Kenny Dalglish & Asif Kapadia on Kenny Dalglish: An Empire Podcast Interview Special

11:36Asif Kapadia:Because I used to take it every Friday night when we were at home when I was playing for a little while the sports scientists would not be happy

11:44Chris Hewitt:to hear you say that it never did me any harm wasn't Peter Beardsley used to have a Mars Bar every game

11:51Asif Kapadia:yeah not sure that was the Mars Bar thing was something that a lot of them were using before the games right but I had this I never told anybody I just used to have my dinner on a Friday night in Marina at the Bottle of Iron Brew and and I had a bar of Carberry's Dairy Milk. And I gave Marina the same squares, short about three squares out of the big packet every Friday.

12:26Chris Hewitt:And I ate the rest. It worked. We're like gangbusters, clearly. It gave me something to blame. And that was it. So when was this meeting, this first meeting, in the Anfield boardroom?

12:39Kenny Dalglish:We've been trying to think about it, actually. So I would say…

12:43Asif Kapadia:Season before last.

12:44Kenny Dalglish:Do you think 22?

12:46Asif Kapadia:That's the season before last?

12:48Kenny Dalglish:Yeah, 2022. I think it was in the Champions League, and it was leading up to Liverpool getting to the final in Paris. Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure it was that season. It was 22, yeah. My memory was like a Napoli game or something like that, I think. Okay. And so the story goes is that there's a couple of producers and Paul Dalgleish, Kenny's son and Ben contacted the club and said, look, will anyone be interested in making a film at Kenny Dalgleish? Do you know any Liverpool fans that make documentaries? And supposedly somebody at the club, and I don't know who it was, said, well, there's this guy at Asif who really likes Liverpool and comes here.

13:27Kenny Dalglish:You might want to try him. So that's sort of how it came about. So they snuck me into the boardroom because I don't normally get invited to the boardroom at Anfield. Okay, yeah. And on the way in, I remember seeing Mo leaving. And I just said, I couldn't say anything. I said, Mo, I love you.

13:43Chris Hewitt:And he just walked past me and turned around.

13:45Kenny Dalglish:I went, okay, I'm in the boardroom at Anfield. My one and only time. And then I meet Kenny and we have a chat. And Marina was there and Kelly was there. And I spoke to Paul. And Michael Edwards was there. And I spoke to Michael Edwards. So, yeah. And it was kind of clop period. It was kind of peak clop era. Right. That was the initial meeting. that's how it came about and i thought okay and then films just take a bit of time to get up and running probably a year nearly goes by of nine months go by you have to raise the finance you have to get it all together start doing research and then and then the editor came on board and we basically had a year and a half of intense making of the film and so so kenny at that point

14:24Chris Hewitt:was it simply in terms of your involvement was it sitting down with asif and having a a chat with him at that point or did that come later? Like the big, the big sort of dig into your life and career.

14:36Asif Kapadia:He knew it. He knew it, you know, and he'd done his homework.

14:39Chris Hewitt:Yeah.

14:39Asif Kapadia:So he didn't need to dig too deeply. So he was just going,

14:42Chris Hewitt:you would just ask. I don't know. Okay.

14:45Kenny Dalglish:I think we did about three or four interviews.

14:48Chris Hewitt:Okay. That's not too bad.

14:49Kenny Dalglish:Did you say three or four times we met in Liverpool and then once in London? And we found like little podcast studios and recording studios, one in Toxteth one kind of near near the ground near the ground number one in London you came down to London we did one at Soho

15:05Asif Kapadia:I thought it was Soho Square yeah there's a studio

15:09Kenny Dalglish:in Soho Square exactly so that was it yeah every now and again we'd meet and we'd have a chat and then Kenny and Marina kind of gave us lots of personal photographs and cuttings and stuff

15:20Chris Hewitt:and there's like Christmas videos and all sorts of stuff yeah

15:23Asif Kapadia:and a bunch of VHS tapes

15:24Kenny Dalglish:you ransacked a bunch of VHS tapes that we digitized and then lots of the home movies come from there because that was the thing, we went through them and we were like, Kenny's not in any of this material and you realize, oh, Kenny's filming it all. Kenny's the one with the camera. And I love that moment when Marina says, Kenny, put the camera down. It's Christmas dinner, put the camera down.

15:44Chris Hewitt:There's a bit where I think you're opening Christmas presents or doing crackers and you say behind the camera, Paul, watch out, you're going to spill your soup. And he does that. He literally pulls the cracker and his soup goes flying all over him.

