Noel Fielding Chats About Returning to His Comedy Roots with The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin

If you’re an Anglophile, celebrating the dramatic and comedic stylings of Great Britain’s programming has been way easier with the advent of streaming and YouTube. What used to be the domain of weekend PBS airings or expensive imported DVDs is now available with the press of a button on Netflix, BritBox, or Max. One of Britain’s celebs who has crossed over the pond with panache is multi-hyphenate comedian/musician/artist/actor and all-around personality, Noel Fielding. 

For fans of UK comedy, he made his mark as one half of the comedy duo, The Boosh, with Julian Barratt. The pair created a stage show that turned into a radio show and then the immensely popular BBC Three surrealist, musical comedy show, The Mighty Boosh. It ran for three seasons and made the pair, along with collaborators the likes of Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry, household names. 

Their fame launched both into eclectic careers with Fielding’s interest running the gamut, from creating memorable characters like Monkey Man in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, or Richmond the goth in The IT Crowd. Then, he became a fixture on quiz and panel shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, QI, The Big Fat Quiz, and was two time champion on Taskmaster. 

But his profile went global in 2017 when Fielding was made co-presenter of the beloved The Great British Bake Off series. It was an unexpected career turn for those who followed his career, and for Fielding. But he’s now as synonymous with the program as Mary Berry or Paul Hollywood.

But in keeping with his zig zag career, Fielding is finally back to scripted television on March 1st with the Apple TV+ farce/satire, The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. A frothy and extremely witty British sitcom, Turpin rests comfortably somewhere between Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Our Flag Means Death. As the main character, Fielding has completely reinvented the infamous real-life highwayman to be a very sweet, glam but slightly dense version of the robber. So, he relies on the advice of his inherited gang, including Moose (Marc Wootton), Nell (Ellie White), Honesty (Duayne Boachie), and Craig the Warlock (Asim Chaudhry), to better his standing in the thieving community. Supported by a who’s who of great British comedians, Paste got on a Zoom with Fielding to ask how he landed on this show and helped curate such a gifted ensemble of familiar faces.

Note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Paste Magazine: Looking at your CV, it feels like you’ve just said, “Yes!” to a lot of eclectic opportunities in your life?

Noel Fielding: It’s a weird career. I think in a way The Boosh [radio show] was the first thing that we ever did, and it worked. We had quite a lot of success with The Boosh, so I thought I was gonna do The Mighty Boosh forever, you know? 

We loved doing telly stuff. We loved doing the radio, and we sort of had a band. We were quite good live. We played The O2 Arena in Wembley. It kind of gave us permission to do anything we wanted. The Boosh was like a whole world where you could do anything. You could do funk. You could do music. You could do animation. You could do stories, you could do sketches. You could do it live and you could add stand-up elements to it. So, I was a little bit at sea after we stopped working together. 

Paste: So, there wasn’t a plan when you went solo?

Fielding: No. After that, I did feel a little bit like I couldn’t quite work out what to do. I tried to make another show straight after. And it was like creating a whole new world that wasn’t The Boosh. But I had to do it relatively quickly. The Boosh evolved naturally, so I found it really difficult. 

I tried to work with lots of different people. I think I was coming to America, actually, to try and do a couple of shows just to change it up. And that’s when I got offered The Great British Bake Off. I was a fan of the show… if you’re British, you have to watch that show. [Laughs] It’s such a good show. And it’s such a big show. It’s weird that they asked me, so I just went, “Yeah!” Then, “Oh my God! What have I done? This is crazy.” It’s huge and there’s a lot riding on this because people love that show, you know. When it changed channels, and they changed presenters, there was a point there where everyone was a bit worried about it because it was their favorite show and they’re very protective about it. Me and Sandi [Toksvig] didn‘t want to come in and ruin it for anyone. We were like, “Hey, look, we love the show, too! We really want to make this work.” But we were scared. We were really scared.

Paste: You seemed to transition so naturally to being a personality who could host, or being a great guest. So, it wasn’t a goal to host your own show?

Fielding: I never saw myself doing a show like that, really. And that was what was fun about it. About the time that I got Bake Off, I had my first child. Because they filmed it on weekends, I had more time to be with my baby and do a bit more painting, which I hadn’t done for a while. I feel like the universe somehow says you should do this now, and it’s always the right time for it, in a weird way. 

Paste: When The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin came to you, did it tape into your creative side yearning for something different?

Fielding: This is like a return to what I used to do and so I’ve really enjoyed that as well. I haven’t done scripted comedy for a while. I love doing all those panel shows and things like that. Weirdly enough, this being a period comedy and being Dick Turpin—and everyone’s dressed up and there’s stagecoaches—that’s freed me up a little bit from being too similar to the Boosh. There are definitely Boosh moments but they feel different enough because the world is very different. It’s allowed me to kind of be who I am. 

You know, there’s that weird thing where someone is in a successful band and then they try to go solo? And they feel like they can’t do what they did in the band. But actually, after a couple of albums, they go, “Well, actually, that is what I do.” You have to sort of go, “Actually, everything I do is going to be Booshy because that’s who I am. And that was me and Julian.” So this has been quite good, because it’s been a little bit like I’ve been allowed to return to doing the kind of comedy that I’ve always done. But, in a slightly different way. And the timing felt right. 

