Transcriber’s Note: For ease of reading, most small speech noises and the frequent laughs/chuckles have been omitted from this text.
ALEX
Hey, everyone. Welcome back. We missed you. It’s been a little while. Well, we’re here today and we are here with myself, Alexander J Newall, and with yourself…
JONNY
Jonny Sims. Hello.
I overslept. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.
ALEX
You take the project pressures away and immediately it all falls apart.
JONNY
It’s been a big week!
For clarity, we are recording this a couple of days after the finale dropped.
ALEX
It’s as close to morning after as we can really manage.
JONNY
I mean, a bit. Yeah.
ALEX
So, what we are doing today is we are being held accountable. To be specific, we have our cast and crew are going to be putting questions to us that we’ve managed to dodge for half a decade, and this was their one chance to hold us to account.
So I hope you’re strapped in. I haven’t pre-read these questions. So I’m assuming they’re all going to be vicious, targeted character assassinations.
JONNY
Elizabeth has been trying to ask me these questions for years, but I just point over her shoulder and I’m like, “What’s that?!” and then she falls for it every time.
ALEX
Well, tough. Today’s the day where we’re going to do our best to give a couple of real answers.
Right, on that, then, I’m going to hand over to our first question-asker and we’ll go from there.
[CLICK]
MARTYN
Hello. It’s Martyn Pratt, CTO of Rusty Quill. And I’ve got a few questions for you, Alex and Jonny: What did you do in my flat that you never told me about?
[CLICK]
JONNY
The… actual honest answer is smoked on the balcony area outside, where there were quite a lot of very vigorous-looking No Smoking signs. And I threw my cigarette butts off the side…
ALEX
Jonny! Jonathan Sims!
JONNY
Onto the greenery…
ALEX
What is wrong with you?
JONNY
…thirteen storeys below.
ALEX
What is wrong with you?!
JONNY
Not often. I didn’t do it every time, but there were one or two mornings where I’d dragged myself out of bed at, like, six in the morning and sat on a bus for three hours to get there.
ALEX
Ah Jonny…
JONNY
I was having a bad time and I’m sorry, Martyn. I hope that the building managers never punched you in the gut once, and were like, urgh.
ALEX
Ah, Jonny, gah…
All I did is permanent property damage. Littering’s far worse!
JONNY
I’m legitimately a little bit ashamed of that, but also not.
ALEX
Okay, things that I did. There’s two. There’s one that I believe I did tell Martyn about, which is that I accidentally tore the entire handle of his bathroom door off. It just came off in my hands, the whole lot, just “crunch.”
JONNY
Oh, thank god! I thought I did that!
ALEX
No. So I can’t for the life of me remember, but I think it was slightly broken, and I just finished the job. So then I think I did have to tell Martyn eventually, like, “This is broken. I think it was already broken, but I know I finished it off.”
But there is one that I also did. So, when we were recording in the corridors, we used to have to tape up the sleeping bags and stuff in order to record. And let’s just say that at some point, one of the tapes was particularly strong. A brand I’ll say is Gorilla Tape, there you go. Very good, strong stuff… that when removing tore out a chunk of plaster, and I don’t think I ever told Martyn that, but what I did is I then took a strip of Gorilla Tape – because if it caused a problem, it can solve it – doubled it over, stuck it on the underneath of the plaster, and then just reinserted that plaster.
JONNY
That poor corridor by the end looked…
ALEX
There was nothing left!
JONNY
It started out relatively nice, painted. I mean, you know, like, it’s that sort of cheap paint you get in a lot of rented properties in London that, like, does sort of come off if you sneeze on it. But by the end… oof.
ALEX
You didn’t have to say “we,” that was me. That was all me.
[CLICK]
MARTYN
What was Robin Lennox doing during Season 5? Was he just constantly scared he’d be late for dinner?
[CLICK]
ALEX
Okay. Oh, hey Martyn. Yeah. So for anyone who may have forgotten, Martyn did play Robin Lennox all the way back in Episode 100, as potentially the most annoying character in the entire series. So what was Robin up to, Jonny?
JONNY
The trouble is I can think of quite a lot of potentially honest and comparatively upsetting answers, but I’m reluctant because it’s a nice, fun question from a nice, fun man.
ALEX
Go horrible. Go horrible. Do it. Well, I’ll set your tone. My first instinct was to put him out on the moors, searching for a dog that never actually existed in the first place and never finding it.
