‘If Gemma Collins is a diva she gets blocked’: the secrets of TV stars’ WhatsApp groups
Behind every big TV series there is now a buzzing WhatsApp group. From spitballing ideas for great plotlines to arranging sweepstakes, and those dramatic “has left the chat” notifications, the action-packed groups used by people in television shows are constantly ablaze.
“If you put nine show-offs in a group, it becomes lively pretty quickly,” laughs Ghosts co-creator Larry Rickard – who plays caveman Robin and the head of Tudor spectre Humphrey. To manage the wildness while making the hit BBC comedy, he set up multiple group chats. There is one for all the lead actors called “Ghosts” (“which – out of the goodness of our hearts – we also let ‘livings’ Kiell SmithBynoe and Charlotte Ritchie into”), with another named “Idiot News” specifically for the writers – and not the cast (“They already know we’re massive nerds; they don’t need to see proof”). They’re packed with impersonations delivered via voice note (“Jim Howick does a helium-voiced cockney and Martha Howe-Douglas sounds like Noddy Holder”), but not everybody is always fully engaged. “You might wait a month to get a reply from Simon Farnaby – it’s like a visit from the Queen. In fact, one time he didn’t reply because he was actually with the Queen!”
The WhatsApp groups behind world-famous TV shows first started making headlines when Nikolaj CosterWaldau spilled the beans about Game of Thrones’s star-packed chat in a Jimmy Kimmel interview. After the final season aired, he confessed that that year’s Emmy awards had lit up the group, and that Alfie Allen is such an active contributor he “does whole songs” for people. Later, Emilia Clarke said that it is where she learned of the divisive House of the Dragon prequel in 2019. Her reply? “Ooh!”
Elsewhere, Josh O’Connor and Emma Corrin have said that The Crown’s season four group helped the cast to bond – despite Tobias Menzies being rubbish at using it. “I quite enjoyed hearing Olivia [Colman] and Gillian [Anderson] working out how to send a voice note, [saying] ‘I’m sending my voice,’” Corrin revealed. When asked about it, Anderson – who was the most active along with Helena Bonham Carter – said she became “enamoured” with voice notes after first watching Colman record one during filming.
Just like us ordinary folk, telly stars and crew use WhatsApp to simply help each other get through a long week – such as Jodie Whittaker, who had a “Friday bangers” group with Doctor Who colleagues, in which they would share tunes while they were actually standing next to each other on set. Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee’s tweet during the Oprah and Prince Harry interview also spoke volumes, given that it echoed the happenings of a million other chats around the world: “It’s defs a Derry Girls WhatsApp group when all anybody is interested in is how well Oprah looks.”
The group chat of Bafta-nominated LGBTQ+ comedy Big Boys recently found itself full of “gambling, memes, dick pics and wishing people happy birthday”, according to creator Jack Rooke. Production of its second season saw the group pinging non-stop. “It mostly comprises of British gay icon Camille Coduri posting [viral Instagram account] Love of Huns-esque memes or astrology-themed motivational quotes,” he says. “Dylan Llewellyn also tries to organise multiple sweepstakes for obscure tennis tournaments or Eurovision. This year I won £30 when Finland came second and bought a round of iced lattes on set!”
It’s not all fun, games and banter, though; dropping ideas in a chat can seriously change what we end up seeing on the screen. Candice Carty-Williams used group messaging to source music for her highly anticipated BBC drama, Champion. When the rapper Ghetts, who worked on the show’s soundtrack, shared never-before-heard tracks for the show in there, she described it as being “like all my dreams coming true”. Meanwhile, according to comedian Bridget Christie, her brilliant menopause comedy The Change saw her exchange “quite a few back-andforth texts with Jerome Flynn” about a line in the script tasking him with squealing like a pig. “Unbelievably,” says Christie, “he’d never been asked to squeal like a pig for a part before.” And Rickard says the Ghosts’ “Idiot News” group is where they nail down plans for how to shoot scenes: “I’d love to say it’s where we bitch about the actors, but it’s largely nerdy discussions about whether it’s OK to move a stuffed duck prop between episodes.”
