Danny Dyer: East End Boy

by Joe Allan

  Crucially, this time he wouldn’t be going in alone. The fact that some of the pressure and press scrutiny that he justifiably disliked would be diluted and shared by the other actors was a great comfort to Danny. In the same interview with BBC News, he commented, ‘It’s the right thing to come in with a family and not as a character on the periphery – it would be a lot harder coming in on your own.’

  Playing Mick Carter would give the people who knew and liked his work a new perspective on him, provide his critics with something different to talk about and hopefully help him reach a whole new audience willing to accept his work at face value. Although sitting behind Coronation Street and Emmerdale in the ratings, EastEnders was still averaging 6 to 8 million viewers per episode, and joining the soap was going to push Danny into the limelight like never before: he would be reaching a massive new viewership, including middle-aged-and-up female viewers, as well as a youthful demographic – rather than his usual thirty-five-and-under male targets – who had probably never seen him in anything other than a tabloid newspaper headline. It was a perfect way to undo the misconceptions he had been saddled with after his recent film output. The opportunity to shake the general public’s long-held perception of him, once and for all, was the cherry on the cake for Danny.

  After only a few weeks on the job, Danny began to realize the scale and influence of the show, telling the Radio Times, ‘It’s quite daunting for us actors ... we’ve seen how much of an affect it has on the viewers. It reaches out to more people than politics, especially among the younger generation.’

  Danny believes the only way any actor maintains credibility in a long-running role is to make sure you know who the character is, inside and out. By understanding what makes him or her tick and having confidence you can deliver as authentic a performance as possible, the viewer will be more likely to embrace the character and be invested enough to want to follow their journey. He told the BBC News website, ‘The more you can make the character like yourself, the better – there’s nowhere to hide in this game.’ He appreciated he was being given the chance to show this new audience the real Danny Dyer – a devoted family man and loving father to his three kids. The awareness of the familiarity that comes with being thrust into the country’s living rooms four or five nights a week, fifty-two weeks of the year, requires the actor to maintain a certain level of consistency and believability, he says. Danny concluded, ‘It’s about being real; you can’t pretend.’

  In an article published by the Huffington Post, Danny described the character of Mick as ‘a nice guy’, before elaborating that ‘He’s a normal guy who loves his family, he’s a grafter, but there’s definitely something there – you really don’t want to cross him.’ Reassuringly, this sounds like an element of the Danny we already know he can pull off.

  Joining him in the first wave of Carters to enter the Square would be Kellie Bright, who would play Linda Carter, Mick’s wife of over twenty years and the mother of his children, the couple’s youngest son, nineteen-year-old Johnny, played by Sam Strike, and Maddy Hill as his older sister, Nancy. Not forgetting, of course, Lady Di, their pet British bulldog.

  Bright has had just as long a career as Danny, although less high profile, starting as a child actor before taking roles in the the Ali G movie and the Only Fools and Horses spin-off, Rock and Chips. Strike and Hill, on the other hand, were relative unknowns, coming to the show with limited experience. Danny said to the EastEnders website, ‘They’re a complete revelation to people; they’re a blank canvas.’

  Mick would be introduced as the brother of long-time Albert Square resident, Shirley, and recent cast addition, Tina. The Carter clan would expand over the next few months with further additions, including Danny-Boy Hatchard as Mick and Linda’s eldest son, Lee, Mick’s dad, Stan, who would be played by veteran stage and screen actor Timothy West, and the family’s Aunty Babe, played by Annette Badland.

  The enormity of the gamble of introducing an entirely new extended family straight into the show’s nerve centre, shifting the focus of the audience immediately towards the Carters, was not lost on Danny. He told BBC News, ‘We’re taking over the Vic – it’s massive, you can’t hide. It’s an honour as it’s the hub of the show.’

  Success relied on Danny and his fellow actors establishing the new family’s identity and back story very quickly. The existing link to an established character such as Shirley Carter was crucial, as was the viability of the Carters as a believable family unit. Each individual member of the group had to have his or her own distinct personality and flaws, Treadwell-Collins explained to the Radio Times. ‘Soap operas go wrong when characters come in who all get along. We did a lot of work defining each member of that family, looking at how they rub each other up the wrong way, at the same time loving each other.’

