EXCLUSIVE Leslie Grantham Interview
'Dirty Den Can't Go Back a Third Time'
By Larry Jaffee
PHOTO: JULIE GRANT - GorgeousGrantham.com
Without a doubt, Leslie Grantham's portrayal of Den Watts, the first owner of the Queen Vic, is one of EastEnders' most memorable characters.
He mouthed the show's very first words, "Something stinks in 'ere!" as Den, Ali and Arthur broke into an Albert Square flat to find Reg Cox dead.
While Grantham left EastEnders in the late 1980s and went on to play characters in numerous other U.K. television series as well as regularly working the British theatre circuit, it's his "Dirty Den" that resonates most. Women wanted to be with Den, and men wanted to be him.
Grantham reprised the Den role in 2004 for 18 months. His second go-round on the show was blemished by an unfortunate Internet sex incident, detailed in his recently published autobiography, Life and Other Times (Timewell Press). The book also goes into great detail about his continued remorse after accidentally killing a German taxi driver while he was in the British Army. He learned to act in prison while serving 11 years of a life sentence for murder, and was released at the age of 29.
Timewell's publicist sought out the Walford Gazette for a telephone interview that recently took place at 5:30 a.m. Grantham started the conversation by apologising: "Sorry about getting you up so early."
WG: That's okay. I make exceptions when I get to talk to somebody I've admired for a long time. We were actually supposed to meet a few years ago when I was at the studio but the publicity department could not get it arranged.
GRANTHAM: I can't remember now what happened. My brain's dead. I'm travelling around the country doing a book signing, so I don't quite know if it's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, or Thanksgiving. WG. When I first became hooked on EastEnders, I immediately felt that the Den character was sort of a Humphrey Bogart-type character.
GRANTHAM: Well, you flatter me, Larry, but thank you.
WG: I'm serious about that, and it was interesting to me that later you played his Casablanca character in the West End stage production of Rick's Bar.
GRANTHAM: You know, I'm a huge Humphrey Bogart fan. The film was based on the play Rick's Bar. It was tremendous for me because I know I always felt that Bogart or Rick is actually akin to, if you like and it should sound very blasphemous, but he's the sort who wants to save the world. So he has a bit of Jesus Christ in him in the fact that he sacrificed himself for love, and especially when he helps the young Jewish refugee to get the exit papers to get out of the country.
WG: Another thing about Den and Angie in EastEnders: they reminded me of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
GRANTHAM: That's very much how [series co-founder] Julia Smith saw it. I saw it a bit more like James Cagney and Jean Harlow in Public Enemy when he smashed the grapefruit in her face. That's the sort of thing that Den would do. You know, it's sort of unpredictable.
WG: By the way, I had met Anita Dobson a few years ago after a play that she was doing. I always wondered whether the BBC might have wasted the Den comeback, and they should have brought Angie back at the same time.
GRANTHAM: Yes. The trouble is that the BBC, unfortunately, is not in tune with its audience. The fact is that the viewing figures are possibly the lowest they've ever been at the moment on EastEnders. People are saying to me everywhere I go around the country, "Oh, hurry up and get back in there and sort that lot out again." You know, the fact is I've been killed off twice—you can't go back a third time. They're getting rid of Wendy's Pauline. Besides Dot and Pat, there's not one stable character that the audience of all ages actually identifies with. It's sad. I mean Ian Beale is not a character that the audience actually warms to because he's never had a rock-solid basis. They tried to make him Dirty Den. They tried to make him J.R. from Dallas. There's no dependability in his character. He's very, very flighty. And the audience wants someone rock solid. Whether they're evil or whether they're good or whether they're in between, the audience identifies with someone who has a true purpose. It's not sour grapes. And I honestly believe that some of the actors in EastEnders at the moment — the full gamut from A to Z— really don't know anything about their characters, and the audience actually can't keep up with the changes of their characters.
WG: What do you think [EastEnders founder] Julia Smith would have said if she saw what happened to her creation?
