Martin Freeman - ‘We should be saying no to our kids’

0:00This month, we are partnering with Pink Lady Apples. Welcome to How To Fail, the podcast that believes you can't truly be successful unless you learn from failure along the way. Before we get started on this conversation, please do remember to follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode. People don't need to know everything about me, you know. They already know more about me than I wish they did. So I don't know why I'm doing this. Why am I doing this? I don't know, but I'm so grateful. For me, parenting was and is all of it. It's extreme love, it's extreme laughs, it's extreme affection and it's extreme frustration and anger.

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3:05That's 15 % off at masterclass.com slash fail. Masterclass.com slash fail. For the past 25 years, Martin Freeman has starred in a succession of big and small screen hits, quietly becoming one of the most sought after actors of his generation. His roles are notable both for the naturalism of Freeman's performance and for their cultural permanence. There's the put-upon Tim in The Office, or John, the mild-mannered porn actor in Love Actually, or Watson, the noble sidekick in the hit series Sherlock. But there's also Bilbo in The Hobbit, the stressed parent in Breeders, the Liverpudlian cop with personal problems in The Responder, and Everett K.

3:49Ross in Marvel's cinematic universe smash hits Captain America and Black Panther. Now Freeman returns to TV in a new Netflix Agatha Christie adaptation, Seven Dials, as the dogged superintendent battle. The astonishing variety of his roles has made it almost impossible for journalists to find a common thread. But for Freeman, it's quite simple. It comes down to the script and the writing. That's the beginning, middle and end of it, he said in a recent interview. His acting has earned him two Emmys and a BAFTA. And yet as a child, he was the youngest of five. Freeman originally thought he'd be a squash player.

4:32Watching one of his heroes, Michael Caine, in the movie Sleuth helped change his mind. And after a stint in youth theatre, he went on to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He hasn't always enjoyed the attention that fame brings him. Asked in 2019 what single thing would improve the quality of his life, he replied, a really careful lobotomy to switch off bits of my brain. Martin Freeman, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you very much. Thank you. Which bits did you want switched off? The inner cop in your head, I suppose. The thing that makes me go, yeah, but what if that's not true? Or do you really mean that?

5:17What are you, what are you doing? What's your motivation? You know, and I think, to be honest, I think it's good to question your motivations. I guess in both of our adult lifetimes, we've got very keen and comfortable with saying there should be no guilt. There should be no judgment. I fundamentally disagree. I think there should be guilt. There should be judgment. There should be accountability and including for self. So I do that to myself a lot. That doesn't mean that I'm a great person, but it just means that I go in circles of, I don't know I think I probably have an anxious mind I think and so I think there's always just this little tremor ticking around I think Has success or recognition helped that anxiety at all?

5:58At times Asking for a friend Yeah no probably at times yeah I think it has but not as much as personal happiness and satisfaction no I mean that sounds like a pat answer but it is true you know that all the people who say it doesn't solve your problems are of course obviously right because nothing solves all your problems but love is a good you know love is a good start to it and it that does more than yeah it does more than anything else I mean I for the last you know as you said last 25 odd years since I've been sort of known you know from the office times and I've kind of been a known person, not to everyone, but some people, I've been on a sort of mission to try to enjoy those parts of it, you know.

6:52And I still, I do struggle with it. I really enjoy work and I really enjoy, because I do for a living what I would do for free. That's an unbelievably fluky game to be in. but yeah the other stuff I sometimes frankly you can sometimes enjoy it for sure but um no I think it it plays havoc with my nervous system and I genuinely don't think I haven't found a way to to handle it properly I don't think you know well thank you for your honesty and saying that no none of that was true was it not okay well thank you for delivering another excellent performance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very natural. Yeah, yeah.

7:33One of the things that struck me when I was doing the research for this interview is what I mentioned in the introduction. I felt that journalists, when they wrote up interviews with you, were struggling to come up with an easy line that would explain your work trajectory. Right. And the one that many of them settled on was the idea of you as an everyman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a sort of, as the person who's the conduit for the audience. And I, the more I read about it, the more I felt how unfair that was. Because Bilbo's not an everyman. The astonishing variety of your roles would seem to contradict that.

