People are always asking, 'Where does Michael Pennington end and Johnny Vegas begin,' and you're going, 'It's not like that: it's blurred right across.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I wanted to try and trace the genuine origins of 'Johnny' and how he so successfully staged this takeover of 'Michael Pennington.' 'Johnny' is a contradiction to who I am as a person. I'm not very good at confrontation, I have a tendency to internalise and to carry things around.
When I played with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings in Vegas, the guys used to go, 'Dick, cut it out, man! You're moving around too much on this stage. You're making us look bad!'
Who's to say where funny stops and 'too far' starts?
'Leaving Las Vegas' is a relationship; 'Dead Man Walking' is a relationship, and they're very contained movies. They're compressed and not in wide open spaces all over the place.
On a TV show, you don't know where the character is going.
I think that's where reality TV works - you don't know where it's going.
I mean one of the weird things about TV and one of the things that some actors don't like but I kind of dig is that you never know where you're headed, I mean you never know what the writer might think of next.
I know all actors are different, but I've never sat down and asked the writers, 'Where are we headed? Am I good or bad?'
At 'SNL' there's framed pictures of all the cast members, and it starts with Dan Aykroyd. It's linear. It just keeps going through all these people, and then you're at the end of it.
In credits, I'm 'Michael' sometimes now, but people know you as something, so there's no point fighting it. 'Squiggle,' you'll always be 'Prince,' and 'The Rock,' just accept it. I want to move on, but not that much. So I'm still known as 'Johnny Vegas.'