15:56Asif Kapadia:Have you ever tried to clean tomato soup off the carpet?

16:02Asif Kapadia:No, I think it's important for anybody to show, I mean, obviously, whatever your sport was, but to show the family as well. That's usually important. And for herself, we've been, I mean, we've been lucky. As I said to Marina, it's the best fiver I've ever spent. so

16:25Kenny Dalglish:on the fish and chips

16:26Chris Hewitt:and taking her out that night no

16:28Asif Kapadia:on the wedding certificate that's right yeah

16:32Kenny Dalglish:and then

16:34Asif Kapadia:we've got Kelly and Paul Lindsay and Lauren yeah and each each and every one of them do something that's really brilliant you know the way that they've developed themselves has been really creditable to her mother. And her mother brought them up because I was working. And she's done a magnificent job with them. She just fell down a wee bit trying to bring myself up.

17:05Chris Hewitt:I'll get there eventually. Yeah, she didn't say no to the iron brew and the dairy milk, which is...

17:10Asif Kapadia:No, no, she's from Glasgow. She knows that.

17:14Chris Hewitt:Listen, that sounds like the perfect meal to me. It really does. But you said whenever this was first broached to you that you knew of Asif's previous past, the documentaries he'd made on Senna and Amy. Had you seen those documentaries? No. The things he had seen? Maradona, no. Okay.

17:33Asif Kapadia:The kids played a big part. The kids played Paul. Paul knew a little bit.

17:38Kenny Dalglish:Paul liked Maradona a lot, and Kelly liked Amy. And so I'd spoken to Kelly when Amy came out. I remember we swapped messages on Twitter back in the day. so they I think they probably had a word with dad because I was wondering if Maradona has sealed the

17:55Chris Hewitt:deal in a way because that's again such a great football documentary but about so much else as

17:59Kenny Dalglish:well that's his favorite of my films so I think that that's where the the family say dad just do

18:05Chris Hewitt:it well Kenny this is a film podcast I'd love to ask you about football uh non-stop but we are a film podcast so I have to ask you are you a film fan at all not at all I'm not a big movie fan

18:21Asif Kapadia:if I'm watching the telly invariably it's a football that's on I mean that is a fact isn't it

18:28Kenny Dalglish:wherever I've seen Kenny wherever we may be he'll be paying attention to a game whatever it is somewhere and I'll say that's exactly the same with Diego when I interviewed Diego sometimes I was doing interviews with Diego Maradona and he's watching a game while I was interviewing him on a big screen while we're chatting and so when we met in Liverpool just recently to do like a Q &A that was filmed for the DCP when the film comes out you were watching a game on your phone then weren't you so that's what you do you're a football nut.

18:59Asif Kapadia:Well can you not take a hint?

19:04Kenny Dalglish:No but it is

19:06Asif Kapadia:that's what I watch I don't the no I wouldn't say if somebody said what's your favourite movie or actor Yeah, yeah, yeah.

19:17Chris Hewitt:I'm really intrigued by the structure of the documentary as well, because it goes up until the moment that, Kenny, you resigned from Liverpool in 91, and obviously focuses on Hillsborough. In particular, Hillsborough is the last 20, 25 minutes of the movie, the impact it had on you and on everybody as well. Asa, first of all, can you talk about that? Because obviously there's huge swathes of Kenny's life and career that come after that, that you don't focus on.

19:52Kenny Dalglish:Yeah, I mean, that's a big part of the job of the director is to work out, well, who are you making a film about? What kind of film are you going to make? What's your style of directing and storytelling? And then also you deciding the framing. And it just felt for me that that's a chapter, a big chapter that starts with Glasgow and starts with Celtic and then comes to Liverpool and then Liverpool as a player and then Liverpool as a player manager and then Liverpool as a manager and then within that we do have Heysel and we do have Hillsborough and everything that comes from Hillsborough and the moment when Kenny said he was leaving I was a student then and I was in Wales and I remember that day very clearly hearing the news and turning on the television and seeing the live kind of report on the news and like the it was quite shocking actually when that happened and then as we were making the film kelly kenny has this amazing career does it again with blackburn yeah you know comes back to liverpool and just keeps coming back and when people are in trouble and in need kenny steps up but it felt like that's almost another film when he came back Like for me, you know, that's the director's job in a way.

