The darkly comedic sci-fi romance follows Agnes (Alice Lowe), a hapless woman, doomed to repeatedly fall for the wrong man, Alex, across different eras, only to meet a tragic end and be reincarnated to repeat the cycle.

Jacob Anderson plays the role of Scipio, who shows up in various places across the timelines as different characters, including Alex’s manager in the 1980s.

Anderson recently spoke with SciFi Vision at length about working in the film, including being a fan of Alice Lowe, working with the wigs and costumes, and more, as well as some of his other projects, including Interview with a Vampire and Doctor Who.

The film is currently available On Demand.

Listen to the full interview or read the transcript below.



***Edited for clarity and length***

SCIFI VISION:  So, to start off, how did you get involved in [Timestalker]?

JACOB ANDERSON:  I got involved because one of my frequent collaborators is the film's DOP, Ryan Eddelston. And I think he either invited me or said that I had to see this film Prevenge, which I knew I would love. I've been a fan of Alice's since I was a teenager. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is one of my favorite TV shows ever made. Also, she made all these shorts. She made a few Super 8 shorts, which were just like really bizarre. It was really bizarre. There was one where she played David Bowie. So, I was already a fan of hers.

And he was like, “I made a film with Alice Lowe.” I think we might have talked about her even when we were working together. So, I watched Prevenge and I just thought it was - like the premise is amazing. The circumstances of its creation were also amazing. She made that film when she was seven months pregnant [and] cast her own daughter in it as a baby.

But it's also just, I loved it. It was kind of an area that I think a lot of people are quite scared to go to. Like there's something - I think Alice has spoken about this before. I don't want to out paraphrase her, but like something about pregnant women being seen as kind of vulnerable whilst they're also, you know, in reality, it's the most powerful thing that you could ever do. It's like, there's so much strength in being pregnant and carrying a human in your body. But it does all these things to your brain as well, to your mind while you're doing it. Something takes over.

Yeah, so I like fell in love with Prevenge, [and I was] already a fan of Alice's. I sent an email to Ryan, and it was just to tell him how much I loved it and I loved his work. He was like, “Oh, you guys should - I'll introduce you.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” [laughs]

And he sent me an email with her cc'd in it and was like, “Alice, Jacob, Jacob, Alice.” And [also], he said that she was a big Game of Thrones fan. This was maybe in like 2016 or something.

Yeah, so we were in touch then, and she said, “I would like to send you something. I want to send you a script. Just let me know what you think.” And she sent me Timestalker. And I, again, immediately in love with the script. I just thought it was like truly bonkers.

SCIFI VISION:  But in a good way. It’s unique.

JACOB ANDERSON:  100% in a good way. But I read so many scripts that are very formulaic. They follow these really rote archetypes. The characters don't really go anywhere or do anything. I mean, I guess you could argue that Agnes [laughs] doesn't really go anywhere in some ways. She’s just reliving the same thing. But I hadn't read anything like it. It's so ambitious. I think that in the UK sometimes, partly because of money, really, we find it quite hard to be ambitious in our storytelling when it comes to films. So, I read it, and I was like, “This is amazing.” Secretly, in my head, I was like, “I don't know how you're going to get this made.”

And yeah, criminally, it took, I guess, like for Alice, obviously a lot longer, but from when she asked me to be a part of it to when it got made, it was like four or five years, maybe three or four years.

So yeah, sorry, that was a very long-winded way of saying how it evolved. But it was just unlike anything I'd read, and I just thought it was really special. I was like, I don't know if this is going to get made or if anyone's going to see it when it does get made, but I know that this is one of those films that somebody's going to find it one day, and it's going to be their little treasure, and they're going to be like, “Oh my God, this film was made for me.” It has that about it. So yeah, I couldn’t not be a part of it.

SCIFI VISION:  It's definitely different. What was it like working with her? Was it what you expected? Obviously she wrote and directed it and starred in it.

