[Music] Hello I’m Marcus Railton and this is the Scotscare podcast. Scotscare is the only charity dedicated to helping disadvantaged Scots in London through a range of support including mental health therapy, financial grants, advocacy, sheltered housing for older Scots, job coaching, social events, befriending and support for Children and Families. The Charity’s been running for 400 years to help break the cycle of poverty experienced by some Scots.
In this series of the scotscare podcast I’ll be chatting to celebrities and supporters of the charity that have also forged a life in the capital away from home and about the ups and downs that can bring.
Scotscare: supporting Scots away from home in London.
The force is strong in today’s guest. He is actor Duncan Pow. Duncan played Sergeant Melshi in Star Wars Rogue One and has also appeared in 24, the night manager, Black Mirror and many other high-profile roles he’s in extremely busy man so I am very grateful to get some time with them today and talk about his life’s journey so far.
[Music] ScotsCare breaking the cycle of deprivation for Scots in London.
Hi Duncan. Thanks for joining me, I know you’re busy.
I’m not busy but you’re welcome.
You know what first of all I want to say thank you because you have made me vaguely interesting to my children for the first time in a long time I said to I said to Noah I’m a 13 year old I’m interviewing sergeant Melshi from Rogue one a Star Wars story and he was genuinely impressed, genuinely because I thought he’s seen it but I thought I’ll show him anyway yeah yeah I know who he is I know he is so he was genuinely impressed but then it kind of tipped over into but how are you talking to him why do you get to talk to him so he’s impressed by you but reinforcing the fact that I’m a nothing we’d be less impressed I’m sure and Ray for my nine-year-old I said no you’ve seen it right if and you know I’m an interviewing Sergeant Melshi from Rogue One a Star Wars story and he went really oh that that’s great the guy with all the arms who’s the leader of the droid army and I said no, that’s that’s General Grievous anyway all right then, but you can’t have everything then we got talking about Star Wars generally as a because he was talking about the dark side and he was talking about this is my nine-year-old Rafe he was talking about the the light side and he was saying why is there a dark side on the light side and I was, and I don’t know if you agree with this, I was saying because Star Wars is a bit of a metaphor for Life we’ve all got a bit of a dark side because he was talking about Anakin and turning into the dark side but he started off as a good guy but he says it’s just about it is a kind of metaphor because you’ve just got to keep the light side uppermost in your heart as much as you can well I agree for sure I think it’s uh well we’ve all got light and dark haven’t we and uh I think it was a young cow young who said uh uh
Enlightenment isn’t some far-off place where everything’s bright and shiny and Brilliant and beautiful it’s uh it’s
it’s knowing the darkness that exists within you and and Shannon light upon it so I think uh well the Star Wars is is
is about that you know the there’s good and the bad everywhere and and you’re right the the challenge is always to to
try and gravitate towards the light yeah and I think as I get older I feel that more and more is that you just gotta try
and do your best because have a bit of Honor in everything you do because it’s honor is just a gift that you can kind
of give to yourself talking about Star Wars do you still get recognized for that role because that was you know
you’re very prominent in that film well no I don’t I don’t I don’t want to get recognized for anything
um it almost never happens which I I kind of quite like if I’m honest with you yeah I get that I get that I mean I
think if you’re just going around scenes producing you’re buying some mackerel and some toilet rolls there must be nothing worse than somebody looking over
your shoulder to see what your life life cycle habits are was it it’s never happened so I’ve got nothing to compare
it to niguel’s Career could have gone in a very different direction because you studied maths at University didn’t you I
did yeah I I studied maths and and astrophysics um up in Edinburgh and uh well I I I
guess for the first the first year of it I was doing okay but I wasn’t really going in to University a great deal you
know I’d always wanted to be a footballer and so so um I kind of uh a degree was
my second choice and I chose something that I was quite good at you know a
bizarrely mathematics was something that came quite easily to me so I thought I’d go and study that and then about I think
maybe about nine months into the the degree I I lost a friend of mine that was was the same age died in a car crash
and I had this you know shocking realization that life is short so we
should really do the things that we love doing rather than doing things maybe we
don’t enjoy to plan for a future that that might never come so
um yeah I I quit the degree after that and I went off and studied um
well media technology film and TV production and and and uh you know
editing and that kind of stuff I went and did that and leads for four years and did your
parents support you at that point or did they say Duncan can you not stick in at the maths because you know you could have been a teacher or a lecturer or you
know an engineer or all these things that’s a far more secure lifestyle Choice than than the one that you’ve
chosen yeah for sure I mean you know my my mom has always supported me in in
