‘The Tick’s’ Griffin Newman On Training Like ‘Iron Fist’ And Being Wooed… By A Boat

What does it take to be a superhero? If you’re in the world of Amazon’s The Tick, then you know that everyone from a tiny human to a canine with a memoir to a sentient boat looking for love can play a part in saving the day. And when it comes to making The Tick, the show itself empowered the most unlikely of super-suited actors, carrying him to action-packed glory. That unlikely actor? Griffin Newman, the actor underneath that gray moth suit.

As the Tick’s (Peter Serafinowicz) sidekick Arthur, Newman is the tightly-wound straight man playing against big blue’s bluster and bombast. Arthur is half the Tick’s size and has none of his invulnerability. Why would he even try to stop a mad man like the Terror? But that contradiction is what makes Arthur’s heroic journey from trauma survivor to superhero unique. And, as Newman told Decider in a one-on-one interview, playing the part of a hero coming into his own gave the actor the confidence he needed to come into his own as an unlikely action star.

Ahead of the rest of The Tick’s dynamite first season arriving on Amazon on February 23, Newman revealed what it was like filming some of the season’s most intense scenes, and what he’s looking for in a love interest for Arthur. Hint: a human body is not necessary.

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DECIDER: In this half of the season you actually get to have some more scenes with Jackie Earle Haley, who is just eating it up as The Terror–as readers can see above in an exclusive clip from the new season. What it was like working with him in his full Terror-regalia?

Griffin Newman: Yeah, it’s amazing. Literally my last shot in the last scene of the last episode of the first half of the season is the first time I got to be on screen with him. But I had talked with him—it was almost a year between when we shot the pilot and when we went to series, and three months between when we started the series and when we finally got to that scene. It was like we were people living on the same dorm floors or something. We kept on seeing each other and talking a lot, but not getting to actually do stuff together, which is nice because I might have been more intimidated if I was going in cold to a scene with a guy of that caliber.

But he is just such a good actor and the crazy thing about him is he has been doing this for so long…so many different types of projects–size of his role, genre, budget, time periods, technology, he’s directed stuff himself when he was sort of on his exile from Hollywood, he was directing local commercials and stuff in Texas. So he understands every single aspect of filmmaking, so he just has such a sense of how his performance is going to work with the camera, sound, with lighting, props, everything he needs from costumes.

But the other thing that’s interesting about it is he’s the nicest, sweetest, most unassuming guy. When he’s in character as The Terror he’s terrifying. The makeup itself is terrifying and the lighting around him is usually terrifying. But he, because the voice is so difficult to do, if the camera is not on him, drops the voice. So he still does full acting–full range, full intensity, but in his voice, which is just the sweet boy from Southern California. So he goes, “And I’m gonna get him there and rip your eyes out.” And he’s still foaming at the mouth…like you’re still scared, but it’s not quite the full effect. And then once it’s on him it’s like all of it. Full ammunition.

Of course you get to work a lot with Peter Serafinowicz. You’re more inseparable in this new batch of episodes than before, too. So what was it like being joined at the hip with someone who, I guess, you probably come up to his hip?

Yeah, yeah just about.

What was that chemistry like on set?

If you want to make two actors bond, put them in really uncomfortable costumes in really extreme weather conditions with very physically demanding parts that also require very complicated comic timing.

Was it shot in the summer in New York?

Yeah.

So that’s a hot shoot.

It was hot, so there’s a camaraderie that only strengthens when you’re in the foxhole together and it’s like, you’re the only other person who kind of gets what I’m feeling right now. You know? Usually we’re in scenes with plainclothes people or people who are a little dressed up or whatever and the two of us were just, like, everyday in it. And especially he never gets to take the costume off, you know. I get to take it off sometimes, in and out. He is always The Tick. And it’s always full tilt.

But we just weirdly hit it off very quickly. That was the scary thing to me, was I had worked so hard to get the part. I had so many thoughts on who I thought Arthur should be to fit in this new version and what I thought I could bring to it and everything and there was, like, five weeks between when I finally convinced everyone of that enough to give me the job and when he got cast. So it’s like I fought so hard to be here but also the whole thing might not work. My performance is not going to work if I’m not with the right guy. It also could be what I’m doing on my own is okay and what he’s doing on his own is great, but we just don’t gel together because they are so much a comedy team.

Like the success of The Tick is about the report between Arthur and The Tick feeling right. And because they were so committed to trying to make it it’s own thing and not just trying to rehash the past versions of the show, they wanted people to come in with new interpretations. It’s scary to be like “What if we just don’t harmonize?” Because it’s kind of like an arranged marriage, you know?

But the weird thing with Peter and I is…I think we’re 15 years apart, maybe? But he grew up in Liverpool where they got American TV late and I grew up with a very overprotective mother who didn’t let me watch most current TV shows. So we grew up on the exact same television. So we weirdly have all the same reference base, so very quickly in talking to each other we could always go, “Oh, it’s like that Hanna-Barbera cartoon.” When we were trying to kill downtime on set it would be like who could recall the more obscure six-episode Hanna-Barbera show. So things like that made it really easy for us to bond and then being in physical pain together kind of strengthens that.

