Latest news with #HotelBabylon
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Max Beesley 'couldn't breathe' watching Jean Charles de Menezes drama
Max Beesley has said he "couldn't breathe" the first time he watched his new drama about Jean Charles de Menezes. The Disney+ series tells the story of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot dead in a Tube station in 2005 when he was mistaken for a terror suspect in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings in London. Hotel Babylon star Beesley plays Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, the man who spearheaded the investigation into the attacks. He shared that the first time he watched the drama it had a big impact on him. Beesley was on The One Show on Wednesday, 23 April alongside co-star Edison Alcaide, who plays Menezes in Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. The actor said the drama was "so truthful and so beautiful" and admitted he was hit hard when he watched it. "When we were watching the press screening at Bafta a few weeks ago, (co-star) Laura Aikman and I were sat next to each other and at the end of the second episode we couldn't actually breathe, we were struggling holding it together," he said. Turning to Alcaide, he went on: "And I think to humanise Jean Charles and to portray it as best as you can, as you did in that show, gives the viewer... it's so powerful isn't it, drama, to be able to put it into people's houses and to give them multiple perspectives. "But to see a living version of Jean Charles de Menezes himself, portrayed by Edison so beautifully, I think it's really vital for the show, to connect with people." Alcaide said he could "really see myself" in the shooting victim. "I feel like I really connected with Jean Charles on so many levels," said the actor. He added: "This is just a man who was living in London, a Brazilian man, living and completely innocent, just trying to make ends meet at the time. Just like everybody else." Jean Charles de Menezes was a Brazilian electrician living in London when he was shot and killed at 27. He was waiting at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July 2005 and was mistaken for a terror suspect. He was shot several times in the head. The following year, the Crown Prosecution Service decided that no officers should be prosecuted over the shooting. However, in 2007, the Met was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay £385,000 costs after it was found that it had breached health and safety rules. The One Show airs at 7pm on BBC One on weekdays. Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is on Disney+ from Wednesday, 30 April.
Daily Mirror
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Suspect star Russell Tovey reveals jaw-dropping advice he received being gay in showbiz'
Earning his place in the spotlight as an out and proud actor, Russell Tovey says not everyone in his professional circle were happy for him to share his sexuality with the world. His death became a global news story and 20 years on, Disney+ delves into the harrowing events that led to the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings in central London. Suspect: The Shooting Of Jean Charles De Menezes is a gripping new four-part drama, airing on Disney + and starring Russell Tovey, Conleth Hill, Max Beesley, Laura Aikman, Daniel Mays and Emily Mortimer. When Russell, 43, was approached to join the cast, he had to stop and take it in. 'I was shocked that 2025 will mark 20 years since the event – it's gone incredibly quickly,' he says. 'It doesn't feel like it was that long ago, but I knew there had been a lot of misinformation at the time.' The actor plays deputy assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police Brian Paddick, who was then Britain's highest-ranking openly gay police officer. 'He's someone I've looked up to. I was happy he was someone within the community with good morals,' says Russell, who is also gay. 'I came out very early in my career and was advised along the way not to consider it, but I went against that advice. I feel a real connection to Brian. I understand what it means to be gay in the public eye and what people can write about you.' Misconceptions have long surrounded Jean Charles' story but to understand it, we need to rewind to July 2005. Just a day after London celebrated winning the bid to host the 2012 Olympics, carnage was unleashed. On 7 July, four coordinated suicide bombings devastated the capital. Three bombs were detonated during the morning rush hour on London Underground trains and a fourth exploded on a bus in Tavistock Square. The attacks killed 52 people and injured almost 800 others. Max Beesley, 54, who plays assistant commissioner Andy Hayman – tasked with leading the investigation into the 7/7 attacks – remembers the day vividly. 'We had our first ever read-through for a show called Hotel Babylon with the BBC,' he says. 'And they wanted a prompt 9am start and insisted that everyone arrived there for 8.30am in Marylebone. God knows what would've happened if it would've been the 9am arrival time as we would've been on the infrastructure between 8am and 9am, which could have been horrific.' For Conleth Hill, 60, who steps into the shoes of former Met Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair, the experience was part of a haunting pattern. 'It wasn't long after September 11th. At the time, it just felt like it was constant or certainly regular enough to be concerning,' he says. 