  Kellie Bright reaffirmed this in the same interview. ‘There was a history already there ... it feels like the Carters have always been around and that’s because there’s been a lot to them from the get go.’ Danny summed up his own feelings on the family’s introduction by telling the Radio Times, ‘You know, [Treadwell-Collins] really rolled the dice with us – there was a big build-up for the Carters and it could have gone either way.’

  The question of whether the hype and Treadwell-Collins’ gamble had paid off would be answered when Danny and the rest of the Carter clan made their first appearances in Albert Square over the 2013 Christmas period and New Year. Television critic Ellen E. Jones summed up the underlying problem facing EastEnders a mere fortnight before Danny and the Carters’ arrival, saying in her Independent column, ‘All good things must come to an end. Except for EastEnders, that is, which goes on and on, piling misery upon misery on Walford’s residents.’ She then proclaimed, with hopeful irony, ‘How lucky for everyone, then, that a saviour is due to arrive on Christmas Day,’ before concluding cheekily, ‘Possibly, comparing Danny Dyer to the baby Jesus is a bit much, but you get the idea.’ It would seem that, for some, the arrival of Danny and the rest of the Carters couldn’t come fast enough.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  GET CARTER

  Danny was scheduled to begin filming his first scenes as Mick Carter on the Elstree Studios set towards the end of October, but before then, he would have to face the full force of the British media and deal with the intense spotlight that comes with being linked to a role on EastEnders. On 1 October 2013, the BBC, after months of speculation, released a statement announcing that Danny Dyer would be joining the cast of their flagship soap, with his first episodes airing before the end of the year. Danny tweeted his followers with, ‘Thank u for the love people it’s overwhelming #eastendfamily. Finally my dreams have come true.’

  The feedback was mixed, to say the least. These days, the reaction to any entertainment news and gossip is an instant burst of wild speculation and differing opinion across internet comment boards and social media sites, and it was much the same in this instance. Most saw the bigger picture and were willing to reserve judgement until Danny actually appeared on screen, accepting this was only the first step in bringing some must-see excitement back to EastEnders. TV critic Grace Dent used her Twitter account to announce that she was ‘So happy right now’, while TV presenter and 6 Music DJ Lauren Laverne proclaimed, ‘Yes to this!’ Consequently, the majority of media reports were fairly innocuous ‘puff pieces’, liberally quoting sections of the press release and maintaining a neutral stance as far as offering an view on Danny’s acting abilities.

  Ellen E. Jones, writing in the Independent, seemed to have a better understanding of Danny’s true potential: ‘There is a thin line between national treasure and national laughing stock and Danny Dyer walks it like an acrobat on a tightrope.’ She continued, ‘This might not be much of an asset in a British gangster film with pretensions to serious art, but in EastEnders, which works best when it’s an overblown pantomime, Dyer has found his natural home.’ Not entirely complimentary, but it appeared someone had grasped what Treadwell-Collins had in
mind all along.

  Despite the BBC stating explicitly in the press release that Mick Carter was a devoted family man, virtually every article or feature about Danny’s casting began with a phrase like ‘Hard Man Danny Dyer’, ‘Tough Guy Dyer’ or ‘Bad Boy Dyer’, with the Sun’s front-page story headlined, ‘New Dirty Den Is Dodgy Dan’. It was obvious Danny was going to face an uphill struggle to shake off the image most people had built of him over the years. But perhaps playing to Danny’s perceived limitations was all part of Treadwell-Collins’ master plan, and it was a bluff that would make the character’s real persona all the more surprising.

  Danny would be the first to admit he’d become typecast as a gangster or villain, but of late he had began to show a softer and more endearing side of himself on the more loosely scripted TV panel shows such as 8 Out of 10 Cats, Celebrity Juice and Sweat the Small Stuff. Here, he was given the chance to show more of his own personality, a much more interesting, funnier and engaging side to a supposedly familiar character than anyone expected. Treadwell-Collins was banking on using the notoriety of Danny’s bad-boy image – and the preconceptions of what that would bring to the character of Mick Carter – to pull in curious viewers.

