Danny Dyer - 'I’m a f**king legend or I’m a f**king disgrace. I suppose I divide people'

0:00At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. So just a heads up before we start this episode, if you know Danny Dyer in any way, shape or form, you will also know that some of the language on this week's episode of How to Fail will be on the ripe side. So just a heads up that if you're not up for that or if there are any children in the room, maybe approach with caution.

0:46Welcome to How To Fail, the podcast that treats all failure as data acquisition on our path to success. I've got some very exciting news to share with you. For the first time ever, How to Fail is going on tour and will be presented by Hey You, the home of reality TV. Each show, I'll have a very special guest sharing their three failures, so you can expect the usual uplifting, hilarious and moving conversations. Tickets go on general sale on Friday, the 12th of July at 10am. Head to fane.co.uk, that's fane, f-a-n-e.co.uk, or just follow the link in the show notes. And if you are a subscriber to How To Fail, you can get free access to 24-hour priority booking on Thursday the 11th of July at 10am.

1:37I cannot wait to see you on tour. Before we begin, I just wanted to remind you about my subscriber series, Failing With Friends, where Danny and I look at your questions and give our advice. To everyone out there, here's a taster. I'll put a little bit of tinted moisture to the eyes on it. Okay. Just give me a little bit of fucking glow in the morning, I suppose. Are you wearing tinted moisturizer? Just a little drop. I don't go mad. Love it. And never have the fucking shimmer. OK. You know, you don't want to be shimmering as a proper gazer. It's the last thing you fucking need.

2:11The actor Danny Dyer played the part of Mick Carter for eight years in the BBC soap EastEnders. His performance won him several awards and his storylines as Mick included finding out his sister was actually his mother and being wrongfully framed for murder by a friend. But if anything, Dyer's real life is even more extraordinary. Born in Custom House East London, his parents split when he was nine after his mother discovered Dyer's father had a secret family. He began acting as a teen but was bullied for it before winning a part in Prime Suspect at the age of 16. In his 20s, his mentor was the playwright Harold Pinter, who saw much of his younger self in Dyer.

2:56He acted in three Pinter plays, as well as several films, including Human Traffic and The Football Factory, which earned him a reputation for being an on-screen hardman and all-round geezer. But he also, incidentally, appeared in Andrea Arnold's short film Wasp, which won an Oscar in 2003. That's one for any pub trivia enthusiasts among you. In truth, Dyer has barely been out of work since he started auditioning. Recently, he presented a documentary on Channel 4 on How to Be a Man and is soon to star in the hotly anticipated Disney Plus adaptation of Jilly Cooper's Rivals. But probably my favourite Danny Dyer fact is not that his daughter, also called Danny, won Love Island in 2018, or that he once labelled David Cameron a twat on live TV.

3:48It's that he is the 22 times great grandson of Edward III and a descendant of Thomas Cromwell, as revealed when he took part in the BBC genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? Do not let where you've come from define where you're going in life, Dyer has said. You can be whoever you want to be. Danny Dyer, welcome to How to Fail. What a lovely introduction. That's a nice reaction. That was really cute, really sweet. I've been around a long time now. My career started sort of in the 90s and there's a whole generation of young people now that are so fascinated by the idea of the 90s. Yeah. You know that?

4:27Yeah. I've got a 16 year old daughter and she said, oh my God, what was the 90s like? Do you know what I mean? It wasn't that long ago in my head. I know. It's actually scary thinking that something that was 1995 is like 30 years ago. Yeah, it is that long ago. In the same way that when we were younger, the 1960s was 30 years ago. It seems completely unhinged. And I suppose we were quite fascinated by the 60s. Yes. And the idea of that era, you know, when things changed. Yeah. Tell me a bit about that idea of not letting where you've come from define who you become. because you have had this extraordinary journey.

5:02And I wonder how much classism, because there's so much classism in this country, has impacted you along the way. Well, there's a lot of isms, isn't there? I suppose with racism and I suppose especially with black people, they get judged on the colour of their skin immediately. So I sort of get past that first barrier, you know, because I'm a white person. So therefore I don't get judged on the colour of my skin, but then I open my mouth and then the classism gets involved. Obviously, I'm not very articulate. You know, I obviously come from a family of, you know, of some sort of criminal fraternity.