nearly all of this the decisions that I’ve made in life you know I uh is that
what I thought I was going to be an actor I remember seeing me you know you’ve got
a job why would you why would you quit a job to to to become an actor and well you’ve never trained and you’ve never
done this and never done that and then what else you came in so a play I was in and afterwards she came up and she just
went you have a go Son Well Done yes I think that’s it I think it’s my kid I’ve
got three kids and this as they get older and my my 13 year old he’s a lovely lad but he struggles at school
and you know he’s happy going to school and he’s got good mates but he doesn’t do brilliantly and I think I come to the
conclusion now that I want him to be I’d rather he was happy than knuckle down and really harassed himself trying to
get gcses or a levels I just want to I want him to come home and go oh I had a good day Dad well I think the problem is
you know when you go to school you’re taught to remember things you know it’s a it’s a it’s an accumulation of
knowledge and you’re judged by how much you can remember I mean it’s a long term since I was in
school but you know they don’t teach you about life about the world about the things that you need to to know of
course this this critical thinking involved but you know for instance something like French uh or Spanish or
learning another language now the reasons you would learn another language is because well it’s nice to be able to
Converse for people that don’t come from where you you come from it kind of opens you up to a larger part of the world but
in school um you’re you’re kind of taught by by wrote and and Remembrance and it’s not a
lot it’s not a lot of fun really and you know you’re immediately placed in competition
with the other kids that are in your class so so everything comes I I think
in school rather than you know I I think personally every kid has a unique talent
something they’re good at something they love something they enjoy doing but that’s not something they are taught to cultivate all the time you know of
course I’m making a sweeping generalization but um imagine the world would live in if
um the the time was spent finding out what it is that that kids enjoyed and tried to bring out that part of them and
and to and to make it kind of uh something that can serve them as they you know as they get older if you love
what you do you will do it for no money and if you
do it for long enough you’ll eventually become an expert at that thing and if you become an expert at anything then
eventually someone’s going to pay you for it so I think I would always lean towards doing what it is that you enjoy doing yeah I think that’s a wonderful
sentiment yeah but my wife has a friend who’s an actress and she’s a great actress we went to see a play that she
was in and she blew me away I didn’t really know who she was and you know and then she’s you know she’s been in a couple of things on TV but she spends a
lot of the time working behind the bar so is it a case when when you make the
choice to go into such a precarious profession you just got to go all in you just gotta go for it I can’t remember
who said it but they said you know they’re sitting around is what I get paid for I I do the acting for free
um and it’s uh yeah I mean it’s it’s a it’s a life choice I remember I I maybe
got into for the for some of the wrong reasons I suppose you know I was working in in London for a company as a
um you know video editor and an assistant producer for a financial television company and um I don’t
particularly enjoy it I didn’t particularly enjoy the people I didn’t particularly enjoy the way as a 21 year
old I was sometimes spoken to by the you know the bosses of the company I came home one day and my sister had gone to
drama school Lindsay she said and we’ve done an interview that day with an
interview uh with Gordon Brown at number 10 uh when he was the Prime Minister it was about pensions and it was about
young people and pensions and I had ventured an opinion in between uh you
know in between the recordings and uh like boss televisioned me and said you’re the cameraman no one cares what
you think just point the camera and it was it was so offended and I got home and Lindsay said to me how was your
dance it was awful it was horrendous um I said how was your day she said what was great I got up this morning and and
I went to an art gallery and then I went to Museum and well then I went to a coffee shop and I just
watched people you know and I said to her is that What actors do and she said well yeah when they’re not working I
quit my job the next day it sounded like a great way to live did you learn from that Duncan is do you when you’re going
out and you you know I love people watching do you sit and watch and can you learn as an actor with this thing oh
he does that or he walks that way can you take stuff away from that and then plug it into future roles well you know
I think I like to pay attention I think uh if you can be absorbed in what’s
happening just now wherever you are then then you’re kind of free from beating
yourself up about things you’ve done in the past and and worrying or hoping about things that might come in the future you’re just you’re just present
you know in in the moment and I think with uh with watching people
everyone’s different you know I I never had the privilege of going to drama school and I remember early in my career
I I I felt like maybe I’d missed out on on something and uh I lived with an
actor after I did my first job I did a show called dream team and he uh
