Mark Homer on Life After Tony Hills
By Larry Jaffee
Walford Gazette readers have Facebook to thank for the following interview with Mark Homer, who played Tony Hills over a decade ago for a four-year run on EastEnders. Mark showed up as a “friend” of Lucy Speed (Natalie), who had “friended” me back a few months ago. I once met Lucy at the studio, and Tim Wilson twice interviewed her for the Gazette. Although I reviewed Mark’s play, Boxed, in London nearly 10 years ago, we never managed to meet. He quickly friended me back on Facebook when I reminded him of the Boxed review, and mentioned all the EE actors who had been interviewed by the Gazette over the years and whose characters had something to do with Tony, including his sister Daniella Denby-Ashe (Sarah), his father Brian Croucher (Ted), his former girlfriend Martine McCutcheon (Tiffany) and her brother Andrew Lynford (Simon).
Of course, the last might be the most important because when last seen, Tony was leaving Walford with Simon for a new life in the Netherlands. More on that later. “A lot of people frown on Facebook, but I think it’s brilliant, especially because I’ve got this new play, Farley’s Date. You let people know it’s going on, and if they want to come they come. It’s better than emailing out invitations.” Homer first mounted Farley’s Date last fall in London for four nights. A producer who came to one of the performances decided to back the show for another run, July 20–August 7 at the prestigious London fringe theatre, the Old Red Lion. “It’s a great intimate space, and the theatre has got a great reputation.” Homer wrote the play and costars as Jace, the mid-30s, responsible half of this buddy story, who’s about to live the life of a grown-up, looking forward to getting married. He’s got a steady job working at a bank. Farley is the irresponsible one, still dreaming about his long-planned drive across the U.S. à la Easy Rider.
Our conversation takes a detour on how much he likes the States. “It’s so easy to travel, find a motel. Six years ago I travelled around the Florida Keys to Miami and then New York. My sister lived in Chicago for a while and I visited her there. I also have friends in Detroit.” Back to the new play, the playwright explains the title character’s motivation: “Farley’s a bit of a poet. He quotes Kerouac, Bob Dylan. He’s not a deadbeat, but he’s stuck on his sofa. Just before the wedding, in one drunken night the two friends go over their dreams and goals. Then the brideto- be comes into the action. There’s a little bit of a love triangle. Things unfold.
“It’s been over 10 years since I did Boxed, which I co-wrote with Ray Kilby, who directed it – he was a director on EastEnders. I had a great time then, and it was great to collaborate with other people. Now I’m very much interested in going my own way. It’s quite scary, my first solo project. I’ve written quite a few short plays. Some have won awards. I’m really pleased about that. Long may they continue.” I ask him what he remembers about his time on EastEnders. “Really good memories. I was there just under four years and so many brilliant memories. My first day one of my first scenes was with Barbara Windsor (Peggy), Steve McFadden (Phil), Gillian Taylforth (Kathy), Adam Woodyatt (Ian) and Michelle Collins (Cindy). It was surreal going into EastEnders because I was a fan of that programme. It was weird. I’d been watching it. I felt I knew all these people, but I didn’t really. It took time to get to know them all.” I ask him whom he was closest to among the cast.
“Martine McCutcheon, Andrew Lynford, Daniela Denby-Ashe, my [on-screen] mum, Robbie (Roberta) Taylor. The best time I had on EastEnders was in Blackpool. It was the culmination of quite a lot of work. It was so well written, by [EE’s chief writer] Tony Jordan. It was always fun to go away from Albert Square and on location. I’ve been back to Blackpool since, and I go back to that pier, and remember how cold it was. It was freezing. That’s when the infamous kiss with Simon took place. Tiffany comes back to tell Tony she’s ‘ready to give it a go with me’ and sees the two of us together.” Asked whether he remains friendly with any of his former cast mates, Homer responds, “ I am still very much in touch with Andrew [Lynford]. My partner, she helped direct something for him. That was quite fun for her. I see him more than anyone. I also occasionally see Daniela. We all do our own thing.”
