Latest news with #Psychoville
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Steve Pemberton interview: ‘For pure nostalgia's sake, I'd love to bring The League of Gentlemen back'
For a man who has stalked television viewers' nightmares with a string of vivid characters – including Psychoville's disturbed savant David Sowerbutts, and Tubbs 'Are you local?' Tattsyrup from The League of Gentlemen – Steve Pemberton goes gloriously unnoticed in a busy central London café. Sausage roll in hand and sipping a white Americano in the spring sunshine, he slips seamlessly under the radar. The lunchtime crowd – a mix of tourists, office workers and lawyers from nearby Lincoln's Inn – blind to the multi-Bafta-winner in their midst. 'I do tire of the big, heavy make-ups and stuff,' he admits, low-key for our conversation in a green shirt and puffer jacket. And who can blame him, after more than 25 years contorting his features with prosthetics in the name of entertainment? 'I wouldn't want to do a Lord of the Rings trilogy and have beards, toes, ears and teeth every day for months, although I recently played Rupert Murdoch [in ITV's upcoming The Hack, a Jack Thorne drama charting the phone-hacking scandal], which was a four-hour make-up,' says the 57-year-old. 'But that was only for two days. It's nice to contrast that with something where I just play a man in middle age with my own hair.' He does just that in the returning BBC comedy The Power of Parker, set in 1990s Stockport, about businessman Martin Parker (Conleth Hill), a silver fox juggling debts, a failed marriage and a girlfriend. After a brief but memorable turn in series one as Sandy Cooper, a Rotary Club bigwig, Pemberton – unadorned on-screen cosmetically save for some tactical augmentation to his own moustache – now gets a proper crack at the character he describes as 'a real dinosaur'. The show was created by Paul Coleman and Sian Gibson, the latter, like Pemberton, a writer-performer, who also stars in the comedy. But why did he take this role when he must have casting directors beating a path to his door? 'I do turn a fair amount down, and with comedy I am pretty picky, but I make decisions based on how much fun I think I'm going to have, and on how good the writing is.' The second series opens in 1992. It's a time when, in real life, Blackburn-born Pemberton was taking baby steps towards his current career. After graduating from Bretton Hall College of Education, which closed in 2007 and was also a springboard for fellow League of Gentlemen collaborators Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss (fourth member Jeremy Dyson attended Leeds University), he secured a job in the London office of the US entertainment bible Variety. 'I landed on my feet. Faxes would come in and I would deliver them and make tea. After a while, they clocked that I knew quite a bit about film, so I ended up staying there for nearly 10 years.' Out of hours, he developed a theatre company and was touring Germany when a health scare threatened to derail his fledgling career. 'I thought I had a heart problem; I just felt very under the weather, and they kept me there. I was desperate to come home, but they wouldn't let me fly. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it was a scary moment. I went on holiday to Thailand, backpacking, after that, and I thought life's too short to worry about what's going to happen.' With that in mind, he set himself a time frame in which to succeed as a performer. 'I decided to give it until I was 30,' says Pemberton. 'I turned 30 in 1997, and that's when The League of Gentlemen won the Perrier Award.' Their television show – which ran for three series between 1999 and 2002, returning with a trio of episodes in 2017 – spawned live gigs as well as a movie, and there's talk of taking it on the road again. 'It's when you really connect with your audience and get to feel the love,' he reflects, fresh from a sell-out West End success with a theatrical version of his BBC Two anthology series Inside No 9, alongside co-writer and performer Shearsmith. 'You don't get highs like that very often in your life. That's the closest I'll get to being Robbie Williams [Pemberton played Williams's father in the recent biopic Better Man ]. For pure nostalgia's sake, and to hang out with those guys again, I would like to do it.' His genuine affection for the group is touching. They seem to have dodged the bitter rivalries that have rended other creative collaborations, but were there ever professional jealousies? 'I think there'll have been a tiny element of it, but, genuinely, we've all had big successes, and that's what's been fantastic. When we all get together, there isn't that band member who needs a reunion because it's never quite worked out for them.' In 2007, Pemberton took an unexpected fork in the road, landing a regular role as Mick Garvey in the primetime ITV sitcom Benidorm, which he juggled with the black comedy Psychoville. The show lasted for 10 series and took his fanbase, not to mention his peers, by surprise. 'Benidorm came into my life out of nowhere, and a lot of people said, 'Why are you doing this?' I don't necessarily think either Reece or Mark would have done it, but it tickled me. The script was really good and I have no regrets at all. Very often things that are mainstream get pooh-poohed; they're not as culty or as cool as The League of Gentlemen, but [because of Benidorm] I would just get mobbed when I went back up north.' There's talk of a revival, but Pemberton wouldn't return. 