Then there are the WhatsApp group bombshell moments. Martin Compston recently revealed that Jed Mercurio has renamed the Line of Duty 6 group Line of Duty 7 – suggesting the absolutely huge news that they’re creating another series, despite the last one supposedly being the finale. “What I love about it is we’ve never spoke of it since,” said Compston. Also, earlier this year, it was widely reported that Strictly Come Dancing’s professional dancers fired off angry messages about a pay dispute in their group, furious about the judges’ 11% pay rise.
Things can sometimes become so heated that it’s best for stars to exit the group before someone boots them out. Brian McFadden removed Gemma Collins from the Dancing on Ice chat three times because “if she’s a diva to us she gets blocked”. (“I just tell it how it is,” she responded afterwards.) Janice Dickinson was the only I’m a Celebrity … South Africa contestant not in the WhatsApp group, for “obvious reasons” according to Paul Burrell. And, showing much better WhatsApp etiquette, Regé-Jean Page “respectfully exited” the Bridgerton group after season one because “I didn’t want to put them in an awkward situation where they had to kick me out”.
Wilf Webster, a finalist in last year’s most addictive reality series The Traitors, also decided to leave the show’s whopping WhatsApp group – which all 22 contestants joined after filming – for his mental health. “There would be 300 or 400 new messages in the one group and it caused me stress,” he says of a group that participants joined one by one, when they were given their phones back upon leaving the show. “There were no arguments [but] none of us knew how we’d be portrayed – so when you’re trying to deal with your own portrayal in the public, then reading everyone else’s at the same time, it’s too much.” He found comfort in a much smaller finalist subgroup: “We’re trying to plan a reunion.”
Messaging apps’ use as a tool to enable real-life bonding between TV stars is not to be understated. It can be something merely practical, such as the “Fun Club” group on the set of Ghosts. (“It was for anyone staying in the hotel during shooting, so we could arrange what time to meet at Wagamama,” says Rickard. “It’s a broad definition of fun.”) But the annual Great British Bake Off groups show how such seemingly small communication can nurture friendships. The 2016 contestant Selasi Gbormittah has said that his former fellow bakers still use their original WhatsApp group six years on to wish each other happy birthday. It’s not just the contestants who benefit: Alison Hammond revealed she messaged new co-host and mate Noel Fielding late at night during production. “Just stop sending me those pictures, I don’t like it,” she joked with him during a recent episode. “That’s not what you said last night,” he smirked.
Rooke says the Big Boys’ group – which has seen “this little gang” through “channel changes, commission cancellations, crew shortages and a cheeky two years of Covid” – has helped to create a genuine sense of community. “When something lovely happens, we just celebrate the fact we actually got to film it and work together again,” he says. “When the four Bafta noms were announced in March, we went to a pub near Arsenal and drank them fully out of Campari. It felt very right.”
WhatsApp groups may be silly, stuffed with annoying emojis and often totally wild, but they have undeniably become integral to making fantastic television. The ultimate proof is Quinta Brunson thanking “my group text, the Butts” while picking up a Golden Globe for her beloved comedy Abbott Elementary earlier this year.
Then again, some TV stars still need convincing. This year’s Strictly Come Dancing WhatsApp group is a super supportive hub, according to Krishnan Guru-Murthy. “As soon as someone is having a bad moment, they’ll go on the group and say, ‘I’m having a terrible day’,” he said in a recent interview. “Everyone else will pile in with their own experiences and advice, or Angela Rippon will tell you about her cryotherapy chamber.” And yet, 2021 contestant Judi Love only vaguely remembers being in one during her time in the dancing competition (she also says she wasn’t even part of one for MasterChef, Taskmaster or Loose Women). “By the time you start dancing in the first week, the only time you’re in the group is to say good luck or bye,” she says. “I’m going to have to see if I’m even still in it!”