moved in with me he’d gone to Lambda and well some days he would come home and I would say how was your day it was like
oh don’t mate was horrible I had to pretend like for 24 hours that I’m
someone else and and I thought well that sounds great you know that that sounds like something I would really enjoy you
know and the next day he’d come home and I would say how’s your day oh mate yeah we had to pretend to be a rock today and
I was like and I thought to myself no I don’t know
if I would be able to do that you know so I I feel uh everyone’s uh different the way they
approach things and I I think we kind of imbibed from others you know if you hang
around with someone long enough you’re going to pick up some of their mannerisms some of the way they they talk I work a lot
um with a guy from Venezuela and his his English is so you know in Spanish
sometimes when you talk they sometimes you’ll say but I mean then
you’ll say the sentence which is for me this is how this is and that’s how he speaks English and says well for me and
I find I I picked up the way that he talks even to the extent of you know
you’ll make noises sometimes when he does stuff and I noticed that I’ve done it and I think any of us if we’re around
people long enough we start to behave a little bit like them so um I I think yeah we’re always we’re
always taking that in but then when I get a uh a job or a role I I have always
found that the um the the character comes from saying
the lines yeah I don’t know if that’s a kind of a neanderthal way to to approach it but it’s the one that’s worked for me
Scott’s care for Scots in London in need of support Financial practical or
emotional
can I go backwards then and I just this might seem like a strange question but you were brought up in Lockerbie and you
you were there and you lived in Lockerbie when the plane crash was there were you too young for that to affect
you as a person or do you remember much about that or or do you have childhood memories that are kind of confused with
news footage well no because we didn’t watch a lot of news footage um I mean I was uh uh 11 years old I
think it was 19 1988 so we have it in December so yeah I’d be 11. and yeah I
remember the whole thing I’ve been I’ve been at Scouts that evening and and we’d left early and actually came past
um very close to her the the fuselage had landed on on Sherwood Crescent and I’d come home that night and uh
the scouts unlock a bit the time but I don’t have to do it anymore it’s a long time since I lived there but they would deliver the Christmas cards so people
take the Christmas cards to the scouts and the scouts would deliver them and I had some left to deliver and I remember coming in we lived in this
it was a it was a big old house that my dad had bought and uh he’d done it all up and it had
this massive door and then a report and then you know a a smaller door um there was stained glass windows a
smaller wooden door and even in Winter we would leave the front the big front door open that you know be the porch and then the
the stained glass window doors you know and I came in there and my mother appeared at the end of the the hallway
so she was maybe about kind of 15 or 20 feet down by the kitchen and she said oh we have to get the Christmas cards
you’ve got more to deliver and of course I didn’t want to so you know in a peak I I uh I I I locked the the door behind me
and put the key my pocket and when she appeared back at the door there was a kind of uh a rumbling you know like a
low rumbling and then the the door started to shake a wee bit and then and
then my head because I was in a ghosts and UFOs and all that kind of stuff I thought no it’s a ghost and and the door
then started to shake you know completely off its hinges you know like rattling and my mother and I were
looking at each other and uh and then the whole of the stained
glass windows went bright orange and we ran in the living room and we had these big kind of sash windows and you
could see the other side the motorway and there was a just a mushroom of of flames
um and I I remember picking up the phone and bizarre as it says you know I was an 11 year old kid I was that excited to
dial 999 because well you know I was an 11 year old kid and I wanted to call 999 you know it was
you don’t really understand the gravity of the situation I suppose um and of course all the phones were
dead and we went outside and this was um this was well lockerby in in Scotland
in 1988 so it was it was winter you know yeah I just remember it was you could feel the heat it was a a tropical heat
um and yeah I I my sisters had been in a bath and Mum went up and got them and we
went along the road to my auntie’s house who was not an auntie
you know the ones you just call an auntie and I remember being in the top bedroom and I remember her saying I hope
those poor people got out of the the house you know and I just remember thinking you know how could they it was
um and and you know we had no concept of what happened but of course in the days and months and years ahead it became
very clear but um yeah I I think with kids because I
was so young he kind of absorbed these things um and understand what you say in that
you don’t appreciate the gravitational or you know that the death that was caused
there but it’s obviously been indelibly Inked into your psyche yeah it’s uh I I
I have the sense that my life has been telling me in various ways that you
don’t know when it’s going to be over so you know I was at school with some of the kids Lindsay and Paul Somerville and
Paul had handed out um it was our last day of school that day you know and and Paul had handed out