5:36I really started to really feel that when I went into the theatre world. Wasn't so much with the TV world, but definitely when I started to, you know, be around theatre gnats, as you'd like to call them, I was well out of my depth with just dialogue in general, especially when you do a play and then afterwards you come off stage and then you know you've got sort of people in the bar waiting I didn't quite know what to say to these people really and I felt that there was always a class thing going on but it gives me a drive and an ambition really I've never been to drama school I don't want to lose who I am the essence of who I am because my theory on acting is that my toolbox is me and my traumas and my you know, my truth.

6:22And so I have to dig into my box to find certain emotions and feelings. And so I wouldn't want to become a blank canvas, which is what you're taught at drama school, lose the accent. And then going back to the Pinter thing, that's what happened with Harold. Harold was from East London, but Harold was told, I suppose he was an actor during the 50s and the 60s. So therefore, you know, working class people, we shouldn't really be on the television. Interestingly, I've just heard a stat that in the arts at the moment, there is 6 % of working class people. Wow. It's at the lowest it's ever been. Something that needs to change, I feel.

6:57Tell me a bit about your childhood and that idea of being rooted in where you come from, but not forever defined by it. You were raised by strong women, weren't you? Yeah, I was raised by strong women, absolutely. My dad left when I was quite young, so I had no real role model or father figure around me. I mean, my mother brought up three children, you know, on her own on a council estate and always did it with a smile and always had a cuddle and that's what our as children actually it didn't matter that we had fuck all it was about our currency as children and I noticed from having children myself quite privileged kids is affection and love and security you know so I didn't have me father for that but I did my mother was always there she was a great talker a great listener I had a matriarch in my nan nanny polly who said a lot right so this was a word that was around me a lot again going back to the classes and thinking I was only later on when I was at dinner parties and I'd use that word you know I realized that maybe if you look at the broader society it's quite rare that word yeah in particular but you know I always felt safe around me now do you remember that moment when your mom found out that your dad had been having this affair and had another family yeah I do because she was on the phone she got a phone call from from the woman that my dad was having an affair with and uh and she just sort of dropped to her knees crying and she had my sister in her arms and I think she knew I think she knew anyway but you know it was like this really dramatic moment of you know it's a tricky one with me dad because obviously I just made a documentary and I was worried about maybe getting a bit of backlash from maybe women's groups and stuff because I felt that the timing of trying to make a documentary about how men are struggling is probably bad timing because everybody's struggling.

8:51Anyway, I upset my dad because he googled my name and he hadn't watched the documentary yet and the press had said that I said that he was a violent man. He was never a violent man. He was just a bit shit. And it was my brother's truth you know it really affected me when he left my brother not so much he was a bit more you know logical about the whole situation and even though he was younger than me he realized that dad not being around meant it was going to be a calmer happy house whereas I just wanted my dad about you know I didn't understand why he wasn't there and I sort of blamed my mother for it because she was in front of me yeah but all these traumas that I had as a kid I think it just defines you as a human being you know what I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't go back and change anything I suppose this was the way it was meant to be.

9:35And I think it shaped me as a father myself, you know, and try and do the right thing. And I did speak about my dad's upbringing in the 50s, which was really difficult for him. He was born in 55, and it was a very strict upbringing, you know what I mean? And so he didn't quite know how to be affectionate with his own kids. There was one moment when he was going to cross the road, and he said, nah, I went to oldies and he went, no, we don't do that anymore, boy. And for some reason that stuck with me. You are very warm. Kindness kind of emanates when you meet you. That's my experience as a woman.

10:06So how did you learn how to do that? I broke the mould in a sense of I thought, well, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to be the way my dad is. I'm going to change it up a little bit and I'm going to actually probably go over the top with affection and love. And I think because my mother was so cuddly, I was brought up with it. So I've made sure that I cuddle my son a lot because I know it makes you feel inside. It's important. And I think it's okay to be a very masculine man, but also let people feel safe around you. I'm really glad I've got my mum's sensitive side. Do you know what I mean?