JACOB ANDERSON:  Alice and I, we talked quite a bit over email over a matter of years. So, I kind of got to know her a little bit in that way. So, in terms of like what to expect from her, I already knew she was great. But I think, yeah, to see somebody taking on so many hats and then doing that day to day - I think she sprained her ankle on the third day and just worked through it. But then I guess if you make a film when you're seven months pregnant –

SCIFI VISION:  Then you probably could do anything, right?

JACOB ANDERSON:  Yeah. She's just unflappable and so insanely talented. She just has a really good eye and ear for comedy, but also just this encyclopedic knowledge of cinema. Like there was - I'm not trying to credit myself here at all, but I talked to Alice one night about Sweet Charity, which is one of my favorite films. She's like, “Oh, Sweet Charity. Yeah, I need to watch that again.” And she came back, and she was like, “There's a shot from Sweet Charity that I want to reference,” and she put it in the film. It's just she's so in love with storytelling and with films. She's my kind of person. So, to work in that environment every day is like my happy place.

SCIFI VISION:  So, to say that, was everything in the script, or was there more sort of a collaboration as you created it? Because obviously there's all different versions of this character. Was all that in the script or did you add anything? I don't know how much you could change, because I didn't see the original script.

JACOB ANDERSON:  I mean, I'm not a comedian. There are comedians in the film who are like - I mean, like Nick Frost and Alice herself, they have such an adept way of improvising and just throwing ideas in, in the day. And I don't know if I have the courage to go up next to them and introduce new things.

But it didn't feel that necessary. I think there were one or two times that I like pushed things a little bit further than was scripted. Like Scipio always playing the piano, and I just went for it.

SCIFI VISION:  I was going to say, is that really you playing the piano? [laughs] Do you know how to play the piano?

JACOB ANDERSON:  No. [laughs]

SCIFI VISION:  Okay, so you were just - got it.

Let me ask you this. Did you do anything, I guess, [consciously] different, other than obviously you have different costumes, to separate the different versions of him?

JACOB ANDERSON:  No. I mean, that's something that I do a lot in Interview of the Vampire. [laughs] But I did, I talked to Alice a little bit about it. And I think part of the point of Scipio is that he's trapped in the time that he's in, but he's the same entity. He's aware of the narrative of the film.

He's aware of what's happening, so he doesn't really change. His surroundings change around him, and he gets increasingly frustrated by the position he's in, in each of these surroundings. So, it's like a position of subservience.

SCIFI VISION:  Which - I was going to say decade, but I guess century or decade, did you like doing the most? I mean, there're some great costumes, although some of them sort of seem similar to, I'm not great with [knowing the time period], but some seem a similar time to Interview, at least one of them did. What one did you like the most, I guess, getting to play that time?

JACOB ANDERSON:  I enjoyed all of them. I mean, the thing that was very, very unique about this film, was that the wigs and the costumes that we got to wear were so -

SCIFI VISION:  There's quite a lot of wigs.

JACOB ANDERSON:  Yeah, lots of wigs. And I loved wearing the wigs, especially the first one, the Scottish one. Like, that wig was intense. I loved it. I was obsessed with that wig. And also some of the ones in terms of like, costuming and how I felt - like costuming and makeup, and how I felt were like, things that you just see flashes of, like the Victorian look. I had this kind of parted Afro and a massive mustache and kind of ‘chops. That was fun. [laughs] But I enjoyed 80s Scipio. There's something I love about that.

SCIFI VISION:  It kind of reminded me of Michael Jackson a little bit, to be honest.

JACOB ANDERSON:  I mean, I was thinking more Prince.

SCIFI VISION:  Oh, maybe. Yeah, probably Prince too. That's good, but yeah, all from that time.

So, you've been in things from obviously Game of Thrones, which is a huge budget to something like this, to Doctor Who. How is it different, I guess, from a perspective of creating it…just with the different budget, how do you perceive it?

