‘The Watch’ Finale: Adam Hugill Shares the Carrot-Angua Moment That Almost Happened
Q&A
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 1 of The Watch.]
The bonkers punk-rock take on Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld book series faced DJ Death (Wendell Pierce), a virgin-hungry dragon, and a major conspiracy involving power-hungry Carcer Dun (Sam Adewunmi). But the city of Ankh-Morpork has been saved, thanks to the City Watch, led by grouchy Captain Sam Vimes’ (Game of Thrones vet Richard Dormer). And all of this happened just in Season 1. (BBC America has yet to renew The Watch for Season 2.)
And there’s more: The team, which along with Vimes includes werewolf Corporal Angua (Marama Corlett), forensics expert and controller of the darkness Corporal Cheery (Jo-Eaton Kent), the lovable Constable Carrot (Adam Hugill), and badass Lady Sybil Ramkin (Lara Rossi), put on the performance of their lives, playing a song to soothe the dragon threatening the city.
So, all good? Not quite. In the books, Carrot and Angua end up in a loving relationship, but even with the finale behind us, we’re left with them still working on professing their feelings. Why didn’t we get any resolution between them?
Below, Hugill reveals the Carrot-Angua moment we almost had, and more about that season ender.
There were so many almost moments between Carrot and Angua. If there’s a Season 2, do you think they’ll spill their feelings and move forward in their relationship?
I don’t think it’d be immediate because I don’t think they’d find any way to confess to each other. I think an initial seed of protectiveness [has been planted]. It’s not exactly “Let’s get married,” but there’s a root sense of love, of protection and care for one another. They’ll get there.
What scenes were cut from Season 1 that you wish viewers got to see?
Yeah, because of COVID we had six days left to film when we got sent home in March from South Africa. We picked up again seven months later. I think there was one scene that tied up [Carrot] and Angua’s story really nicely, which we never got to film, sadly, because there wasn’t enough time.
Ilze Kitshoff/BBCA
It was a really nice scene, a sort of confrontation between the two; not a bad confrontation, but like a meeting, that wraps up our storyline after that other [finale] scene where Carrot’s talking to the [magic] mirror. He tries to find a way to tell her that he’s starting to care for her and she overhears that and then, in the final scene, which we never got to shoot, she confronts him and drops a hint that she heard him. He’s left going, “Oh, crap,” or another expletive, and then she walks away. It left on a really nice beat for them both with [Carrot] thinking, “Does she know?” It’s a shame that it never got to see the light of day.
Those two could not possibly seem more different. They obviously have a history together in the books, but why do you think Carrot and Angua are a good couple?
Not to sound corny, but opposites attract. They go on a journey together of finding loopholes in the system and wanting to fight crime. They start to realize they both have the same goal, but they go about it in different ways. Carrot’s very stubborn, Angua’s very stubborn. There are a lot of similarities too, between the characters, but I think, for the things that aren’t similar, they need to clear their own paths to understand one another.
Why do you think Carrot was so disappointed to find out that he didn’t have noble blood as Carcer led him to believe?
Right in the beginning of our story, in Episode 1, he had this huge tsunami wave — he has no family, no true family, he was adopted, and they sent him to the Watch to get him out of the way, not because of his skills. He felt pretty alone in this world, and was stuck thinking everything he grew up on was a lie.
The Watch becomes his family. He starts to find a little kinship with all these misfits from many different backgrounds and all races of mythical creatures. And when the noble blood comes up, it’s not a vanity thing, it’s just more like, “Oh, great. Something to make me feel special like I belong here. There’s something tying me to this world, I’m not just wandering through it blindly.” I don’t think he really wants to be noble-blooded, deep down; at that moment, he just needs something to guide him with what he’s actually doing [in the City Watch].
Ilze Kitshoff/BBCA
I believe you played drums before the show, but how was it getting to play the drums for TV?
Yeah, I did play the drums already, which is quite lucky. The first band moment in Episode 3 was good because we were indoors. We could have the speakers blacking out and play along, and I didn’t have to mime or anything, so that was all good. But then for the big finale moment, with the [CGI] dragon flying through the sky, we were outdoors in London and we couldn’t play very loud because there were houses everywhere and it was three in the morning. I was playing a cymbal that had duct tape underneath it and we had to stuff the drums with sheets just to not make any noise and still be able to play. If they released the actual sound from shooting the episode, it’d be horrifying.
