Exclusive:Jack Lowden: Slow Horses actor on recording his first audio book, Muckle Flugga and reading Scottish dialogue
The chance to narrate Michael Pedersen’s debut novel Muckle Flugga was an opportunity Scottish actor Jack Lowden couldn’t miss
It is a quintessentially wild Scottish story about life in Britain’s most northerly lighthouse - and poet and author Michael Pedersen knew exactly who he wanted as narrator.
Rising Scottish actor Jack Lowden has voiced the Audible recording of Muckle Flugga by Pedersen, Edinburgh’s Makar and writer-in-residence at Edinburgh University.
It is Lowden’s first audio book narration and Pedersen’s first novel, released on Wednesday following the publication of Muckle Flugga in May, the fantastical story of those living at a lighthouse located off the coast of Unst in the Shetland islands.
Lauded by the likes of Stephen Fry and former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, Pedersen’s novel takes the reader on a wild and wonderful journey with the imaginary inhabitants of the ‘cliff island’, a father and son whose lives are turned upside down by the arrival of a stranger from the city.
Speaking about his first foray into audio books, Lowden said when he was asked by Pedersen’s publisher to narrate Muckle Flugga, it was an unmissable opportunity.
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“I felt I needed to do this,” says Lowden. “I'd read Michael's memoir, Boy Friends and was obsessed with it. I get so excited when there's talent of that level that's home-grown. It's such a buzz and to be asked to do this made complete sense.“
Lowden was Pedersen’s first choice as narrator after seeing the actor perform on screen and stage.
“I'd seen him in different roles and been ensorcelled by him,” Pedersen says. “I felt he wouldn't just narrate, that there was such depth and dedication to his acting he would inhabit the story. There’s the location and characters, Jack delivers it all with eclat and bravura.”
Lowden is in rehearsals for Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice - the first Scot to play Mr Darcy - after the London run of National Theatre of Scotland’s The Fifth Step, and the Bafta and Olivier Award winner threw himself into bringing Pedersen’s unique cast of characters, including the ghost of Robert Louis Stevenson, to life.
“It was fascinating,” he says. “I've never done an audio book and didn't know how to go about it. Full disclosure, I chose not to read it beforehand. Because you very rarely as an actor get to perform or read anything cold and experience it as you go along. I jumped on the fire.
“The characters are all very different and I didn't come in with any preconceptions, my opinion of them changed as the chapters went by. I didn't know what was going to happen next.”
For Pedersen, hearing Muckle Flugga read by someone else gave it a fresh perspective.
“It's the biggest opportunity I've ever had to listen to my own work as a reader or spectator,” he says. “Because everything's been autobiographical and poetry, it makes no sense to have anyone else read it, but because of the range of voices, we needed a professional actor.
“I was really particular about suggesting people to narrate because there were moments of darkness and despair that Jack could portray and also lilting fun, and some brilliantly Scottish profanities that I was excited to hear Jack flying out with. I spat out my soup in a cafe listening at one point.”
For Lowden, the Scottish dialogue tripped off the tongue.
“Maybe because I’m an actor, any kind of dialogue I would barely fluff, because they have roughly my accent or vernacular, where with the narration, it was a bit more stumbly,” he says. “But the production team were brilliant and it was a fun experience.”
As well as loving the book, Lowden was driven by a desire to champion Scottish artists and locations.
“It's so promising to have people like Michael,” he says. “Artists that are completely singular, but so embedded in where he's from, celebrating it. To find a prolific Scottish artist that isn't tartanised in that shortbread tinned Walter Scott kind of vein. He's more John Byrne, Peter Capaldi and that mad sort of outer space artistry we have in this country. We have such a rich heritage of that running alongside and sometimes pushing past it and overtaking it.”
A vivid rollercoaster of a book, the world of Muckle Flugga is so vividly wrought by Pedersen that a screen version would seem to be the next step. Would Lowden appear?
“If Michael wanted me in it, yeah, I would probably, but it would need to be in a couple of years,” he says. “I don't get any time.”
Pedersen also is in no rush, savouring the Muckle Flugga moment as he appears at book festivals, including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and events, although he is engaged in the beginnings of a follow-up that continues the characters’ stories.
“I want to give this story time to breathe,” he says. “The paperback comes out next year and it’s being translated. If it travels into an adaptation, I want to be there to service every element of it.”
In the meantime, an audio book brings a new audience.
“It's another manifestation and equally important,” says Pedersen.
“To sit down and read, when people are working long hours, can be a privilege and many struggle with dyslexia. But to listen and experience that way, there's a whole new audience.
“And people love that it's Jack Lowden narrating his first ever audiobook and that it's a stridently Scottish story that he's putting his name to.
“If I read Jack Lowden was doing his first audiobook, I would listen to that regardless of what the story was because I know he would have been particular about the story he chose.”
Muckle Flugga by Michael Pedersen is available to listen to now on Audible. www.audible.co.uk www.audible.co.uk/pd/Muckle-Flugga-Audiobook
Muckle Flugga is published by Faber, hardback, £14.99, www.faber.co.uk
Michael Pedersen will appear at Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 23, with Russell Tovey in Michael Pedersen: Charged by Starlight https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/michael-pedersen-charged-by-starlight
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