Howard Antony on his 'Alan Jackson'
A Family Man Looks Back at his Walford Years
By Larry Jaffee
NEW YORK-When you first meet Howard Antony in person, you realise that his EastEnders alter ego Alan Jackson appeared much taller on the telly than he is in real life. But that's because his Walford better half Carol (played by Lindsay Coulson) was by her own admission "five-foot nothing." Howard was in town in early May visiting his mum, who recently celebrated her 80th birthday and who has lived in Brooklyn for more than 20 years.
He's pretty familiar with the U.S., and in fact, if it hadn't been for his audition for EastEnders some eight years ago, he might very well emigrated to be with his family.
EastEnders fan Bob Tulipan, whose business arranged for the actor's visa, recently contacted the Walford Gazette about the possibility of setting up an interview. The actor recently wrapped up working on his first American film, an independent production shot in California that is about to make the international film festival circuit in search of a distribution deal.
I show Antony a photo that the Walford Gazette ran of him years ago snapped by Brit teenager Darren Nelson at the rare mid-1990s EastEnders studio open house. "They asked me if I would sign autographs for an hour. When I got there, there was a queue down the High Street. There was about 13,000 people. I was there for four hours. It was my introduction to that whole kind of autograph thing. Wow. That's when I realised exactly how popular it was and what kind of attention we received."
Antony says he was "absolutely a fan" before he made it onto the show, but he never expected to land a role. "If you told me at the time that I was going to be in EastEnders as a regular character at any period of time in my life, I would have said you were crazy because it was never in my head that I would be in EastEnders. It was never part of my plan. It was never a goal in my life or an ambition, so when it happened it was a complete surprise."
Similarly, he chose acting as a profession almost by accident when a friend told him that in the mid-1980s a movie was being cast in east London and there might be a part for him. It turned out that master filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, who died a few years ago, was casting extras for his Vietnam film Full Metal Jacket. This film was shot on location, not in South-East Asia like Apocalypse Now (filmed in the Philippines, for example), but rather in a neighbourhood not far from what's supposed to be Walford, oddly enough.
Antony grew up in London, primarily the west London section Notting Hill. When Antony was 23, he followed up on a friend's suggestion that he go down and meet the casting director. "I just went yeah, yeah, yeah. I just forgot about it. About two weeks went by, and I got this phone call from the technical adviser of Full Metal Jacket. 'I've been given your name and number, and heard you might be interested in working on this movie.' I thought, 'okay,' I was really surprised. I went down to the East End.
"It was an old kind of gasworks, all these demolished buildings and stuff. And they had all these trailers there because they were in pre-production. They gave us pretend rifles that were supposed to be M16s, and we were supposed to pretend that we were in this hostile environment and could be under fire at any time. We had to go from point A to point B and run across this parking lot, and run straight at the camera and scream really aggressively like we were demented. I just said to myself, 'this is just like playing soldiers when you were a kid, right?' So I just did it. I didn't hear anything for four weeks, and then got this phone call, 'Stanley really liked you; he looked at the tapes and wants you to come down for a part in the movie. Are you interested?' I said, 'Well, yeah!' He said, come down to sign the forms. And that was it.
"Originally they said they'd need me only for six weeks, which transpired to six months. Because I wasn't featured that much, and I had this combat outfit, they said 'the film is in two halves, there's a combat section and a boot camp section. Stanley thinks you'd be a really good drill sergeant. You look really smart in the uniform. Do you want to audition for that?' And they cast me in that, so I actually ended up doing another six months for that. So I ended up working on it for a year. That was it. I was totally smitten by the movie thing."
Antony was to get a few lines that he had prepared using a quasi-American accent. After all, his mum was already living in the states.
Unfortunately, those scenes ended up not being shot because Kubrick decided they weren't needed.
Antony mentions that he was very upset four years ago when he found out that Kubrick had died. "I was coming back from Barbados. He kind of changed my life, you know."
Following the movie, Kubrick asked Antony whether he was going to stick with acting and suggested that he take acting classes. "He said, 'If I was you, I'd really stay in the business.'" The fledgling actor then went to drama school, after which he embarked on an acting career in the theatre for the next five years. "I always wanted to say thank you to him in some way or work with him again."
Fast-forwarding to EastEnders, "the thought of becoming a TV actor on the biggest show in the country-20 million two or three times a week. I think it took me the best part of a year to become more technically minded-know what camera to look at. There's never just one camera. Sometimes there's as many as four. You have to know which camera is doing what to give the best performance. You can give a really good reaction for camera two, but it's really camera three. It was little things like that.
"The executive producer once said to me, 'Howard, just think more technical.' And from that day everything just sort of made sense. That was great because you get the chance to practise your craft day in and day out. The only way you can do that is in a soap, it's ongoing."
When Antony started on EastEnders it was supposed to be only two years, to accommodate Lindsey Coulson's desire to stay on the show that long.