GRANTHAM: I think she'd be turning in her grave now. I mean I have tremendous respect for the lady. I mean she — and also Tony Holland — what made the Julia Smith and Tony combination so good was the fact that Julia had been working on the BBC on things like The Railway Children, and daytime television, so she understood about making quality television. And this is in the days when the BBC really was the best broadcasting company in the world. Tony Holland was an actor who could write. So he understood acting. He understood how actors work. It doesn't matter how good a script is on the paper, if it doesn't go from the brain to the tongue, then there's something wrong, especially when you've got a quick turnover. And what's happening now on the show — this is when I went back — the writers don't meet the actors. You got hooked on EastEnders, and you do this wonderful Walford Gazette, which is a brilliant, a brilliant idea and a brilliant conception. It's very well written. I'm sure, and please correct me if I'm wrong, ahm, I'm sure that you've got a literary background of some sort.
WG: I'm a journalist, actually.
GRANTHAM: So, therefore, you didn't suddenly go, "Oh, I love EastEnders. I'm gonna now churn out a paper every week." The fact you have a journalistic background helps you understand your market, what you're gonna write about. Otherwise, it turns into a National Enquirer–type newspaper, doesn't it?
WG: Exactly. In fact, over the years we've interviewed or colleagues more than 75 of the cast members, many of whom would not give interviews to the U.K. newspapers for the reasons you just said.
GRANTHAM: That's good. So that's what I'm trying to say, going back to you, is that Tony Holland understood actors and understood writing. A lot of these writers in the beginning were ex-actors. So he nurtured them. He taught them. Even if their scripts weren't very good, he said, "Listen, now the basic premise there..." and he would spend time going through it. Now the script editors on the show really are glorified secretaries. Anyone can read a script. Anyone can write a script, but the point is it's the finished product. It's like having a Rolls-Royce with a Suzuki engine. You know, it's all style over content, and that's the trouble with EastEnders at the moment. Even when Den went back, he'd suddenly gone from being a ducker and a diver. He's slightly on the edge. He'd do a deal here and do a deal there, and it always sort of ends up coming back on him. He never really wins. And when he came back, they turned him into some Machiavel-lian gangster that had a deep side. Den's problem was he was a big fish in a little pond. And, that was all it was. If he had a load of dodgy or snide watches for sale, they would always end up going wrong. So in the end he'd have to give back any money that he made out of it. You know, he was just a guy who ducked and dived. And suddenly he came back and he was some sort of big gangster. He never was. He wasn't a Mitchell either. He was just a guy who lived on his wits.
WG: Any regrets about coming back?
GRANTHAM: No. The only regrets coming back was that the scripts didn't actually live up to the promises made. I originally came back just for the 20th anniversary. When Louise [Berridge, the EastEnders executive producer who convinced him to come back] was gone, it was pointless staying. I've written my book, so at the moment I'm travelling the country publicising that. Everyone tells me that they miss me in the show. And maybe that is the regret, that I've actually let them down. I think they expected a new dawn of EastEnders, and it never happened.
WG: Were you surprised at how much things had changed when you came back? I mean obviously there were only a few familiar faces.
GRANTHAM: I think I was. It was lovely to see Wendy and Letitia [Dean— Sharon] obviously, and also meet Nigel Harmon, who was playing my son, as well as June Brown (Dot Cotton), Pam St. Clemens (Pat). There were some mates I'd done television shows with like John Bardon (Jim Branning), Derek Martin (Charlie Slater). Twenty-five years ago, Larry, if we'd have been having this conversation and you'd have said to me, "British television is the best in the world and American television is rubbish," well, I would have said, Yeah, you're probably right. Now you'd have to go American television is knocking spots off everything around the world, you know, whether it's 24, Lost, Law & Order, CSI. It's because of the quality of the scripts, the quality of the acting, and the casting is superb. We have American comedies. We have Everyone Loves Raymond, The King of Queens, and Seinfeld and all these sort of things, they're all on at a ridiculous time over here, 9 in the morning. Our own British drama or comedy is on at night, and it's not a patch on the American stuff. Maybe you'll go to me, "Oh, no. We think we prefer such-and-such; we think the American stuff rubbish." But it isn't. At the moment, I'm a great Law & Order fan and now your Jerry Orbach is sadly no longer with us. That's the sort of show I would love to get in, much more than doing British drama, because British dramas are only style over content. There's no meat to it.
WG: Had you ever tried to work in the States?