JONNY
Yeah, that’s actually kind of where my thoughts were sort of lending as well. I think he’s out on the moors, Jackie’s gone. He’s running, he’s looking, he can’t find his dog and yes, he is late for dinner, but also he doesn’t know where his mother is. Like, everything that is very important to him feels like it’s almost close, but he can’t find it. And there’s just that gradually building sense of panic forever.
ALEX
Yeah, I think that would work.
[CLICK]
MARTYN
Was there a field of bad cows during The Eye’s reign?
[CLICK]
JONNY
Yeah. Probably.
ALEX
There must have been, like, there must be someone out there who could not imagine anything worse than a field of bad cows. Therefore, to my eye, pun intended, there must be a field of bad cows. Right?
JONNY
Someone’s gonna have cows as a phobia. Also, there’s probably a field of good cows that are imagining bad cows, as they’re – Like, a lot of the people trapped in human domains created, sort of, human or human-adjacent things to torment them – Well, they didn’t exactly create them themselves, they were created in response to their deepest fears.
So, if there were some domains where there were cows and the cows were, like, “Oh no, I really hope I don’t get bullied by other cows. Whoa. What’s that over there? Some bad cows.”
ALEX
Oh yeah, there you go. So it’s less bad cows than like social exclusion cows, potentially.
JONNY
Potentially.
[CLICK]
HELEN
Hello. I’m Helen Gould and I play Melanie’s therapist, Laverne, on TMA, as well as being Lead Sensitivity Editor.
Here are my questions for Jonny and Alex. Number one: Who wins in a fight – Martin K Blackwood or Alexander J Newall?
[CLICK]
JONNY
I think it would start going to Alex, but about halfway would switch over, because Martin is, I’ve always imagined him as, like, a much bigger guy.
ALEX
Yeah, I’m the same.
JONNY
But he’s got that thing where bigger people are often a lot gentler because they’re aware of their own size and sometimes their own power. And so I think it would be a lot harder to actually get him to invest in the fight.
Whereas Alex, I think would just go from, from nought to just, like, violence –
ALEX
Immediate. Yeah. Okay.
JONNY
Yeah, absolutely. Just like a switch snaps and you’re wailing on him. So I think that would really go in your favour early on, but if you weren’t able to finish the job pretty quickly, I think Martin would reach a breaking point, and I think he would be able to overwhelm you.
ALEX
You see, I agree. I think what it comes down to is, is Martin starting this process ready to fight? Cos if so, I’m – I’ve got my clock cleaned very, very quickly. But if he’s like, “Oh, hey, we can work around this…” then I can really, you know, get in early with some horrific sucker punch or something, I might stand a chance.
JONNY
Actually thinking about it, given that this fight might be instigated by him being told you are the one who has created the universe in which he has suffered, he might be raring to go quite quickly.
ALEX
No, that’s a good point, actually. I’m the one who’s been gunning for the most suffering for Martin throughout. So actually, I think it might just have to be that I lose, I don’t see a win state here.
[CLICK]
HELEN
Do you have any horrible story ideas that you didn’t get to include in the series for plot reasons? Like, did you ever want to write about a man whose hand slowly turned into hammers or something?
[CLICK]
JONNY
I mean, yes. Not this series specifically. In fact, a lot of the ideas that- I say had, these are generally things that other people said to me in conversation. Or like, weird little historical or, like, in some cases, physics facts that fascinate me, I’m like, “Oh, I could do a story on that.” But the reason most of these didn’t end up being used is because I couldn’t easily convert them into a Season 5-style horrorscape or statements.
ALEX
See, I got a list as long as my arm. I’m genuinely gutted we never got to do one that was fully based in a submarine. I really wanted to do a submarine one.
JONNY
You was so pumped for a submarine episode.
ALEX
I really, really wanted a submarine episode. I’m gutted we didn’t get to do one of those.
JONNY
I’ve actually still got a bunch of notes on my phone about potential ones.
ALEX
I feel like these notes are going to be “What if lamp, but scary?”
JONNY
Well, one of them is “drained canal full of spooky.”
ALEX
Drained canals all, properly, a little bit disturbing.
JONNY
Yeah. Cos it was like about a year and a half ago they drained a bunch of canals in Amsterdam and were finding all these – I mean, like, they were finding thousands of bikes –
ALEX
Oh, yeah, yeah.
