FRIDAY NIGHT WINNER!
Sitcom star on his delight in bossing around TV mum Tamsin in his new movie
‘The fact that I’m still typecast as Will can be slightly frustrating and flattering’
NOT many people find themselves in the awkward position of bossing their mum around at work, but Friday Night Dinner star Simon Bird insists that when it happened to him, he wasn’t remotely daunted. In fact, when he was given the chance to direct his first feature film, he didn’t hesitate to cast his TV co-star Tamsin Greig, who plays his mother and the voice of sanity in the sitcom about a Jewish family’s Friday night get togethers.
So did he find it hard issuing orders to his own fictional mum? “No, it was fantastic! I finally got to put her in her place,” he laughs, before adding hastily: “Obviously, I’m joking.”
Laughter is very much a part of any encounter with Simon, 35, first known to viewers as nerdy sixth-former Will in the coming of age comedy series The Inbetweeners.
In fact, he was delighted to recruit Tamsin for his movie, Days of the Bagnold Summer. She recently starred in ITV’s period drama Belgravia and is soon to be seen as one of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads on BBC One.
“Tamsin is so busy,” Simon says. “I don’t know if she felt she had to do my film and just accepted the role out of awkwardness. I’ve never pressed the issue of why she took it. I don’t really care – I was just glad she did it.”
In the movie, out now on streaming platforms, she plays Astrid, a hippy mother and Reiki practitioner.The plot is based on the Costa Book Awards-nominated graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, and centres on Daniel Bagnold (played by Earl Cave, son of musician Nick Cave), a long-haired teenager who loves heavy metal, black clothes and stroppiness.
In the film, which also co-stars Rob Brydon and Alice Lowe, Daniel is looking forward to escaping suburbia – a very beige version set in the present but reminiscent of the ’70s – to while away the summer with his father in glamorous Florida.
HOWEVER, the trip is called off at the last minute, and Daniel is forced to spend the summer holidays in his dreary dormitory town with the person who irritates him most in the world: his mum, Sue (Monica Dolan, who won a BAFTA for her performance as Rosemary West in Appropriate Adult).
Sporting a very fetching orange wig teamed with blue eyeshadow, a floaty, floral dress and a bangle “made from Nepalese teak”, Tamsin has a ball as Astrid, the mother of Daniel’s best friend, who is given to saying such things as: “Your chakras are all messed up. Come for a Reiki session – 25 per cent off.”
Simon, dad of two children with wife Lisa Owens, who wrote the script, says his TV mum totally nailed the role of Astrid.
“It is such a hard thing to create characters who feel like they exist in the real world, but are still able to be funny in a believable way,” he says. “Not many people can do that, but Tamsin has proven time and time again that she is expert at it.”
She also helped Simon create the right environment on set. He observes that, “It didn’t feel that different from being on the Friday Night Dinner set. One of the things I’ve learnt is it’s so important to create a convivial atmosphere, especially when you’re making comedy. That’s how you get the best out of people.
“Friday Night Dinner certainly has that.We all get on so well. It’s very informal, and everyone trusts each other to do their job. I tried to copy that on Days of the Bagnold Summer.”
Part of the Friday Night Dinner atmosphere is generated by playing the word game Boggle between scenes of the Channel 4 show.
“Tamsin is very good at Boggle,” Simon says. “Mark Heap (who plays the eccentric neighbour, Jim) is top-notch at it, too. I think he’s been secretly practising because he’s got better series on series – in fact, not so secretly practising, as he’s got the Boggle App on his phone. He’s been training, which is very annoying. I didn’t realise that was allowed.
“If we do make another series of Friday Night Dinner, I’m going to have to up my game.That’s what I should have been using the lockdown for – training on the Boggle App!”
The sitcom already has six seasons under its belt, and its popularity shows no sign of waning. “A lot of people say it’s the only show they watch as a family,” says Simon.
“For a while, people were quite snooty about the idea of a family sitcom. But what its creator Robert Popper has achieved is something kids really like, but that also has a streak of surrealness and at times a hard edge that draws adults in as well. “It’s so instantly relatable because everyone has a family and every family is a little bit weird.”
But Simon seems to specialise in relatable shows. Six years after the second of two immensely successful Inbetweeners movies, fans he passes in the street still regularly tease him with geeky Will’s less than complimentary school nickname: “Briefcase w ***** ”. Does he ever try to avoid the attention? “I’d be lying if I said I never tire of it, but at the same time, it’s a sign we all did a very good job in the show. So ultimately it’s a very nice thing.”
He says that he does not mind if people still see him asWill.
“Although the fact that I’m typecast to some degree as Will can be slightly frustrating, it is also very flattering. It shows how successful The Inbetweeners has been.
“That’s why we are all in this business – to make shows people love to the point of obsession, which we seem to have achieved with The Inbetweeners.That’s a positive.”
It is now a decade since the last series of Inbetweeners. Is there any chance of a comeback?
“I think it’s impossible,” Simon asserts. “But people keep mentioning it. I’d love to hear how they think it would be possible. The show is clearly about