by Matt Lucas
We appeared on various TV shows there, including Waratte iitomo!, with the iconic Tamori. The thing that amused us the most was seeing so many people walking around Tokyo wearing those little surgical face masks. I wanted to walk out on Waratte iitomo! wearing one, but was discouraged by our publicist.
Little Britain seemed to be reaching its natural end, but it was to have one last hurrah.
During the tour I had received an email from Will Young (I think I’d better ‘Clang’ right now), who had seen the show, asking if he could pass my details on to his manager Simon Fuller.
Simon had created Pop Idol and So You Think You Can Dance and managed the Spice Girls, David and Victoria Beckham and Annie Lennox amongst others. We had never met him before, but he flew to see us on tour in Birmingham and told us that he had taken the liberty of talking to HBO’s head honcho Chris Albrecht about Little Britain. He said that Chris was interested in us making a version for America.
David and I were flown with our agents to LA. We had a brief meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills with Simon and a pair of genial guys called David and Larry. They were veterans in the industry, managed Billy Crystal, Robin Williams and various others, and would be executive producers on the show.
We went to HBO, met with Chris Albrecht and left half an hour later with our own US TV series. We hadn’t even got ourselves an American agent at that point. Meetings with all of the big agencies followed and we signed with the biggest, CAA. We were then serenaded by various movie studios and signed a deal with Dreamworks – before we’d even had an idea for a film!
The Americans seemed to be impressed with our ratings, our merchandise sales and the amount of tickets we’d sold on tour. In a world before Netflix, AMC and Amazon, there was nothing to rival HBO. They were the only place to be – unless we’d wanted to try and make a network show, which felt like a whole other world to us. So much of what we did was adult – you couldn’t have Bubbles or Dafydd or Bitty on mainstream American TV, the advertisers would have been in uproar.
We agreed that we would take some of our original sketches and Americanise the characters. For instance, Dafydd would become Latino, and the only gay in his border town of Laredo, Texas. We completed this process and had begun to write some brand new characters when word reached us that there was now a new head of HBO – Mike Lombardo – and he wanted us to feature the characters in their original British form.
Little Britain USA would be set and filmed entirely in the US so we had to figure out a reason and context to allow our most popular characters to be in America. Although our shows had already played to a small audience on BBC America, this new show would effectively work as series one for HBO viewers who had never seen us before, and series four for our existing audience in the UK and around the world.
To inspire us, we went with David and Larry and our producer Stephanie on a short research tour around some American cities. Branson, Missouri, was definitely the strangest – like a Christian gambling-free Las Vegas, where the Osmonds and Andy Williams did nightly shows. In Chicago we went to Wrigley Field to see a baseball game. We had a great time the next day in rural Illinois at the Sandwich Fair – a huge, old-fashioned, typically American event with shows, parades and competitions.
We returned to LA to write. Our show runner was Michael Patrick Jann, who had been a part of an American sketch group called The State. After we read each sketch aloud, Michael would often say it was ‘quite good’. This felt like faint praise to us and we were sad that he didn’t think much of our efforts. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the Americans use the phrase ‘quite good’ the way the British say ‘very good!’ Sorry if we appeared ungrateful, Michael!
We filmed on location in Wilmington, a seaside town in North Carolina. In the summer humidity, we baked in our hot costumes. When we weren’t filming or learning lines, we had dialect rehearsals, so we could make a respectable stab at the American accent.
The studio scenes were shot in LA and were directed by David Schwimmer, who was one of the best studio directors I’ve ever worked with. Full of great ideas, the only annoying thing was that he wasn’t playing all the parts himself, as he’s clearly one of the funniest people in the world.
It was a fresh challenge filming Marjorie in front of an audience and we had special guests, including Sarah Chalke and a very game Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie had been a big champion of the show and she did a great job of standing up to Marjorie.
One of the Emily Howard sketches included an appearance by Sting, who we happened to meet on a flight a few months earlier. He was going to be in LA while we were filming, as The Police had re-formed and were playing the Hollywood Bowl. He suggested we head to the concert and watch the sound check, and then we could meet him immediately after to discuss the sketch we were all filming the following day.
I sat at the Hollywood Bowl, a few rows back, Walliams on my left, Schwimmer on my right, watching The Police rehearse. Also onstage during the sound check, dancing away, were a few people who’d donated money to charity and been invited to meet the band in return. After each number Sting would complain he had a sore throat and ask if anybody else wanted to sing for a bit. One or two of the charity donors took the mic for a few seconds before sheepishly handing it back to the singer.
After yet one more appeal from Sting, Schwimmer nudged me. ‘You can sing. Go on.’
‘Noooooooo,’ I replied.
‘Well, now’s your moment. In thirty seconds’ time it’ll be too late,’ said Ross out of Friends.
I walked up to the stage. There were four of us – The Police, and yours truly.
‘Oh, hello, Matt,’ said Sting. ‘What do you want to sing?’
I hadn’t realised there’d be a choice. It was like karaoke, with the words on a discreet little screen at the foot of the stage.