JONNY
– but also just, like, a lot of weird stuff that had fallen into the canals over the course of, like, a hundred odd years. And so the idea of like, “Oh well, what else could it have dredged up?” was quite compelling to me. Also things like, how in Chernobyl, nothing rots.
ALEX
Chernobyl in general is really – grips me in the most horrific and visceral way.
JONNY
I feel like by that time, I’d learned my lesson about being like, “Oh, this is a real world thing that’s kind of horrible. I’ll just use it.”
ALEX
It isn’t one you just dive into.
JONNY
I’m not sure it would have been a good idea to do an episode on that sort of thing, but yeah, there’s all sorts of stuff about the Chernobyl fallout and how it’s affected the surrounding countryside that is like, really disquieting in quite interesting ways.
ALEX
I often say to people that horror has never really got me. The best horror series I’ve ever seen wasn’t a horror series, and it was that Chernobyl series. That grabs me in a way that more fantastical horror never will.
JONNY
Oh yeah. There was the Brocken, or Brocken spectre. It’s a phenomenon where, generally when you’re, like, on a mountain or something like that, and the sun is sort of behind you and there’s, like, mist or something in front of you, and your own shadow appears as a figure in the distance…
ALEX
Mmhmm.
JONNY
Apparently quite unsettling. And I think that would have been quite an interesting one.
Also the Red Zone in France.
ALEX
That one’s new to me.
JONNY
It’s basically an area where there’s still just enough unexploded munitions from one of the World Wars that you can’t go there. And it’s just got all these signs everywhere, and it’s just an otherwise completely beautiful bit of the French countryside that is still, a hundred odd years later, unusable because of the war.
And like, I don’t know what I’d do with that, but that – When I read about it, it seemed like a relatively potent seed. But again, real-world stuff, learning to be a little bit more careful about that.
ALEX
You also forgot, though, the most important horror story that never got told, which I can’t believe you never raised.
JONNY
What? You?
ALEX
No, no! The best pitch I ever heard. I think it was you. What if teeth only got hard when you were about to eat?
JONNY
Oh no, that’s not me. It was a deeply upsetting tweet I found.
ALEX
That’s the true horror that I regret not being able to fit into Magnus Archives.
JONNY
The idea of your teeth becoming tumescent?
[CLICK]
HELEN
Who is your favorite fear avatar?
[CLICK]
JONNY
You are. I don’t know. Helen’s not a fear avatar.
ALEX
Well, I quite liked the character Helen. But I always did. I always wanted a character that’s, like, “Oh, you know, they’re a bit disreputable, but they’ll be a good friend in the end.” No… They won’t. You’ll just feel that way for a while, but they’ll just burn you in the end.
JONNY
Yeah. I mean, like, all my children are dear to me.
ALEX
Oh, I know who your favourite is even if you’ll won’t admit it, straight out of the gate. Monster Pig.
JONNY
Oh, Monster Pig! Monster Pig!
ALEX
You love Monster Pig! Monster Pig’s your, like, absolute favourite.
JONNY
Monster Pig’s great. Ah, Monster Pig…
I think I also, like, never really dived into it much beyond the one episode, but the Piper, I’ve got a lot of affection for that, because that is a story that was very much with me a long time before Magnus came about. It was one that I sort of, like, when we started doing Magnus Archives, I was like, “Oh, this would go really well here.”
So, like, Oliver Banks.
ALEX
Oh yeah.
JONNY
Maybe it’s just because he’s very tired all the time. So, right now, I consider him relatable.
ALEX
Fair enough.
[CLICK]
NICO
Hey Alex and Jonny, it’s Nico, your humble servant of an editor through Magnus Season 5. Question one: Alex, you said in the previous Q & A that there was an episode in an earlier season where, because the deadlines were so tight, you couldn’t get Jonny to come back in to record a John line, so you did it yourself. Would you be able to reveal to us what episode/line that actually was?
[CLICK]
ALEX
I feel like I should put this one to bed at this point now the series has been done. Do I have your consent, Jonathan Sims?
JONNY
I mean, what you have to remember is I’m not actually here. This is Alex doing an impression of Jonny.
ALEX
Hah, wah wah.
JONNY
Yes, Alex, I, Jonny, very much consent to you revealing this.
ALEX
The sad news I have for people is, I don’t remember the specific episode off my head, but there’s a reason for that, which is I’ve done it a few times throughout the season. It’s not like once or twice.
