I’M BLAGGING IT AND I’M VERY RAW. I CAN ONLY BE ME EastEnders’ Danny Dyer is hosting new game show The Wall. finds out why he wants to be a different kind of presenter
Laura Harding
DANNY DYER is pacing round a well-lit sound stage about 25 minutes from Warsaw Airport in Poland.
He looks trim in a blue suit and is swigging from a can of energy drink.
Every so often he says something to a crew member or a middle-aged married couple from the North of England, who have flown out to take part in his new show.
This is a break during the EastEnders star’s first outing as a game show host – a new BBC1 programme called The Wall, in which contestants must combine strategy, knowledge and luck in a bid for a lifechanging cash prize.
The couple have previously told Danny they want to use the money to fund their young son’s dreams of becoming a pilot and he seems to be genuinely invested in them doing well.
“It’s a surreal experience,” he admits as he sits in his armchair in his dressing room a bit later, after filming is over.
“When I filmed the pilot I was on the verge of tears because it’s a really emotional show.”
But, as impassioned as he is now, the 42-year-old was not always so keen.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to do it at first, and that’s just me being straight.
“The opportunity came up and I thought, ‘Do I want to be a game show host? Not really’; I mean, I’m quite busy at EastEnders.
“They sent me it, I watched it, the American version, which is always very earnest... There’s a lot of money at stake, and it was a bit like, ‘I don’t know if I can pull this off’, Americans are so different to us.
“And then I thought, ‘Do you know what? Go and do the pilot and just see if you enjoy it’ and I really did enjoy it. I did.
“Did I ever think that I would be hosting my own game show? No. I think that I’m at a period in my life when you’ve got to try stuff and so I just thought, ‘Let’s have a go, let’s see where this leads’.”
Does he feel this enthusiasm for trying new things is a by-product of getting older.
“I don’t take anything for granted but I’m very grateful for a lot of things I’ve got in my life,” he says.
“And this is a BBC prime-time show, it comes on after Strictly, to be asked to do that, you’ve got to go, ‘OK, I’m very blessed’.
“I think they want something different; they don’t want the – no disrespect to anyone – the robotic game show host vibe.
“And so I’m blagging it and I’m very raw and I said, ‘I can only be me, because everyone else is taken’. And I suppose that’s what they wanted.”
Indeed this is true – Danny’s hosting is just a reflection of his personality.
He hugs me just as warmly as he does the contestants, he swears like a sailor when the cameras are rolling and when they aren’t, and his dialogue is peppered with his signature vernacular, which sometimes makes it sound like his EastEnders character, Mick Carter, is hosting the show.
Danny is juggling the hosting gig with his full-time role in EastEnders, as the landlord of the
Queen Vic, but is enjoying having another string to his bow.
“I fly out here, I do six episodes in five days, and then I’m straight back Monday morning in the Vic, cracking on.
“I’m juggling it, it’s do-able, I just want it to be a success really.
“It’s weird, isn’t it? In the same year I would have done a West End play – a Harold Pinter play (The Dumb Waiter), I’m in the biggest soap on telly, and I’m a game show host.
“And so I suppose there’s not many people out there who can say they’ve done that. So I’m quite proud of that, it’s quite an achievement.”