8:13yeah i mean the the everyman tag happened straight away so like from you know the the office and love actually and probably hitchhiker's guide or i played arthur dent and stuff and you know what it's like in journalism and just in culture generally where you you say something you don't even mean it but you've heard it said four times before so you're just you're literally just being an echo yeah of the last person you heard speak so i think i think there was a bit of laziness with that and it made me because i am a reasonably angry person it made me pretty chippy about it you know and then of course the more chippy you are about something then you're just then you've lost because if you're the one going but i'm not on every you know like you just look then you become defensive martin dream and exactly exactly so it just becomes pathetic then you know i agree with you i do think you know i'm not making a claim for myself as the the most you know brilliantly versatile actor in the world but um i think it i don't think it's quite right that oh he's just the everyman thing if you look at the characters i've played um i don't think they all fit into that and i don't think they're all versions of tim from the office which basically people mean is they're all versions of you martin they're all versions of you know so i think what makes you a little bit chippy sometimes is well if you think this is easy you fucking try it yeah i'd love to see your go and i don't mean not everybody can do what i do i'm not even gonna what actors what good actors do um because there's a lot of juggling happening and the point is to make it look easy and the point is for me anyway has always religiously been to make it look natural don't ever get caught acting ever if you can avoid it and so people i think take that and think oh you're just you're not doing anything yes yeah i'm doing a bit tell me more about this anger because when you co-created breeders yeah that was an examination of a reality in parenting and you've spoken very openly about how sometimes you have regretted the anger but it's totally understandable when you're a parent and you're under an immense amount of pressure yeah is that one of the places that your anger has come out definitely yeah of course absolutely i think because I knew I had that in me, but it's never been tested in the same way that it is when you become a parent.

10:30I think because for me, parenting was, was, and is all of it. It's extreme love. It's extreme, uh, laughs. It's extreme affection and it's extreme frustration and anger. You know, it's, it's all of those things. And I think part of the reason that I can't, you know, can't speak for Simon and Chris, my collaborators on breeders, definitely part of the reason I wanted to make it was to make people not feel so bad you know it was just about what do you do as a human being when the rug is pulled from you and you think i know who i am and i think i'm i think i'm a pretty nice bloke you know that was my thing is like for 30 years i've been told i was a nice guy i'm a nice guy i'm a really good guy and then you suddenly find out maybe i'm not a really good guy because i'm i've got all this other stuff happening as well that doesn't negate everything else but it's definitely accompanies it i think it's honestly genuinely harmful what we do to ourselves in our culture in the last 20 odd years of thinking we've kind of convinced ourselves we try to convince ourselves that somehow parenting is a postcard or something it's just mad it's mad for me it's mad because anybody vaguely of my generation even vaguely of my generation knows that's not true because they know that their mum and dad if they had a mum and dad fucking screamed at them at some point many of them know that life was as chaotic or more chaotic than it was lovely.

11:52Now, I never made any bones about it. I'm very lucky. I always knew I was loved, and that was my power, really. I was supported, and I was loved. That meant everything to me. I know plenty of people for whom that was not the case, and I think that's coloured their life a lot. And I think the fact that I knew I was loved coloured my life a lot. But the idea that, well, this is my opinion. The idea that you don't say no to your kids, the idea that you don't shout at your kids it was like okay good luck with that good luck yeah really fuck it i wish you luck if i don't wish you luck because that's fucking mental i don't wish you luck with that it's doomed to fail and it should fail you should say no to your kids you know you should let them know that life's going to kick them in the ass in my opinion you know and and if i can help with that i'll happily do my bit to you know and that is a manifestation of love for me well i know so many parents and actually non-parents who felt very seen by breeders so thank you for your service and I kind of agree with you you know for so many years once we got smartphones and social media we were living under the shadow of curated perfection and now I think it's pivoted and it's almost like curated imperfection we're willing to share failures but only so far right Right, right, right, right, right.

13:10Yeah. And I think that your honesty goes a long way in attacking that. Yeah. I mean, for me, I try not to make any bones about it. I don't want to make myself impressive or special with the idea that, again, even when I say, I know I've got anger in me, I don't think that is interesting. It's not romantic. It doesn't mean I was a bad boy. It doesn't mean any of that shit. It just means I know that I have a ticking away, some sort of rage that is often an impotent rage, but it's fucking there. And certain things unlock it. But that's the other thing is that I'm not trying to sound interesting. It's just true.