'I was in New York for September 11th and I was also doing a play there at the time.' Now portraying a man widely criticised for his role in Jean Charles' death, Conleth was careful not to pass judgement. 'I don't blame Ian Blair. I can't – I have to give him the respect to play him,' he says. 'There are statements that he makes within our drama where he's perfectly aware of making mistakes and of being culpable. There's a strange understanding that comes from why he did what he did, because his main focus was finding the four bombers.' Two weeks after 7/7, another wave of attempted bombings occurred. On 21 July, four devices were again placed on trains and a bus. This time, they failed to detonate, but panic surged. Police believed another coordinated attack was underway – and they were desperate to act fast. The following morning, on 22 July, 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes left for work. But officers wrongly identified him as one of the failed bombers. He was followed into Stockwell Underground Station before being shot seven times in the head at point-blank range. The fallout from the incident was instant and international. In Brazil, where Jean Charles was from, outrage erupted into street protests. Around the world, blame and misinformation reigned. Taking on the role of Jean Charles is Brazilian actor Edison Alcaide. Although he already knew the story, diving deep into the man at the heart of the story was difficult. 'I feel really connected to Jean Charles,' he says. 'We have so much in common. He was truly a nice guy, famed for how he cared for his family and his friends and the way he approached life. He was living in the UK because he wanted to grow as a person and experience different cultures.' But portraying his death was one of the biggest challenges Edison faced. 'There were so many legal things that needed to be respected and they were extremely careful, thanks to all the research, to show exactly what had happened,' Edison says. 'It was very difficult. It was very emotional. It was a very heavy day on set for everyone.' In the aftermath of the shooting, misleading information was everywhere including claims that Jean Charles had jumped a ticket barrier, that he was wearing a bulky coat or that he even ran from the police. None of it was true. For writer Jeff Pope, who worked on the series with producer Kwadjo Dajan, it is about portraying the facts. 'I had no concept that this story was this relevant and this fundamental,' Jeff says. 'And the only way through it all is the truth.'
Telegraph
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Max Beesley: ‘Alcoholism is a very quick disease – you can soon get in trouble'
At 8.30am, on the morning of 7 July 2005, Max Beesley was at a hotel in Marylebone participating in a read-through for a new BBC drama, Hotel Babylon. The producer had asked everyone to be in early and the actor – star at the time of Jed Mercurio's medical drama Bodies – had been there in good time. By 9am, as the cast were going over their lines, they heard multiple sirens screaming on the road outside. Ten minutes earlier, suicide bombers had detonated improvised explosive devices on three underground trains. One was at Edgware Road Station, less than half a mile away. Another exploded on a Piccadilly Line train leaving King's Cross, two miles down the road. One hour later, a fourth bomb was detonated close by, on a double-decker bus. The blasts killed 52 people (not including the four Islamist suicide bombers), and the proximity of the bombers in enclosed spaces led to a horrifying 775 people being injured. Today, I'm in a room with Beesley near King's Cross once more, talking about the new four-part Disney+ drama, Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, which explores the killing of an innocent Brazilian man, 15 days later, by the Metropolitan Police. The 27-year-old electrician was on his way to work when he was followed onto a tube carriage in south London by specialist firearms officers and shot seven times in the head. A report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) in 2006 concluded that his death had been 'caused by avoidable mistakes' – de Menezes had been wrongly identified as a suspect in a second set of attempted bombings when he left for work from his home in a block of flats linked to one of the would-be jihadists. The 2008 inquest ruled out a verdict of unlawful killing. Screenwriter Jeff Pope, whose credits include Appropriate Adult (as executive producer), Little Boy Blue and the 2023 Jimmy Savile drama The Reckoning, wrote earlier this month that the Met still has questions to answer about the shooting. The strong cast includes Emily Mortimer as the future Met commissioner Cressida Dick, who was the commander in the control room of the surveillance operation that day; and Conleth Hill plays the serving Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair. Beesley, who appeared recently in Guy Ritchie's high-profile Netflix show The Gentlemen, plays Assistant Commissioner, and head of counterterrorism at the time, Andy Hayman, who was criticised in the IPCC's report for 'inaccurate public statements concerning the circumstances of the death'. Beesley – who notes that taking on a real-life character represents a very different challenge for him – was an admirer of Pope's attention to detail in factual dramas such as 2019's A Confession, but says he asked the producers of Suspect if it was possible to talk to Hayman himself. He'd studied the book Hayman wrote in 2010 about his experiences on the force, The Terrorist Hunters – 'I read it a couple of times, making notes,' he says. 