Daniel Vincent Gordh speaks to Hypable exclusively about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the reaction to Dizzie Day and that kiss, on-screen chemistry, and more.

Last Thursday the Lizzie Bennet Diaries fandom exploded when Lizzie and Darcy finally locked lips. Once we had recovered, we decided we had to speak to the man behind the bowtie, Daniel Vincent Gordh himself. We were lucky enough to speak to Gordh as part of our series of Lizzie Bennet Diaries interviews. In the first part of our interview, find out how he felt on Dizzie Day and Darcy Day, how he and co-star Ashley Clements developed that sizzling onscreen chemistry, and much more.

Hypable’s interview with Daniel Vincent Gordh:

Hypable: There was a huge fan response to Dizzie Day, or episode 98. How did that feel?

Daniel Vincent Gordh: I feel like every step of the way with this project I just feel grateful, because I have been acting for a long time and it’s hard to get people to care about something that you do, as much as people do about this. It wasn’t a surprise how people reacted, but the overwhelming feeling was of gratitude, which some people have noticed was the same as the title of the episode.

It was definitely the craziest day in terms of fans reaching out to me. The numbers on the video with the likes and views were wild, which also makes sense because we’re at a part where the viewership of the show is bigger than ever before. More people are along for the journey now than ever. But what that meant was that, in terms of the internet reaction, the volume of it was insane.

For me, I wasn’t surprised. I felt that everyone had a right to go as crazy as they wanted in terms of how they reacted to it, because they’ve been along for the ride with the show for a year now, basically, and this is the moment everyone has been waiting for. Not in terms of the kiss specifically, the kiss is emblematic of a story moment for Lizzie. They were very patient to get to that point, so it was a big release it felt like, of anticipation that has been building up for over a year. It was like super Christmas.

For you personally, how did that compare with Darcy Day?

It was very different for me personally because I have now been involved for so much longer than I was that first day. That first day, on what is now called Darcy Day and was my first appearance on the show, it was a similar kind of release of anticipation, because we kind of did it to them twice. For me it was different because I knew what to expect.

The first day, I was just introduced to everyone, and I was much more overwhelmed, and much more an innocent so to speak. I felt like it was my first day at school. And this time I was able to take a step back, and not have that perspective of “Oh, what’s happening to me?” and more look at how the fans were reacting to the story.

We are in the last week of the show now, and you were in the preview for episode 99. I’ve seen the fans try to lipread what you’re saying.

I don’t think they’ve ever gotten it right.

I don’t think so either but it’s always so funny. It’s great to watch.

And I’m not blaming them, it’s hard to lipread.

Let’s talk about episode 99, which is the penultimate episode of the series.

There are certain parts of the story where we can’t do the same thing as Pride and Prejudice, because it’s an adaptation. So, people don’t get married immediately any more, not in the circumstances at least of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. If you were to take that and put it in now, it just wouldn’t make sense, it wouldn’t be viable in the world of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. So clearly we had to make a different choice that was going to work for our story.

But I think what you’re seeing in the episode is two people who finally are getting each other. And the reason they’re getting each other is that they’ve both made this change of seeing from other peoples points of view, of empathizing, of looking from outside of yourself from another point of view, and that enriching your experience and making you a more open person. So Lizzie and Darcy have finally made some of those changes that they so desperately needed to make at the beginning of the story.

I recently started rewatching it from the beginning, and Ashley’s character has changed so much, it’s crazy. There’s certain things we needed to wrap up and as usual, a lot of them happen off screen, but we find ways of bringing the events and bringing all of that back on screen so that we can include it in the adaptation.

How would you describe your Darcy?

I think one of the most important elements of Darcy that everyone who has played him has to deal with first is the class thing. There are certain behaviours and cultural and character things that you have to incorporate from that class. And even though we don’t have exactly the same dichotomy of class that they did in the original time it was written, it’s still something that is very real, and one of the first things that you have to deal with.

It’s funny because I’ve done a number of interviews and no one has asked me specifically to describe him. As Darcy, I’m reserved, I keep my true feelings and my emotions guarded, especially from those I don’t know well, and I think that makes it such that people I don’t know well are suspicious of me, or think that I’m judgemental, when really there’s an appearance of callousness that is there to guard something that is very vulnerable.

