‘Matt Smith is so hot that he’s a problem’: Inside the TV version of Nick Cave’s disturbing, sex-filled novel | television

nEek Cave claims that at least four different production companies have tried to adapt his always funny, disturbing, sex-filled novel The Death of Bunny Munro into a movie or TV show in the 16 years since its release. The problem? “No one would play this character!” He says as he sits, as always, in a room at the Corinthia Hotel in London. As it turns out, the material was waiting for the right actor. Promote Matt Smith to play the sex-addicted traveling makeup salesman.

It’s no surprise that he eventually became Smith. Since his Doctor Who days, he’s tended to choose roles whose direction was a bit quirky – and the role of Bunny, depicted in Cave’s book as a misogynist, borderline animalistic who sweats pure ethanol, fits the bill perfectly. “I think it’s important to tell stories that feel challenging and difficult and polarizing, and I thought this would be all of those things,” says Smith animatedly, dressed head-to-toe in black in contrast to Bunny’s lavish suit. “But really, at its core, it’s about a father and son, and it’s really beautiful.”

First published in 2009 – after initially being written as a screenplay by Australian director John Hillcoat – The Death of Bunny Munro tells the story of an obsessive sex salesman who, after driving his wife to suicide due to his constant infidelity, kidnaps his bookish son (brilliantly played by Raphael Matthey) when social services try to take him away, and takes him on a surreal road trip around Sussex.

The book is defined by Bunny’s shocking internal monologue and his seemingly amoral worldview. The film adaptation of Sky, directed by Isabella Eklov and written by Pete Jackson, offers a slightly watered-down take. Much of the sex is conveyed through sound and dialogue. Some moments from the book, such as Bunny’s rape of a woman while under the influence of heroin – a scene for which Cave was nominated for a Bad Sex award – were implied rather than depicted in gruesome detail. This results in a slightly more sympathetic, though still undeniably creepy, rabbit, willing to give up his child for long periods of time to seduce bored housewives, and intent on teaching his son how to be a lich.

Set in 2003, the show is also a hipster piece filled with vintage Nokia devices and classic Kylie tracks blaring from the car radio. Smith says he feels the series is a “really faithful adaptation,” though he admits that the book, steeped in Bunny’s almost free-associative ideas about women, was very difficult to film. “It’s really hard to translate the pollution of his ideas and the danger of his ideas into a character that you’ll stick with,” he says.

However, the uniqueness of the rabbit was fundamentally attractive. “I thought the language of the book was beautiful – I read it very quickly, and I thought, ‘Wow! the curse. This will be a challenge, because he is so present, but what a great challenge. “I’d rather do that than do something that’s predictable,” Smith says. “He’s quite an operatic character – he’s out there doing crazy things – and they’re the people I’m drawn to, otherwise we’d be left with this homogeneous, vague nonsense where no one pushes it any further. This looked really original.

Although Smith declines to specify what he considers “stupid nonsense,” he does elaborate: “I think we tend to over-explain and try to predict people’s tastes in television sometimes.” “Let’s make it so everyone likes it, you know? Some people will like this, some people won’t – I’m totally fine with that.”

He feels Smith’s version of Bunny Monroe is “more aggressive than my version, because my version is just a lost individual and a terrible person, and he’s not attractive and he’s not good at what he does.” Smith, on the other hand? “The problem with Matt is that he’s handsome and sexy, and that makes the whole thing more suspicious, because he’s doing the same things,” Cave says. “But women actually like this show – you can see the kind of pull it has, and I find that more disturbing in a way. There’s something about the fact that Matt is hot that’s a big deal.”

Mathie, who plays Bunny’s nine-year-old son, Bunny Jr., is a standout in The Death of Bunny Munro, holding his own even when paired with the penniless Smith. Smith says working with a child actor on such explicit material was a great experience for him. “We were really lucky because we had a brilliant young actor in Rafe, who is intelligent and understands the emotional complexity of the story, even at such a young age,” he says. “You have to be careful about what you reveal to him — so, for example, you shoot the scene in the strip club with the beer and strippers and naked people first, and then he walks in, and he doesn’t see any of that.”

He continues: “So you’re shooting both sides of the coin all the time. And then I swear on my takes, and on his shots, I say the word frig or flip or sugar. This was the first time I’d been involved in a story where kids had to witness this level of depravity, and you have to realize that he’s nine years old.” “Even if it’s a story, you don’t want to expose him early to things that he shouldn’t be anywhere near. But his parents were amazing, and they navigated this whole thing beautifully — we really took care of him. Without him, there wouldn’t really be any show.”

The Death of Bunny Munro is in some ways a morality tale – a tragedy about a man whose lust and inability to care for his family led to his eventual ruin. Around the time of the book’s release, Cave said he was inspired by a certain type of British man who is “boyish, sex-crazed, who thinks breasts are kind of funny”, and that he wanted to show where that kind of misogyny could lead. Cave says he “doesn’t have anything to do with that quote anymore. I don’t judge Bunny Monroe anymore. I have a different way of seeing people, and part of that is that we’re fundamentally broken, all of us, to greater or lesser degrees.” “I think we live in a time where there is a feeling that we should condemn the transgressive character wherever we see it, and I find doing that personally very difficult.”

Smith wasn’t looking back to any specific heroes when he conceived of Rabbit, partly because “it has a lot of guys rolled into one guy. I recognize a lot of different guys in it,” he says. “He’s a very complex, very troubled, sad human being. He’s in the middle of this tornado of grief.”

Now is the perfect time for a Bunny Munro series, Cave says, because of that sentiment. “I think the world is hungry for things that go beyond the expectations of our culture these days — I have a feeling that people are looking for ways to test the puritanical nature of our current culture,” he says. “Especially with young people – I’m surrounded by young people because I have kids in their early 20s, and they’re more flexible and free with things these days, and they take pride in that. I think that’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned – it encourages a healthier, more artistic and freer society.”

Bunny Monroe’s book was considered controversial upon its release, in part because of the sexually charged and topical way in which Bunny focuses on Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavigne. Cave ended up apologizing to both women on BBC 6 Music, although he said: “Maybe that was sarcastic. I’ve never met Avril Lavigne, and I hope she’s not really offended, or embarrassed by that – I really hate it. I hope she’s not upset – she probably thought it was funny.” “I know Kylie. I asked Kylie what she thought, and she said, ‘Well, actually I haven’t read your book yet.’ And this went on for years. She says, ‘It’s next to my bed, but I haven’t been able to get to it.’ So I don’t know if she’s actually read it, but I think she still loves me.”

Bunny’s transcendence as a character – which led to such controversy after the novel’s publication – is what attracted Smith to the role in the first place, and why he’s so glad he got to play it. “Parts like Bunny Monroe have always been hard to find; they’re rare, really rare. That’s the kind of thing I’ve always been interested in,” he says. “I remember all that theater in the ’90s, I used to love all of it. There was something horrific about it…but it kept me on the edge of my seat. That’s what Bunny can do.”

The Death of Bunny Munro is shown on Sky Atlantic November 20.

Death of Munro Rabbit by Nick Cave (Canongate Books, £9.99). To support The Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.