prizes and Christmas gifts and assembly and well his whole family they died in
the in the disaster and to have been at school with people
in the morning and the the evening for them not to be there anymore like I say
you don’t process it and I don’t process it because an adult has a a little bit longer to to have a sense of life and
this these things that have happened to you as you say it’s given you this what would you call it the this this feeling
to kind of carpet carpet the DM you know grab the you know don’t do something you want to do you don’t want to do take
Life by the horns and go and do it and this is why you became an actor and you think what there was a pivotal point
where you decided I’m going to do it I’m going to become an actor was it a pivotal point that you thought this is
working I just you know what I just never imagined that I wouldn’t make it I
I don’t I don’t know how or why that is um I I was just never afraid to try and
you know I I think uh in life I remember when I was younger I always
had this sense that being lying on your deathbed you know and having this feeling of going oh I’ve got it all
wrong I want to try again and and realizing well that’s that’s never going to happen so I I think I I’ve always in
life done what I wanted to do and you know I think there’s a fine line between bravery and and stupidity but I I just
never worried about it what brought you to a lot of um a lot of people in the UK
was when you were in Holby City how long were you in that for I was in that show for
um about two and a half years contract was for three years but I I ended up just doing two and a half years and I
wonder because when I look at the stuff that you’ve done and and reading about you and haven’t spoke to you over email
and stuff like that I kind of think was that a double-edged sword for you because as an actor you kind of think well I’m going in week after week I’m
getting a paycheck I’m I’m I’ve got regular work but for somebody like you Duncan I kind of wondered whether you
would have got itchy you were thinking is this stretching me should I bring it off and doing something else well yeah
yes um so when I got that job I was under
the impression that it was a a a rolling yearly contract
um my agent at the time told me it was a three-year contract but we could get out after a year you know
um and well of course I went I did it and I had a great time at Hobby it was a great place to learn and and I I met
some some great people and um but I found out the end of the first year the the break of the contract
wasn’t on our side it was on the side of the BBC so you you know we were there
for as long as they wanted us to be there within that three-year contract um and yeah that’s exactly what I found
you know and it was such a kind of pivotal kind of time in my life because
I started in 2007 and finished in 2010 and I remember getting the job and I
remember the feeling of euphoria and oh you know I was so blown away that I’d
finally got something that was um that was of the kind of profile of things
that I really wanted to do and then when you’re going in and you’re doing the same thing and playing the same character every day you realize it’s it
for me it was I really I really felt like I was doing that job um and it became more and more like a
job you know like not a nine to five it’s a seven to seven but um I just started to feel maybe a year a
year and a half in that I’d got everything I wanted and it hadn’t kind
of filled that annoying feeling inside of me that there was something more to life than than this what if your agent
called you tomorrow and said oh Gray’s Anatomy have called for you would you consider something like that one of these big long-running American shows if
my agent calls me Immortal and tells me there’s a job I’ll go and do it
um but you don’t seem to me like the person is driven by cash because you look at the money that these people who’s the Scots guy who’s on Gray’s
Anatomy the ginger Skillets guy and you know if you look up his yearly salary it’s in the millions but you know you
don’t appear to me as someone as much as we all need to pay the pay the rent or pay the mortgage you don’t strike me as
someone who would do it just for the cash no I mean I I feel as an actor if
you’re working you’re you’re you’re already and maybe the the the luckiest
10 of actors because many great great actors they don’t work as often as they
should um but for me yeah the the money thing was and is something of course it’s nice
to be comfortable and to be um you know I’m living in a place in Somerset now I have my own home and you
know it’s the first time I’m 45 this year and it’s the first time I’ve I’ve had a period where I haven’t had to
worry about money and and you know I’ve been doing this for about 20 years or so
you know but gonna I’m sorry I was gonna ask you did Star Wars open doors for you professionally then did that was was
there a catalyst there where there was a role and then people you know people knew who Duncan pie was
no uh I I still don’t think people people know who dude
I meant professionally sorry no no but I I do you know what I I I I felt you know
I spent a lot of my career post hallway booking jobs that I thought were going to open doors and I realized that that I
was maybe not enjoying the present job as much as I was because I was already thinking about the next thing the next
thing the next thing and I did think when I booked uh uh Star Wars and the way that that came about was so
well Mystic and unfathomable and but I you know I didn’t have a part in the