10:36Yeah. Quite happy to cry and stuff. I will do it. Now, annoyingly, you can't say that much about Rivals, the Disney adaptation. No, I'm desperate to start, you know, spitting loads of dialogue out about it, but I'm not allowed yet. Can you tell us who you play? I play a character called Freddie Jones. Freddie Jones being the richest one in it, but also the most working class, because that's a lot of classism in rivals. And it's all about power and, you know, money. It's something different for me. I speak Japanese in it as well. Do you? There are two things that generally come up when you tell people that you're about to interview Danny Dyer.

11:12One is that you've, that you have, I don't know if you still have one giant testicle. Wow. Yeah, no, I've still got a big bollock. Have you? Wait, is this, yeah, I suppose I spoke about it a lot, yeah. You mentioned it on Celebrity Juice. Well, I got it out. Yeah, you were meant to have it drained, I believe. Yeah. Well, it's called a Hydrocell. Yeah. It's just a big bollock, basically, because when I went to the doctors, obviously they just said, not in these words, but they just said, you've got a big bollock. You're like, I knew that already. Well, it's cosmetic surgery, whether I want to have it done or not.

11:42Okay. Yeah, it's a big nut, you know. The second thing is... It's amazing. Out of all my body of work, we talk about me big bollock. Okay, good. The second thing is, who do you think you are? Yeah. one of the best episodes of that program ever such a mad job because you know they offer you the job or they go look we'd really like to do something on you and you go okay fine and then you sort of give them some information about what you know which is usually generally fuck all and then they go away and they disappear and you don't need nothing for three months and then and I know people that they've done that with and come back and gone yeah sorry we're not going to be able to so we didn't find anything.

12:21They came back to me shaking. There was an energy. And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, okay, so we're going to start shooting in three weeks. And I was like, oh, what is this? What's going on here? I never quite knew. And the thing is, you don't know what's coming. So you wake up in the morning. You know they're picking you up at 9 o 'clock. You don't know where you're going. You don't know who you're talking to. You can't be planning the day in your head. And they keep you in a cafe around the corner. They put the mic on you, and then you go around the corner, and then you go and meet somebody. and it all plays out live on the camera.

12:51So they don't give you no inkling of anything. So who knew? You know what? I've had a few professors and stuff piss on my parade since. I mean, if you put the article in the Daily Mail, the Daily fucking Foul, and then of course they encourage people to comment on it, then most people will go, well, everyone's related to King Edward III, everybody. So, and I go, well, hold on a minute, because I think I was in series 10 and they'd never found any trail to, why has this never come up before? It goes back to classism thing. How can someone like me, you know, potentially win the first BAFTA for Who Do You Think You Are as well?

13:28Although I didn't get a fucking BAFTA for it, which is weird. I stood in the queue and all the producers and the director got one. I went, where's fucking mine? Criminal. It's my family. How did it make you feel about yourself and inhabiting your own skin? Did it make you feel? It gave me some sort of validation in the sense of not really the royalty thing. I couldn't give a fuck about that. More the Thomas Cromwell thing. Because I'd heard a lot about Wolf Hall and I'd worked with Mark Rylance when I was a child. He was my drama school. He was somebody that I really learned from. I worked with him when I was 17 years of age and I'd never come across anybody who was so unassuming and boring and shy and a bit sort of socially shit.

14:09And then when you said action, he was the most powerful fucker in the room. This presence. And I was like, oh, I've never seen this before. Like, all my scenes were with him. Couldn't quite talk to him away from the job. Tried my hardest, didn't really want to know. But then I would watch this man come alive. He had a little dictaphone. And he would walk around and he would, because he'd obviously give himself notes. And again, I'd never seen any of this. So it was like, I could hear him listen to this thing. But the presence between action and cut. And I thought, oh, I love it. I could see his little idiosyncrasies or the way his posture would change.