21:05Kenny Dalglish:And in a way I thought, well, this film takes the period from literally like Roy the Rovers and Panini stickers and, you know, film Super 8 films. You know, a lot of that footage in Celtic has never been seen before. Wow. Like we found film footage that no one's seen and we got it all digitized. You follow it through to Liverpool and then after that we get the Premier League. After that we get the Champions League. So that is really what comes next. digital, Murdoch, Sky, all of this stuff comes in. And that is kind of recorded. That is talked about. And this is the period where people seem to try to just erase the records, erase the goals, erase everything that happened.

21:47Kenny Dalglish:So like when you see a list of the greatest goal scorers,

21:49Asif Kapadia:Rush doesn't get a mention. A load of rubbish.

21:52Kenny Dalglish:So I'm like, I'm going to deal with a period that everyone ignores. Okay, I'm going to show that because that's my period growing up. And I thought that felt the right thing to do in a way.

22:03Chris Hewitt:But Kenny, it means that the last 20-25 minutes of the movie is focused on Hillsborough. Were you at all nervous about digging back into that and digging back into your feelings at the time and how that impacted you? Because it did obviously have a huge impact on you. yeah but I wasn't

22:22Asif Kapadia:I wasn't afraid to go back visiting what happened there I mean if if people think I was suffering I wasn't suffering a fraction of what the families were suffering they were the worst they were the ones that were more affected by it than anybody and as I've said before that's for us they were supporters of Liverpool Football Club but this time Liverpool Football Club had to be supporters of the Hillsborough family to help them so that was that was what we we tried to do and that's that as best we could before we got that pretty prominent before we went back into playing football and when we went back into playing football they were never far away from our minds and that year we won the cup which I think was that for the particular reason at Hillsborough that was the most successful thing we could have done that was the greatest thing we could have done we get beat on goals with Arsenal who won the league which is fine it's not to say we didn't try to win the league or we didn't want to win it yeah we did but winning the Cup final was a great I think a great achievement because of what it meant to so many people

23:48Kenny Dalglish:especially the families of housework i just wanted to kind of say something on that which is like so this is where this kind of the this is all happening up in liverpool i'm growing up in north london i'm watching a lot of this on television or listening to on radio reading about the paper same and then i become a film director and then i get a chance to tell this story and i feel like actually having made lots of documentaries where i'm interested in characters and people but also the environment and and the media and the social setting and the politics of the time So for me, this became a way to also deal with Hillsborough as a fan from afar, who sees a miscarriage of justice, sees what the government, sees what the police, see what the authorities are doing and the football authorities, two ordinary people who are suffering and blames them for something.

24:35Kenny Dalglish:So for me, it's like I felt this anger and it was so upsetting from afar. I wasn't there. My friends were not there. I didn't experience it. so to have the opportunity later to tell a story which starts off as one type of film and then develops and then becomes a very important part but continues to be about the character of kenny and kenny's position for the people for the community for the the city the fans but also for everyone who's ever been to a football game who now feel safe to take children something awful has happened and those people were blamed for what happened to them but that entirely change football and that's why they decided well we'll just pretend football began now so that for me is quite i'm interested in this stuff and i wanted to make a film that talked about this and showed this for the generation not only people who didn't know kenny as a player but kenny as a man but also the injustice that continues when i go to stadiums and i hear people singing yeah and chanting and you're going i can't you don't know what you're saying and you see things on social media or fans abroad who've no idea what they're talking about kind of saying things about Liverpool fans and you're like almost as a reflex if I can do something to for the family as a fan as a filmmaker from afar if I can do something that helps people understand better and tells them to stop doing what they do but also for the families to feel people believe them and their story is not going to be forgotten I mean that's where filmmaking can come in that's where these worlds of football and cinema and filmmaking join up and for me and so it was an important moment of British history that I kind of felt like I wanted to put onto the screen and make a film about.

26:22Chris Hewitt:And there can be a danger I think as well, we're now about 36 years away from Hillsborough, there can be a danger that it begins to fade in people's minds, obviously there's a generation growing up who never who won't know what Hillsborough was, who won't know what happened at Hillsborough, Kenny you were there, you and I saw it on TV

26:37Kenny Dalglish:We had a screening for Hillsborough, the survivors we did a screening and you came in and it was so emotional i mean i could not i talk non-stop right i could not speak afterwards it was so all of the family members there up in liverpool had lost a son or a father or a brother or a friend or a mom you know they'd lost someone everyone in the room and it was they were amazing they really were very supportive they loved the film like don't change a frame and it was really important for us to do that one of the people came up to me said their child really didn't know their dad because they were so young when their father died at Hillsborough that they now are older watching the film and they can show it to their kids and say, this is what happened to your father.