The one that everyone has been hunting for, the reason they haven’t found it, is the largest substitution was the title read of an episode. Jonny read the wrong title for an episode, so I recorded myself as Jonathan Sims reading the episode title. I don’t even think it was the whole title. I think it was, like, a three-word title and he got two words wrong or something. So the major one that people will be able to find if they hunt, and I don’t mind sharing it because it won’t ruin the episode, is I have read as Jonathan Sims, the title for an episode, I think in Season… 3, but I have done that more than once, because there’s been a couple of gaffes there.
JONNY
Yeah. It’s like, I think people are, like, “What is the one thing?” And it’s like, no, this is just something that Alex discovered in like Season 2.
ALEX
It’s a fix that I’ve had to use a couple of times.
JONNY
I don’t think you’ve needed to do it much at all in Season 5, because I’ve generally been –
ALEX
Almost not at all.
JONNY
It’s because, weirdly, pandemic has made that bit a lot easier, because –
ALEX
Yeah.
JONNY
– if you’re like, “I need this line again,” you can just be like, “Hey Jonny, can you just record this line again and send it over?”
ALEX
The unfortunate truth for people is, there is an episode and I would have to dig around, and I don’t know it off the top of my head that I did, basically, the title for and that’s not Jonny. And I think it’s around season three.
There’s another one where I did a couple of words from a title. And there’s been a few points in the series where I have subbed in, like, a word, but very often what I’ll do to throw people is, let’s say that the word was, like…
JONNY
Watermelon.
ALEX
Yeah. “Watermelon” is actually a good example – is I would take Jonny saying “Wart” and then I would take me saying “a melon” and then blend them so that it’s – You’re never, ever going to find it. Maybe a spectrographic analysis, but that’s a lot of effort go to through on two hundred episodes and it’s not worth it. There isn’t anything particularly exciting.
The one that everyone’s been hunting for, and the one that I alluded to, was yeah, it was an episode title only, I’m afraid. And I know that’s a grossly underwhelming secret, but don’t assume all secrets are interesting because they’re not.
[CLICK]
NICO
What’s the biggest idea one of you has had, for any point in The Magnus Archives, that you were really fond of doing, that the other one has vetoed?
[CLICK]
ALEX
That’s a really good question.
JONNY
It’s a hard one though, because like, if that is the process of planning, basically every season has been just a long back and forth. With like, us throwing out ideas, the other vetoing or being like, “Yeah, but twist it this way.” I think you initially wanted to be a lot harder on John and Martin with the ending.
ALEX
I wanted the ending to be harder across the board. And one of the things that I know – Like, we discussed – And I do, for what it’s worth, I do believe that we’ve pretty much consistently come to always the answer of what it should have been.
JONNY
Yeah.
ALEX
I pushed initially the idea that Georgie didn’t make it.
JONNY
I think we were both initially talking about the idea of a sole survivor at the end. And it was, like, partway through Season 5, because that was when we really started, like, “Okay, so who is going to be the survivor?” And we came down on the, the idea, actually, that there was no dramatic reason to kill them off other than just to be a bit sadder.
ALEX
Cruel.
JONNY
Yeah. Certainly at the ending I was on the harsher side of that table than you were.
ALEX
It’s one of those things I don’t remember the exact details. I remember both of us throwing out a lot of things. I remember quite a few of yours. I was like, “I think that’s a bit too much. I’m probably going to veto.”
JONNY
You don’t want to read something that’s ever been written by me solely. It’s always just vicious.
ALEX
There is one disagreement we had. And I remember this conversation, and this is early Season 1, where it was the first time we ever discussed the feasibility of a Martin/John romance. And I distinctly remember your initial reaction being, “I don’t know if there’s much space for romance in this as a property.”
JONNY
I very much went into Season 1 being like, “Ah no, this is horror, there’s no, like, I don’t think there’s space for romance.”
I don’t think it was actually John and Martin though. I think we were talking much more abstractly, because I remember there was a distinct moment, end of Season 2/early Season 3 where we both have the moment of like. “John and Martin, actually? The dynamic. Do we lean into this?”
And we were both like, “Yeah, actually, that is, that’s the move.”
ALEX
You’re right, it was, it was a blanket discussion of should we put some romance in the ensemble bits. It wasn’t specific.
[CLICK]
NICO
Technical issues aside, because of the pandemic, which we all are very, very much aware of, how much of an emotional impact has it had on you to record The Magnus Archives? How much harder has it been to get into character?