Homer had a bit of a reunion when he went back to Elstree for the big party in conjunction with the 25th anniversary live episode this past February. “That was great, so many people I worked with there: a brilliant director I worked with, Philip Casson, Gilly Taylforth, Dean Gaffney (Robbie Jackson), Michael Greco (Beppe), Lucy Speed (Natalie), Patsy Palmer (Bianca) and Sid Owen (Ricky Butcher) – they’re back now (he says of the last two). It was so nice to see them.” I asked if he’d seen the Walford Gazette during his days working at the studio. “I remember Shaun Williamson (Barry) and Russell Floyd (Michael) talking about it.” All the reminiscing sparked more stories. “Yeah, going back to find memories, I had such a laugh with Roberta Taylor. When she came in, I had been in the programme for about a year. I remember a scene around the breakfast table. I was buttering toast, and I was arguing with her, waving my knife about. I could never do it again – it was a pure fluke. A huge piece of butter went flying off my knife into the air and straight into her eye. We were rolling around laughing.” Moments like that helped break up the frantic pace that they often worked at. “It is fast-paced. The turnover is so quick that sometimes it feels like you’re on a machine. It was important to have fun whenever we could, and we did.” Not to mention that the actors and crew could be in for long days, sometimes 12 hours or more.
“Yeah, they can be. When you’ve got a heavy storyline, you’re there all the time. In a cast of many, you eventually get your time. But when you don’t get your time, the days aren’t that long. I had my fair share of storylines that I was really proud of.” I ask when did he find out that Tony was going to be bisexual? “I found out about the bisexual storyline about six months into playing Tony. It wasn’t right at the beginning. He was a bit of a wide boy, a bit of a Jack the lad. He was going out with Tiffany, things like that. After about six months they had him look at what he was, what he wanted. They handled it beautifully. That unfolded nicely; it wasn’t quick. For some storylines you have to invest in the character. And we did. It was a surprise. Not everyone saw it coming, and I did- n’t when I joined. They didn’t keep it from me. They had wanted to do that storyline for some time. They were waiting for the right character. We had a meeting, and they asked ‘How would you feel?’ and I was like, ‘Bring it on’. That’s what a programme is supposed to do: a challenging storyline. It was brilliant. The feedback was fantastic. "I’ll always remember that. The reaction to it was great. I got many, many appreciative letters saying thank you to the programme, showing people that they were not alone.
"These were people not from the city who didn’t have that kind of support [the kind Tony received]. Seeing a bisexual character on the television they felt less alone." After Homer left EastEnders and did Boxed, the play mentioned earlier, he did “a lot of theatre.” Television roles weren’t as easy to come by. Did he feel typecast on telly, worrying that viewers would only see him as Tony?
“There were some gay [TV] roles that were bandied about. At that time, I did think I needed to get my head down and do some theatre. If I took those other TV roles people would have seen me as Tony. I’m not surprised by that. Everyone saw me playing a fictional character for four years, and it takes time [to separate the actor from the character]. I went off and toured in theatre. A couple of years after that I was able to do Casualty (a medical TV drama) and I was able to play a different character. It is hard to play other roles [when you’re closely identified with one]. “In the theatre in November and December 2008, I played a gay character in a play called In the Balance. He was an American. It’s all about choices that the character makes. The circumstances. What is he like? Sexuality is not the first thing that I think about, really. It was the first time I played an American in a political play set in the U.S. That was one of the challenges. And Ray Kilby was the director and he co-wrote it. I still see Ray quite a bit. It played at the New End Theatre in Hampstead.” What kind of American accent did he use for the play? Homer laughs. “Well, the family was living in Florida, but they had lived in New York for a while. I had a discussion with Ray about the accent. In the end, it was more Florida. I really enjoyed it. It was the first time I gave time to study an accent. It was not just that I wanted to pull it off. What I wanted to do was crack it, and really pull it off and excel at it. I feel much more confident now that I can play an American.”
What other types of stage roles has he had? “I just played in Oxford an upper-class gentleman in a Charles Dickens ghost story, The Signalman. That was great because it was a departure for me. I’m all about trying to stretch.” Mark Homer did not set out to be an actor. He grew up in South London, left school at 16 and promptly went to work in a bank, where he stayed for five years. “I got disillusioned with what I was doing at the bank. There didn’t seem to be much opportunity to move up the ladder. I started to go to the Academy Drama School at night in Whitechapel (East London]. The tutor said, ‘You’re good at this. Why don’t you go fulltime?’” He ended up going for the next two years.