13:53And there are many things I wouldn't talk to you about in front of a camera and a microphone because I'm also really private. or do I believe in it? I don't know if I believe in it, but I agree with it when people in a sort of public position try to demystify. I also understand when the old, the conversation where people say, stars used to be stars, you know, you didn't know shit about Cary Grant. And on the one hand, I think, well, yeah, that's, but that, but that was a lie because we didn't, you know, we were thinking they were amazing and of course they were. And on the other hand, And I think, yeah, fine.

14:30People don't need to know everything about me, you know. They already know more about me than I wish they did. So I don't know why I'm doing this. Why am I doing this? I don't know, but I'm so grateful. Maybe it's that impotent rage has just pushed you to the edge. I mean, I do, you know, because obviously I believe in talking and I believe in being honest, but that doesn't mean I have to splurge it all out. Yeah. I don't believe in splurging, but I believe in where it's appropriate and where the time and place is appropriate, we may as well have direct conversations. That's what Breeders was about.

15:05It wasn't even about just about screaming at your kids because if anyone who watches that show, there's as much love as there is swearing. You know, and the point is there is swearing and in the 2020s, that for some people is unbelievably brave or bold or wrong or something because it's going against the complete wave of culture, which is in our sort of showbiz world, in nice, arty, you know, liberal left-leaning world where I know people who don't disagree with their kids. I'm like, well, mate, okay. What do you think made you the person you are? Because your mum and dad were chaotic or you had a chaotic, i.e.

15:52real, i.e. being alive. It's called being alive, right? I think what we're doing, what we're in danger of doing sometimes now is taking away all the grit that makes people vaguely interesting or vaguely resilient. And that is lethal, man. I think what you're identifying is the difference between privacy and secrecy. So there are things that you understandably, and I completely respect it, want to keep private because that's a deal with you and your personal life and other people. Once it's out, it's out. Yes. and then there's secrecy or dishonesty which is about not naming emotions or feelings that we all have yeah yeah and that's what you do through your work and actually for you to act sufficiently well for us to recognize that or for you to create sufficiently well for us to recognize that in ourselves you also need to be private because people need to believe totally in your roles 100 that's what i like when i when i see really really when i see good pieces of work um just as a viewer and as a fan of them i'm seeing humans do stuff to other humans or things being done to people emotionally or physically or whatever it is um and i don't like being lied to and i think most of the time we are lying to the audience and about whether being more heroic than we would be or about being smarter than we would be or sexier than we would be or not being as scared as we would be all of that shit the vulnerability side of it that i think um is not attended to a lot of the time because things are just and i get it because you know what the business i'm in is i'm i'm not a documentarian it's artifice right it is you know but with within that please god hopefully we're getting to some truth yes and i think you can get to a really great truth through fiction obviously otherwise people wouldn't read novels or go to the theatre or whatever I think you can get to a great truth uh when it's done well that you you can't get anywhere else maybe even a documentary you know I realize that I've gone off on a tangent for many minutes already and could carry on like this quite happily but I have to ask you a question about seven dials oh yeah otherwise I'll get into trouble yeah so you play Inspector Battle.

18:08Now, was that enjoyable? Battle was very enjoyable. I didn't know of Battle before. Me neither. Because I'm not an Agatha Christie expert at all. And I read the script and I thought it's a really, really good, smart adaptation, modern without being too anachronistic, which I think is always the trade-off, I think, that you have when you have period stuff. How do we make this appeal to 2025? Oh, by ruining everything that made it good about About 100 years ago. You think a few things, I suppose, as an actor. Can I do it? Is it something I've done before? Am I going to enjoy it? Who's in it? You know, like, who am I going to be playing with?

18:45And all the parts felt right. Okay, let's get on to your failures. Your first failure is doing badly in your GCSEs. Yeah, that was a surprise to me at the time. Because I've never been academic. It will amaze you to hear. Well, it does surprise me. No, I'm not an academic person at all. At all. I'm interested in stuff and I'm not thick, but I'm into, I'm curious about things, but I'm, no, that wasn't my strength at all. Um, cause I was a smart ass and I was lazy. I was smart ass and lazy and easily distracted. So that was not going to point to it's Oxbridge for Martin. It just wasn't going to happen.