[CLICK]
ALEX
I am going to give a controversial answer, which is… I think remote recording is technically more difficult, but I find it significantly easier to perform in. Because I find it really difficult to squeeze eight people in a room, inches away from one another’s faces, accounting for all of that, and then trying to perform, and being like, “You have to keep your hands by your side. Why? Because if you gesticulate, you’re going to hit everyone else in the studio.”
Whereas remote recording kind of frees that.
JONNY
Obviously. Yeah. Because for you, Alex, like, doing non-remote recordings means that you are performing the functions of both actor and actual sound technician, which means that you’re only ever going to be able to put, what, 70% of yourself into a performance, because part of your brain’s always going to be on the actual recording.
Remote recording, because it kind of distributes that, so everyone’s brain is like 10% sound technician, 90% actor.
ALEX
That’s exactly how it feels to me. Yeah.
JONNY
For me, I found that it hasn’t had any effect on the quieter scenes. It’s entirely volume-based, and it’s just because I live in a shared house with relatively thin walls. Which means that louder scenes I have to actively fight against getting quite self-conscious and quite worried about disturbing other people.
[CLICK]
ANNIE
Hey, I’m Annie. I am a vocal editor for The Magnus Archives. Jonny, Alex, settle a debate for me and one of my closest friends: Insofar as any of the avatars or monsters were a part of just one of the entities, were Breekon and Hope a part of The Stranger, or were they free agents working for the overall entity of Fear from the beginning?
[CLICK]
JONNY
For me, Breekon and Hope were one of the first, sort of, examples of how a lot of the Fears interact. Because they are pure Stranger in terms of what their alignment is and what entity they are a part of. They are a hundred percent The Stranger, they are a manifestation of the unknown figures arriving in town bearing something bad. But because of the way, the fears sort of blend into each other and because of the specific role that those figures have within stories of all sorts of different, horrible things, they have this function of being able to interact with and facilitate all sorts of different Fears.
So, in many ways it was an early example of the quite weirdly intricate ways that the Fears can blend and merge and interact with each other based on, in many ways what their actual narrative roles were within the world, rather than just within the story.
ALEX
See, I think we think of them ever so slightly differently, which is, I also see them as pure Stranger, but I just – So a lot of what I do directing is I have to find shortcuts for people where it’s like, instead of learning “here’s four seasons of lore,” just like, “think of it like this thing.” I use a lot of shortcuts.
For me, I always just saw Breekon and Hope as pure Stranger but they’re ambassadors who are granted diplomatic immunity, so they’re bouncing around other powers, and they’re – they flash their diplomatic immunity badge and then they get to have a natter with other powers and everyone just leaves them alone. That’s how I always just kind of skipped to in my head.
[CLICK]
ANNIE
There are certain seemingly mundane locations that provide good cover for places of power for the various entities. For example, the Archives for the Eye, a theme park would do well for the Vast, things like this. What seemingly normal business establishments would provide good fronts, good cover for other entities?
[CLICK]
ALEX
I think that every tax office ever would be a fantastic place for a Buried statement or five.
JONNY
Yeah, absolutely.
ALEX
I think public swimming baths for The Vast also works.
JONNY
Oh actually, I was going to go with Corruption.
ALEX
Oh, naw, Jonny, why?! That – Urgh, that’s so viscerally horrendous!
JONNY
Sometimes you’ll go to a swimming pool and you’re like, “This is not being cleaned long enough, uhhh –”
ALEX
And there’s mould all up the sides of the thing. And you don’t want to touch the side, so you just hover in the middle and regret your decisions. Yeah. Okay.
JONNY
The horrible floating plaster.
ALEX
Jonny, stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop.
JONNY
Sorry, content warning –
ALEX
Stop!
JONNY
– for just horrible stuff.
ALEX
Oh god.
Oh, here’s one for you that’s an odd one. A tanning salon for The Spiral. Because, I happened to have been in one or two, and they always tend to be very long backroom corridors where, like, it has a nice shop front, but you’re always inevitably just wandering around in the back. And it’s full of all of these figures, just laying waiting in bright, bright light, and the fact that it never has a normal layout because it’s always some kind of retrofitted domestic space.
And no, I don’t do tanning as a thing, but I have been in tanning salons before.
JONNY
Yeah, no, I keep thinking of them. And then we’re like, “You did that in Season 5 because that’s what Season 5 was.”
ALEX
A little bit, yeah. We have narrowed the field a lot.