film I only had a part after the the rewrites and the reshoots and and um I remember thinking again this was 2016. I
remember thinking now I’ve made it now I won’t have to worry about uh money or jobs or auditions everything’s gonna
come and I don’t think I worked for a year after that wow wow that’s that’s to somebody like me that’s mind-boggling
because you know as you know as a punter you kind of think people who are in Star Wars that’s it you write your own check
yeah well I wish it was but sadly for me not the case do you get do you get
nervous if you arrive on the set because you’re also in the night manager you you were doing you did Halo uh was it last
year you did Halo yeah and you know is there when you arrive on set and you know there’s somebody big across from
you and like the night manager or Halo is there a voice inside your head that goes Duncan don’t make an ass of this
um no uh there used to be it wasn’t it wasn’t so much don’t make enough I
remember doing uh 24 and I think early 2014 I did 24 11 other
day and I was working with John kasar and Kiefer Sutherland and John boyega
and I remember being a little nervous and I remember when I met Kiefer
Sutherland of course I grew up watching Kiefer Sutherland The Lost Boys And 24 was one of my favorite shows and and
yeah there was a there was a sense of of being in the the presence of of people that were kind
of world famous and and I I feel back then in
2014 I was maybe still had that feeling that maybe I’d kind of I was going to
get found out you know because you know I didn’t go to drama school I didn’t do that you know I I never went that route
of of of training and and feeling like I mean I always thought at some point I’m gonna get found out but
um I just kept doing it and now you know I go on jobs and and my mentality has kind of changed because I think maybe
early in my career I wanted people to notice you know in in the sense I you
know I wanted a chance and I I had that it’s not desperation but you just have this feeling of wanting to have the
opportunity and so you maybe have this uh you give off this energy of of
needing something from someone else and now when I I do things while I’ve lived
a very different life in the in the last uh seven years or so you know many many things have changed and and happened and
I’ve been and seen some things that well I never thought were possible
um you know with my rational Western think in mind and and now when I go places I think well I always feel I’m
going somewhere myself so wherever I go I feel like um there’s going to be someone there
that I’m going to meet I’m gonna have a conversation with that um is going to be of benefit to them
that might help them look at things in a different way so so now I feel when I go places I feel like uh it’s uh it’s a
blessing for whoever it is I’m coming into contact with because maybe I have some I have something to share and I
think maybe early on in in my career I I maybe I didn’t think I had something to share and maybe I thought that the the
the the work the career the job was the thing that was going to Define who I am but I realized if you live your life
that way um and you define Yourself by your success in your career or as an actor
then then your definition of success is is limited only at the periods that you’re working into the success you have
in your career whereas now I look at it very differently I I think uh your measure as a a human being is is
measured in you know it’s it it’s a different thing and we can make ourselves very small by thinking that
the things that we do are what we are are you a big um social media user have you developed
a thick skin as an actor do you do you have a real criticism of yourself well do you know what I I don’t care what
people think about me I used to I used to be a big thing for me and I think that the freedom of of not caring it’s
not that I don’t care it’s just I don’t worry about it I I think uh if if we
take the time to examine our own mind for long enough we’ll realize we are
creating a narrative inside our head about things and if you can look at that from a kind of logical sense you must
realize then that if you’re doing it yourself everyone else is doing it so there’s not a lot of people that are
thinking too much about you and I’ve never taken praise to heart you know
I’ve never felt like if someone said I did a good job that that’s that I did a good job I never felt that way and so in
the same way if you don’t take the praise to heart and and make that change who you are then it’s just as easy not
to take criticism to Heart either Scott’s care
helping to break the cycle of deprivation for Scots in London
are you are you comfortable talking about your your belief system or your faith you’re a Buddhist aren’t you well
I I practice um yeah I practice nature and Buddhism and I’ve been practicing that Buddhism now for
um 12 just over 12 years I think when we Define ourselves though as I mean that
was my doorway into uh uh starting to look at myself as a as a
as a human being and my place here in this in this universe and I will always
practice this Buddhism however I I think to call oneself a Buddhist or a Christian or a or a a
Muslim or a Jew is we’re separating ourselves in in many ways from from
everyone else in humanity you know at the core we’re all human beings and
we’re all in this kind of ball of water flying around a ball of Fire in the Sky and I think
I think divisions are unhelpful um and I think I I think there’s no
one way to understanding the truth of what we are you know there’s not a
there’s not a Christian truth and a Buddhist truth and a a Jewish truth there’s just you know
