by James Corden
Looking back, the build-up to leaving was a very emotional time. I was going away for eight months – maybe more – and I had no idea what that would do to Shelley and me. That was the big downside of the tour: it meant having to leave behind the girl I’d fallen in love with. By this point, Shelley and I had been together for almost eight years. We’d never been apart from each other for that long before; we’d had this agreement that the longest we’d ever spend without each other was a month, never any more.
To say goodbye, we had a meal together at the little pull-out table in our kitchen, the table where I’d been writing Gavin & Stacey. It was so romantic, but heartbreaking at the same time. Shelley was absolutely wonderful. She’d put together a playlist of songs that meant so much to both of us and created a photo album with pictures of us together, along with pictures of my family, my sisters and my nephew. She fell asleep before me, so I slipped quietly out of bed and wrote hundreds and hundreds of little ‘I love you’ Post-it notes and hid them all over the flat, in every nook and cranny. I hoped that as the months rolled by, she’d still be finding them and be reminded of how I felt.
CHAPTER 17
BEST MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT:
‘New York’ by Stephen Fretwell
BEST FILM TO WATCH ALONGSIDE:
When Harry Met Sally
BEST ENJOYED WITH:
pastrami on rye
THE CAR CAME to pick me up the next day; after wrestling my enormous suitcase into the boot, I turned to say goodbye to Shelley. We held on to each other for as long as we could, tears rolling down our faces, both of us shaking like leaves. I finally got in the car and waved sadly to her as we pulled away. I cried all the way to Heathrow. I cried because I knew how much I’d miss her but also because, deep down, there was a part of me that knew things would never be the same again.
I remember sending a text to Russell Rook, a really close friend who works for the Salvation Army. I told him I was leaving to go on this great adventure and yet there I was in the taxi unable to stop crying. I asked him what on earth I could do. Russell tried to call, but when my phone rang, I just couldn’t answer. I knew if I did I would burst into even more tears and never be able to get a word out that was even vaguely intelligible. I sent him another text explaining that I couldn’t speak; I was too upset. Bless him, he sent one straight back. ‘Just let the tears flow,’ he told me. ‘Don’t try to stop them because in a few weeks’ time it’s important you remember why you were crying. It’s important you remember who and what you’re missing.’
He was absolutely right. I knew I was crying because I’d miss Shelley, but more than that, I really didn’t know if we could get through this. I remember thinking that New Zealand, where we were going after Hong Kong, was as far away as it was possible to be.
When I got to the airport, I found that I wasn’t the only one struggling to hold it together. All the other guys were just as upset as I was. We saw each other in a completely different light that day; usually, when we were together, we were the most confident, happy, piss-taking group of boys you could imagine. On that afternoon, however, as we were all standing around glumly waiting to check in, it seemed as if we’d lost a layer or two of skin.
Things calmed down as we boarded the night flight to Hong Kong. I was in a row of three together with Dominic and Stephen Campbell-Moore in economy. (This was a play, not a Hollywood movie.) We decided that the best way to deal with our emotions and the long flight ahead of us was to get totally hammered and film ourselves doing it. Why not? What else were we gonna do? Cry for the next thirteen hours?
Dom and I borrowed a camera from Andrew McDonald, one of the producers of the film, who’d lent it to us to film the tour for extras on the film DVD. We have hundreds of tapes and Dom and I have promised ourselves that one of these days we’ll sit down together and edit all that footage. We filmed ourselves getting drunk. When we touched down in Hong Kong, we were all wearing high-altitude hangovers.
We were only in Hong Kong for a couple of weeks and, to be honest, I didn’t have the greatest time, but that’s probably because I hardly saw any of it. Let’s put it like this. If you need any good tips on where to go drinking at three in the morning in Hong Kong, I’m your man. It didn’t help that we were booked into the YMCA in Wan Chai, which is about as ‘real’ as Hong Kong gets, so going to bed was never the safe option. On our first night there, Zammo found a pile of human hair crumpled among his sheets, and the morning after, when Jamie Parker turned the shower on in the bathroom, the water was the colour and consistency of chocolate Angel Delight.
But if it was good enough for Richard Griffiths, it was good enough for us lot. Sometimes, other people’s bed hair and skiddy-brown water are the realities of working in a touring theatre company, and the best thing to do is suck it up and just get on with it. Anyway, it was such a laugh being together again that our one-star accommodation wasn’t going to spoil it.
It had been a few months since we’d finished filming the movie and since then we’d all been doing different things. Dominic had been offered film after film after film, Sam Anderson had been in a show called Trapped, I’d been writing with Ruth and (oh, I forgot to mention this) I’d also had a small part in a film called Starter for Ten, which Tom Hanks had produced. Dominic had been in that too, only his part was much bigger than mine. He’d played James McAvoy’s best mate and I’d played a long-haired rocker mate of Dom’s. Thinking about it, that film had a seriously talented young cast. I mean, James McAvoy has become a proper, bona fide movie star, Alice Eve and Rebecca Hall have done fantastically well and Benedict Cumberbatch is being talked about as the best actor of his generation. And then there’s Dirtbox, but more on him later.