14:48And it was just a real lesson for me. Seven weeks being wrapped around this man. He was my complete drama school, I would say. The Thomas Cromwell thing though, because you see parallels. So he then, he then, he then, he then played him, right? In Wolf Hall. So I hadn't watched Wolf Hall until after I learned that he was my grandfather. 15 times great grandfather. and the reason, this is the beautiful thing about the whole thing, is that his last act, before he got his nut chopped off, was he made sure that his son, my 14 times great-grandfather, married Elizabeth Seymour, sister of Jane, who Henry VIII loved with all his heart, so he didn't kill his son.

15:35Otherwise he would have killed Gregory as well and I wouldn't be here. So the fact that he kept that line going meant that then Gregory had a son and then they had a son and then they had a son and then fuck knows what went wrong I ended up on a council estate, you know what I mean? But, you know, if he hadn't have done that before he was killed then my bloodline, I wouldn't be here. It's amazing. It's totally extraordinary, especially given what we're talking about about fathers and sons, abandonment, identity. Like, actually, this is the reason you're here. That's wild. Yeah, and then also he was from Putney.

16:05He was a working class kid and then he went to Florence and he studied there and he learnt languages and he was almost like, so going back to the classism thing, I suppose, it's the same thing with me. I suppose I was in a world I shouldn't have been in, I knew nothing about, but I obviously had a talent. I wasn't very good with the socialising aspect, but put me on a stage and I'll stand up and I was the bravest fucker in the room. You know what I mean? I could never quite understand when I was sitting round a table doing the rehearsals and everyone's talking about subtext and shit and writing stuff down.

16:34They've got journals and I was just sitting there, I'd learnt my lines. I wasn't very good at breaking down why my character's saying it, because actually it's all about performance and just, you know, selling the line. So that when I was sitting with some actors, I won't name them, that were really good at writing about it and being quite dismissive of me, when they stood up, they were a bit shit. I was like, oh, right, so you understand why you're saying the line and why it's so loaded, but yet you fucking can't deliver it. And so I would sort of quietly just sit back in my seat and go, I can't wait to get up and start playing with it and really start blocking it, because that's when I can come alive.

17:06So I suppose there's similarities in a sense of, you know, Cromwell's rise and to where he got. And ultimately that's what got him killed because obviously the other aristocrats around Henry hated the fact that this kid from Putney had rose and become so powerful. And so they got in Henry's nut and he killed him. I've got two more questions before we get onto your failures. Have you ever been to a psychic and tried to communicate with your ancestors? interestingly I'm quite a spiritual person and I've had messages off of spiritualists that say to me that they get contacted from my ancestors and the way they do it is from the time so at least three times a day I will randomly look at my what on my clock and it will be 12 12 or it will be 13 13 or I did it today at 10 past 10 I just looked at the clock and it was 10 past 10 So it gives me a comfort that I feel that my ancestors are maybe looking out for me.

18:06A higher power, if you will. And I'd like to think that one of my higher powers is Harrell Pinter. And that's why he's a screensaver on me phone. Is he? I just like having him around me, you know what I mean? I just feel that he was really good for me and I went off the rails when he died. So there's a connection there. Yeah. But yeah, I do think that they are maybe looking out for me. Because I've got some nutty blood. I'm related to a saint as well. Are you? Which saint? Saint Louis IX was it. I went to France. I did a follow-on from Who Do You Think You Are? It's called Danny Dye's Right World Family.

18:40And then we go right back to William the Conqueror and Rollo the Viking, who's my last relative that they can trace me back to in 900, whatever. Amazing. We're going to talk more about Harold Pinter as one of your failures. But before we get onto that, Helen Mirren. So you got this part in Prime Suspect when you were 16. What was she like? She was amazing. I mean what a woman and I was very attracted to her then and now I mean I was 14 when I got that part and I just one of my first ever scenes was with her and I got thrown straight in the mix and I loved it and I never felt out of place and you know she said I was a really good actor and she was really kind to me and then I did a film I did a film full 15 years later and she remembered me a film called Green Fingers and she went, here he is, my boy, and gave me a big cuddle.