JONNY
I think there’s a reason that you have so many just coming out and I’m like, “Uhhhh… meat shop?”
Because I feel like I’ve used up most of my, like, “Well, what locations will be good for what powers? These 40!”
ALEX
Last one is simple, evil pubs. You know, you have, like, the Harry Potter one where it leads to another world. That but evil.
JONNY
So what Power is “evil pubs”?
ALEX
Ah, evil pubs, I mean, all of them. You pick a Power, mate, and I will find you a pub that’s evil and fits that bill. Go! Any, any Power.
JONNY
The clown one.
ALEX
The clown one…
JONNY
The Spiral, no, The Stranger. Yeah, the clown one.
ALEX
The pub that you go to and it’s your regular, but you never, ever see a same person behind the bar more than once. And you’ve been going there for a year and you go there three, four times a week sometimes, just even if it’s just to sit and play games in a corner or whatever, but the staff is never the same one after another.
JONNY
Okay.
ALEX
I mean it’s a damning indictment of the current gig economy, but… pubs are a universal. They are a nexus point for all Powers.
[CLICK]
FAY
My name is Fay Roberts and I played Daisy Tonner on The Magnus Archives. To both of you, probably enough of us have asked: Did you ever expect The Magnus Archives to become as phenomenally popular as they have turned out to be?
So instead, I’m going to ask: How has that changed other aspects of your life, for better or worse?
[CLICK]
JONNY
There’s the obvious answers and, like, the big ticket answers, which are like, “Hey, I got a book deal.” Professionally-speaking, I’ve had a lot of success based on it.
ALEX
For me, it’s quite an easy one to answer, actually. No-one wants to hire a young director. No-one wants to hire a director who’s certainly younger than forty. It’s a genuine issue because people assume a level of experience is required, and it does take a lot of experience. Having this means I don’t need to any longer convince people to take a punt.
I can point to and be like, “Look, I’ve done this. Just, you either want to hire me or you don’t.” And that’s quite useful because it was very difficult, especially in my twenties, to get directing work. Cos everyone’s like, “Come back to me in twenty years,” which isn’t a particularly helpful answer. So that’s been a big help.
[CLICK]
FAY
The next question is for Jonny: I know that some details as a final season have changed way beyond your original or even relatively recent plans. Though some – “the Archivist accidentally starts the apocalypse,” which you mentioned in passing that exactly four years ago – have abided. Could you talk us through a little of that process of change and how that feels or felt?
[CLICK]
JONNY
It’s tricky because in many ways to talk about it in terms of change often implies a level of set that things weren’t. It was, in many ways, a lot less a process of change and much more a process of discovery. So the idea of the Archivist making his way across this hellish, transformed wasteland was very central, right from a very early point.
Then around Season 3-ish, Martin was added to the journey. We were like, “Okay, so it’s Martin and the Archivist making their way across.” Season 4, when we cemented the Panopticon as this thing, we were like, “Okay, so it’s Martin and John making their way across this blasted hellscape towards this tower.”
And so, that is much more how it went rather than me coming in with a strong idea of exactly how Season 5 was going to look, and then revising it and changing it. I think the biggest change that happened, probably, was the last ten episodes were a little bit reordered early in the season. My first draft didn’t actually have them meeting Elias ‘til right at the end, ‘til the finale, and had Hill Top Road happening a couple of episodes earlier.
But, as I was writing, as we arrived at the tunnels beneath the Institute, I realised it felt super-artificial for them not to go up and see Elias, basically immediately.
ALEX
Well, it’s a pet peeve of mine in fantasy fiction and stuff like that, where it’s like, “We have arrived at the tower. You know what we should do? Anything else for a while.”
No! It drives me up the wall. I hate it.
JONNY
And that was kind of how it read in the original episode plan. It was basically a reorder where it was, like, “Okay, no, we’re going to have them go up and see Elias. And use that to establish the stakes that can then be used to launch into the, sort of, longer finale run involving Hill Top road and all that sort of thing.”
[CLICK]
FAY
Question for Alex: What advice would you give someone who wanted to set up their own audio entertainment production company?
[CLICK]
ALEX
I am getting asked this increasingly.
JONNY
Run!
ALEX
I will make sure that my advice is not UK specific. If you want to set up a company, actually set up a company. The worst thing that you can do, that I keep seeing people do, is they set up their Facebook page like, “The Glorious Rabbit,” and they start getting all of their branding for “The Glorious Rabbit,” but they’re not a company. They’re still just themselves, dressing themselves up as a company. And that is a gross error.
