Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2015 / January 2016 | Page 16

INTERVIEW
they’re frivolous and easy to write but
they’re actually the hardest to achieve,
which is why there are so few successful
ones” he explains.
In fact, he’s currently working on a
potential new show for ITV, and says the
impetus that drives him is “the incredibly
rewarding process of reaching a lot of
people”, as Doc Martin has done.
“I’ve always been interested in where
creativity meets volume – perhaps that
goes back to my advertising days,” he says.
“There was a certain snobbishness
about TV when I started and the real
work was seen as being in the theatre.
You’d hear actors say quite dismissively:
‘Oh, I’m just doing a telly, love’ - but I
think all that’s changed. TV offers a space
where you can really mine character”.

The call to film
The other reason Dominic would like
to come up with another TV show that
would “run and run”, is that it would
allow him to indulge himself in other
creative film projects, including the one
he’s currently working on, about the 19th

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“I’m a walking cliché
I guess – a secondgeneration Italian
who’s still trying to
understand what it’s
all about!”

century Italian opera composer Puccini.
The script is written and all ready for
casting from a short list of potential
“bankable names” and the aim is for
filming to begin in 2017.
It’s no coincidence that Dominic should
have chosen a larger-than-life Italian
character for this major film project,
and perhaps no surprise that he tells the
story from the point of view of a humble
looker-on - a young servant girl who went
to work for the Maestro - rather than the
great man himself.

“I’m allergic to ‘great men’ stories he
says, “and much more interested in
meeting the great man through the eyes
of a normal person”.
This subtle, ‘fly on the wall’ approach he
traces back to his family’s background as
ice cream sellers from the 1950s: “We
were people who went round the back of
places to deliver the ice cream, and my
reflex is always to approach things in that
way. There’s an awareness of what it’s
like to work in a place, rather than to go
in through the carpeted main entrance”.
Alongside this project, Dominic is also
working on a film set in 1980s New York
and LA, about a white Italian American
who befriends an African beggar –
another imprint of the Italian heritage
and ‘small voice’ themes.
“I’m a walking cliché I guess – a secondgeneration Italian who’s still trying to
understand what it’s all about!
“I have no connection with Umbria –
our family is from the south - but Umbria
is an adopted second home, and learning
Italian has always been a draw.
“It can make you feel a bit stateless,
but if there’s anywhere that’s home, it’s
obviously the Island”.