot of facts that Sam and Tom vaguely read and a set of directions that they mostly ignored.

Can you tell us a bit about Samuel Barnett’s Unknown?

Scott: Samuel Barnett’s Unknown - great title! - is an investigative, literary walking tour around London, trying to find a lost Shakespeare play with lots of ghosts, lots of history . . . Two actors, one take, no hope. And it was! The entire recording was just one take, because we're doing it for nothing and didn't have any time. So why did you guys want to do it?

Samuel: Well, a lot of it is improvised, so it was fairly important that we got most of the scenes in one take, because it’s difficult to recreate improv. What James Goss has very cleverly done is he's researched this thoroughly, and he's created this ghost, mystery, literary walking tour. But also, he put prompts in the script for me and Tom to go off on various tangents, because that's how Tom and I have always worked together when we've been doing audio drama. They wanted to make that part of the script, so it was quite important to get everything in one take, and we didn't always manage it. But what I've loved in terms of feedback from people who've listened to it is they can't necessarily tell what's written and what's improvised, which I think is quite exciting.

Tom: I think of Samuel Barnett as mine, and I love doing our talk show episodes with him. And I also think James is an incredible, genuinely borderline genius writer - he is so prolific and his standards are so high. And Scott's incredible direction . . . I love working with all of them! To work with Sam is just a joy. And to work with someone who, when you do the improv stuff, whatever you say, whatever happens, you know that it'll get bounced back, that the right things will happen and it will be good... So broadly speaking, it's just really good fun. 

Samuel: Tom has got one of the quickest brains of any actor that I've ever met - he genuinely makes me laugh! There are plenty of times in the podcast where you can hear me just laughing in the background because of what Tom's doing. So this podcast has been a joy. And actually, we are absolutely riding on the coattails of Scott and James here, because it was their idea. They wrote it, they produced it. What Scott's done with the with the soundscape and all that, all the production . . . 

Tom: It's great! Hearing it and going, “Oh, that sounds amazing,” it's genuinely lovely. And also, in terms of the general theme of it as well, I'm a massive Uncanny fan, and my kids are as well! I just wanted to make something that was even slightly in that same ballpark where it's a cosy listen. I love a cosy, spooky listen - audio is in a unique place to do that. And Danny [Robins] has absolutely built that in the last few years. 

Scott: The whole conceit of a walking tour around London was basically James and I going, “What can we do that won't cost us any money? We won't have to hire a studio. We can just get two actors wherever.” And we did literally take you just around random bits of London! We spent a whole morning in St Pancras churchyard, where you were wandering around looking for graves that all tied into the story.

Samuel: I loved it! It was liberating. What I particularly loved was these amazing little microphones that you got us that magnetised themselves to our chests. We could speak just at the level we're speaking now and still be caught so beautifully. The sound production is really fantastic, so I found it really liberating. And we did most scenes in one take. We literally did it in two mornings!...And it is a labour of love, because none of us are getting paid for this. We don't do it for the money. 

James, can you tell us a bit about the creative process for writing an episode of Samuel Barnett’s Unknown?

James: Well, that bit was easy because it's always been a subject I’ve been fascinated about - lost Shakespeare . . .  Does Cardenio actually exist? And the answer is . . . Probably? And the research was enormous fun, going and looking for sources. One of the things that I really enjoyed was finding out that a lot of the sources that get quoted in editions of Shakespeare, when you actually look into the original sources, they say something else entirely. It's all full of lies and people who aren't quite sure what's going on, or people who go, “Well, somebody else said this, so it must be true!” So writing a thing about lies and then getting two of the most truthful people I know to say those words was great. And they said all the words. They said exactly the words! 

Tom: And then we said some of our own words, which weren’t as good!

So what is it like creating a walking tour in the form of a podcast?

James: Enormous fun! Coming to work out the practicalities of each episode and basically test them. Scott and I did a test of some of the walks, mostly so that Scott could record the ambience and sound effects as we went along, to make sure that everything is supported and right. Because sometimes on the day you don't get quite the right kind of pigeon - just making sure that everything had a different audio feel as we went through. But we made sure that the walking tours actually work as walking tours. You can do them while you're listening to them, but obviously, you have to pause every now and then to listen to some Sam and Tom say magical words.

Scott: Guiding these two through traffic, though, while they're looking at their iPads . . . [Laughs] Literally, doing the walking Kings Cross and Bloomsbury, and I'm there with my recording devices checking for traffic. That was quite tense! 

James: They don't look left and right. They just assume that there's somebody who's sorting all that out for them!

How did you choose the different locations for Samuel Barnett’s Unknown, like the Royal Opera House and the Sir John Soane’s Museum?

James: Well, it's all the connections to the story. A lot of it is real - there really are haunted bits of stages in London, and there are a lot of secrets in Sir John Soane's house. And we go to St Pancras graveyard, which is the oldest graveyard still around in London, where two strands of the story actually connect. And when we go to the place where Cardenio was last seen, that's really where it is! This is what's great about London, because there's so many layers of history on top of streets that still exist. You can literally stand where Cardenio was last seen - and possibly still is - which I think is incredible! That's what's great about London, the fact that you're walking in history. 

What do you hope audiences take away from Samuel Barnett’s Unknown?

Tom: I hope that they tell their friends, because word of mouth is the most important thing! When I listen to really great audio, I always remember where I was when I heard that great audio. So there'll be bits when I'm on the dog walk where I remember listening to a really good podcast. I have a very visual memory in that way. And if anyone is listening to a podcast and gets lost in it in that way, then I will be absolutely thrilled, because I think that's the greatest pleasure about good audio.

James: I honestly wish that people get into the mystery and get excited about Cardenio, because I've been really excited about Cardenio for years, ever since I discovered that it exists, but it doesn't exist, which is great. And I also love a mystery that has an ending, but it has a sad ending, which is fascinating. It's the story of a heroic failure, really. Lewis Theobald is unbelievable. It feels like a sad film.

And finally, how would each of you describe Samuel Barnett’s Unknown in one word?

Samuel: Intriguing

Tom: Canny

James: Unpaid

Scott: Chaotic

Samuel Barnett’s Unknown is currently streaming.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Acast