Cancel culture is like ‘kicking a corpse’ says Downton’s Hugh
As Bonneville prepares to play a fallen national treasure...
HUGH BONNEVILLE is the spitting image of newscaster Huw Edwards in the forthcoming drama Douglas Is Cancelled, in which he plays a ‘national treasure’ who is abandoned by his agent, colleagues and bosses in the wake of a scandal.
The very black comedy — shown to international buyers this week during the London TV Screenings festival — echoes the ruckus last year which saw Edwards suspended from his job as the BBC’s best-paid news presenter.
And though the events at the heart of the two tales are very different — Bonneville’s TV presenter is ‘cancelled’ after making a misogynistic comment — the consequences for the central characters are startlingly similar.
The star of Downton Abbey and W1A hit out at ‘cancel culture’ this week when discussing his new role. ‘You can pick examples from every generation,’ he said ‘Probably, the caveman was chucked out of the cave for saying the wrong thing.’
He continued: ‘I think one element of it is the mob, and the fact that things spread so quickly. And there is the relentless pursuit until someone virtually dies, or in some cases, has died. There is a sense of kicking a corpse when it’s dead and keep stamping on it, like tabloids have always done.
‘But in the world of social media, with the screen of anonymity and being able to bully from a distance and bully anonymously, it compounds that evil.’
In the TV miniseries, Bonneville plays respected news presenter Douglas Bellowes. He makes a misogynistic, off-the-cuff remark at a family wedding which is overheard. Events snowball, and his personal and professional life is upended.
Douglas’s TV co-host is played by Karen Gillan. In an echo of another ‘cancel culture’ scandal — the Phillip Schofield controversy — she is ambitious and much younger than her colleague (like Holly Willoughby) with a huge Instagram following. And thus she holds the power to rescue Douglas’s career — or torpedo it.
DOUGLAS Is Cancelled was written by Sherlock creator Steven Moffat in 2018, long before Edwards or the Schofield drama, which saw the presenter stand down as the host of This Morning after admitting to an ‘unwise but not illegal’ affair with a young colleague.
Moffat said: ‘At the time I wrote this, I wouldn’t have known the expression cancelled. Obviously, once I did, I co-opted it straight into the title. It’s a heated topic.’
He added: ‘Most of this was written before any of those things happened. And I partly think: “What if the bloke is watching this, and then his name comes up?” That’s his personal tragedy, he’s suffered enough. So we don’t specifically reference anyone. It’s obvious enough that there are parallels in the real world.’