~*~MaX~*~
Max Cunningham aka Matt Littler
How did you first get into acting? I used to do school plays when I was younger and really enjoyed it. I went to my mum and dad and said how much I enjoyed doing it, and my mum knew this little theatre company where Albert Finney and people like that had trained. She dragged me down there one night and I had a great time.It just so happened that the first night I went to that theatre they were casting a play, and I auditioned and I got a part. I stayed there for a good ten years. I then went on to Oldham Theatre Workshop, and did some training there.
What were your impressions of HOLLYOAKS before you joined the programme - and were they borne out in reality? I hadn't watched it. I'd seen about three or four episodes, but I'd never seen the character of Max, which was a good thing for me cos it meant I could play it my own way. The guy who played Max before me, I met him - Ben Sheriff, a really nice fellow, but I think he had other things going on, he was very musical so I think he just left. The character wasn't in the show for four or five months or so, then they decided they were going to bring him back as there was stuff they could use him for and they needed him for other storylines. That was when I came in.
When you arrived, what do you think Max's role was within the programme? Jo Hallows [HOLLYOAKS' series producer] puts it that he was like Kevin from Kevin And Perry - he was just the annoying little teenage younger brother. But of course then the show wasn't about me; now it's about my character's peers, about Max and his friends. When I first started on the show I was just playing a role affecting the people who the show was about. I think when they figured out that me and Daz [Jeffries, aka O.B.] could do comedy they decided that it was time to push me forward, as we were getting to the point where everything we were doing was just whinging and being kids. So we started to adlib a little bit and then obviously the writers got onto it. When they started writing more for the characters, that's when we moved up a step.
It's quite rare in a soap to find a strong male platonic friendship like the one Max has with OB - why do you think that has remained so strong in the programme? It's like a bond. I've got friends like that in my life, so it's good because it's a very real friendship. And you've seen them be mates since school, and that's why they're so close. And you do get annoyed with your mates, and you don't fall out with them but people come in and out of your life, and that's what happens with Max and OB, they're in each others lives all the time. They have ups and downs as any relationship does.They're on the same road but they're taking different paths. OB's done the student thing and Max hasn't, and I think that Max is naïve to think that as soon as OB passes his exams he's going to become his mate again. But secretly I think the subtext is that Max is jealous that he's not done that because he didn't have the brains to go to college, and that's why he harbours this contempt for him slightly. I think their relationship is like two mates, up and down, but obviously they both need each other.
What would you single out as the storyline that you think revealed most about Max's character? There's a few. There's one coming up that'll show you the real true Max. You know what, he's a surprisingly unmessed up character seeing as one of his sisters died and two are on the run. He's had bad Christmasses for a few years, illegitimate children popping up left right and centre, his sister dying in the arms of her fiancee. This stuff with Mandy, well, me and Sarah [Dunn] didn't expect it. Mandy's Max's sister and they'd always been played like that. But unrequited love is a lovely emotion to play because it's just dead dead dead down, horrible.
Do you get quite proprietorial towards playing someone who's been in the show for a long time? There's quite a revolving cast, and people come and people go. When I was younger some of the people that came in I used to really look up to, they were like the older kids at school. But it's different for me now, I see people come in and you think right, OK, you just make loads of different new friends, and you learn from them. That's how it is as an actor: you come and you do your job and you leave again.I've had to grow up amazing quickly. Doing the job we do, if I hadn't I'd have ended up a real messed up kid, because I was so young when I started doing the job. I'll always be in acting; I suppose when I first started I was trying to be an actor, and now I am doing it. As opposed to looking at it from the outside, I'm now looking out from the inside.Sometimes you read descriptions of Max and think, poor boy, so much bad stuff happens to him! But I don't think oh, I really feel sorry for him, that's the way it is. You've got to do it, you've got to play it, and whatever happens, everything that happens to him gives him more depth.