19:25You know, not only was it not Oxbridge, it wasn't even history, a good market history at GCS. Now I love history. I'm fascinated by history. I thought because you know I left school in 88 right so C and above was a good pass you know I didn't even pass art and I was good at art I thought I mean I can draw pretty well so yeah anything above C and above is what counts I got a C in a C and a B in English language and English literature or my mum would have told me about it and I've said the same thing to my I said the same thing to my kids if you don't pass English I've got nothing to say. You are English.

20:04You live in England, right? There are people... You haven't actually said that to your kids, have you? Yeah, of course I have. Of course I have. There is no excuse. You live in two houses full of books, right? You have two parents who talk to you a lot, right? We engage in conversation. If you can't pass English, that's really... It's just lazy. That's bad news. It is bad news. There are kids you go to school with from the other side of the world whose parents got here 15 minutes ago who speak a completely different language who have just passed English. You can pass English. What, do you think that's out of order?

20:40I mean, it's not for me to say much. No, it's just for me. Yeah, again, and anyone who does think it's out of order, that's your problem. No, you don't have to pass English, darling, just because it's the only language you... How old are your kids now? 20 and 17, yeah. Oh, so they passed English? Yeah, they did, yeah. That's a joy of relief. and RE that's the only other one I got I passed RE because I was interested in that and you were raised Catholic yeah so I found all that interesting so the things I you know the things that I passed I found I was interested in I liked English and I liked RE but the things I liked history I liked art didn't pass them sort of thought I'd pass geography didn't pass that I knew I wasn't going to pass physics or chemistry I knew I wasn't going to pass that And how did you feel when you got the results?

21:30Disappointed. Because I thought, that's a swizz. Surely I've done better than that. And I hadn't. I hadn't. And I knew it's part of it you can account for because you think, well, I'm lazy. I knew that about myself. And I knew I was unmotivated about some things. I knew I wasn't academically a striver. But I suppose I just thought, yeah, but I'm good at that. So shouldn't that just sort of happen? Shouldn't they just give me a GCSE? because look at that picture of Margaret Thatcher I did. Yeah. Next to a picture of Hitler with the dates. Did you do that for your Arch-UCSE? Yeah, I think I did, yeah.

22:07Edgy. Very edgy. Yes. And my art teacher said, Mr. Lemke, he said, because I remember like doing a picture of Margaret Thatcher, Adolf Hitler, I don't think, 1987, 1937. that was i don't know it was for my exam but that was part of my course i'm just that's the sort of shit i like to do yeah like so you know did the dates you decide yeah you just you be the judge yeah so i did that and and mr lemkin went that's not because he saw me drawing hitler he was like that's not very nice it's not meant to be nice it's meant to interrogate you I'm interrogating the viewer. The viewer. All of the viewers who came to my exhibition, yeah.

22:54I'm really interested by your childhood. It will not surprise you to hear. So, youngest of five. Yeah. I was raised first by my dad and then by my mum and stepdad. And I was born in Hampshire. Okay. But I grew up mainly, I left Hampshire fairly quickly and was then sort of suburbs. Tell me about your mum. my mum was uh i think a really fascinating wonderful person it's called philomena philomena rita norris was her maiden name and she was one of 14. wow she was a massive influence on my life i really really loved my mum a lot like and i think being the youngest as well i was the youngest by six years so i definitely had a lot of i was i was was the last one at home for a while everyone else left home you know reasonably like earlier than people do nowadays so i i had a real bond with my mum fantastic bond with my mum my dad my dad died when i was 10 i'm sorry uh thank you um so i never you know i wish i had got to more time obviously you wish you had more time with everybody but um i look him back now it's like i was a baby when he died you know like it was nothing but i remember him very well and it It was like we had a relationship, but that didn't mean I was able to be close to my mum.

