Ben Chaplin Is Quite Mad

Ben Chaplin plays “mad” with all his consummate craft.

The word “mad” in all its annotations, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s latest edition means: 
1: disordered in mind: insane 2: being rash and foolish 3: furious, enraged 4: carried away by enthusiasm 5: rabid 6: marked by wild gaiety and merriment 7: frantic

Choose any one of the above definitions and you will be spot on when describing the behaviors of the five principle characters that inhabit the new series, Mad Dogs.

This dark comedic drama is about a group of underachieving 40 something year-old friends who gather in Belize to celebrate the early retirement of a mutual friend when a succession of wild events unfold, exposing dark secrets, deception, and murder.

Sitting in a sizable event room in the gorgeous Langham Hotel in South Pasadena, California, actor Ben Chaplin revealed from where his mysterious and complex character, Joel, emanates.

A Brit from London, where he currently resides, Chaplin was cast in a different role in the original British Mad Dogs series, created and written by Cris Cole, which he has now adapted for Amazon. 



Chaplin shares the screen with cast members Michael Imperioli, Romany Malco, Steve Zahn, and Billy Zane. He says, “I know we gel. They’re kind of desperate aren’t they [the characters]? In order for it to work, I feel like they cast it very cleverly. It relies massively on the, for want of a more original word, the chemistry and dynamic between the four main guys.

"It just never stopped between us, and even though it was a tough shoot, we never lost our patience with each other, there was never a harsh word.”

He continues, “Desperation was reflected in the shoot because it was physically hard. It was very hot, even by Puerto Rico (the island stood in for Belize) standards. They had off the charts hot weather and it never cooled down, so it was hot mid-summer for the entire shoot and it was incredibly humid. It was like running up hill and almost being unachievable at the same time and doing that for six months.”

Chaplin figured out with his two months of prep work in Puerto Rico prior to the shoot that he was on the island for seven and a half months, which is a long time to be on any location. So whoever presumes that acting and working a show isn’t demanding, the cast and crew of Mad Dogs will beg to differ.

He loves and is most comfortable working on the stage and made a very interesting comparison pointing out that with a play he gets to do another performance the next night and can adjust his character’s behavior or continue to work to enhance a particular moment.

But with a camera shoot, be it film or TV, once his scenes are shot his performance is unalterable. Therefore he is always more concerned and anxious when anticipating a difficult camera scene that is more technically or emotionally challenging.

Chaplin recounted how years ago he lobbied for the part of Tom in Tennessee Williams’ iconic masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie, “It was my ambition to do that show. It was my favorite play as a kid growing up. My mother was an English teacher so we had a lot of plays, which I read without seeing them, and I just thought it was always the perfect play and still sort of do.”

At age 13 he went to see The Playboy of the Western World by the famous Irish playwright, John Millington Synge. It was being performed by the Irish acting troop, The Druid Theatre Company, at The Warehouse in Covent Garden.

Chaplin sat in the audience and was amazed to see the actors on stage drinking what he presumed was real Guinness, “It was a kind of life changing production where I realized that you could do something joyful, or tragic, or something beautiful, funny, or poetic, and it could be real on stage.

"I still remember how excited I was, but at that point there wasn’t a thought in my mind that I could be an actor. I just needed something to do with this art form.”

Years later having just completed his first film in Hollywood at age 24 or so, a “power meeting” (his words) was set with the wunderkind of the moment, Sam Mendes. Under 30 at the time. Mendes had just taken over The Donmar Warehouse Theater, the same theater where Chaplin had seen the Irish play.

During the meeting Mendes asked if he had any ambitions and Chaplin answered that he’d like to be in a Western!  “They’re both American, The Glass Menagerie and Westerns, which is strange. I can ride a horse and have since I was a kid and I liked Westerns growing up, because they’re Greek, you know, life and death, on the edge, and you get to ride beautiful horses!”

Chaplin also told him that he wanted to play Tom in Menagerie. Mendes regretfully said his whole season was already mapped out at The Donmar, and yet a month or two later called and said that something had come up and Menagerie, which hadn’t been staged in London for 25 years, was now going to be produced at The Donmar and Chaplin was going to get to play his dream part of Tom.

“And I still get remembered for that show. I’ll be in a coffee shop and someone will say, I saw The Glass Menagerie, and that means a lot.”

Mad Dogs can be extremely funny, and the plights the four characters are continually trying to extricate themselves from surprisingly recall the Marx Brothers, especially Groucho.



Chaplin commented that the infamous Machiavellian aspect of Groucho’s personality, always being out for himself, was indeed applicable to the four of them.  Much as they have forged a common bond based on their years of friendship, their loyalty to one another is relentlessly tested by all the bizarre happenings in this unfamiliar and strange land.

The series, including the pilot, is 10 episodes. The production design and the cinematography make full use of the beautiful Puerto Rico landscapes with its textures and colors and many of the screen compositions are stunning.

Always most important is the story itself.  And what makes Mad Dogs such an original and engaging show is how, while surrounded by the Belizean people and the routine of their daily lives, and besieged by each new quandary, the four cope by withdrawing introspectively, and, when composed, react quite differently once back within the dynamic of the group.

What ensues is a broad canvas of behavior which the actors masterfully lay their characters bare.



Chaplin summed up his Mad Dog experience, “The four of us were egoless and I never had that experience before. I adore the guys and I’d love to work with them again. I learned every single day from them because I was working with great actors who were so aware, and technically skilled as well as being emotionally skilled. Limitless talent.”

He added with a bit of resignation, “and that particular group, I’m almost certain and will bet my house on it that I’ll never work with a group as agreeable as that!”



Mad Dogs is streaming now on Amazon.