'I had a plethora of questions.' The former policeman 'was very generous and forthcoming with personal things I asked him, private things, you know, but that was invaluable. I got a real sense of him.' He lauds 'the incredible work that [Hayman] did tracking those copycat bombers down' but says, 'I did want to get into some grey areas with him.' He notes that Hayman still vehemently denies 'that the Kratos order was not given' – this was the shoot-to-kill policy adopted by the Met after 9/11, which became a key point of contention in the inquest. Cressida Dick denied ever giving a Kratos order as de Menezes was pursued into the tube station, stating that she only instructed officers to 'stop' de Menezes, not to shoot him. Beesley pegs himself as 'quite a good reader of people' but adds that 'it's difficult when there are two people and you've got two versions of events – we can't 100 per cent say, 'No, that's what happened'.' Pope employs multiple perspectives, he says. Beesley has strong views of his own about what happened, and adds – 'but I'm going to keep them to myself.' He's similarly circumspect when I ask for his views on the political situation in his adopted home. Beesley has lived in America for the past two decades, and has brought up two daughters, Sabrina, 11, and Bella, 6, there with wife Jennifer Noelle. So what are his thoughts on the 47th US president? In light of 'what's happening to people at present, I think I'll take the Fifth on that,' he says. 'I'm a dual citizen, so it's tricky – my kids are Californian babies, my wife's from Minnesota.' He does, however, admit to having some savings invested in the S&P 500 stock index, which is being battered by Trump's tariffs on the day we meet. He and his family had to evacuate their Encino home during the wildfires that engulfed parts of Los Angeles in January, he tells me. 'We know probably five families, a lot of folks that lost their homes. The environmental dynamic there is shifting dramatically, no doubt about it. You know, Los Angeles, '88, '89, '90, it was vibrant, it was bustling. It was just an incredible place to be, and it's a little different now. You drive along Sunset [Boulevard] on a Saturday night, it's quite quiet. A lot of folks are moving away from there, to [northern states, like] Oregon or Maine.' He's been thinking about returning to the UK, where he grew up in the working-class suburbs of Manchester (he's still an avid – and deeply concerned – Manchester United fan). The 'gift of fatherhood,' he says, has been life-changing. 'They are unequivocally the most important thing in my life, those girls.' When we meet, he's with his own father, Maxton ('He's a great drummer,' he tells me later). Both his parents were musical. His father still plays in dance bands, and his late mother was a jazz singer. As a chorister at Manchester Cathedral, Beesley was given a scholarship to Chetham's School of Music, specialising in piano and percussion after his voice broke. He went on to Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he met actors such as Daniel Craig and Ewan McGregor and began acting, though he has enjoyed something of a dual career, playing over the years with Paul Weller, Stevie Wonder, Roy Ayers, James Brown, George Michael and Robbie Williams. (Remarkably, he can be seen playing percussion on videos of Williams performing at Live 8 in Hyde Park on 2 July 2005 – five days before the bombings.) He has known Williams since he was 14 and the future Take That singer was 11. When he first moved to LA in the early 2000s, he says, 'I bumped into Rob in a shop in a classic car sales room. I moved in with him for a couple of years, and we went on the road, touring.' What did he think of the 2023 Netflix documentary about the singer? 'I watched it and went, 'That's Rob'. There's no pretence. There's no acting. I thought it was really quite brave of him.' Williams has talked about his problems with cocaine and heroin abuse. Beesley has had issues of his own, although not with hard drugs. 'Alcoholism is an incredibly quick, progressive disease that if you've not got your eyes on it, you can get in trouble very quickly,' he says. Society has something to answer for in the way that it pushes people towards drinking, he adds, especially in adverts. 'You know, it's Christmas, have a drink. It's a nice day, let's have a drink. It's a very serious drug.' He realised that the way he turned to booze had become habitual in June 2013, three months before the birth of his first daughter, and stopped. 'I don't like anything controlling me,' he says. Beesley has been through some ups and downs in his career since he took the title role in the BBC adaptation of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones in 1997. He told a journalist in 2014 that when he first moved to the US, he'd had 67 auditions in one year without getting a job. He has 'had the thought, 'I might have to do something else' multiple times' since then, but has been sustained by shows such as Sky's Mad Dogs and his music. (He released the excellent jazz groove album Zeus as Max Beesley's High Vibes in 2023.) It's his musical ear that gives him a talent for accents, too, helping him to switch from his native Manc to Hayman's London-tinged Essex in Suspect. He knows it's a drama that will draw attention: it's still a sensitive subject and the depiction of Hayman will be closely observed. Pope, he insists, 'encourages the audience to make up their own minds'.