there’s there’s just finding out what you are and what is your belief does your belief keep you balanced does it
connect you to the planet or does it you know I’m always interested in what keeps people sane in this crazy world that we
live in well what is what is done for me is it has uh opened many doors and the
study of of Buddhism you know I I started practicing Buddhism in 2010 at that time I’d been in hobby for three
years I lived in a nice house I drove a nice car I had everything that I thought was going to make me happy and I wasn’t
you know I I just wasn’t and and I remember uh I went out for for lunch
with the casting director Liz Stone and I told her I’d started meditating because while I was going through a
breakup with the girl I was living with and oh she said to me I used to chant and she wrote down the words
and she um said look I can introduce you a guy who I went and met and well he told me
all about this practice and he just had something this guy he just had something
and I didn’t know what it was and he asked me why I was there and I said to him that I had everything that I thought
I wanted but I wasn’t happy and also I if I had a problem or an issue it
would be running a constant train through my head so I wouldn’t be focusing on the person I was talking to
I would be focusing on the thing that’s going on in my head and wondering how I could get in a conversation so that we could talk about my problem you know and
um the the Buddhist practice for me has has really quieted acquainted quite
excited yeah why did things down um inside my mind but also it’s kind of
the the way that my life the trajectory and the changes inside of my life that
have taken place this last 12 or 13 years have been unfathomable and if you
said to me look Duncan if you start doing this practice and you chanting on your
everyday um well then 12 years time you’re gonna feel like this well I would have bitten
your hand off but if you’d have said to me you know for that to happen you’re
gonna have to lose everything you have and you know you’re going to lose your sister to to Suicide you’re going to
have to have open heart surgery and you’re going to have instances where
you think you’re gonna die I would have probably not signed up but those those things that happened I realized that
that something has taken place in the sense that well they say when you you chant name what you’re doing is you’re
you’re summoning forth the Buddha nature the the exactly you know that exists within yourself and
as you do that the Buddha nature that is inherent in all things in this universe who Rises up to protect you
um externally and and that has for sure been my experience and you you mentioned
very sadly that Lindsay passed away in 2013 she was very young and did it give you a did it give you a focus did it
give you a way to deal with the the grief that could have overwhelmed you yeah well it’s you know it’s the first
it’s funny I I had gone in in 2013 to Peru uh in in the beginning of
2013 to go and and drink something called Ayahuasca with uh with Shaman’s
uh and it was a a
powerful powerful process and I remember the shaman at the end
um you have kind of one-on-one with these these shamans and he said to me a
lot of people when they come and they drink this medicine they will realize what’s taking place here you know during
these these days he said for some people they’ll go home and maybe six months later something
will happen and then everything that has happened here will will will reveal itself and
and and well six months after I got back I took the phone call to to say that Lindsay had taken her own life and I
will never be able to put in Awards what it is that happened when I took that call but it was like uh
you know like an explosion of understanding and I love my sister
dearly and my other sister Catherine and I we we say really it was the most terrible terrible gift
that we’ve been given because the way I I Live Now and the way I understand life
and see life and and uh try and behave as a human being is on account of of
what happened and I think if that had happened maybe six or seven years previously I’d
probably be dead and I’d probably be dead because I would have thought isn’t
this awful and wallowed in the grief of it all and played the victim of not
intentionally of course but we have a tendency to feel like you know why is this thing happening to me and sometimes
when bad things happen we can go one of two ways we can we can try and make things better in which case we’re kind
of working in harmony with the universe or we can make things worse and by making things worse what I mean is we
can we can kind of take a very selfish approach to to what it is that’s taking
place and not think about the people around us and well I I might have you know drunk
myself to death who knows but you know as it happened I experienced the the death of my sister from uh uh a place
that um everybody else in the family experienced it in their own way of course they did you know grief is a a
unique experience and yet you know the the suffering that we we go through is
not unique to to the individual suffering and suffering it doesn’t matter how you’re feeling it or what your mind is telling you or what it is
that you’re grieving you are going through a process of energetic
transition I suppose and uh the the way that my life changed after I lost my
sister was I became quite free as a human being and what I mean by that is I
realized the gift of what it meant to be alive and I also realized how again as
if I needed another lesson how quickly life can be over but the thing I think she taught me the most was that I we’re