JACOB ANDERSON:  I think I'm learning increasingly as I get older and as I work on things of different budget, that the budget is obviously important and informs how the producers feel, I guess, and like how the producers then treat everybody else. But I think the size of a thing, the size of a project, actually doesn't necessarily inform how it feels. Like, Game of Thrones felt tiny. It felt really intimate, especially because we're in these like little story pockets, but you just, you really get to know everybody. And it is like a community and a family and everybody was seeing each other at the same time every year that it shrinks the kind of scale of the whole thing.

Then, you can work on something - I'm trying to think, like again, Timestalker felt like everybody getting together and working together to make a thing together. It didn't have a lot of money, but…we had really great producers, and we had Alice pulling everybody together. Everybody loved Alice.

Again, Doctor Who, famously that show is like,

SCIFI VISION:  It’s low budget. Even though it's big, it's low budget.

JACOB ANDERSON:  Exactly. And that's part of the fun of it. Like, I remember just being so excited to get onto my spaceship for the first time. It was like made up of old consoles, like old games consoles. There was a spectrum. It's like the control thing, like a ZX Spectrum or like an Atari. Then, there're like these buttons from an old keyboard, or there's a PlayStation controller. I love that kind of thriftiness.

SCIFI VISION:  I think it can make people more creative when you don't have much.

JACOB ANDERSON:  Yeah, and also - I think that there are definitely exceptions, but I think when we talk specifically about science fiction, I prefer it when something feels lived in, when it feels like there's like a story behind the objects, like when the walls are a bit like you have metal walls and stuff. It's all a bit rusty; it’s a bit old.

SCIFI VISION:  Rip them apart and paint them and everything else. Yeah.

JACOB ANDERSON:  Yeah, like the film Dark Star and Alien even, like they have, you know, the ships are oily and dirty and old and lived in. I think that there's something a little bit more tangible about that. Doctor Who, as a kid, it was scarier for the fact that it felt real, [laughs] you know, like you could recognize what things were made of, and that meant that like, it was closer to you than you thought it was.

SCIFI VISION:  That makes sense. And I have to ask you, because I am a big Whovian, what kind of like your favorite memory from working on that, that sticks out that you remember?

JACOB ANDERSON:  I mean, like generally speaking, it was just really lovely to be with Jodie [Whittaker] again. Also, it’s just a really lovely cast. They were just really lovely people, Mandip and John as well. But like, I'll be honest. My favorite thing was just like [laughs] I was sitting on my ship. I almost didn't want to say that, because I'm on my own. I feel like it’s bad to say that.

SCIFI VISION:  Yeah. That's true. You did have a lot of scenes by yourself.

JACOB ANDERSON:  Yeah. And also, like touching the TARDIS was a huge, emotional thing for me. Like I grew up with that piece of iconography, and it's in front of me, and I can touch it, and I can walk through it. Yeah, it was kind of magical. It was something like - it was like being at Disneyland.

SCIFI VISION:  Yeah. I'm sure that that would be cool. I hope someday to even go to the UK, but I don't think they're going to have the museum by the time I get there for Doctor Who. So I don't know, but that would be fun. That would be a lot of fun.

Are you then like a sci-fi fantasy person, or did you just kind of fall into it? Because you've been in obviously a lot of sci-fi fantasy.

JACOB ANDERSON:  I am. As a kid, primarily, I was really into comics. I was really into Star Wars. I was really into Doctor Who. So, yeah, I feel like I can often make sense better of our world, our very real world through the lens of [unintelligible]

So, yeah, I've always been a fan of science fiction, speculative fiction. Comic books, superheroes and things. Space operas. [laughs]

SCIFI VISION:  Have you started - I assume that you've either filmed or started filming season three of Interview with the Vampire, haven't you?

JACOB ANDERSON:  [No.]