'I'm not sure it's the sort of thing I would want to go back to, having had such a great time. You don't want to spoil that.' Currently, he is at something of a crossroads. 'I don't think it's quite hit either of us yet,' he says of his recent decision with Shearsmith to call time on Inside No 9 following nine series. 'I never thought after The League we'd do something that got that level of love, so it's hard to think we've finished it and we have to come up with something new... or maybe we don't. I'm a bit sad, but also I'm happy and really proud that we got to end it the way we wanted.' None the less, there was always a sense that the pair, and Shearsmith in particular, felt the award-winning show was somehow underappreciated, despite it being critically acclaimed. 'I slightly tell Reece off about that, because I think, 'How much more celebrated could it be?'' chuckles Pemberton. 'Even in the taxi home, with both of us nursing our Baftas, he's like, 'No one knows it!'' I think what he means is that it could have been on Netflix. It could have done what Black Mirror did and gone global. But, hey, we're big in China.' Pemberton concedes they were afforded a huge amount of trust by the BBC in making the show their own way. 'It got to the point where Shane [Allen, the then head of comedy] would say, 'I don't want to read your scripts, I just want to watch them when they're finished.'' It was a different story when he adapted E F Benson's Mapp and Lucia for a three-part BBC series in 2014. 'Various times it was a case of 'You're a couple of drafts away' and I thought, what you're saying there is that what I do next isn't going to be good enough, either. You've decided it needs two more drafts. But I was working with drama people who didn't know me and I didn't know them. So it can be tough.' For now, Inside No 9 is a closed book, save for a regional tour of the stage show that kicks off this autumn. Taking the project to the theatre has brought him another element of closure. 'We always wanted Sir Ian McKellen [on the series], because we'd had Sir Derek Jacobi, but the timing never worked out. But with the stage show, we had a different guest every evening, and on the penultimate night, Sir Ian came on. He added six minutes to the running time because he was so funny. I don't know if it was the first occasion he'd been back on stage after he'd had his accident [falling off the stage at the Noël Coward Theatre, in June 2024], but he really connects with an audience. We were in awe. So it was a lovely full-circle that he was finally part of the Inside No 9 story.' What comes next is a mystery, even to Pemberton, who has just returned from a break in Japan. He says he's going to be prioritising more holidays in the near future. But would he ever contemplate writing a novel? 'It definitely appeals to me because I've always written, but always scripts. I love mysteries and riddles and storytelling. However, I would miss the bit when you then get to 'do' it, and you get actors in and you hang out and you tell the story. And I'd miss being with Reece. I don't know if you can write novels with two people... 'I'm a couple of years off turning 60,' he continues, 'and I'm going to a lot of birthdays, which is making me think about what the next act will be. But I've never had a plan. I've just gone with what comes up, so we'll have to see.'
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Extremely sad': Long-time EastEnders star to leave soap after 32 years
EastEnders is to lose one of its longest-running cast members. Natalie Cassidy has announced that she will leave the soap permanently having played Sonia Fowler for almost 32 years. Cassidy first appeared on the BBC soap when she was 10 in 1993, and left for the first time in 2007. She returned for a year in 2010, and then again in 2014, since when she has remained a regular fixture on the series. The actor's exit scenes will coincide with the show's 40th anniversary on 19 February. Cassidy announced the news in a statement shared with The Sun, reading: 'I feel extremely sad to be writing this, but also very excited. 'After another 11 solid years back on The Square, I have decided it's time to move on to pastures new. EastEnders is in my bones so I will never forget where I started my career and I will continue to love the show. Cassidy continued: 'Thank you to Chris Clenshaw for the opportunity to be such a big part of the 40th anniversary – it's an honour. See ya, Sonia, going but never forgotten.' She is believed to have informed bosses she wanted to leave the soap last summer. After first leaving the soap in 2007, Cassidy appeared in several stage productions, including The Vagina Monologues and The Cherry Orchard. Later that decade, she released a high-profile fitness DVD and appeared in a supporting role in Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's League of Gentlemen follow-up Psychoville. She recently appeared on sitcoms Motherland and Mandy, and co-hosts a TV review podcast with Gavin & Stacey actor Joanna Page. Next month, she will also appear in series two of Daniel Lawrence Taylor's BBC Three hit Boarders. Cassidy has been in a relationship with BBC cameraman Marc Humphreys since 2014, and they have one daughter Joanie. Cassidy also has a daughter Eliza with her ex Adam Cottrel. In EastEnders, Cassidy is pregnant with the baby of killer Reiss Calwell (Jonny Freeman), whose wife she was falsely jailed for murdering. One of the actor's most famous Sonia moments occurred in 2000 when she gave birth as a 15-year-old without realising she was pregnant.
