Quickie Q&A With Murray Bartlett (Cyrus)
Soap Opera Digest: Are you enjoying life in Springfield?
Murray Bartlett: Yeah, I am! I’m enjoying it very much. This is the first time that I’ve worked for an extended period on a soap, so it’s a different experience. It’s challenging in that it’s so fast, you know, the making of it is so fast. It’s an adjustment, but it’s a really great challenge and I’m loving it. I hear a lot of people from the cast say this in interviews, but it’s true that it’s a lovely group of people. It’s been a pleasure being there and being welcomed by everybody. It makes the work smoother when you’re in that kind of environment … that supportive and friendly and generous. It’s been great.Digest: Have you always wanted to act?
Bartlett: Pretty much. It wasn’t a decision, but it’s something that I always did. I got my teeth knocked out when I was really young by my brother with a hammer [laughs]! It was unintentional! It was in our street when we were kids and all the kids had gathered around because there was this spider sitting on a rock and my brother was going to kill it with a hammer. I was standing behind him. He like threw the hammer back to get some momentum and my teeth were in the way [laughs]! And then a couple months later, I was spinning around and I fell out of a blanket for some reason — I don’t know why — and knocked my two bottom teeth out, so for a couple of years I didn’t have any teeth and I couldn’t say “S’s” very well. So when I was 5 or 6, my mom took me to a speech-and-drama kind of person to help me say “S” properly, so I didn’t sound like an idiot, and I really loved it! And from then on I always did stuff. I guess I always had a kind of vivid imagination, but that kind of gave an outlet to it and I just continued to do drama classes. I guess it was something I always wanted to do, but there was also some kind of strange event that got me toward there [laughs]! It sounds like I’m making it up, but I’m not.Digest: You attended Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art. Any famous former classmates?
Bartlett: I was there at the same time as Cate Blanchett. We weren’t in the same year, but we were there at the same time, and Toni Collette. Those are probably the names that have sort of gone into international renown, I guess [laughs]. It’s interesting. There seems to have been a few people who’ve gone through that school who’ve gone a long way, which is kind of nice.
Digest: Do you enjoy playing a bad guy?
Bartlett: I’ve played bad guys before, but this is fun! It’s nice, actually, because there are kind of two prongs to the storyline. One of them is with Dinah [Gina Tognoni], where it’s kind of a little intense and there’s a lot of past stuff going on with us, but then the storyline with Marina [Mandy Bruno] is a lot more kind of humor and flirting and it’s really fun. It’s nice because it gives me the chance to explore two different sides of the character.Digest: Cyrus is the type of character fans love to hate. Do you have anything to say for him?
Bartlett: There are a million different sides to people, so I guess you don’t want to be too quick to judge…. It’s good to kind of get an understanding of where people come from. Even if people are doing crazy things, it comes from somewhere, something unsettling or traumatic that happened to them. No person and no character is beyond redemption, ultimately. That’s the great thing about playing a character that has kind of a dark side; there’s room to explore the opposite. I think we’re going to run the whole spectrum with Cyrus, I’d say. Digest: Have you had any awkward fan encounters yet?
Bartlett: I haven’t!… I tend to be hibernating a bit at the moment, so I’m not going out very much [laughs]! Staying home and watching movies!Digest: We suspect Cyrus has a few shirtless scenes in his future. Are you prepared?
Bartlett (laughing): I guess so! You know, it’s all in good fun! So long as it’s not grossly gratuitous, I’m okay with it! Digest: Do you work out?
Bartlett: I do my best. It’s an important thing for me to be healthy and fit. It just makes me feel good, so I keep up with it. I guess you’ll have to see for yourself whether the results are paying off or not!
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Soap Opera Digest does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.