SCIFI VISION:  No, you haven't. I wasn't sure, because it said it was coming out the beginning of this year, but I know they keep changing everything, and with the strike and everything it's hard to tell what's going on. Do you kind of have an idea where it's going - I know you can't actually tell me, but do you have an idea where it's going this season [for your character]? Because I know it's mostly focusing on Lestat, I guess, from what I’ve heard. I haven't read the books, so I don't know, but from his point of view.

JACOB ANDERSON:  No, no, I don't know anything. [laughs] I don't. Yeah. I have no updates.

SCIFI VISION:  Well, at least, you know you're getting a season three. So, you know, you have the job. I guess that's something.

[JACOB ANDERSON:
I mean…[laughs]

SCIFI VISION:  [laughs] I guess you never know.

JACOB ANDERSON:  We’ll see.

SCIFI VISION:  Let me ask you this. Was playing a character like Louis, that not only is the character, you know, known for the books and everything, but there's been a film and everything else. Was that daunting to do something like that, play something that people knew? Did you worry at all about how it would be perceived?

JACOB ANDERSON:  Yeah, I think I did initially. And I think it had less to do with the film and more to do with Anne Rice. And I was not - I didn't really know who Anne Rice was before I auditioned for that. I had read Rolin [Jones]’s script before I read the book. So, like, I'd seen the film. It didn't have a massive impact on me. I had watched Queen of the Damned, because Aaliyah was in it. [But] it wasn't until I started to look into what The Vampire Chronicles meant to people. That was when I was like, “Oh, this is something that has to be really - I don't know. It just, it has to be held in the esteem that people hold it in. I guess actually also the film was very iconic, and Brad Pitt is a famous person. I mean, [laughs] Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

SCIFI VISION:  That's a good description of Brad Pitt. [laughs]

JACOB ANDERSON:  He’s a very famous man.

SCIFI VISION:  No, I know what you mean.

JACOB ANDERSON:  So, like, I guess there's that, but then you do realize not everybody likes the same things. No everybody loves the same actors or the same interpretation, and this was already very much its own thing.

And I really loved Louie. I mean, I didn’t love of all of Louie in the book. And then in Vampire, I read Vampire and Lestat well before we started filming. That was like a whole other thing, again. Like, I love this, the books. So, it meant that I sort of, by the time we were filming, I had those feelings of like, “I want to do this right.”

When you're working with somebody who [laughs] really, really knows their shit about, you know, Anne Rice, then you sort of fall into that, and you want to just do the story justice anyway. You know, I don't really go into things half-assed or like for a paycheck. It's just not really my thing. Like, I feel so lucky to do this as a job.

And this speaks to Timestalker as well, and also like why I wanted to be a part of it for four years. Is that I think if I really love a story, and I really love a character, and I really love the people that are making the thing…I think I might as well be in a line of work that I don't hate and don't care about and is just work, if I'm not going to do things for the right reasons.

SCIFI VISION:  …I think that you can tell when people do that though, compared to when they don't.

JACOB ANDERSON:  Yeah, I think so. That's the thing. Like, I love this. Like, I love watching. I love being told stories, and I can tell when someone's heart isn't in it. I don't want to be one of those people.

SCIFI VISION:  Was there anything though that was, was difficult? I mean, it sounds like it was a lot of fun working on this project, but was there anything that was difficult at all?

JACOB ANDERSON:  Just being in the countryside in Wales in the winter. It could be hard sometimes. [laughs] It was cold sometimes. But like, again, even that, you just got to dance through it. [laughs] You just dance through the cold.

SCIFI VISION:  Yeah. Well, as long as you're enjoying it, that's a good thing. Do you have like, I don't know, a dream role or something, a type of role or something that you'd really still love to do?

I mean, you said you were a fan of Doctor Who. So, I don't know, maybe that was it, but is there anything you're just still thinking about? Like, if it were up to you, you could be in anything?