  While most people were unable – or unwilling – to separate the characters he played on screen from the man playing them, Danny has always maintained he never set out to be the hard man, telling the Independent, ‘I’ve just done what’s put in front of me. I’m from a council estate, I’ve never been media trained, I swear a lot, I walk with a bit of a swagger, I’ve played a few gangster roles, but I’m a sensitive soul. I’m a father to my babies.’ He finished, ‘I’m not a hard man. I can’t be bothered with rolling about on the cobbles, mate. A mug’s game.’

  The real trick would be giving the considerably broader EastEnders audience a glimpse of this relatively under-exploited softer side, the side that Treadwell-Collins believed the public would fall in love with, the man behind the persona: the real Danny Dyer. The pair knew this would be the deal-breaker; no one would expect Danny not to be playing the villain, and this would hopefully ensure the viewers could relate more to Danny as Mick and, in turn, secure the unconditional acceptance of the rest of the Carter family, too.

  As the media were discussing the new arrivals on Albert Square, another new face was about to make an appearance in the real world. Danny and Joanne’s third baby arrived on 22 October, around the time Danny was due to start filming his first scenes at Elstree. The couple were obviously overjoyed about their new arrival, but Danny was especially thrilled – at last he had a little boy. He talked with wonder on Jonathan Ross’s chat show about the latest addition to the family, who the couple had named Arty. ‘He’s such a beautiful little thing … I’m loving it. I was due a son, ’cause I’ve got two daughters, so I need a boy ’round me . . . I’ve got my boy now.’ However excited the couple were about the new addition to the family, the stress of looking after a baby added to the anxiety and pressure Danny was already feeling about taking up his latest challenge.

  He confided in an interview on the BBC News website, ‘I will never advise anyone to go into a high-profile job and bang out a kid at the same time . . . It’s been very hard.’ He explained, ‘I’m a hands-on dad. I’m trying to get involved as much as I can, but it’s very surreal . . . You have a long, twelve-hour day, and you get a big chunk of dialogue that you gotta learn, but you’re going home to a newborn child, which is not really ideal for resting and sleeping.’ It was this increased workload that, although expected, still came as quite a shock to Danny’s system. ‘It’s harder than I thought it was gonna be,’ he revealed. ‘I make films – a good day on a film is about seven or eight pages, that’s a good twelve-hour day. On [EastEnders] you’re doing forty-five pages a day, you’re doing twenty before lunch.’ He concluded, ‘I like it, I’m ready for it, [but] it’s really tough.’

  Exhaustion aside, it was to become abundantly clear that Danny had made the right decision. He instantly felt at home in the Queen Vic and thrived on the bustling atmosphere of the set. He described the feeling of entering the studios to the BBC: ‘When I first walked in here, it was, like I think [it is] for most people, it’s a moment. It takes your breath away because [the image of Albert Square is] embedded in your psyche. We’ve grown up with it and then you are there and then it started to become real to me.’ He told Attitude magazine, ‘It’s mad. I still can’t get my head round it.’

  When Danny described his first few days on the EastEnders set in the same BBC interview, he said, ‘The fear was there. I couldn’t help it. I’ve done a lot of work, you know, I’ve done plays at the National Theatre and I’ve done a play on Broadway and I’ve done high-profile things that are pretty petrifying, but this was up there.’ Later, in an article by the Huffington Post, it was obvious this initial ‘wide-eyed wonder’ stage was wearing off fast, as the reality of the situation started to kick in. As a newcomer, Danny described his initial feelings of isolation: ‘On my first day I queued up to get my lunch, but obviously I [didn’t] know anyone, so I had to sit on my own.’ He continued, ‘A couple of them did come over out of pity, but it was horrible.’