I’m not going to dive into how to direct audio cos that’s not the question. If you want to do the company stuff, actually set up a company. Thankfully in most countries, but not all countries of the world, it’s surprisingly easy to set up a company because they want you to do that because, you know, it has economic benefits for the country at large, if everyone’s doing it.
Setting yourself up as a company, again, in most countries, affords you a large number of protections because it means “What happens if you make a show and then you get sued because ‘The Glorious Bunny,’ or whatever I said, the company was, already exists.” If you’re not a company you’re just sued. If you are a company, the company is sued. And the worst thing that can happen is that the company goes bankrupt, not you.
And I know that sounds like an unsexy answer, but it’s the mistake I see most often is people saying, “Oh, I’m a company!” but they haven’t actually set themselves up as a company. And you are leaving yourself open to just enormous problems. The other one is – It requires three things to make a successful company: time, money, and –
JONNY
Lack of asbestos!
ALEX
That is the secret fourth ingredient, yes.
It takes, let’s call it “talent.” I’m not a huge fan of that as a word, whatever. Basically it doesn’t matter what the proportion is, but you’re going to need to hit a certain amount. And it’s like, if you’ve got no money, you’d better be quite good at what you do and have a lot of time. I basically maxed out the time aspect, is how I decided to game the system. I was like, I can take a job that gives me a lot of time and I can just burn a lot of midnight oil. If you’ve got a lot of money, shocker, it’s quite easy.
You can skip steps if you’re just brilliant! If you’re just absolutely amazing, turns out you don’t necessarily need much money or time. However, I think a lot of people, including anyone who thinks that of us, tends to overestimate that and underestimate the time element. So, the other one is, really balance those three and figure out what your win of those three is and work to it, I guess.
But again, I’m not an expert.
[CLICK]
KARIM
Hello everyone. This is Karim Kronfli, voice of Simon Fairchild in The Magnus Archives. Question for Jonny: after having written this massive opus of a creation, do you think you need to lie down in a dark room for a period of time or find yourself some nice, wide open spaces?
[CLICK]
JONNY
Yes, but I have deadlines!
ALEX
Deadlines are your friends. Deadlines mean you’ll always have work. Just load yourself on deadlines, and you’ll never be tired again.
JONNY
And to be fair, actually, my part in the writing actually finished month and a half, two months before the final episode actually dropped. So, I should have had plenty of time to rest post-Magnus.
I haven’t, but that’s entirely my own fault.
ALEX
There’s always an extra project you can take, Jonny. Would you like three more? Have three more projects, Jonny.
JONNY
Yeah, okay.
[CLICK]
KARIM
To Alex: how do you feel about rollercoasters?
[CLICK]
ALEX
Fun fact for people, I actually have a perfectly manageable fear of, mostly manmade, heights. So as a result, I adore roller coasters and take every opportunity I can to go rock climbing. I know that might sound counterintuitive, but you get more thrills from something you’re afraid of than something you’re not.
So I love theme parks, love rollercoasters, love rock climbing and anything that feels like that. What I don’t like is going up something like, I don’t know, Tokyo Tower or the Shard, and just standing in a big skyscraper very still because I’m not grabbing anything. And if I’m not holding it together myself, clearly it’s all going to fall apart, which says a lot more about me, I think.
JONNY
Rollercoasters are a little bit of a tragedy in my life. Because for the first 20, 21 years of my life, I was absolutely terrified of them. I’ve got a bit of vertigo and like, I could never bring myself to actually go on a rollercoaster. It legitimately terrified me.
And then around 20, 21, maybe, I was like, “You know what? Screw this, I’m going to do it.” And I did. And I was like, “Wow, rollercoasters are fun! I really like rollercoasters.” And so I had five, six years of, like, really loving rollercoasters. And whenever we went to theme parks, “Let’s go on the rollercoasters!”
But a few years ago, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. And that has meant that I can still go on rollercoasters, I’m not, like, gonna burst like a balloon, but it means that I tend to get headaches.
ALEX
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.
JONNY
I can’t just be like, “Yes! Let’s go on all the rollercoasters.” I’m like, “Okay, I’ve been on a rollercoaster and I probably need to sit down and just, you know.” So that’s a bit sad that I can’t do rollercoasters as much as I’d like anymore.