"It ended up being four years. When she first joined the show she told me she'd only do it for two years. I always knew she was going to leave, and she was gracious and polite enough to tell me she was going to leave before she even told the executives. When she told them, they didn't believe her- 'give her more strong storylines and more money'. But she wanted to do other things and not be typecast as this particular character."
Antony explains that the storyline regarding part of the Jackson family relocating somewhere north of Walford about four years ago for Billy's safety (after he witnessed a crime) was designed for Coulson's departure.
"I was always meant to go back." In fact, during Coulson's hiatus, Antony says he was asked to come back a year after he left, but following his new agent's advice he decided not to become Alan again. "They said the character is incredibly popular, and we are going to bring you back. I said to myself at the time that I had only wanted to do three years, so having done four I thought it might be a good time to see what the big wide world had in store for me. I was worried about getting typecast as well. I'd saved enough money, so I didn't really need to go back."
He points out that Coulson ended up returning for three months (this just hit WLIW, NY-area public TV screens in April 2003), to accommodate Bianca's exit. "That was really good stuff." When I pointed out that I hadn't seen the whole drama concerning Carol's new beau Dan, Antony courteously said, "I don't want to ruin it for you."
In retrospect, Antony now realises that "it wouldn't have done me any harm to have gone back." And even though it's four year (U.K. time) since Alan left the Square, there's no reason why he and Billy can't return. "Yes, [Alan] is still alive living somewhere in London."
He comments about Natalie Cassidy, who played his on-air daughter Sonia, "She's one of the best actors on the show. From Day One, she always had this maturity about her, and this appetite and desire to learn. When she was 16, I told her she was going to win an award for Best Actress in a soap, and she said she was just happy to be nominated. And she did win.
"I'm so glad she did because her mother died a few years later, but her mum saw her win that. Her mum used to bring her to the show because she was still a minor. I love [Natalie] dearly and she's a lovely person, and I think she has a wonderful future as an actress."
Antony had no problem playing a black man married to a white woman, and notes that in real life most of his relationships had been with other races.
"What you saw was part of my life any way," he says, adding that, like the fictional Jackson clan, he also grew up with siblings whose fathers were other than his own.
"Alan was so family oriented, but I liked that-a young black guy who was very responsible, mature. That was something that I was very comfortable with because it was something I grew up with to a point. To me, if you love someone you love everything about them. It's not 'I love you, but I don't love your kids'. It was something I was very glad to do. The whole black-and-white thing, I think we're at a stage now that people are more informed.
"I noticed in this country (U.S.) things have changed over the past 20 years. When I first came here 20 years ago, it was a different racial climate than how it is now when it's quite commonplace. We've had that England for 40 odd years.
"The whole point of a democracy is freedom of speech and freedom of action. Everyone should be able to choose who they want to be with. I don't think anyone should dictate whom someone should be with. It comes down to personal choice. I was raised in a way that I had that choice. There are good and bad in every race and that's how it'll always be. When I see racial intolerance and ignorance it just upsets me. One of the worst things that a human can do to a fellow human being is to reject that person or show animosity or be disrespectful to that person because he or she comes from a different racial background. And I don't mean that just from a black-and-white relationship. I think we should celebrate our differences."
Of his first experience working in California on an independently produced film called Seizing Me, his agent told him of the role: "It's a psychological thriller with elements of erotica about this woman who kidnaps three people and brings them back to her house. And they all have something that she needs. I got this scene and realised it was really good. I read the rest of the script and said to myself, 'This is going to be a really good movie." His first audition went really well.
"I was in my car and within five minutes driving on Santa Monica Boulevard near Sunset the casting people called me on my cell phone and said they really liked me, and could I come back tomorrow for a call-back. 'They want you to read with the actress playing the main character.' I said, yeah. I went back the next day and read for them."
Turning in a winning audition, Antony ended up landing the part, which he describes as "a transatlantic, he's more American than he is British. He's lived in the States for a while, but every once in a while you hear a little British out of him. The director said to me that I could play him any way I wanted. They asked if there was anything I needed to play this role, and I said, 'No. I'm an easy actor to work with, I don't make demands. I'm not Hollywood yet-unfortunately.'"
Elements of erotica make him a little nervous about his mum seeing it, but Antony says that "it's justified." Of the director, Antony says "he's very art house, very cutting edge." The producers are aiming for the North American premiere to be at the Toronto Film Festival. Seizing Me's director, Halfdan Hussey, had won an award for his first feature at the Venice Film Festival.
Four years after his EastEnders exit, Antony still thinks about how they could have taken Alan in another direction.
"Dramatically, what would have been interesting is if Alan got left with all the kids, to look after four kids. Of course, that would have meant something would have had to happen to Carol. There were various ways they could have dealt with that. They could have given me a new love interest. And there was the whole Frankie thing. Carol was no longer there, or it could have been someone else. There was so much mileage there. They tend to have these little family units, which is great because it's about these different families in this little community. They interact in the Square, and there's all this drama."
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