Pop princesses made life an adventure every day
There are very few actors who can say they made back-toback films with Stanley Kubrick and the Spice Girls. There is only one, and that is me!
On my return to Britain at the beginning of 1997, I had a crash course in the Spice phenomenon.
While Britain was succumbing, America had yet to be so lucky, and the Spice Girls had barely registered on my cultural radar.
Those were the days before music was dropped worldwide at the exact same moment. Those were the days when music was not dropped at all. It was released, on CD predominantly, before the revival of vinyl and after the demise of tape (I still have the cassette of the first Spice Girls album in pride of place on my shelves!).
“Darling, I have a rather weird one for you,” said the voice on the other end of the line one morning. “Heard of the Spice Girls?” “I’m currently alive, so yes!” I quipped.
“Well, they’re making a movie and they want you to be in it!”
“What??!!”
FAVOURITE
It turned out that Geri, aka Ginger Spice, had seen me in Hamlet on a college group outing just days after her father had died.
Four years later, she insisted I was the natural choice to play Piers, a documentarian chronicling the band’s every move in Spice World: The Movie! I am often asked my favourite of all the films I have made, and I always answer Spice World. I do it partly to confound any intellectual snobbery,
CHUMS
Spice Girls sign tum
but also to point out that for me, the experience of making a film is far, far more important than how it turns out, is perceived, or performs at the box office, in the ratings or reviews.
That summer was golden for me, running around London, laughing, and frolicking with five girls who were at the very zenith of their pop princess potency, being taught the dance moves of the Spice Girls’ songs by the Spice Girls themselves. I felt at home, happy, carefree. Every day was an adventure and anything seemed possible and that’s how I want all my life to be. On my last day the girls called me into their trailer. Yes, the five of them shared one trailer, often with their mums in tow, while Richard E. Grant (who played their manager) and I had equally big trailers for ourselves.
I was presented with a card full of messages of thanks for agreeing to be in their film. They were that nice. But best of all, Emma’s message called me a “Special Spice boy”.
Drop the mic. Thank you, good night. That card, along with Polaroids of me with each Spice on my last day of filming, is framed and has pride of place in my study.