Hong Kong was a difficult place to kick off the tour. In a way, we weren’t properly prepared for it. We were so used to the massive success back home, all the awards and the great press, and the roars of laughter rolling back from the audience every night at the National. The problem in Hong Kong was that the play was subtitled into both Mandarin and Cantonese, and so, as a consequence, it lost some of its spontaneity. There were two giant screens on either side of the stage translating all our lines as we spoke them. We’d say our words and, instead of that instant feedback of a big laugh, there would be this stony silence. Then, moments later, when the translation came through, the audience would get the joke and start cracking up, but by that point we were on to the next line. It was no one’s fault, but it ended up feeling stilted. We had to adjust our performance to pick up the extra beat, which meant it didn’t flow as it normally would have done.
But, as I said before, Hong Kong was more about what happened after the show than what happened during it. Most nights – OK, every night – after the show was over, four of us would pile into Jo-Bananas, the nearest bar, and get the party started. There was Zammo, Dominic and Andy, three good-looking guys, along with a chunky lad from Beaconsfield. Before we’d even ordered a drink we were surrounded by the most beautiful girls we’d ever seen. I just gawped at them, naively thinking that they must have an incredible infatuation for English guys, and for about twenty seconds, I knew what it felt like to be James Bond. Slowly, it dawned on me that it wasn’t just the English guys; every westerner in the place was sitting with two or more scantily clad girls around them.
It was the same every night. It didn’t matter what street or bar or restaurant; we were swamped by prostitutes looking for business. In the end I developed a fool-proof way of keeping them at bay: as soon as one approached me I explained that like them, I was working, that like them I sold my body for sex and whenever they saw me out at night they should know that I was working. If they wanted any action, they would have to pay me $1,000. No discounts. Pretty quickly word got around about this slightly mad English boy and they left me well alone.
I don’t recall seeing Hong Kong at all in the daylight. We’d do the play, be out all night, then crawl back into bed at nine the next morning. Then do it all over again the
next day. The whole place just passed me by. It was kind of a relief to get out of there to be honest.
After all that debauchery, New Zealand had real appeal – for starters, it just seemed much healthier. This was the place out of The Lord of the Rings with the amazing waterfalls and mountains – wide open, beautiful countryside compared to the densely packed high-rises of Hong Kong.
Landing in Wellington, I made my way to baggage reclaim and switched on my phone and immediately a text from Ruth popped up. I hadn’t heard from her for a while, so this must be something big.
‘Oi, Smithy,’ it said. ‘We’ve got a green light, a’righ’.’ Written as Nessa – nice touch.
Not even thinking of the time difference, I phoned her right away. It was late morning in Wellington and almost midnight in the UK and Ruth was just about to go to bed when she picked up.
‘What’s this?’ I asked her excitedly. ‘I just landed in New Zealand and I got your text. What green light?’
‘We’ve got the green light, James,’ she told me. ‘The BBC are going for it. They want the whole lot. The whole six episodes. They want us to start shooting as soon as you get home.’
I love you, New Zealand! If you ever want to remember a place fondly, I’d recommend getting some amazing news the first moment you touch down there.
Ruth and I shouted at each other for a bit down the phone, then I let her get off to bed. I hung up and stood fixed on the spot by the baggage carousel, my mouth hanging wide open. Jamie Parker was standing next to me, looking a little concerned.
‘Levine,’ he said, ‘you all right? What’s up?’
I stared at him for a while before answering. ‘The show’s been picked up,’ I mumbled. ‘Our show. Gavin & Stacey. The BBC’s picked it up.’
‘You’re joking,’ he said, beginning to smile. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘That was Ruth on the phone. They’ve given us the green light.’
Telling Jamie made it real and – boom! – like that, suddenly it hit me. I was gonna make my own TV show! Jamie grabbed me, hugged me, slapped me and kissed me and then the two of us started jumping up and down and round and round with the whole baggage reclaim area looking on. It was a beautiful moment.
Hearing that fantastic news really chilled me out – in fact, everyone was more relaxed once we got to New Zealand. We had three days to ourselves before the play opened, and we decided to hire a camper van to check out some of the countryside. If you’ve seen The Lord of the Rings movies, then you’ll know what it’s like, so I won’t bore you with all the details. All right … quickly, though. It is really, really beautiful. There, said it.
In Wellington we were back in front of an English-speaking audience, which made our performances all the better. We were performing at the St James Theatre, a proper old vaudevillian design that hadn’t been touched for nearly a hundred years. It had a very intimate stage, creaky wooden floors with old-fashioned bench seats and was a really romantic place to perform. At the end of each night, the audience would stamp their feet on the wooden boards, which sounded like an onrushing wave of water. It was a lovely noise.
