The Cast

Director and Producer Kai Maurer's confidence in the script for Splinter turned out to be well founded; it very quickly enticed an impressive cast to the project.

"Paul Barber was our first and only choice for Dan," says Maurer, "and he said yes straight away, which was a great way to start casting." Barber describes his fast decision: "It just fell through the letterbox, this script. I didn't know the writer, the producers, anything. But I read it and thought 'I'll have a bit of that!' It's just a great script, good dialogue, and it's a good character."

Issy van Randwyck, Joe McGann, Emily Woodward and Joe Ferrera get in touch with their inner child

All of the cast agree with Barber's assessment. Issy van Randwyck, who plays Mrs Peters, the legal adviser for Treccabyte International, goes on. "I thought the script was fantastic, one of the funniest things I have read in a long time. It was very original."

Nickolas Grace, who plays the sinister "Glasses" also had the same reaction: "I've always enjoyed that area where you cross over into magic or science and take people on a fantasy ride. I love it. The script is superb. It's one of the best contemporary scripts I've read. You actually believe that this is possible. It's going to be the next stage, it's going to be somewhere else that man will eventually go. One step further than Being John Malkovich. It's that that enticed me to do it."

Eva Pope as Dr Lexington

Eva Pope, who plays Dr Lexington, the psychologist behind Splinter, was impressed by how new and different the script was. "It's a very fast-moving piece and it keeps your imagination going. You never get bored when you read it and it's got a clever twist at the end."

Michael N Harbour and Nickolas Grace play "Beard" and "Glasses", the mysterious benefactors of the Splinter project. Harbour says "I've known Kai for some time and I've known of his ambitions to make films and indeed I've seen some of his work which is fantastic, so I was delighted to receive a phone call quite out of the blue, when I had just returned from Budapest where we're filming A Christmas Carol. There was only one problem however. I had to point out to Kai that I was stuck with this beard, because Dickensian London they had asked us not to shave. And he said 'well, that's not going to be a problem because the name of your character is Beard', so it was a delightful coincidence."

Michael N Harbour and Nickolas Grace as 'Beard' and 'Glasses'

Grace was another person who committed very quickly to Splinter: "It was in the spring of this year [2004] that he said it was definitely going ahead... and I said yep I would do it of it happened and sure enough it's happening so I've had to drop everything and come and do it for him."

Joe Ferrera explains how Maurer persuaded him to play Ramon in Splinter. "He needed a Latin lover so here I am!" Of course the script helped, "beautifully written, beautifully understood and hopefully beautifully played."

Joe Ferrera as Ramon

On his character, the janitor who seems to be behind the theft of all the chairs in the building, Ferrera goes on: "He is here to upset everybody's rhythm. Not intentionally. He's not going out of his way to hurt anybody, it's just that he has a different rhythm to everyone else."

One role that proved a little harder to cast though was the crucial part of Joyce. Says Scott-Perry, "It was especially tricky because it required really a new face. Kai was very eager that Joyce not be someone that we'd seen in a hundred other movies, and honestly he was right. Joyce needed a particular vulnerability, and Kai also had a very specific idea of what she should look like. We were even debating holding open auditions, until Nickolas Grace came to our rescue."

Emily Woodward as Joyce

Maurer continues: "I was telling Nicko about what a nightmare it was to find the right actress for Joyce, and he told me about Emily whom he had just worked with." Emily Woodward, the daughter of the actors Edward Woodward and Michele Dotrice, carries on the story "I was doing a play called Full Circle with Joan Collins and Nickolas Grace, who was already on board. Kai asked him if he knew anyone who could play the character of Joyce, and it went on from there really." A recent graduate of Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, Splinter is Woodward's film debut. "Because it's my first film I'm obviously dead nervous," she says, "but it has been really fun. Everyone's so lovely and the cast are so friendly."

Eva Pope as Dr Lexington, Kai Maurer as Dr Zinger

Another significant film debut is Maurer's as director. Although an experienced film actor himself, Maurer had never previously produced or directed a feature film. A born multi-tasker, he also plays the computer expert Dr Zinger, who works with Dr Lexington on the Splinter project. Despite his relative inexperience, his confidence and ability quickly won over the cast and crew. Joe McGann, Mr Floss in Splinter, says "It's refreshing to work with a director who knows what he wants. You don't spend too much time faffing round doing much else."

Joe McGann as Mr Floss with Nickolas Grace

Joe McGann goes on "Kai came up with the idea because of thinking about people's interior monologues and at any one minute going through your head could be your shopping list, a couple of songs and the like. Just because it's mundane doesn't mean there's nothing familiar about it. I think that where the writing in this is clever because it doesn't sensationalize it, it just makes you think that people's interior worlds are every bit as chaotic as the universe."

Splinter: Stills Gallery