Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Freeze! IT’S A SPOOF LINE DUTY OF
Danny Mays has four shows coming up to help us through the corona crisis, and first it’s a riotously silly send-up of the crime thriller. Here he tells what a joy it was to link up with some other Line O Dut stars
Danny Mays arrives in the pub car park wearing a black leather jacket and sunglasses. Social distancing has already begun when we meet, but it’s still pre-lockdown so this gathering is legal. ‘Is this the meeting of the Rebel Alliance?’ he grins conspiratorially as we walk through the doors of his local in north London. We’re the only people here.
It feels apt to be chatting to Danny in the pub, as it’s much more his natural home than the sort of smart hotel in Soho where his fellow Rada-trained actors like to meet. He’s not drinking today because he’s on a health kick, but he wonders how long that will last in lockdown. ‘We might need to drink all the way throughit, ’he muses.
Essex-born Danny, 42, the son of an electrician and a bank cashier, remains that rare beast, a working-class actor in a world where almost all of his contemporaries seem to have gone to Eton or Harrow. His hangdog expression and rubbery features mean that alongside lead roles in films such as last year’s sleeper hit Fisherman’s Friends and the feature-length TV movie Mother’s Day about the Warrington bombing, his bread and butter is playing coppers and spivs. This, he says, is both a blessing and a curse. He may be getting more work than almost any other actor out there, but it’s sometimes a struggle to get casting directors to see outside the box.
Now, thanks to the coronavirus, all his work has been cancelled for the foreseeable future. But for the rest of us there’s going to be a lot more TV viewing – and that means we’re bound to see Danny at some point over the next few months. ‘I’ve had a busy year and everyone is going to be properly entertained by Danny Mays,’ he laughs. ‘I’m just a bit worried that people might get sick of me.’
There’s a cameo performance as himself in an upcoming BBC4 mockumentary by Spandau Ballet stars Gary and Martin Kemp. The Kemps: All True is a spoof tribute to the brothers after the band’s 40th anniversary celebrations last year, ‘I’ve loved them since they were in The Krays – I was obsessed with that film – so when they asked me to record a spoof audition for them I leapt at the chance,’ says Danny. ‘It’s mainly me repeating a line in many, many different ways. The show is really funny and I was honoured to be asked to be part of it.’
But before that there’s his first police show of the year – new Sky comedy Code 404, due to air on 29 April. Here he plays DI John Major, a policeman with a difference – he’s a comedy Robocop. ‘I keep saying to my agent, “Enough is enough, no more cops”, but then these interesting roles keep arriving and that’s part of the problem,’ says Danny, who won a BAFTA nomination for playing a rogue policeman in Line Of Duty in 2017. ‘I don’t know why I keep being sent scripts for characters on both sides of the law – arguably the thought patterns of policemen and criminals have to be pretty close. Maybe I’m a little bit dodgy – or maybe I just come across like that?’
The premise of Code 404 is that Danny’s character John was the top undercover cop in his unit until a sting went horribly wrong and he ended up dead. But unbeknown to John’s wife Kelly and his police partner Roy, who take comfort in each other’s arms, the force decide he should be a prototype for a new artificial intelligence robot, and he’s brought back from the dead after a year of experimentation. Only he’s not quite the same – and neither is the relationship between the trio. It’s very silly and a welcome reminder that Danny is as good at comedy as he is at gritty drama. Line Of Duty fans will also be thrilled to learn that, thanks to Danny, Code 404 has become a kind of comedy version of the crime drama, with two
‘Maybe I come across as a bit dodgy’
fellow alumni joining him in the six-part series. Anna Maxwell Martin, the Motherland actress who had a scenestealing turn in Line Of Duty last year as fierce anti-corruption officer Patricia Carmichael, won the part of his wife Kelly after he mentioned it to her when they were playing a married couple in Mother’s Day.