19:31And I was like, wow, she remembered me. And I was a grown man by then. Again, that's been my drama school. Working on people like Daniel Craig I worked with when I was really young as well. And Ben Wischo I worked with when I was really young. And I remember I did a film called The Trench, William Boyd film, and Killian Murphy was like an extra in it. He had a small little part. And I remember looking at him and going, wow, he looks great. He's really good. He only had about three lines in it. And same with Ben. I remember him, I thought, wow. You know, sometimes you come across these people, especially Daniel Craig, it's like you go, you just take little bits, you know what I mean?

20:05And that's what I've tried to do, I suppose. So your first failure is that you haven't been able to give up smoking. Yeah. Yeah, shit. When did you start smoking? About 13. And then I started smoking drugs as well. there's something about nostalgia with smoking and all because if any sort of pictures of me when I was a baby or a kid there's always an ashtray next to me head or a cigarette burning or it's something about the idea of you know you used to go up to the hospital and people would be smoking in an hospital or on a bus or on a train or I remember when I first had a fag in front of me dad I was actually doing a thing called Brother Cadfile and I needed a chaperone with Derek Jacob and we flew to Hungary and I remember my dad bought me my first box of fags and I could smoke on the plane with him.

20:56And the smoking bit was just like a curtain, wasn't it? So whether you smoked or not, you was going to get a mouthful of smoke in your lungs. It's weird how I think that, you know, as human beings, why we didn't know smoking was shit back then. You know, like in the 60s and that, you'd have big billboards of doctors going, smoke Rothmans or it's good for you. You know, what was the matter with our brain then that we realised this thing wasn't good for us. Do you know what I mean? It's only now that you go, oh, my God. And I remember when the first band came in, you're not going to be allowed to smoke in pubs and everyone's like, yes, if that's going to work, no one's going to do it.

21:33Everyone's done it. Now it's a thing where if you do light up a fag, people really do because everyone's vaping now as well. The thing about me is I vape as well. Do you? But it's something that I need to give up. I mean, I just think every time I light one up, I go, what the fuck are you doing? Do you know what I mean? you're killing yourself so how many do you smoke a day do you think i went about 15 a day and what do you make because you strike me as someone who you believe in civil liberties like you believe in the power of the individual to do what they want so what do you make of kind of government initiatives to try and phase out smoking altogether it's fucking ridiculous i mean none of it makes sense anyway because it doesn't work does it so have you tried to give up smoking i did a couple times and I tried to replace it with vaping and then as soon as the vape broke I went and bought cigarettes immediately I mean I don't know if this is getting too deep and psychoanalytical but I wonder if there's part of it with smoking for you that is your connection to your past it's part of your kind of rootedness it's part of remembering where you're from and those interactions with your dad because so much of your life has changed in the most unanticipated way that maybe it's something that's important for you in that sense i don't know i don't know maybe it's so frustrating to me i've lived a life i've took a lot of drugs i've drunk a lot you know i have really lived a life and i really fucking lived it to the full i think it stems from just having that personality but also the film that made me famous was a film called human traffic which was all about hedonism and i was the nuttiest fucker in it the character that was the moth was the one that everybody loved just because he was the loon and there's a saying nice one bruv nice one brother that is still going on now it's the 20 years later they shut out festivals through 10 someone sent me a video glastonbury last year and people go nice one brother nice one brother no that's my that's my saying you know i have lived a life do you think you have to live up to the idea of danny dyer maybe yeah maybe there's been a bit of that i think with fame you can't prepare yourself for it there's different levels of fame you know I've been famous a long time now and that's why I had a lot of fear around my daughter becoming famous because there was a while when she was more famous than me when she won Love Island and I was like oh god you know she's got to roll with this now because you can't turn it off like a fucking tap but I feel that maybe my fame is I'm accessible to people I'm honest there's no TV fucking version of me I think you and that's why I think maybe I divide people as well because there's people out there that hate me fucking guts I suppose anyone with fame you're going to get that but either I'm a fucking legend and a hero or I'm a fucking disgrace I suppose I divide people but that might just be because of the nature of the way I speak or the way I present myself I don't know most people that I know that talk about you think you're a fucking legend so I just want to say that to you but I also want to ask whether you care do you care if people don't like you yeah well it's human nature isn't it I think I became famous and then the social media thing came in and then you know you know the whole twitter thing when people could just say the most horrendous things to you and I suppose coming from the background I come from I thought I'm not having it and so and of course they call it fishing don't they so they're therefore if you reply to someone being really nasty to you then they've they've won anyway because they put the hook out a new bit I never understood that as soon as I've got older I've actually realised and gone how much do I give a fuck about what people think about me who I'm never going to meet and also arrogant I might have think that everyone's got to love me I mean you know if you come into this industry you have to accept that people are not going to get it you know what I mean they really go for the fucking jugular some people and why I suppose because they can there's nothing social about social media I don't think you know it's it's really brought out the worst in human beings I feel and it's fucking dangerous and divisive I mean look at what's going on in the world at the moment with the atrocities and you're on one side or the other it's always one side or the other what fucking side you're going to pick when the fuck is humanity going to come together and we start looking after each other because we're fucking destroying the planet as well maybe fucking as a human race we've come as far as we're meant to come and we're all fucking just destroying ourselves now because where's the love gone?

