You’ve got to have a bit of craziness in this business...
Danny John-jules chats to MARION MCMULLEN about stepping into Sir Ian Mckellen’s shoes for The Da Vinci Code stage tour
How does it feel to be playing Sir Leigh Teabing in the world premiere tour of The Da Vinci Code?
It’s a great and daunting part. (Laughs) When I was offered it I thought ‘huh, maybe they’ve got the wrong actor. They probably watched Death In Paradise and thought I was Don Warrington’.
No, it’s a privilege to be asked to do it. It actually came about six months ago. It was one of those moments that you sort of go... ‘really?’ And then ‘oh, wow’ and then ‘erm...’.
Talk about pressure. A hundred million books sold, movies, lords of the theatre... and Danny Johnjules. They have created this world on stage and a touring version... Everything you heard about it, you think ‘these people are crazy’.
But these are my kind of people. I’m sorry but you’ve got to have a bit of craziness in this business otherwise we’ll be doing Pride And Prejudice all our lives – version 1,750.
You’re known as Red Dwarf’s cool Cat and Dwayne Myers in Death In Paradise on TV, but do you feel most at home in the theatre?
I’ve done so many fantastic roles that have been long-running roles and people know me from TV, even though I’ve done more theatre than TV. Few people know anything I’ve done in theatre. People would ask why did I leave Death In Paradise? Such a fantastic job, going to the Caribbean every year for seven years, but you go seven years and your theatre bones start aching.
I’m a song-and-dance man and that never goes away and that’s why I put on my one-man show afterwards about Sammy Davis Jr. I wrote it and put it on because there was nothing I could do in the theatre that I thought ‘I want to be in that’, whereas with the Da Vinci Code you go the opposite and say
‘I’d love to be in that’, but oooh it’s a challenge because we’ve only ever seen one person play it, Sir Ian Mckellen, and he’s a lord of the theatre. I do love a good mystery though, well, I spent seven years playing a policeman.
(Laughs) I’ve gone from Caribbean nights in Death In Paradise to a Caribbean knight playing Sir Leigh. Playing a billionaire lord is what everyone always wants to do, isn’t it?
What was your first acting role?
My first job was actually a crime prevention film made by Scotland Yard called Seven Green Bottles. That was 1974, and it was basically about juvenile delinquency and that was my first foray into the business, but I never thought ‘Oh, I want to be in showbusiness’.
I still see about five of those kids that were in that film although some may have no teeth now. After that I remember there used to be a show called Boy From Space that used to be on schools television and it was the first time I had seen a black actor and I got his autograph.
Three years later I was going to a drama school he set up in Notting Hill and that’s how I got into the business.
I spent 10 years in the West End doing musical theatre. My first West End show was 1982 at the London Palladium with a 21-year-old Jimmy Tarbuck. I met Bruce Forsyth as well on the opening night of Barnum.
What was it like for you growing up?
My mum was a single parent, mother to three kids, and we moved into my uncle’s back room the four of us. So there was no stage school. Some days it was corned beef and crackers, but on the street university you learn lessons a lot better than a trust funder.
I did a few jobs when I left school. My first job was on a building site, my second was in a warehouse and then I was sterilising equipment in the National Heart Hospital under the famous heart surgeon Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub.
I met him 40 years later, at his charity night Chain Of Hope, and I told him I used to work for him. He nearly fell over. I must have watched him do at least 50 heart operations.
After that I worked in a hair salon and that was the last job I did before I went into showbusiness.
You appeared in the Christmas special of Death In Paradise and The Weakest Link. Any more TV roles coming up?
I’ve just done The Chase and a BBC show called Dodger with Christopher Eccleston and I’ve just done an episode of the new series of Shakespeare And Hathaway.
All this lockdown has been bizarre. I’d be going to work and people would be asking how? The last three months I have been working solidly. I’ve been working more in lockdown than I have out of lockdown.
How does that work out?
I’m a song-anddance man and that never goes away Danny loves being on stage