The Independent
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
'Extremely sad': EastEnders icon to leave soap after 32 years
EastEnders is to lose one of its longest-running cast members. Natalie Cassidy has announced that she will leave the soap permanently having played Sonia Fowler for almost 32 years. Cassidy first appeared on the BBC soap when she was 10 in 1993, and left for the first time in 2007. She returned for a year in 2010, and then again in 2014, since when she has remained a regular fixture on the series. The actor's exit scenes will coincide with the show's 40th anniversary on 19 February. Cassidy announced the news in a statement shared with The Sun, reading: 'I feel extremely sad to be writing this, but also very excited. 'After another 11 solid years back on The Square, I have decided it's time to move on to pastures new. EastEnders is in my bones so I will never forget where I started my career and I will continue to love the show. Cassidy continued: 'Thank you to Chris Clenshaw for the opportunity to be such a big part of the 40th anniversary – it's an honour. See ya, Sonia, going but never forgotten.' She is believed to have informed bosses she wanted to leave the soap last summer. After first leaving the soap in 2007, Cassidy appeared in several stage productions, including The Vagina Monologues and The Cherry Orchard. Later that decade, she released a high-profile fitness DVD and appeared in a supporting role in Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's League of Gentlemen follow-up Psychoville. She recently appeared on sitcoms Motherland and Mandy, and co-hosts a TV review podcast with Gavin & Stacey actor Joanna Page. Next month, she will also appear in series two of Daniel Lawrence Taylor's BBC Three hit Boarders. Cassidy has been in a relationship with BBC cameraman Marc Humphreys since 2014, and they have one daughter Joanie. Cassidy also has a daughter Eliza with her ex Adam Cottrel. In EastEnders, Cassidy is pregnant with the baby of killer Reiss Calwell (Jonny Freeman), whose wife she was falsely jailed for murdering. One of the actor's most famous Sonia moments occurred in 2000 when she gave birth as a 15-year-old without realising she was pregnant.
The Independent
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
'Extremely sad': Long-time EastEnders star to leave soap after 32 years
EastEnders is to lose one of its longest-running cast members. Natalie Cassidy has announced that she will leave the soap permanently having played Sonia Fowler for almost 32 years. Cassidy first appeared on the BBC soap when she was 10 in 1993, and left for the first time in 2007. She returned for a year in 2010, and then again in 2014, since when she has remained a regular fixture on the series. The actor's exit scenes will coincide with the show's 40th anniversary on 19 February. Cassidy announced the news in a statement shared with The Sun, reading: 'I feel extremely sad to be writing this, but also very excited. 'After another 11 solid years back on The Square, I have decided it's time to move on to pastures new. EastEnders is in my bones so I will never forget where I started my career and I will continue to love the show. Cassidy continued: 'Thank you to Chris Clenshaw for the opportunity to be such a big part of the 40th anniversary – it's an honour. See ya, Sonia, going but never forgotten.' She is believed to have informed bosses she wanted to leave the soap last summer. After first leaving the soap in 2007, Cassidy appeared in several stage productions, including The Vagina Monologues and The Cherry Orchard. Later that decade, she released a high-profile fitness DVD and appeared in a supporting role in Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's League of Gentlemen follow-up Psychoville. She recently appeared on sitcoms Motherland and Mandy, and co-hosts a TV review podcast with Gavin & Stacey actor Joanna Page. Next month, she will also appear in series two of Daniel Lawrence Taylor's BBC Three hit Boarders. Cassidy has been in a relationship with BBC cameraman Marc Humphreys since 2014, and they have one daughter Joanie. Cassidy also has a daughter Eliza with her ex Adam Cottrel. In EastEnders, Cassidy is pregnant with the baby of killer Reiss Calwell (Jonny Freeman), whose wife she was falsely jailed for murdering. One of the actor's most famous Sonia moments occurred in 2000 when she gave birth as a 15-year-old without realising she was pregnant.