JACOB ANDERSON:  It's a really good question. I used to think I had things. This is going to be a boring answer, I'm sorry. Like, I used to have things that I was like, “I want to do that. I want to be in this super team, or I want to do this thing or that thing.” But I think now I just want to be in things that like I get joy out of, and I don't know what they're going to be like.

Like I did a film last year that like just came out, I felt just came out of nowhere, and it's like one of my favorite things I've ever read and that like I never would have planned that for myself. So, I like the surprises. I'm excited for more surprises.

SCIFI VISION:  Is there someone in particular that you would like to work with? Either an actor, director, whichever, I mean other than Alice?

JACOB ANDERSON:  Oh. I mean, I'm watching loads of old films just recently. [laughs] Most of the people that made those films are not here anymore. I was like Agnes Varda, but that's not going to happen…I think there're like a lot of really interesting drama directors around at the moment that are doing some really brilliant satire through horror. I'd love to work with Jordan Peele, Barry Jenkins. Oh, who directed The Substance? Coralie Fargeat, I think that's how you say it…I'd do it for free.

SCIFI VISION:  That's cool. I actually haven't seen that, because I'm a wuss and it looks scary.

JACOB ANDERSON:  But, you know, it's like I'd say it's one of the more accessible body horror films, like once you get past the kind of like visceral stuff.

SCIFI VISION:  Like, yeah, I know. I know a lot of people like it. I'm just I'm the kind of person that looks up the parent’s guide when it's really scary or to see what's in it first. [laughs]

JACOB ANDERSON:  I do that too sometimes. [laughs]

SCIFI VISION:  I'm always that person, I'm a wuss when it comes to horror.

…Is there anything else you want to promote that you have coming up?

JACOB ANDERSON:  No, I don't think so. [laughs] Go find go and find Timestalker. It's a weird film, and it deserves your love and time.

SCIFI VISION:  Yeah.

JACOB ANDERSON:  So does Alice Lowe.

SCIFI VISION:  Yeah, it's a fun film.

…Is there anything else you want to put in the interview you want to add, that you want people to know that think you can think of? It's OK if you can’t just before we run out [of time] I figure I might as well ask. I know, what's something people would be surprised to know about you? That's something I haven't asked people for a while. I used to always ask that.

JACOB ANDERSON:  Oh. I feel like because of the Internet, it's probably not surprising to anybody. [laughs]

SCIFI VISION:  That's true. People know everything now.

JACOB ANDERSON:  That's true.

SCIFI VISION:  That's true.

JACOB ANDERSON:  And I'm like definitely an oversharer. [laughs] I'm like a big reality TV fan, like only in the like since 2020, like since lockdown.

SCIFI VISION:  I was going to say, like I started watching much more TV.

JACOB ANDERSON:  Yeah. But I used to actively hate reality TV. I was like, it's rotting. It's rotting us, and it's rotting the way that we that we relate to each other. Then, I watched that show Unreal, and I was like, “Oh, this is wild.” Actually, reality TV is just one big, like it's just basically narrative. And I started to get into it quite a lot. It's like a guilty pleasure.

SCIFI VISION:  There's a lot going on. I was going to say, what's something you're into right now? It doesn't have to be reality TV. I don't know how much time - I know a lot of times in your profession, you may not have a lot of time to watch television or movies, but is there something you're kind of into right now?

JACOB ANDERSON:  No, I make time to watch things. I'm going to have a look at my watch list of what I've just watched. I write everything down that I've watched. [laughs]

I've just started watching Common Side Effects, which I'm enjoying. I love Scavengers Reign. I think it's Joe Bennett wrote and created both of those shows.

I've been watching this show called Culinary Class Wars on Netflix. It's like a Korean cooking show. It's just like the scale of it is ridiculous. I love that.

I've just watched the first three [seasons] of Industry. I'm late, but like, wow, that show just took over my life for like two weeks. I just had to like watch one a day and pass it out, and I obviously failed, because I watched three seasons in two.