Death Valley: Charlie Sanders Interview

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A hardware store is just another name for and armoury

Death Valley looks like a show with a lot of improvisation…

“Yeah, we’ve got a lot of improv. We have great scripts and really good writers, but we’ll ad-lib and do some improvisation during the takes as well.”

What kind of form might that take?

“We’d do a few takes just how the script is written, then do a few takes where we’ll be a bit looser and do whatever we want. Especially with Bryce and I. Over all the months shooting the show we got a rapport. A lot of the time once we’d done shooting the scene, they would keep the cameras rolling as we improvised to see where we’d take it.”

Do you enjoy the outrageous gore in the show?

“Oh I love it. There’s all types of crazy stuff that happens with monsters and things getting shot and exploding. I’m regularly covered in fake blood.”

What does the blood taste like on your show?

“It was kind of sweet, some sort of corn syrup base. It didn’t taste like blood.”

What was the weirdest moment for you? Were there any moments you were thinking, “What am I doing here?”

“Yeah, when you go to the catering line and sit down to take your first bit of some pile of steak and you look over and there’s a man with his face falling off eating across from you.”

What does your mum think of the show?

“She likes it! She fast forwards through some of the grosser parts but she likes that I’m on a TV show. My brothers love it.”

Officers with attitude

If you had to make a Frankenstein monsters out of the other cast members, which bits of them would you use?

“What a great question! Wait, let me answer this carefully. Well, the most obvious one would be the body of Tania [who plays Officer Carla Rinaldi] with the head of Bryan Callen [Captain Frank Dashell].”

Yeah, we can see that. Whose brain?

“ The show creator Spider’s brain, because he can come up with some weird stuff.”

What part of you would you donate?

“I guess, my improvisational skills.”

An improvisational man-woman monster.

“Yeah, exactly. This could be a series of its own!”

What about the future? What are your ambitions?

“I’d really like to do a second season of Death Valley. I love writing and acting, so at some point I’d really like to have a show that I make, I write and I’m in. And I’d love to be a companion on Doctor Who. That’s been a dream since childhood. I think it would be awesome if the Doctor ended up with a bumbling American side-kick somehow!”