GRANTHAM: I did. But there are too many good actors out there. I'm not gonna rock the boat. If I come over, I'll just be hanging around the pool all day. If you're talkin' about the film stars, you know, sadly, there are no more Bogarts or Cagneys, but you do have Hackman, Eastwood, De Niro, Pacino and James Woods, you know. I did a series called The Paradise Club. Someone said, I was sort of England's answer to Jack Nicholson, and someone else said, "No, I think he's England's answer to James Woods." And I took both those things as a compliment. Well, if you've got the original, why would you want some peanut like me, you know? It's up to you, Larry. If you get around those casting directors and you say, "Hey, we've got this guy Leslie Grantham. He'd be fantastic." (Laughs)
WG: Okay. I'll see what I can do.
GRANTHAM: All right, mate.
WG: Let's get to the book a little bit. Had you thought about writing this book previously?
GRANTHAM: No. Everyone has said to me over the years,"You really should write the book," and I went, "No, no, no." I wrote it basically as therapy really. I've got 60 years of craft inside my head, and I put some stuff down on paper. I was doing a tour with an actor who I was sharing a cottage, and he said, "Hey, this is really good. You should put it into a book." Then someone else read it and said, "Look, I'll introduce you to someone." My old agent introduced me to a publisher, who said "Listen, I think this is brilliant. Why don't you write it?" So I did. I wrote 327,000 words. I got rid of all the boring bits and I just left the not-so-boring bits. I've tried to be as honest and truthful in the book as I am in my acting. And I learned that from probably one of the greatest American actors of all time. I was very fortunate to meet James Cagney when he doing a terrible film called Ragtime in England. And I said, "Mr. Cagney, Mr. Cagney," and he said he's had a long day filming. And I said, "Well, I'm a drama student." And he said, "Acting is about walking through the door, planting your feet and telling the truth." And I learned more in that that one sentence than I did at three years at drama school. I mean that's stayed with me the whole time, and if someone as wonderful and iconoclastic as Cagney says that to a peanut like me, I've got to take it onboard. And hopefully I have.
WG: I wanted to mention to you some of the people you talk about in your book that I know personally. For example, I had a very close relationship with Gretchen Franklin.
GRANTHAM: Ah, a lovely lady.
WG: She was sort of the British gran that I never had.
GRANTHAM: Yeah, she's one of the loveliest people I've ever worked with. And I used to take her backwards and forwards to — to work every day, and she was just a joy to be with.
WG: When my son was born and we named him Jake, Gretchen wrote me a letter and had mentioned to me that you had a son named Jake as well.
GRANTHAM: My first first television job was something called Jake's End, but that's not why we named him that. My eldest son is Michael, but he's called Spike. Jake, I just thought was such a lovely name. And when you look it up in the baby book, it says, "the follower." Well, he came second, so it was quite apt really. And I've got a third son called Danny, who is just a joy; he's got Downs syndrome — he's an absolutely wonderful child.
WG: And another person in the book I've interviewed was Matthew Robinson (former EastEnders executive producer and director).
GRANTHAM: He saw me in a play that he'd written, and then he cast me in Doctor Who. And then he obviously snapped me up for EastEnders. We still keep in touch. He is a very creative person, and I'm sure that he should be running a television company rather than sort of working for one, if you understand what I mean.
WG: Getting back to EastEnders, for the scenes that they had to shoot in prison, to what extent did you inform the writers about the way it should be done because you know from first-hand experience.
GRANTHAM: Ah, yeah, I think, well, Bill Lyons wrote all the [prison] stuff. Bill and I were very close. He was a child actor, and then he got into writing. He used to come and ask me when we were doing certain scenes. "You know, I've written this scene. I'm not quite sure." He's a very giving writer, a very good writer, but he said, "Look, I'm sure you can make it better," which was quite flattering. So I would look at it and say, "Well, Bill, I think we need to lose that line." So he used to chat to me all the time, and he did say, "Look, Julia's asked me to ask you would you mind if you did some stuff in prison?" I said, "No, I don't mind at all." I think if I hadn't had such a big workload, he probably would have picked my brains really.
WG: Another person I know pretty well is Wendy Richard. Did she ask for any advice on what it's like to finally leave EastEnders?