‘Um, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, please.’
I’d never sung it before, but as luck would have it, it just happened to be in my key. I was able to really belt it. Afterwards Mr Sting told me I was really good. I mean, he’d have probably said that anyway, but still.
And that is how I came to sing lead vocals on ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ at the Hollywood Bowl, with The Police, and Sting on backing vocals.
It wasn’t filmed. But it happened. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
I’ve had a few odd moments like that. I once sang backing vocals on ‘Ain’t No Pleasing You’ with Chas & Dave on a TV show – which might not sound like much to you, but I bloody love Chas & Dave – and I say that even as a fervent Arsenal fan.
Also I got to share vocals with Peter Kay and The Proclaimers for Comic Relief on ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ – which went to number one for three weeks. (Still waiting for that gold disc, by the way.)
And … I once sang with Queen, of course.
Back to 2008. As we were making Little Britain USA I got the sense that the new guard at HBO would probably not have commissioned it – but, having inherited it, they were stuck with it! Suddenly, in the context of what the channel was doing – the big new series was True Blood – our programme felt old-fashioned. A big bone of contention was the laughter track. During the edit, Mike Lombardo asked if we could try removing it, to make the show feel more contemporary and pacey.
We didn’t like to be obstructive, but we felt we had to say no. When it came to the footage we’d shot on location, we could indeed lose the laughter as requested, but because the studio audience had been so lively and chortled throughout, we knew we wouldn’t be able to remove their laughter from the sketches we’d shot in front of them without sitting in a booth and re-dubbing virtually every single line of dialogue.
Besides, the scenes we filmed in front of an audience were shot and lit very differently to the location footage. When you go on the road you tend to film with just one camera. It’s much more intimate. In the studio you tend to do big set-piece sketches. Everything is lit more brightly.
The action is covered by five cameras at the same time, all of which are much further away, and there is much less movement from them. Consequently the performances are bigger. The timing, too, is affected by how the audience responds. We had set out to make – and had made – a big broad sketch show. We felt that re-voicing sketches full of dialogue and cutting out the laughter track would not have addressed HBO’s concerns.
Despite their misgivings, I thought we’d done a decent job. There were lots of fun new characters in the series, like the little girl Ellie-Grace and her mother, and two butch gym buddies with micro-penises. HBO might have felt the laughter was intrusive – but it was real.
The majority of American reviewers were generally pretty positive about the show. The UK press, however – now gleefully charting our ‘downfall’ – summarised the notices by quoting only the bad ones! The Daily Star went one step further. It ran an article, picked up by lots of other news outlets, quoting members of various outraged and offended gay rights groups, apparently disgusted and grief-stricken by the Dafydd sketches.
I was confused and disappointed. The show had not yet aired – in fact, preview copies hadn’t even been distributed to critics – so I couldn’t fathom how they could have seen any footage. Furthermore, I really didn’t think there was anything homophobic in the show.
David suggested we get our lawyers onto it and they put a detective on the case. We learned that not only were the quotes entirely fictional, but so were the individuals and the organisations quoted. We sued the Daily Star, who ran an apology. We gave the proceeds to local gay rights charities – ones that actually existed!
Despite these obstacles, HBO told us that they would like a second series. We began writing and had penned three episodes’ worth of sketches when they had a change of heart. They said they wanted to relaunch the show. They still wanted another series, but first they would like a ninety-minute special. We said we were reluctant to do ninety minutes of solid sketches. Could we at least do two forty-five minute specials? They said no, it had to be ninety minutes. We didn’t fancy it, so that was that.
Ha – look at us with our big ideas, turning down a feature-length HBO special.
The film we developed with Dreamworks – and Ben Stiller’s company Red Hour – was to be called ‘Diva Las Vegas’. We worked closely with an Englishman based in LA called Will Davies, who had written lots of comedies including Twins and How to Train Your Dragon. We figured out the plot together and added gags to Will’s script. The story featured some of the Little Britain characters and lots of new ones in a big-budget, madcap comedy. Had the HBO show been a smash, maybe ‘Diva Las Vegas’ might have been made. It’s certainly a funny script, albeit in a town with piles of funny scripts sitting on shelves gathering dust.
Dust? Anybody? No?
People had told us that Little Britain wouldn’t work in the US without us in it. Though I’m sure they said the same thing to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. They made the right choices when it came to the American version of The Office and, having thought about it since, I think we should have tried to do a deal to remake the show, using our concepts and scripts as a basis, and then recast it. I’d love to have seen – would still love to see, in fact – ‘This is America’, starring two or three homegrown comedians, with a voiceover by James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman.
It’s not easy for me to look back on Little Britain USA. The events of 2008 were overshadowed by the breakdown in my relationship with Kevin. David was supportive as it became clear that Kevin had become consumed by drug addiction. When I wasn’t on set – and even when I was – I was focused on trying to save not only our relationship but his life. There is much that I could say about that period and what followed, but, as I explained in the Preface, some things must remain private.
