SIMON AMSTELL
Bringing his life ( sort of) to the silver screen, Simon Amstell talks heart- break, mental health and the long road to self acceptance
On the challenge of bringing his life ( sort of) to the big screen
Many eons ago, when I first dipped my toe into the waters of journalism, I modelled my celebrity interviewing style on Simon Amstell’s gloriously sardonic schtick from early Noughties TV fave Popworld and then Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
Unfortunately, my reserves of wit at the time had about as much bite as a gummy, denture- less granny.
Simon was also one of the few seemingly out male presenters on television while I was growing up a closeted teen. I can’t remember him publicly proclaiming that he was gay. He just was, and that was pretty great.
His mop of curls is even more buoyant in real life, by the way.
I make sure to mention my early poor attempts at plagiarising his patter when we meet. “Did you upset a lot of people?” he enquires. I nod ( belated apology, Bloc Party). “Well, I did a bit of that as well,” he admits.
Cue fl ashbacks to 2007 when Ordinary Boys singer Preston threw a strop and stormed off the Buzzcocks set.
However, Simon’s days of mercilessly mocking celebrities is long behind him and Attitude is here to pick the brain of the comedian, actor, writer and now director about his big- screen debut Benjamin.
In too neat a nutshell, the bitter- sweet comedy drama follows a rising star filmmaker ( a fantastic Colin Morgan, of Merlin fame) seeking the adoration of an audience, while struggling to let himself love and, ultimately, be loved by sexy, young French musician Noah — played by sexy, young French actor Phénix Brossard, seen opposite Alex Lawther in 2015’ s Departure.
“The drama for them isn’t their sexuality,” Simon explains. “The drama is that there is this beautiful French guy and there is this beautiful Irish guy, and the Irish guy is terrified of intimacy.
“It’s a love story where the confl ict is one of them being a disconnected maniac!” adds
39- year- old Simon, laughing.
The funny man didn’t need to look far for inspiration because the film mines material from his own life, specifi cally his past habit of dating younger men, and his battle with depression and other mental- health issues.
“I’d put ‘ semi’ before ‘ autobiographical’,” he clarifi es. “There are very few things in the fi lm that actually happened to me but all the feelings that the character [ Benjamin] feels, I know those, whether it’s the loneliness or the terror of surrendering [ to somebody else].”
Given how much of himself is on screen ( albeit in a roundabout way), it’s a surprise that Simon — who previously showcased his acting chops in BBC sitcom Grandma’s House – didn’t take on the title role.
“There was a period where I thought I should be the new Cate Blanchett. I thought I looked a bit like her,” he grins. “The moment I knew I wasn’t going to be a transformative actor was while reading an interview that Eddie Redmayne gave about becoming Stephen Hawking [ in The Theory of Everything], a year- long process of learning the specifi c body movements and voice.
“Very few things in the film happened to me, but I know all the feelings”
“I was in my kitchen going, ‘ Who can be bothered with that?’”
Settling for possessing a slight resemblance to Blanchett ( you can kind of see it), Simon instead cast Colin .“I remember seeing him on TV years ago and thinking, ‘ That’s a really good face’,” but had to cross the English Channel to find Phénix.
“We met quite a few actors and they were all great. There was just something missing and it seemed to be Frenchness!”
Would you say the other actors lacked a certain, ahem, je ne sais quoi, I ask. “That’s very good,” he exclaims. “Will this be written so you can put that in? You can write, ‘ Simon laughed at my brilliant joke’.”
Pulling a Taylor Swift- esque move, Simon based the central romance on a painful, failed relationship, one he has creatively reworked.
“It only lasted six months but it really broke my heart,” he recalls. “It works out better for Benjamin than it did for me, although I did learn a lot about myself.
“I think you end up being drawn to people who will either bring you a lot of joy and peace — a relationship that lasts — or you’re drawn to someone who will show you who you are. That’s what he did. I thought what was going on was that I was the mature one who would save this young, vulnerable person but it turned out [ to be the other way around]. He dumped me and wouldn’t say why at the time. We met six months later and he said two things. One, ‘ You’re not at ease with yourself’, and two, ‘ You’re really vulnerable’. I knew I wasn’t at ease with myself but I thought that was my personality. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was vulnerable.”
Couch time in therapy shed more light on the situation. “I got why I kept going for the same kind of person,” Simon reveals. “I kept trying to save the 18 year old in me who wasn’t saved.”
Two years ago, Simon, wrote his autobiography Help, which details, among other moments, his first, not entirely pleasant, gay sexual encounter, in Paris, at the age of 18.
Travelling alone, he went in search of a kiss and ended up losing his virginity by a canal in the French capital.
The fiercely frank ( and, naturally, very funny) book deep- dives into Simon’s anxiety, sense of disconnect and lack of self- love, themes explored in Benjamin. Understandably, shooting the fi lm was triggering in some ways for him.
“There was a lot of laughing and a bit of crying. I found myself taking moments to feel quite sorry for the character, and because I wrote the character using aspects of myself, it meant I was able to feel empathy for myself that I might not have done otherwise,” Simon admits.
“I was able to go, ‘ You poor thing, you didn’t know what you were doing,’ or, ‘ Well done you for not completely imploding’, those sort of soothing, self- caring sentences.
“That happens with stand- up [ comedy] as well, and writing that book, talking about things when I was a teenager, I felt: ‘ You did it all on your own, you were all on your own’.”
That feeling of catharsis has only been amplified by audience responses to the film. “When we premiered at the London Film Festival, hearing everybody laughing and making a connection to what was going on, gave me this feeling of, ‘ This makes sense to people, it’s not just me who was incapable of loving, or being loved at one point’.
“There is something universal about this fear that we have.
“Although I’m not setting out to do anything particularly generous [ with the film], it feels like a generous act. I’ve provided something in the world. I’m not just a selfinvolved idiot,” he cackles.
Like maintenance work, Simon says he recently completed a “little top up” of therapy sessions to keep the demons at bay.
“That was the first time in six years or something. It’s essential. What happens for me is that there is a build- up of crazy thoughts. Once you let them out of your head, they get exposed to the reality that what you’re thinking is silly.”
Things are also drama- free in the relationship department — which, Simon admits, initially felt weird.
“The boyfriend I have now – is that the way to say it? – the person I’m with now doesn’t need to be fi xed. There was no point where I thought, ‘ I better go and help that guy’.
“He is fi ne. He had a happy childhood and is a highly educated, brilliant, handsome human being. There was a moment where I thought, ‘ This guy doesn’t need me, what am I doing, I’ve got nothing to do here, no advice to give, I’ve got nothing’.
“But when I got over that anxiety, there was this ease. I could breathe. We could just have a lovely time together without this panic that something needed to be fi xed, that someone needed to be saved.”
Benjamin is released on 15 March. See p114
“My boyfriend is a brilliant human being who doesn’t need to be fixed”