24:16I just was close to my mum, yeah. She was a very, very loving, very adored her kids. And again, going back to what I was saying earlier on about the breeders side of things, I don't, I'm pretty sure no one ever laid a hand on me as a kid. No one ever laid a finger on me and they didn't need to. because if that cup went down like that, I'd be like, okay, let's pay attention now. We definitely weren't coddled. We were demonstrably loved and demonstrably fucking bollocked when the need arose. I read somewhere that, as you mentioned, your dad died when you were 10, but it took you a few years to process it.

25:08Yeah, I think it did. I remember going to the cinema to see Shirley Valentine with my first girlfriend, Michaela, in Teddington. Went to see the cinema probably in Kingston. Bental Centre. Yeah, you know it. I used to waitress there. Did you? Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah, because I was near there. Yeah, we went to see it and, you know, Shirley Valentine, which I loved, RIP Pauline Collins. And in the credits, there was, I can't remember, a crew member named Geoffrey Freeman, which was my dad's name. and something just slightly clicked in me it was like oh yeah I've not really and I was like 17, 18 then and I think I hadn't really dealt with it is the cliche I guess but because I think when I was 10 I didn't want to be pitied do you know I didn't because I was already I was in and out of hospital for various things as well dodgy hip asthma you know I was a kind of sickly kid and I was little right so you know i'm not a big person so i was little martin whose dad just died whose parents were divorced and that was relatively rare at that time about in other schools in catholic schools it was pretty rare for your parents not to be together and his dad's died i didn't want to be anyone's mascot or token so i think i would probably just yes go let's kick a ball about and get on with it you know um and so it probably wasn't a few years until a few years later i was I'm like, that's actually quite a big deal.

26:38And I'm allowed to think it's a big deal. Do you think all of that had any impact on your GCSEs and how much or not? No, I don't. I don't think so. I mean, other than I suppose it's impossible to say whether. No, I'm pretty sure it didn't. My mum and dad had split up when I was very young. So I'd had a stepdad for a long time. We had a stable, you know, we had a family life. And even though I never called my stepdad my dad, you know, he was always James, but he was a parental figure. Secondary to my mum, because she was the one who was doing the main stuff. But, you know, James was a good step-parent.

27:18I think that was the thing. It was not for me like the thing of academic excellence. The thing was, not even excellence, just not good. That was a surprise to me. And that's why I kind of count that as a bit of a failure. because if someone said but Martin you're not an astronaut well no of course I'm not an astronaut but I did think I would do better at that stage I guess it well I suppose it coloured things in then I went to Brooklyn's College in Weybridge to re-sit GCSEs to get enough GCSEs to do drama A level so for a year I re-sat GCSEs to get enough because by that time I thought I want to be an actor in the interim I'd found out that I don't really want to do a drama A-level because that's also academic.

28:06I like reading plays and I can write about them, but I'd rather be doing it. So in the interim, I found out I wanted to do a BTEC in performing arts. You get to devise, you get to act, you get to write, learn how to do the lighting board, the soundboard, your choreographs. It was a much more doing thing than a sort of observing thing. What was the first part that you played that you really felt, this is going to be me now? This is my life? I know it absolutely. It was in the autumn of 1988. I was in a youth theatre group in Teddington and we used to perform at Hampton Court Theatre, which was a tiny little theatre right near Hampton Court Palace.

28:52there was a weird sort of like an almost fairy tale theater that existed there that you get 100 people in it was a play called the roses of eam uh which was about a a true event that happened at a derbyshire village called eam where during the the plague of 1665 um in order to stop uh the plague from spreading so obviously it's spreading like wildfire it's spreading like the plague and then there was a fire the year after exactly so everything was fine they made a selfless decision to kind of uh lock themselves in to sort of well to do a lockdown really uh quarantine themselves so that it wouldn't spread anywhere else and which meant an awful lot of people died in a m i'm not going to heroic tale but i played uh a character called the bedlam a young lad who wasn't quite right let's say i suppose so physically and emotionally i was able to tap into something that for for some reason i found uh i don't say i found it easy but i found it but it felt comfortable uh because i'd had a sort of you know i'd had a dodgy leg as a kid so i sort of used that my sister laura had just had a baby and i sort of at my niece abby and she and so I kind of used that as well.