On the other end of pain is love, and in these six episodes, Arthur gets a one-sided love interest that I think viewers are going to be obsessed with: Dangerboat. And Alan Tudyk as the voice of him. So when you’re on set in the Dangerboat, what are you reacting to?

A first AD reading the lines. We had an amazing first AD named Alex Finch who we would call Daniel Day Finch because we had so many characters in the second half of the season who had to be dubbed in later. You know, because they’re the wrong size, or it’s an animal or it’s a robot or whatever. But there were scenes where he was doing 60% of the dialogue having to jump between all these different characters.

But that was weirdly—I won’t get into the scene in detail—but there’s a scene that’s sort of the most physical of our interactions that was the most complicated scene to shoot because Dangerboat is supposed to be this like Knight Rider/submarine who’s totally automated. But in reality, it’s like seven different puppeteers. It’s like balsa wood and different rods and people trying to move things at the right time and they’re on the other side and they have to hear your dialogue at the right time. We have water and lights. All of it has to look really seamless because it’s supposed to look really automated. So the scene was really difficult to do just on a technical level.

And the big scene between Dangerboat and I is one of the few scenes we reshot wholesale because I think the performance wasn’t right the first time because I think the technical aspects were so difficult. And I think there was a very specific zone that [creator] Ben Edlund wanted to hit it in terms of my relationship with Dangerboat because it’s one-sided, but it certainly shouldn’t feel assault-y, it shouldn’t feel aggressive. And a lot of that is in how I respond to it. Which I think Arthur is a character who is uncomfortable with any sort of sexual advance.

There’s a moment in the first half of the season where Ms. Lint (Yara Martinez) makes me take all my clothes off so I can put on the suit and I think she’s trying to seduce me. And the second she tells me it’s just so she can beat me up I’m relieved that I don’t have to have sex with this woman, you know? So I think for him it’s less weird that it’s a robot and more weird that it’s anyone. He’s used to not even being noticed. I think it’s not a territory he’s very comfortable with.

You also get to use some hand-to-hand combat in this batch. What was the training like for that? 

You know, it’s crazy, when Iron Fist was coming out I read interviews with Finn Jones. And they were asking him about his prep and he was like, “You know I did general kind of like build and course train, you know. But on the day they would just show me the choreography on the morning and I’d have 30 minutes to learn it.” And I was like, that’s the same time I have and I’m supposed to look bad at this.

I think they would consciously not give me too much lead time, because I had to know where the moves were and I’m mostly fighting against people who are professional stunt people and know how to really go through this. But Arthur can never look super capable. And my strategy is like, I’m in my head very worried about hitting the right moves and selling it correctly and that dance of getting as close as you can to make it look like contact with the right amount of force without actually hitting people. And they’re always saying, “No hit me, hit me!” And I’m like “I don’t know, I just feel so uncomfortable with this whole thing.” But I think I just trusted that I didn’t need to do any acting on top of that. Like I should just be as worried about executing this choreography as they want me to be and that will look like how he feels fighting. So it was just focusing on get the moves right.

We know that season 2 is coming. So what are your hopes and dreams for Arthur in season 2?

I’d like to continue only having nonhuman love interests. That’s a big push I’ve made, so we’ll see if that pans out. My big thing is, I feel like by the end of this season, by the end of episode 12, we get to a point where they’re finally full-fledged Tick and Arthur in bold. These two characters have come into their own and figured out how they need each other and help each other and a lot of this first season is a lot of refusing the call for the first six episodes. I think the second six kind of move more aggressively. It makes sense because he’s a guy who wouldn’t believe, it’s not like Ryan Reynolds refusing the call. Arthur shouldn’t believe that he should be doing this. It’s very dangerous, he’s going to die.

I think the thing I’ve always loved about Arthur in the previous versions was that he was so incapable and ill-equipped and in over his head and somehow was there. He was showing up and doing this everyday. Edlund said what he wanted to do with this show was do the math on these characters. Do the math to figure out, reverse engineer, how they got to where they had always sort of been as a given. And so I think by the end of the season you have The Tick and Arthur fully in those forms, so what’s fun to me as we’re gearing up to do season two is, I can still be terrified, I can still be bad at everything I do, but Arthur doesn’t have to try to be fighting to get off the show anymore. You know? He’s committed to being the star of The Tick.

Just like you are!

Right, right, right. And I think that’s kind of what the arc of season two is going to be. I always joke that season one was like me having to believe I was capable of handling this large of a role. And season two is shaping up to sort of be the “what now.” Where it’s like, now you’ve done it and what do you do now. How do you keep that going? Which is my fear right now. How do I make sure I don’t just pee.

The final six episodes of Amazon’s The Tick will be available to stream on Prime Video on February 23.

Where to stream The Tick