The Seasoning House: An Interview With Kevin Howarth

17th June 2013

The Seasoning House is movie that takes a look into the violent and corrupt world of military sex trafficking through the eyes of a deaf, mute orphan. BRWC spoke to Kevin Howarth, who plays main character Viktor, about the directorial debut feature from special effects artist Paul Hyett.

In regards to your character, Viktor, he is obviously quite an evil man. How did you get into role for this?

For fear of sounding like a broken record, I’m an actor. It’s what you do, it’s homework. You do whatever is necessary to get to your role. I have my ways of doing things, I do my homework, I try to get everything at my fingertips that I think is necessary to be in character and be one of those people from that world to the best of my ability. I have played quite a rogue’s gallery and for my role in Summer Scars, for instance, I had to play a man who was not well and who was psychotic. For that you have to dig very deep to keep it truthful. What I do is I try to look for what’s good about them and what I like about them. No one is just evil; they’re all somebody’s children. Here, in The Seasoning House, Victor is a man in a war zone. War makes people go in a direction that they wouldn’t normally go in. But I often look for what’s good in them because if I don’t have any joy about them or any feelings of humanity, I would never be able to give my performances any nuance and I like to pride myself on the fact that when you see me play a role it’s definitely 3-dimensional. I’d like to think that with Victor there is a sort of duplicity with him, but you’re never quite sure where you are going. You’re always wondering, does he care about Angel? Does he love her?

Why do you think Viktor chose Angel?

Paul is a top special effects and make-up artist. He comes from that world of detail and accuracy and I think that’s why Paul’s made a really good debut feature because of his eye for detail. So for me, I actually said to Paul at the beginning why doesn’t Viktor have a very nasty scar across one of his eyes? Something that’s very visible on his face and for him, when he sees Angel with the fact that she’s deaf and she’s mute and she’s also got this red, port wine birth mark on her face there’s a connection there for him. We decided in the end that having a big scar across my eye might be a bit too obvious but for me the emotions of that still stayed and I felt that what he sees in Angel are mirrors of scars in his own life.

Is it true that Paul created the character with you in mind?

Paul and I have known each other for about eighteen years and he has been in the business for a very long time. He always said that he wanted to direct in the future and that he’s always had me in mind because we’ve always been strong friends. He admires me, I admire him and it’s a mutual feeling. Then this script came up and I read it in one sitting. I thought it was really good and I thought the dialogue was well written and there was a lovely tone to it. So when I rang him up he said to me this script was never going to go to anyone else for Viktor, it was always going to go to me. So the rest was left to him and producer Michael Riley and that’s how the Genesis of The Seasoning House came about. Paul and I have spoken and there’s no doubt we’ll be working on other films in the future together.

So did your friendship help during the filming of The Seasoning House?

I think with friendships you trust each other. Paul knows exactly how I work. The only difference was, of course, I didn’t know how Paul worked as a director. But I know Paul and I knew he wasn’t going to disappoint and he didn’t because he’s a man who comes from the world of detail, which he carries with him. It’s also just great because Paul’s very quiet on set as a director, which is nice. Everybody loses their patience a little bit, but Paul, not a jot. He just got on with it very quietly. He knew what he wanted and it was great.

With one of the central characters of The Seasoning House being a deaf and mute girl, along with the setting, do you think Paul, as a director, was trying to raise some issues in regards to feminism?

You always get stories about sex traffickers in the press and people are often saying, “Oh these girls, they kept saying they went to the police. Nobody wanted to listen, nobody wanted to hear.” Be it by accident or be it by design, I feel that the metaphor of Angel being deaf and being mute is symbolic of the whole industry: that they don’t have a voice and they are afraid to say anything in fear of their lives. I love that side of it and for me that’s why I’m extremely proud of The Seasoning House. The work that’s gone into it from everybody, from Paul as a director, the camera guys, the whole cast, the crew, means that what we’ve made is a piece of work that is actually for me quite poetic and meaningful.

How was the film received by its critics?

So far it’s been received very well indeed, definitely more in the pluses than the minuses. The film went down extremely well in the continent. The Portuguese absolutely loved it. We won the Critics’ Award at Fantasporto. The Spanish, German and UK critics loved it as well. We haven’t had the UK release yet so when it goes on general release there will be another type of critic reviewing it. So that’s going to be interesting to see, but so far so good. What I was really pleased to see was how many young women liked it. They seem to have an affinity with it. You get that redemption with the heroine; this isn’t just some nasty little torture porn movie, which there’s been a glut of over the last decade.

So what are your next moves as an actor?

I’m reading a couple of scripts at the moment and I believe there may be another one on its way. There is a whisper of a movie that one of the producers has already contacted me about and I know I’m on his radar but that’s all in pre-production at the moment. And of course with Paul, if The Seasoning House looks like it could be a really good success for him and I know it will be, as a director I think he will do really well for himself. I think he’s already planning the next one so things are moving along as we speak.

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