never going to know what is going on inside someone else’s head and so at
every moment you know make efforts to to be kind and to be compassionate because
you know in this world no one is setting out to to be bad human beings you know
people don’t make a plan to be you know evil things happen to them and they behave in
in certain ways and in the same way um when people cause us to suffer sometimes we we think well why would
that person do that to us and and actually you know people that cause suffering they are suffering themselves
usually um and and so it’s it’s trying to have a kind of grander perspective of other
people and wow you knew Lindsay she was a light you know that that girl anybody that speaks about her only has good
things to say about it yeah I I knew your system I mean not tremendously well but you know she was a light you know
she was a tremendous person and I wonder you you talked about a grander
perspective so everything that’s going on has that given you a grander perspective
just in life in general do you are you less of a warrior and I’m just talking about paying the gas bill having to pick
this up from Sainsbury’s oh the the nonsense that like you said rumbles through your head like a train are you
able to kind of create a a less worrisome equilibrium about all these things yes you know I I I I I have my
moments you know I had some news yesterday that that uh you know I
I had believed something was coming through in a certain way which made things very secure for me for a long
period and well that’s a couple of things changed and and then well maybe I
have to start thinking well can I stay in this house for another year to learn and and actually what happens is I it’s
not that I don’t experience the the the process of now what is going to happen
it’s just that I don’t pay a lot of attention to it because the the mind is is something I I believe really that’s
set up um through our our social conditioning you know the the fear we have inside of
us is it’s not usually our fear it’s a product of the way we’ve grown up or the
things our parents told us and um so I’m aware of what goes on inside
my head I just try and be aware of it I don’t try and stick my fingers in and and and run with it because what you do
when you when you start to worry if you knew the power of the Mind to create the reality that you live in
we would all of us be super conscious of what’s going on inside there and and
certainly we would do everything we can to find ways not to give energy to negative thought processes now of course
that takes time but the mind you know some days it will say yeah Marcus for instance you said you had three kids
some days you’ll have really good days with the kids right and you’ll feel like I did good today you know the mind will
tell you I did a good job today but the days that you don’t do good jobs your mind will say oh you were bad you should
have done that differently or you’ve done this or that so your own mind which is how we Define ourselves is
sometimes telling you you’re not so great now anything that works in that way I I wouldn’t you know the mind’s a
great thing if if you’re cooking on a hot stove and it’s telling you not to put your fingers in there in the suit but but if it’s uh if it’s sometimes
telling you you’re good and sometimes telling you’re bad I would wonder if that’s a uh something to lean on when
times are tough and and do you know what’s from an acting point of view you know this has obviously given you a pragmatism but do you know what’s coming
up next for you or are you are you waiting well I I have some things that I can’t talk about that are that are
coming um I I I spent uh a good portion of last
year nearly seven months working on a project um which which is coming out very soon
um and well you know in terms of of what comes next uh as usual I’ve not worked
since then so I I don’t know what’s coming next but I think that’s that’s that’s I think the life of an actor is
a kind of microcosm of what life is like and well maybe experience it a little
differently in the sense that you never know when your next job is going to come from you know you never know when your next paycheck is going to come from now a lot of people can’t live like that a
lot of people they they like the the security of knowing I’m gonna get paid
at the end of the month I can pay for this and this and this the idea of not knowing that for some people would be
you know horrific and yet at the same time here we are all all staggering through life not knowing you know when
we’re going to take our last breath and we don’t worry about it at all you know we we kind of we kind of put it to one
side and and almost push it away and and you know and feel like well that’s that’s not going to happen to us which
of course it is um but that’s how I feel the the life of an actor is you’re experiencing that on an
almost daily basis in the sense that you you know none of us know what’s coming next but if you’re an actor that’s just
something that applies to your your career as well unless you’re you’re one of the you know very fortunate uh three
or four percent at the top end of the business so you’ll get to to pick and choose the things that come next for them Duncan it’s been an absolute Joy
speaking to you I really have enjoyed it I could listen to your day actually thank you thank you for coming on the
scotscare podcast thank you for having me Scott’s care supporting London Scots
with financial grants welfare advice counseling sheltered housing jobs
coaching and family support [Music]