GRANTHAM: We've been chatting for a while, and she was getting unhappy the way it was going. And I said, "Wendy, you don't actually need to be in the show. You know, if you feel that you're unhappy, you're a certain age now. You've had health scares. You know, just take some time out. You know, it's not as if you're short of a few dollars, Wendy?" And she said something very apt to me. She said, "Once you'd gone (editor's note, referring to Leslie leaving a second time)," she said again, she said, "I knew that it was — it was pointless staying." She wasn't enjoying it, and she was enjoying it when I came back. And a lovely lady is Gary Oldman's sister, Laila Morse, who plays Mo.
WG: Yeah. In fact, Wendy helped secure an interview with Laila that was in my last issue.
GRANTHAM: Yeah, and, you know, Laila's saying the same thing. She's doing it because she enjoys the show and she's doing it for fun and for remuneration. But she said, you know, "When you came back, it was fantastic," and we got on very well and we've become great mates. She said, I used to love sitting in the green [room] with you. We'd just have a laugh all day. I speak to Laila once or twice a week. She's such a lovely lady. And when I had the book launch party, she and Wendy came. They would come down to see me in plays and pantomimes and stuff like that.
WG: You also had a close relationship with Julia Smith.
GRANTHAM: I was fortunate enough to see her just shortly before she died. She came to see me in a pantomime in Richmond, and she said that she was having a yearly check-up at hospital soon. And it wasn't long after that that she went. So it was very sad, a loss for me because although I only worked with her for a short period of time we did become mates. As you said about Gretchen. I think Julia became a sort of surrogate mother to me, you know?
WG: I had a theory about what happened in your dressing room, which you deal with pretty explicitly in the book. It reminded me of Pee Wee Herman, the American actor — how he wanted to get rid of that kid show because he knew it wasn't who he really was and he went into that adult theatre.
GRANTHAM: No. I think mine's slightly different. The thing is that I had a stalker for years. The more and more I tried to get away from her she became so bitter and twisted. I only ever met her once. It wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing. I'd been in conversation with someone for a long, long, long time, but in the end it became a stupid event. It was totally stupid; it was entrapment, I think the press knew that they wereon a sticky wicket. They then came up with several other people out of the woodwork who I was supposed to have had an affair with, which was totally untrue. But you can't sue for one without dragging the other thing up. And that would then turn into a Gillian Taylforth situation (the EastEnders actress who played Kathy, and unsuccessfully sued a tabloid for libel). Gillian never told a lie in her life. She's just a straight working-class girl, very, very, straight. She was always late in EastEnders and Julia finally said, "One more late arrival and I will sort of suspend you or spank you." Well, the very next day Gillian came in late and we said, "Oh, tell her your car broke down or someone rear-ended your car." So we rehearsed it all with her. She went down to Julia, and Julia said, "You're late." And Gillian said, "Yes, I know. I overslept." (Laughs) So what did Gillian in on her libel case was the fact that they brought out this silly little girl's video that she did at something when she was 18, and that's what swung the case.
So you can't win, you know, and it was a stupid thing that I did, but it wasn't anything other than me sort of thinking that some 23-year-old was marvellous. But that's not the reason — contrary to popular belief — I got sacked. I actually went back to EastEnders only for 18 months. The option was on my side. I decided the way the show was going, it wasn't worth me staying. And I wasn't enjoying it, Larry. I was leaving home at six o'clock in the morning, getting to work at half past seven, quarter to eight, leaving at half past eight at night, getting home at 10 o'clock, and learning 30 to 40 to 50 pages of dialogue.
And the show was going completely different. The viewing figures shot up when I went back, high on my last episode, and they've now gone down. So I think the proof's in the pudding actually.
But I do have a huge affinity with the show, and that's only because I was in at the beginning of a wonderful, wonderful event, the wonderful show which has brought a lot of pleasure to a lot of people in a lot of countries around the world.
And here I am on a Saturday morning talking to you, and I mean that not giving you any B.S. I actually mean that. It's a pleasure to be actually talking to the person who actually created the Walford Gazette. If there's anything you ever want me to do for your publication in the future, please don't hesitate to ask.
WG: Thank you, Leslie. I appreciate that very much.
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