Stephen Graham, one of Danny’s oldest friends in the business, played dodgy undercover cop John Corbett in the last series of Line Of Duty and took the role of Roy after Danny suggested him to producers. ‘I worked with Steve in Top Buzzer [a sitcom about low-level cannabis dealers] years back when we both started out, and we’ve been looking for something to do together since,’ he says. ‘We ve both done some quite serious stuff recently – as well as Line Of Duty Stephen had done TV drama The Virtues and Scorsese’s wanted The to Irishman do something – and I silly knew and he different and funny, as did I.’
The idea of a spoof Line Of Duty is there from the start. Danny’s character is killed ‘in the line of duty’ in the first scene and at any moment the robot reboot could be terminated if he malfunctions. ‘While it’s a comedy there’s also some drama, as well as a conspiracy theory element, and I think Line Of Duty fans will enjoy seeing us all together,’ says Danny.
He’s full of admiration for his mate Stephen, who’s finally being hailed as one of our most accomplished actors following the critical success of The Virtues and The Irishman. ‘I think in the 80s and 90s working-class actors like Gary Oldman and Christopher Eccleston were much more in vogue,’ Danny says. ‘So it’s good to see my friends like Stephen and Eddie Marsan being recognised, because so often people from working-class backgrounds put in the graft but don’t necessarily get the rewards.’
It is odd that coppers and criminals are Danny’s stock in trade, because in the flesh he’s nothing but gentlemanly. No one in the industry has a bad word to say about him, and for all his dodgy roles he’s a softie at heart. But at the same time, he has an edge that the camera seems to draw out. ‘I don’t have a problem tapping into my anger or rage,’ he says. ‘It’s easy for me, I just imagine I’m sitting in traffic or my general impatience with things. I’m one of four boys and we lived in a relatively small house, so it was always boisterous and loud and I think my household today is still like that. It’s part and parcel of who I am.’
The closest he’s been to getting into rouble was when he was caught throwing a large bin used for storing bread across a street after a night in the pub when he was in his late teens. ‘It was about 4am and my friends had been taking some of the bread out and I picked up the bin and hurled it. A squad car came past as it sailed through the air. I was put against the wall and searched, but that was it.’ Now he gets approached by policemen because they’re fans, but ‘it unnerves me’ he admits. ‘I was at the airport a few years ago and this guy clocked me and said, “Oh, you’re from Line Of Duty, that was amazing.” We talked for a while and I asked what he did. “I’m a policeman,” he said. “Undercover.” Then he pointed to a few other people and said, “We’re all undercover here,” and they grinned at me. It freaked me out.’
We’ll soon see Danny in complex ten-part Netflix drama White Lines, made by the production company behind The Crown and due to air later this spring. It’s about a superstar Ibiza DJ who vanishes, and when his body turns up 20 years later a police investigation delves into the lives of his friends. Danny plays Marcus, a small-time drug dealer who still DJS on the island. ‘He’s a tragi-comic character and it’s a gift of a role,’ says Danny. ‘It’s a really layered show set in the nightclub scene, underpinned with huge drama. I just love it and can’t wait for people to see it.’ Then later this year he’ll be back as a copper in Des, a three-part ITV drama about Dennis Nilsen with David Tennant as the notorious serial killer. Danny plays DCI Peter Jay, the officer investigating the monster who is thought to have killed up to 15 men, and the story is told partly from his point of view as he tries to cope with the horror.
Yet Danny says despite all the harrowing roles he’s had, he never takes his work home. He and his wife Louise have been together for 16 years, though they only married two years ago. They have two children, son Mylo, 14, and daughter Dixie, seven, and decided to marry after Lou lost both her parents in quick succession. ‘We were never going to get married, then it just felt like it was the right time,’ he says. ‘It was such a brilliant day that I immediately thought, “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
‘I felt very chilled right up to the moment when Lou walked down the aisle, and then I was gone. Completely gone. She was walked down the aisle by her brother and the loss of her parents was palpable from that moment. I started crying through the service and I didn’t stop. I couldn’t even get it together when I was doing my speech. I was a wreck.’
He grins and I swear there’s a hint of a tear in his eye. The sunglasses are quickly popped back on – he has a reputation to maintain, after all.
a