27:26Kenny Dalglish:This is why you don't have a grandfather. This is what happened. And this is how the establishment dealt with it. This is what, you know, and it's quite hard to keep talking about something. so in a way sometimes films can do the work for you yeah absolutely and make sure people don't forget and also globally people will see this film and understand what happened you know so that's that's my part of it that's where i come in um to tell the story in a particular way and to show just let the audience see what happened and understand you know how awful this was and there have been historically lots of terrible miscarriages of justice and this is one of the worst that has happen in this country.

28:06Chris Hewitt:And just very, very quickly to wrap up, I mean Kenny that must be very important to you to know that or gratifying to you to know that people are going to see it and understand the importance of Hillsborough the significance of Hillsborough.

28:20Asif Kapadia:Yeah, the only unfortunate thing is the way that Hillsborough is portrayed is perfect for the families but there is no recompense for the people who caused it right? they told lies about the smell in a drink. They told lies about being in pubs coming down. They told a pack a pack of lies. Yeah. And every single one of them who were in the establishment got off with it. Yeah. It was disgraceful. We, as a football club, had a role to play in it because it was our game. But also, they had no disrespect whatsoever for the people who had lost lives family members the whole of it so as you do very well in Liverpool we try our best to be inclusive players involved directors involved the families involved and to be fair the majority by far the greater majority of football fans played homage to the families it doesn't help bring them back but at least a geysier wee bit of encouragement about the general public but know the general public that were in important positions when that happened

29:47Chris Hewitt:there's a moment in the film where you talk about how difficult it was to hear You'll Never Walk Alone for a while after that now this is for both of you what does that song mean to you? When you hear You'll Never Walk Alone now what does that mean to you?

30:06Asif Kapadia:Well it's a song it sang at weddings and also sang at funerals. For me it'll always be iconic for Liverpool Football Club it's synonymous with Liverpool Football Club and for Celtic Football Club coincidentally and that was the first game we played back so there's always that memory for you but the memory the song I think it's fabulous the way they sing it before the games and I think it's for me it's something that it has its meanings but also it has the importance as well and it really means as much as any other song for myself indeed and Asif

30:53Kenny Dalglish:I mean I can't really say more than what Kenny said but I'm like as a fan who goes there you know i get really emotional when i sing that song in the stadium every time and then you know sometimes you're there and you've just witnessed an amazing match and when it because it gets sung at the beginning gets sung at the end just before the ending of the game and you know i'm i love it you know i'm in tears but i like it in the stadium i have to say it's one of those things like when you're there and you're experiencing your partner crowd and you have your scarf and you're holding it up it's beautiful you know so it's very special it's really music and singing collectively and Just being in a crowd with 60 ,000 people.

31:31Kenny Dalglish:It's so special, that feeling. And actually, one of the voices in the film talks about that kind of feeling of community. A lot of people don't have that experience of being part of something like that, where you go and there's like 60 ,000 of you, 50 ,000 of you all collectively feeling something. It's beautiful.

31:48Chris Hewitt:Kenny, Asif, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much, Lee, for your time.

31:50Asif Kapadia:Thank you very much.

31:51Kenny Dalglish:Thank you.

31:52Chris Hewitt:Okay, that was Asif Kapadia. And I can't believe I'm saying these words. Kenny Dalgleish on the Empire podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I was mildly levitating out of my body, but I think I managed to keep a lid on it. Kenny Dalgleish, the movie, is out today and tomorrow, as I said earlier, in cinemas around the country and then on Prime Video from November 4th. It is obviously one for Celtic and Liverpool fans, but I would recommend it for all football fans. And beyond that, as a portrait of a man touched with genius, but one who has remained utterly grounded throughout his career and life. If you're interested in psychology and how people can stay humble at the height of their success, then this is one for you as well.

32:34Chris Hewitt:There are more interview specials coming your way very, very soon. If you're a fan of K-pop Demon Hunters, we've got one that'll be right up your street. And also the regular Empire podcast comes out every Friday. If you don't already listen, do listen. It is an absolute ton of film-related fun. Okay, that is enough for me. Finally, I'm off to get a big old bottle of Iron Brew and a massive bar of dairy milk for my breakfast. Hey, if it's good enough for King Kenny, it's good enough for one of his loyal subjects. Thanks for listening. See you next time. You'll never walk alone. Bye.