Noel Fielding says that initially, “I didn’t want to be in” The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. “I didn’t know if I could do it,” he tells Consequence during a recent sitdown at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. The reason was, he says, that starring in the Apple TV+ series as the titular fictionalized highwayman pushed him out of his comfort zone as a supporting actor — a zone he never really stepped out of, he feels, even going back to his fan favorite work on the BBC cult comedy The Mighty Boosh, which he co-created with Julian Barratt.
“I didn’t know if I could carry a show, because I was always the slightly ethereal childlike sort,” Fielding says. “Julian carried [The Mighty Boosh], really, and I was the guy that flitted in and out. [Barratt] did all the heavy lifting. He was the Oliver Hardy. And it was very difficult after that to do comedy again, because it was very idiosyncratic and very specific, and we had complete freedom and we did exactly what we wanted to do and what we wanted to say.”
Since The Mighty Boosh ended in 2007, Fielding has kept busy with a variety of projects, including hosting The Great British Baking Show, which, he says, “I love for different reasons. It’s like an improv show for me, because I just get to chat with the bakers and I never know what’s gonna happen in those conversations. I love that, and I love working with Alison [Hammond] and Paul [Hollywood] and Prue [Leith]. It’s just a fun, nice vibe.”
But Dick Turpin is the project, Fielding says, that he was essentially waiting for after all these years, as it “would accommodate my weird whimsical notions,” with the deliberately anachronistic and irreverent period comedy “written specifically so that my comic clown can be the center of this strange world.”
Executive producer Kenton Allen, sitting beside Fielding for our interview, notes that the comedian is “the spirit of the show. He’s not only got an incredible imagination — there’s a childlike element to his imagination which is unfiltered, which is rather delightful. Because it’s not tainted by being an adult. You’re still in touch with your inner child. If you talk to anybody about creativity, often your most creative point in your life is when you are young, before you get burdened by parenthood and taxes and all of that. Noel’s managed to stay in touch with that childhood imagination.”
“I’m Pee-wee Herman,” Fielding laughs.