Paste: Was casting Turpin a bit easier than expected because you could reach out to so many of your co-stars, like fellow Taskmaster alumni Asim Chaudhry, or panel show friends like Joe Wilkinson, to appear in this?

Fielding: Yeah, you’re right. We got Asim Chaudhry who I love and he’s a brilliant physical comedian. We got Tamsin Greig. It was like I was a kid in a sweet shop, just being able to work with all my heroes and all my contemporaries, and people I’d never worked with. I was like, “Oh, yeah, let’s get this person!”

There are people like Paul Kaye in it. And then there’s David Threlfall, who plays in Shameless and that was just an absolute treat for me. I’ve been a huge fan of his for years. That was kind of surreal when you’re working with people of that caliber. You just strap yourself onto them and let them go and hope you can hold it on for dear life. [Laughs]

But I was a little bit scared of working with Hugh Bonneville because he’s such a great actor, and a proper actor, even though he can do skillful comedy as well. He is a proper actor, famous for Downton Abbey and Paddington and all the films and movies he does. So that was quite interesting as well. I felt like I learned quite a bit from him. 

Paste: Like what?

Fielding: Weirdly enough, me and him had quite a good double act. He’s quite high status, and I’m quite low status, and we work quite well as a double act. I was surprised by it. Sometimes those things just happen. Actually, everyone came into it in the same spirit as the show. They came in knowing it was a sort of slightly otherworldly, whimsical world that they could play in and have fun. Hopefully, they all felt like they could improvise and muck around and try different things. It was great fun to shoot, actually.

Paste: As a Taskmaster winner, does that mean that host Greg Davies had to agree to be on your show?

Fielding: [Laughs] It was an absolute dream. I do Never Mind the Buzzcocks with Greg as well. Greg is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. There was a part in Dick Turpin of the rival gang leader who’s a much better highwayman than me. I knew that Greg would be perfect for it. We were sort of writing it for him. But then we had to quickly check if he wanted to do it. And he was so busy at that point, because everyone wanted him. He was like, “I’ll do it if I can. I’ll do it if I can.” We just took a gamble and said, “Look, it’s got to be Greg. We’ll write it for him.” Because I’ve spent so much time with him, it was very easy for me to write in his tone of voice. Then, he comes in and improvises anyway. But you can get the gist of how he would be. Greg is just one of those performers that he’s such a big presence, as well as being a huge man. He’s a giant. But on set, he’s so funny. He’s so giggly and he makes himself laugh. And then everyone in the room laughs. That’s quite contagious. He’s always sort of not taking it seriously and there’s something really brilliant about that. He was a joy to work with.

Paste: Having your own comedy team, then jumping into panel shows and existing shows, you know great chemistry now. How did that help in choosing Dick’s core gang?

Fielding: Marc Wootton is such a wind up and such an improviser. He’s so funny. He was making things up and joking on set and keeping everyone buoyant. And then you’ve got Nell, played by Ellie White, who’s so good, skillful, and very brilliant at playing characters. Then you’ve got Dwayne, who plays Honesty, who’s an actor. He’s so committed to it, and he’s so good at the action stuff. He makes it very believable. And he was very funny as well. He’s such a good actor that he could do things the same, six or seven times, and if he got a good laugh, he could repeat that line in the same way and get the same laugh. Whereas comedians will often hunt around and try to do it in a different way. But he’s got quite good discipline. Asim is quite mischievous, and loves to improvise. When me and him are in the same scene, they can go quite long with [director] Ben Palmer shouting at us. [Laughs] Asim likes winding up Ben as well, because he’s worked with him before. 

Paste: Was there anyone who was particularly helpful with locking in the show’s unique tone?

Fielding: Ben Palmer is a brilliant comedy director. But he’s also really good with action and makes everything look really beautiful. He never misses a joke. He’s forensic and so good. He’s got such great energy and is so intense and full on. He’s just so committed to it, so you feel like he’s got your back. As a performer, you can get really tired, or maybe you improvise a bit too much. He’s very good at bringing everything back to the script and what you need to do to get from A to B. He was a real asset. 

Paste: As a designer and artist, how much of your own design style is reflected in Turpin’s costuming and the overall look of the show?

Fielding: We had a fantastic costume designer [Rosa Dias] and I worked closely with her. She was a bit of a genius. I always try to put a little bit of my own stamp on it, but the makeup and the costume and the effects and the dress, everyone was good. It made it very easy. Whereas with the Boosh, me and Julian were sort of trying to do too much, probably, running around. We had great people we worked with but it’s slightly more lo-fi. Whereas with this, we had a little bit of budget to play with so we can make things look really nice. I think that really helps the atmosphere on the show as well. Hopefully, it’s good!

The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin premieres March 1st on Apple TV+. 

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Tara Bennett is a Los Angeles-based writer covering film, television and pop culture for publications such as SFX Magazine, NBC Insider, SYFY Wire and more. She’s also written official books on Sons of Anarchy, Outlander, Fringe, The Story of Marvel Studios and Avatar: The Way of Water. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraDBennett or Instagram @TaraDBen

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