“I was working at the bank during the day. I got quite ill. I wasn’t eating properly; I was undernourished. I was doing lots of student films, fringe theatre – what young acting students do. But it was worth it because 10 months after I graduated from the Academy, East- Enders casting director Jonathan McLeish – he was a big fan of the drama school – went to a showcase. He remembered me. And the rest, as they say, was history.” Didn’t he have to audition? “It was barely an audition. It was a chat with the producer at the time and one of the directors. Jonathan and I got on like a house on fire, cracking jokes. I think I read a couple of lines. I almost couldn’t go to the casting briefing because I was in Brighton doing a class, theatre in education. I remember frantically calling my agent, saying, ‘Can’t you make it later? I won’t be able to make it.’ Luckily, Jonathan said we could meet at 5:30. So I rushed from Brighton and I just about made it. It went well. I found out [that he got the part] the day after the audition. I got the call and I was just over the moon.
“I enjoyed the EastEnders storyline at the time I came in. The David Wicks and Cindy and Ian Beale love triangle. At the time, it was really clicking. I was so proud to come into something like that.” How did his family react? “My parents and two sisters were tearing their hair out. It’s the biggest thing you could imagine. There’s nothing like it in this country. So many people watch EastEnders and Coronation Street.” Did viewers ever have difficulty separating reality from TV? “It was quite difficult because people [when I was out in public] would comment what was going on. A woman once told me, ‘Don’t be nasty to your mother’. Sometime I wasn’t sure if they were joking or not. I remember a couple of years after I left EastEnders, I went to my local library, and the librarian had this irate person come in swearing. She asked me, ‘What should I do?’ I responded, ‘What are you asking me for?’ She said, ‘You’re a detective!’ I said, ‘I was a detective on TV.’ She then tried to play coy, ‘Well, I know that. But you must have done your research.’ They believe in it when they’re watching.” There’s a cliché in show business: “What I really want to do is direct.”
In Homer’s case, what he really would like to do is write television scripts, and especially for EastEnders, and he feels he’s honed those skills writing short plays. But Homer knows of no EE cast member who went on to write for the show, and it would set a nice precedent. “I know that Sue Tully (Michelle Fowler) came back [to EastEnders] to direct. She was such an actor’s director, obviously. She knows what it’s like on the other side. There is a BBC writing academy, which I applied to this year. I still very much enjoy acting, and I will always do that.” Tony left the Square with Simon for a new life in Amsterdam in 1999. Are still together? “Yeah. They’ve probably moved to Belgium. As they got older, they’ve mellowed. They’re probably eating lots of chocolate. One thing I was really please about was that we finished on a really positive note with Tony saying, ‘Yes, I am gay and I love you, Simon.’ And they went off into the sunset. I don’t know if you remember, but there seemed to be endless episodes where I’m: ‘I don’t know, I’m confused.’ “We were involved in that process actually. I was really touched that we could be involved in that script process. We discussed how the end would come. It was really nice to be on the other side and see how much work went into all these episodes.” Having been a journalist all my professional adult life, I tell Homer that Tony’s trajectory, going from newspaper apprentice at the Walford Gazette to investigative reporter, was a little unrealistic, although it was arguably the best job the former small-time drug dealer ever had. “He’s in the car on a stake-out with Polly eating that doughnut. I thought I was on Beverly Hills Cop! It wasn’t long before he was having an affair with Polly.” Mark mentions that the Walford Gazette is “back in the fray,” regarding a current U.K. storyline, so stay tuned. “I was just talking on the phone to a current director of EastEnders two days ago, actually. He was a runner when I was there, and now he’s a director, so it shows that at the BBC when you start if you work hard you get rewarded.” One thing we hadn’t discussed in the previous 45 minutes was how being on EastEnders was lifechanging for Homer, who went from obscurity to ubiquitous fame literally overnight. “It was – completely. It was very strange. The lucky thing for me is that I am in the same relationship as when I was in EastEnders. I was 22, so I had a little bit of life experience beforehand, so I kept my feet on the ground and I tried to treat it as a job. “I always tried to be the same as I ever was. It was just the reaction of other people. For some reason people think just because you’re in some programme you must be special. That’s not necessarily the case. It was always great to be judged every second. People would say, ‘You’re not going to wear that, are you?’ because they felt like they could. To a certain extent, people just want to see you react. “I must admit when I joined EastEnders I felt like I was a representative of the BBC, I was just polite to everyone, and I would talk to everyone. If I ever went to a pub, people would come up and say, ‘Could you come up and say hello to my friend Ronnie’. In the end, I would spend the whole night talking to strangers and I neglected my friends, so you need to grasp that you should always be polite but know where you are.” Does he still get recognised? “Yeah, I do, but not as much now. Sometimes they say, ‘I know you from television. Where do I know you from?’ And it takes them a minute, and then they realise where.”
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