David and I returned to the UK. We wanted to re-orientate the material we had written and produce a final series of Little Britain for the BBC, but there was a new controller of BBC One – Jay Hunt – and she felt that the show had had its day. We offered to show her the scripts, but she said she thought it was time for us to do something else. So if you want to know why we stopped making Little Britain – well, it wasn’t our choice and there’s at least half a series’ worth still lurking on our hard drives somewhere!
I will admit we were a little surprised, but we didn’t mope. Jay Hunt remained keen to keep us at the BBC, so we set to work trying to think of what to do next. David suggested we do a big new sketch show – something with all of the things that we couldn’t do in Little Britain, like monologues and parodies, something more family-orientated that could play on a Saturday night. While it was a good idea, I wasn’t sure that we should follow Little Britain immediately with another sketch show.
Instead we decided to answer the critics who accused us of just trotting out the same jokes week in week out by developing a series that would be something completely different each time. We created six new scenarios. One of them revolved around an airport. As we started to write, it became clear that it had a lot more life in it than just half an hour. We asked Jay if we could do a whole series of it and luckily for us she said yes.
T – The TARDIS
‘Are you excited?’ asked one of the runners as he led me down the corridor.
What a strange question, I thought. Am I twelve years old? Is this my first job in television?
It was the autumn of 2015 and I was anything but excited. I was anxious.
The orange duffel coat I was asked to try on seemed broad to me. I mean, obviously it had to be broad to fit me, but … you know what I mean.
In a large, nondescript room at BBC Roath Lock studios in Cardiff maybe fifty people were gathered for a read-through of the Doctor Who Christmas Special.
Once or twice over the years I had had an availability check for Doctor Who. I had always been unavailable.
Scratch that. I had always told them I was unavailable. I had resolved never to appear in the show. Why on earth had I said yes now?
Let’s go back and forth, travel through time like the Doctor. And I’ll do my best to explain.
A month earlier I had been asked to put myself ‘on camera’ for the role of Bottom in Russell T. Davies’s BBC adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’d not had much experience with Shakespeare. In 2000 I was cast to play Thersites in a production of Troilus and Cressida. The director wrote to us a couple of weeks before rehearsals began and suggested we read The Iliad, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and a deeply scary memoir about Bosnia just to get us into the mood. A talented troupe of actors and one of Britain’s hottest up-and-coming directors contrived to put on a mess of a production that baffled and bored anyone who came to see it in equal measure. We toured the country, playing to tiny audiences in enormous theatres and even though the production was not nearly good enough, the director somehow managed to wangle us a three-week run at the Old Vic. We were shredded by the critics. I remember sitting on the Tube on the way to the theatre, as people around me read copies of the London Evening Standard in which I was (rightly) slated. As the run came to a close, I was so dispirited I seriously questioned whether it might be time to quit performing altogether and try something else.
In the summer of 2015 I’d worked hard for a day or two on the Midsummer Night’s Dream scenes, by myself, at my home in LA. I had three friends staying, but I gave them my apologies and sent them out on excursions while I holed myself away in my office, trying to work out how to play Shakespeare without anyone there to direct me.
Eventually the time came to record myself. I can’t say it was any good, but I can say I gave it my all as I performed in front of my webcam (wahey!) and emailed the scenes off.
A couple of weeks later, I learned that I hadn’t got the job. I allowed myself to be disappointed, but also remembered that there are many more experienced Shakespearean actors than me, so maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.
Shortly after that, though, I was offered a small guest role in the
Doctor Who Christmas Special by the same casting director. Without even reading the script, I thought that perhaps I should say yes because that would make me feel better about not getting the other job. I also thought that maybe I would be ready to step back into the TARDIS.
It had been around eight years since I had last been in it. Eight years since Kevin had left and taken the TARDIS with him. The actual TARDIS, that is.
When Little Britain went big, I wasn’t really sure what to do with the spoils. I’d not had any experience of that kind of life. I bought a house with too many floors. I had my own box at Arsenal, where our dog Milo would sit on the seat next to me. And I bought a TARDIS from the BBC …
It was the one that had been used on the Christopher Eccleston series and David Tennant’s first series too. The production team needed to build a slightly bigger one so I took this one off their hands for a low five-figure sum.
I bought it for Kevin. I had enjoyed Doctor Who as a kid, tuning in to the adventures of Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin Baker, but Kevin was a true Whovian, a devoted fan. When Russell T. Davies brought the show back after a hiatus that felt like a lifetime, Kevin’s excitement was so great that I arranged for us to travel to Wales and visit the set. That night we went to the episode launch screening and then, to cap it off, managed to cadge a lift back to London with Captain Jack himself, John Barrowman. I’d never seen Kevin so happy.
And so the TARDIS was delivered to our house in Marylebone in pieces and installed in the basement. We even had a hole cut into the basement ceiling to make room for the light on top. Inside the police box Kevin put up some fairy lights. Visitors would have photos taken inside it. It was loved and cared for.