[CLICK]
ELIZABETH
Hey, it’s Elizabeth, one of your editors. What was the opinion of the Eye and the Spider of Martin’s poetry, given that, from what I understand, they both had to suffer through it?
[CLICK]
JONNY
In my capacity as the Web, I haven’t listened to a lot of it. I, I listened to it, to the first few Patron releases to make sure it was good and then I was like, “Brilliant. I trust Anil to absolutely nail this.”
ALEX
There was specifically – You went, “I listened to it to see if it was good, it wasn’t, and then was told that was the point. And like, okay, cool.”
JONNY
Yeah. I was like, “Ah no, this is not great. Perfect.”
In terms of the in-universe, Eye and Spider, I think you got to remember that they delight in fear being caused. So, for them to listen to it is fine because all they can see is the potential for people being afraid that Martin’s going to strong-arm them into to coming to an open mic night.
ALEX
Although there’s an interesting nuance here, which is, okay, The Eye stuck with Martin right the way through to the end, right? But The Web sort of gave up on him to a degree, as we establish with Chioma’s speech.
JONNY
Yeah, yeah.
ALEX
Therefore… it follows in a, sort of, like, Greek philosopher-style logic, that The Eye is more on board with Martin’s poetry than The Web, as The Web clearly didn’t like it as much, having bailed early.
JONNY
Yeah, well, I mean, fundamentally there’s less for The Web to work with. Poetry is not- I mean, I suppose you could talk about poetry being, like, all playing on emotions and like, manipulating emotions, but like, fundamentally you’re much more likely to have poetry lead to feeling terrified of people watching you, you know. You’ve got stage fright, you got the fact that a lot of poetry is kind of putting your own emotions and soul on blast.
ALEX
You talk about the terrifying ordeal of being Seen, Jonny? Seen?
JONNY
The mortifying ideal of being known is much more, I think, part of poetry than anything that The Web’s got going on. So I, I would say that The Eye is probably more on board than The Web. But also The Web is probably almost cognisant enough to understand it in a way that they don’t like.
ALEX
Just cognisant enough to not like it.
Well, okay. This prompted, then, one question I’ve never asked you, actually. Outside of Magnus, do you write poetry, Jonny?
JONNY
Uh, no.
ALEX
Have you ever?
JONNY
I think so. Ish. Like, I mean, I was a teen. So –
ALEX
Ah. Ah, I’ve got a collection of angsty teenage poetry somewhere.
JONNY
Yeah.
ALEX
Gah.
JONNY
These days, like, I really like when other writing allows me to be poetic, like, I really enjoyed doing 165, for instance. But years back I was housemates with someone who is now, like, a pretty successful poet. I feel like there was always a sense of – I’m always someone who’s been quite, this is what I do, this is what other people do. I don’t want to encroach on their thing.
ALEX
I get it, I get it. So all podcast monologues belong to Jonny, but that means that you stay away from other people’s poetry, yeah?
JONNY
Yeah. They’re mine. Any of yous try to do, gonna knife ya.
ALEX
Why did no-one ask who would win in a fight between Jonathan Sims and Jonathan Sims?
JONNY
This was a fight between Jonathan Sims and everyone else out there doing –
ALEX
Just everyone.
JONNY
– doing podcasts or monologues.
ALEX
You’ve drawn a line in the sand and the only person allowed on your side is you. Wow!
JONNY
And I feel like that was quite a thing. Cos, like, I went to a lot of poetry stuff with them, and it was very much like, “This is your world,” you know. It’s how I met Fay, actually.
ALEX
I think Fay’s really good at poetry. I really liked Fay’s stuff.
JONNY
Fay’s poetry is great.
ALEX
Yeah.
JONNY
Yeah. I feel like I really enjoy doing it, but at the same time, I’ve never quite felt like it is my domain, I guess.
ALEX
Oh, wah wah, gotta end on that. Best pun of the night.
In that case then, thank you, crew. Those were surprisingly civil. I was ready to really be dragged over the coals, but actually, you know, most of those were reasonable. I mean, Martyn’s still a nightmare. I think we started very harsh, but, uh, yeah, I think that was alright.
In which case then, do you have anything you want to say before we disappear for another week before coming back with yet more You?
JONNY
Let me rest!
ALEX
No, no rest for Jonny. No rest for Jonny, only deadlines.
JONNY
Okay.
ALEX
Bye everyone.
JONNY
Bye.