25:59Where the fuck is the love gone? Yeah, and someone's default position being thinking the best and thinking with love rather than the default being hate and you're wrong. You're doing better than me. I hate your fucking guts and I'm going to tell you how much I hate you. And not only do I hate you, I hate your family. I hate everything about you. Can you stop pointing at me when you say that? I was like, that was like being in a Danny Dyer acting masterclass. No, but it is like, it's like, that's what it's like, isn't it? It is. With social media, it's like people pointing at you going, oh, fuck you, you're horrible.

26:29Hate you, hate what you do, you're shit. You know, and so I don't entertain it now. I just don't look anymore, really. I think, you know, I don't really give a fuck anymore. I think of the people that matter, directors, producers, they hire me, so they must know what they're talking about.

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27:52Tell me about your daughter, Dani, because I remember vividly that season of Love Island that she won and she came across so beautifully and as such a warm-hearted, honest soul. And clearly, as you just said, you were really worried about the fact that she was going to be at this stratospheric level of fame. How has she done since then with the fame thing? Well, when she first, I was father of the fucking year. I mean, it was a revelation to me. What a wonderful human being I'd brought up. Because I was watching it just like a viewer. They fuck off and that's it. You watch it every night. There's no contact from anybody.

28:29And I just thought, how's this going to pan out for her? Because I know she's got her own insecurities and I think that she was lost at the time. She needed some sort of validation about who she was. She'd just come out of a relationship and she was really heartbroken. I thought throwing her into the limelight is the last thing. And also she wanted to be an actor, and I thought that was going to affect all that. Anyway, I couldn't have wrote a better script for this kid. She was so honest, vulnerable. She got on with the girls. She got on with the boys. She wore a heart on her sleeve like I do.

28:59She's funny. She's witty. She's got everything going for this kid. And so I think she needed validation of who she was. I don't think she ever thinks she was going to win it, but she did. And then, of course, she came out. It was interesting because people like Margot Robbie and Eddie Redmayne was speaking about her in interviews. And I was like, wow. She's really... For some reason, that particular series reached everybody in the country. It was during the summer. It was the World Cup 2018. There was a real energy and vibe. And so when she came out, everyone was loving her and celebrating her.

29:36But I knew it was going to switch because it does turn. And it was when it turned. And you've got these fucking assholes. and they would just assassinate Danny every week and me as well, I'd get a little bit. With Danny, you were saying that she's got three kids now. Has she made a decision just to step back from it all a bit? Well, she found the love of her life. Jared Bowen, who's amazing, someone who adores her and worships her. That's all I want as a father. I just want someone to worship the ground that my daughter walks on and get her on the level that I get her. And I finally got that, you know.