From New Zealand we moved on to Sydney for a six-week run, which meant renting apartments. I shared with Dom and we really lucked out. Our place was massive: twin balconies overlooking the city centre, and only a few minutes down to the waterfront. There wasn’t a lot not to like about our time there: the theatre was great, the show got a fantastic reception, and on our days off we’d hire a catamaran and sail under the Harbour Bridge or just lie out on the beach and listen to Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, which kind of became the soundtrack to the whole tour. The only problem I can remember was the poster. Before we got to Australia, every promotional poster of the show had had a picture of us boys as the central image. But in Sydney – and you’ve got to wonder whether there wasn’t a sneaky call made – it only had Richard Griffiths on it. Rizzo absolutely loved it, thought it right and proper given his age, ability and standing, and, of course, was always lording it over us lot every time we went out. You’ve gotta love that man.
The night before we were due to leave for New York, Dom and I went out for an all-nighter, which made the flight very rough. We had a two-hour stopover in LA but, before that, there was a painful fourteen hours of being squeezed in with no legroom. Happily, on the connecting flight to New York, I managed to wangle three seats to myself and, within seconds of taking off, I was out for the count. I’ve been lucky enough to have been on some pretty expensive flights since, but I promise you, nothing has ever compared to the relief of stretching out over that row of seats and passing out.
So, New York. Broadway … it was totally awesome. It’s New York. When we landed, Richard Griffiths told us that we had no idea how brilliant this was going to be, and he couldn’t have been more right. We were staying in some serviced apartments in Midtown to begin with as we had no idea how long we’d be staying there. We were booked in for six months, but that was only if we made it past the critics. I mentioned earlier that in London, theatre critics really can make or break a show. Well, in New York, they can murder it. In the week we got there, David Schwimmer had just opened a play; a week later, after some pretty nasty reviews, the play had already shut. New York is the most demanding city in the world and the theatre’s no different.
We were playing at the Broadhurst Theatre on Forty-Fourth Street between Eighth and Broadway, directly across the road from a restaurant called Angus McIndoe’s. That first day is one I will never forget. We’d been in this play for twelve months in London, shot a movie of it and taken it to Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia, but that first morning we went down to the theatre in New York will always be one of the highlights for me. We all came out of the subway at Times Square and there, right in front of us, was a History Boys poster the size of a London bus – it was of all eight of us and I get a tingle down my spine just thinking about it.
It didn’t take very long to fall in love with the city – New York is New York, after all – and the vibe was great from the start, with the week of previews going really well and the New York producers proving they were at the top of their game. They had fought really hard to get us out there and I can’t thank them enough for what they did. They made sure the production was as good as it could be and they backed Nick’s directorial decisions to the hilt.
We had a couple of early nights where the critics came in, but all the reviews were embargoed, as they always are, until after opening night. That’s one of the strange things about theatre in New York compared to London: everyone knows what kind of reviews you’re going to get long before anything is published, and long before you do. You find out which way it’s going to go at your opening-night party – if no one turns up, then the news isn’t good. New York is brutal: succeed and the city’s there at your feet; fail and you’ll overhear them in the restaurants marvelling that you’ve dared to show your face.
We all brought our families over for opening night, which was wonderful. Mum and Dad came out together with my sisters and my nephew; having not seen them for so long, it was lovely to be together again and catch up. We’d had a few nerves in Sydney but, compared to New York, that was a breeze. It felt more like it had when we opened in London, only much, much worse. We were desperate for this to work, but we were more than aware of the pressure. If the critics didn’t like it, we’d be on our way home.
As it turned out, we weren’t gonna get kicked out anytime soon. The play was a hit – I mean, a major hit. It went down as well in New York as it had in London, maybe even better. The reviews were great and a couple of days later we were told that we’d definitely be on for the full six months. Amazing! You can imagine how it was. You’re in your mid-twenties; you’re in a hit play on Broadway; you’re living and working with your best mates in one of the greatest cities in the world. If that isn’t living the dream, I don’t know what is.
We were told that o
ne of the really cool things about being in a hot play on Broadway is that lots of famous people come and see it and they’ll often pop backstage to say hello. And the thing is, you know when a famous person is in because the front-of-house team tell you about it. So, we’d get told that Philip Seymour Hoffman or Jennifer Aniston or Bill Murray were in and after the show we’d all anxiously wait for them to show up at the stage door. But none of them ever came. It seemed as if every night there’d be someone in the audience we wanted to meet, but for whatever reason they never turned up backstage. Well, there was one occasion, but it didn’t quite pan out as we’d imagined …
It was a midweek show and we were told that Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart were in the audience. If you’re a child of the eighties like me, then Harrison Ford means something: Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Blade Runner. He was the eighties. I remember even being nervous that I was going to perform in front of him. You can always spot the famous people because they’re generally near the front of the stalls and they always sit on the aisle, for the quick getaway. That night, just before the show started, I peeked out of the wings and caught a glimpse of Harrison and Calista. There he was, Indiana Jones, about to watch me do my thing on stage. Cool. Very cool.
After the show, Russell and I were coming down the stairs backstage, desperately hoping they’d be the first to come back. We both let out simultaneous gasps when we saw them waiting just inside the stage door. This was my one and only chance. I walked up to Harrison and grabbed his hand and started shaking it like a loon. ‘May I just say,’ I began, ‘that we’ve had a lot of extraordinary people come to see the play and we were always told they’d come back to say hello. But you guys are the first to actually do that. Thank you so much. The boys will be so excited to meet you.’