I think the hipster thing got thrown around a lot, just because there were some references to it before I got involved in the show. My only nod to that was to true to find it in the physical, in the visual style, in the costuming. But really, I don’t think he’s a hipster. People have alluded to him being kind of Aspergian, and I actually don’t think that’s terribly far off. There are certain descriptions of him in Pride and Prejudice, which are like, he doesn’t understand the social manners of other people, there’s a disconnect between himself and how others work.

Did you feel a lot of pressure coming in to play such an iconic character? Recently we had the Pride and Prejudice bicentenary, and you featured on polls of favourite Darcys (including Hypable’s) – how did that feel?

Somehow I didn’t feel a tremendous amount of pressure. I felt good about what I did, I felt like I understood what was required to play the role of Darcy for me. I understood kind of instictively, and so I came in there and I made my choices in all of the auditions unabashedly. Ultimately I felt, though there was some nervousness about “Oh, are they gonna like me or not?” really I felt like it was on Bernie, it was on the team whether it was successful.

They had a lot of people to choose from and they chose me, so in that way I felt like, “I’m not the one who’s choosing who’s playing Darcy, that’s you, so if you made the wrong choice for your project, then that’s your fault.” But I never felt like, “Oh I hope I rise to occasion,” because I knew I was doing what I wanted to do, at least. It’s funny, because people assume that some of the choices we’re making as actors are choices we’re making to illicit something from the fans.

There’s a lot of guessing about, “Did you do this because you knew the fans would like it?” and we don’t work that way. We make our choices all based on the story, and so those behaviours that resonate with people come from us paying a lot of attention to the story. It’s funny, because my focus isn’t on how do I appear to people, it’s on what my character is doing, so when I’m compared to Colin Firth or Laurence Olivier, or these people who have played Darcy, it’s just so weird to me.

That the perception of me playing this role compares with those people who are such legendary actors, I don’t have much to say about it except thank you, wow. But I’m just working. I’m glad it’s resonating with you. Every time a new poll like that came out I was like, “Wow. Okay.”

Given that before you started on the show, Ashley [Clements, Lizzie Bennet], Laura [Spencer, Jane Bennet] and Mary Kate [Wiles, Lydia Bennet] had all “played” Darcy, how did that affect your performance going into it?

I used all of those as information for me. It wasn’t the only information I had, but it was something I knew I had to make work. When I came in I said okay, there’s all these things that people have said about me, and there’s a number of impersonations about me, so I have to incorporate those into my characterisation or the story doesn’t make sense. Because then they’re all doing a really bad impression of me and it doesn’t really make sense.

So that was how it influenced me, I said okay, I have to justify those. But luckily all those actresses had done their work too, and they were doing impersonations of a person who was really very put together, and didn’t understand, and was robotic, and appeared to be callous, they did a pretty good job. It was definitely not the only thing I used. I definitely paid attention to those characterisations.

I watched the 2005 movie right before I went in for the audition, I researched it, I started reading Pride and Prejudice – I took information from as many places as I could. But the biggest influence was the episodes that had already been made, because that set the tone, I knew what tone the show was, and the writing in the episodes I was actually doing. I used them but it was not the only thing I used.

You and Ashley have relatively few scenes together in the show, how did you go about establishing a rapport with each other?

That’s one of the primary challenges of acting in general. It’s funny because there’s this conflation between character and actors that happens a lot for the fans, when really it’s like Ashley and I, that’s the work that we’re doing. Part of the work is putting this relationship between these characters together. Me and Ashley are very different people from our characters, so obviously our relationship is very different too.

Establishing the rapport, it’s about figuring out the thoughts that your character is having about the other character, and finding those things in the other character that are so attractive to you. Ashley and I have also gotten to spend so much time together that we developed a way of working together, and communicating about the show, and luckily Ashley and I are very much on the same page about Darcy and Lizzie’s relationship, so it’s easy for us to bounce ideas off each other.

But a lot of developing a rapport in a relationship is just rehearsing, working on it, finding it together. It’s not always something you can control and do with your head, it’s a process, it’s something you find with someone else.

Read part 2 of our interview with Daniel Vincent Gordh tomorrow, to find out about his Darcy audition, his thoughts on the DVD Kickstarter and upcoming mini-series, and his answers to your twitter questions.

Image credit: Daniel Vincent Gordh