I was offered Tin Man whilst I was still performing Bent in London and the idea of running around the forest of British Columbia being chased by flying monkeys after spending months watching my lover die and being abused by nazis every night was very appealing!!
I'm always slightly worried about "reinventions" and "adaptations" of already successful films as the obvious response sometimes is why? When the original is so good, why do we have to reinvent it? But what I really liked about Tin Man was the way that it used elements from the original book and film but it was something completely of its own. I also think that the idea of people going on a journey to a destination where they think they will find something they think they lack, and on the way realizing that they have had it all along, is a story that we have told in various forms for generations. You could say as far back as The Iliad.
I spoke to Nick Willing, the director, on the phone and I was really smitten with him and his energy, and I came on board. The shoot in British Columbia was pretty arduous as we were making three feature length episodes in the time it can sometimes take to do one feature. So there was no mucking about! I really had a lot of fun. The Vancouver crew was amazing and my fellow travellers in the O.Z., Zooey Deschanel, Neal McDonough, and Raoul Trujillo, were a great group to work with. We are all very different but I think difference is very healthy when you have to spend a lot of time with people in a variety of forests!
I tried to infuse the character of Glitch with a little of the physicality of Ray Bolger's Scarecrow in the original film, the Wizard of Oz.