30:18It's not like I'm going to give a De Niro-like process to my youth theatre, but in my head, that's what I was doing. And I was good. I was good in it. I used to get so stressed planning holidays. Time away is so valuable and I'd panic about choosing the wrong destination, getting lost on public transport or feeling like I'd miss the heart of the place entirely. but honestly you can let all that worry go with Explore Worldwide, specialists in genuine small group travel. Their expert guides are incredible, they know the secret spots, the family kitchen serving unbelievable food, the tucked away markets and neighbourhoods that are hard to find and because everything is sorted for you it's ideal whether you're travelling solo or hoping to meet others who love the same kind of adventure.

31:09So dust off that travel wishlist and head to explore.co.uk. With more than 400 trips in around 100 countries, you'll have an amazing range to choose from without the overwhelm. So visit explore.co.uk, avoid any more holiday fails, and don't just travel, explore. This week on Lipstick on the Rim, we sat down with the one and only Rachel Zoe. And wow, this episode is a ride. We talked about everything, motherhood, divorce, finding herself again, joining Real Housewives literally overnight. And then she said this. Can I tell you a true story? In COVID, in the darkness of COVID, I had a cat eye every single day where nobody saw me, not one soul.

31:58And when I had COVID, not even my ex-husband saw me or my children. And you know what I did? I went in to my bathroom. I did a black liquid liner, put on lashes, black liner in the waterline, a full lip, did my hair and sat in my bed. And that is what I did. And I looked at myself and I said, you are not a well person. I said, are you fucking okay? You have 104 fever. You are like, you are like contagion right now. If you love fashion, beauty or Bravo, this Rachel Zoe episode is a must. It's out now. Your second failure. I'm so glad that you're going to talk about this. Is comparing yourself when you were younger to where your heroes were at that stage.

32:50Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just think it's such a human sensation that we are not doing as well as in any walk of life. Totally, yeah, yeah. So what stage are we talking about here? In your 20s or 30s? Oh, definitely. I mean, teens and 20s. Because again, my first and still favourite art form is music, right? And records. So that's my favourite thing and has been since I was five. the problem being if you're comparing yourself to your favorite sort of record makers you're fucked because everybody post 1955 anyway and probably even if you're including mozart pretty young you know that stuff happens when people are young a lot of the time most of the time there's not many rock and rollers who come out i'm 50 and i've just made my first it's a young man's or woman's game right so by the time i left drama school at 23 that is the age George Harrison was when they were recording Sgt.

33:46Pepper so I was like fuck I've got to get a move on and as it came down to my late 20s and 30s Marvin Gaye was like 32 when he made What's Going On he'd already been a star for 8 or 9 years so there's always this countdown, this clock and I sort of enjoyed it because I knew I couldn't compete with it but it was definitely there like I should get a move on. I mean, Michael Caine is a case in point because I think he did Zulu at 30. So that was like, and again, but in acting terms, 30 is still sort of young. It's not rock and roll. Acting and rock and roll, whatever people say is the new rock and roll, it isn't the new rock.

34:24Rock and roll is it. That's the only thing. Other stuff, you can be a little bit older and still be considered young, especially if you look young. So The Office came out when I was 29. So I just made the cut. It doesn't mean anything cosmically at all. But to me, in my little stupid head, meant something. Yes. And did you compare yourself to actors, the contemporaneous actors? I think I'm sure I did and I'm sure I do, if I'm being honest. Oh yeah, please be honest. I'm not going to name names. You don't have to name them. I'm not going to name names. But do you have a person who's like, oh, him again?

34:56No, I have people. It's plural. I do know that comparing stuff in a field which is only opinion, it's not football it's not we scored more goals than you so we won it's only opinion and taste right so you know luck of the moment you know sort of voting for BAFTA films then you vote for the academy films we know this is not quantifiable it's only what I like or what I don't like you know it's a fool's game but you can't help play it I think if you are alive yes do you know what I mean I think if you're being truly honest viscerally somewhere in you is going at the same time I know I can honestly say there's a list of there's a long list of people let's say because I'm not going to get you know Olivia Colman's part because she'd piss me off if I was she'd annoy me a lot because she'd be getting all of them but there's a long list of say blokes who I think no problem with you at all I'm delighted for you because I love seeing good things.