  The punishing schedule and unique demands of working for a show that airs four or five times a week were compounded by the fact Danny’s entrance would be during the Christmas period. Historically, the Christmas Day episodes of soaps like EastEnders and Coronation Street compete to top the viewing ratings by unveiling a shocking twist in a long-running storyline, dramatically killing off a much-loved character or, as in this case, introducing an important new one. Danny told the BBC, ‘I’ve come in at the maddest time – at Christmas … they’re rinsing my character, as they should do. I’ve been in every scene. I’ve worked every Saturday since I’ve been here, it’s been completely full-on.’

  Added to the physical strain was the psychological challenge of processing the enormity of the role he was taking on. Mick Carter would be the new landlord of the Queen Vic, and would be joining a long list of some of the show’s most iconic and popular characters. Danny was well aware that by stepping behind the bar at the pub, he was putting himself into the firing line. ‘This is my stage, you know, it’s my domain – this is the hub of the show. It’s a very, very important role, and you gotta hit the ground running.’

  He would also be filming the majority of his first scenes in front of most of the existing cast. Danny exclaimed, ‘The first scenes I had were [at] Christmas [and] New Year, so you’ve got the whole cast in the pub. You don’t know them, they don’t know you and you gotta impress them, you know, prove yourself!’

  But this was where Danny excelled. As he had done every time he’d been put in a similarly tough position before, he fed off the cast’s energy and used the same competitiveness he’d always felt around other actors to deliver a series of strong performances. Danny explained, ‘You gotta be on the ball in a soap. There’s nowhere to hide. There’s no excuses for not knowing your dialogue … There’s nothing worse, I can imagine, then coming in here and not knowing your dialogue, ’cos you will crumble pretty soon.’

  Any doubts Danny had about the acting credentials of his new colleagues or how hard they work were soon put to rest, he told Digital Spy. ‘I’ve got a lot more respect for soap actors now. I don’t care who you are – it’s a massive test to be playing a character day in, day out with the amount of dialogue and the number of scenes you have to do every day.’ He admitted he’d had a change of heart himself: ‘I think there can be a snobbery towards soaps, and I’ll hold my hands up and say that I probably would have been one of those people. When you make movies, you can sometimes look down on soap actors. Now I’ve got a newfound respect, just because it’s really hard work.’

  He revealed to Attitude that there were many new challenges even for someone with his long and varied career in the industry: ‘The speed of it, you read the lines once, you shoot it. You’ve got to be on it.’ He was using everything he’d learned over the year
s to fill out his character, who at this point was still an unknown quantity and set him apart, for now, from the other soap-opera actors. ‘What I’ve tried my best to do is be very subtle. You can get into this whole thing in soaps with being a bit shouty and a bit dramatic, but for my character, I just want to bring it all back down.’ He added with a grin, ‘Save the shouting for your special occasions.’

  As if to answer his own critics, who might have questioned his credentials as a serious actor, he told the Radio Times, ‘If you’re blagging it as an actor you’ll be exposed once you come into a soap.’ Danny confirmed the whole experience was a completely different discipline to acting in films; it was stretching him as an actor and he felt the need to instantly get under the skin of Mick Carter. He said to Digital Spy, ‘It’s very rewarding, but it engulfs your life completely. You’re playing your character more than you have time to be yourself, which doesn’t usually happen on movies.’

  Danny also had to start modifying his infamously ‘unfiltered’ language. He told the BBC website, ‘I gotta watch what I say . . . it is a struggle, I ain’t gonna lie.’ He explained that, as far as swearing was concerned, it had become a part of what people expected of him: ‘I totally get I’m on a family show . . . so you gotta act a bit more family f*****g friendly.’

  It wouldn’t be long before the punishing work schedule started to take its toll on Danny, and although he had readied himself for it, nothing could have prepared him for the mental stress and physical demands of coping with his new job at the same time as having a new baby around the house. After just two months of filming, while appearing as a guest on topical quiz show, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, he was asked by Jimmy Carr how filming for EastEnders was going. Danny replied in his typically frank manner, ‘I’m f****d, to be honest. F*****g shattered.’