I love working with animatronics because it involves working with a whole team of people. It takes up to 6 people to drive Rygel and negotiating a performance with those 6 people is a real joy. It’s a real joy to act with any animatronic concept, especially Rygel.

What do you think of Pilot? I love the pilot set. It’s fantastic because everything else is an enclosed space. The Pilot has his own set in the studio and there’s massive great big ramps off to the side and the rest of the set is filled in with CGI, so you’re really surrounded with this great big black room with this enormous animatronic.

The first time I saw it my eyes almost popped out of my head because it was such an extraordinary creature. When you see it face to face, Pilot is the most extraordinary creation. There’s one guy that stands under the middle and has a great big silver ring around him and he’s responsible for moving the body one side and there’s someone else working the head and then remote control people working the eyes and working the mouth and there’s four other puppeteers in there working the arms and the hands for Pilot. Still after three and a half years when you see all of that suddenly come to life it takes your breath away.

The size of Pilot is quite extraordinary, when you feel him come to life you can’t help but feel that you’re in another universe and that’s really really exciting.