Simon Bird is understood for playing boys. As Will McKenzie in The Inbetweeners and Adam Goodman in Friday Night Supper, he was among “the boys” even into his 30s. His directorial launching, 2020’s Days of the Bagnold Summertime, sensitively tracked a challenging mother-son relationship.
Now, in the brand-new comedy Everybody Else Burns, the 38-year-old has actually been fast-tracked to playing not simply a papa however the daddy of a teen. “I’ve skipped the stage where I was just a normal, functioning adult,” says Bird, whose real-life kids with film writer Lisa Owens are 7 and 5.
Composed by Dillon Mapletoft and Oliver Taylor, Everybody Else Burns gets its laughs from the accident of fanatical certainty with the messiness of life. David Lewis is an ardent member of a spiritual sect that thinks, to name a few things, that self-raising flour is decadent, offering coffee is drug-dealing and the armageddon is nigh. He runs end ofthe world drills every early morning and admits to outrageous ideas about the female on the Sun-Maid Raisins box.
When he’s not being embarrassed by other members of the order, David is a stopping working patriarch who has a hard time to guide his other half, boy and child clear of everlasting damnation. “My character is fighting the tide of the world that he doesn’t understand,” Bird says. “He’s doing it for religious reasons but he might as well be doing it for non-religious reasons: family values or small-c conservatism. Really this is about a traditional family trying to survive in the contemporary world.”
Though Bird himself is endearingly reluctant and self-effacing, David, like Will McKenzie, is a clingy blowhard who can’t help however state the incorrect thing. He is not assisted by a horrendous bowl hairstyle that, as one character observes, makes him look like a mushroom.
“I’ve never been in a show where the idea has been to make me look good. It’s always to make me look as horrible as possible.”
Everybody Else Burns provided Bird great deals of amusing lines and good individuals to deal with, which is all he actually desires. He reject any concern that may make him sound too actorly since he never ever prepared to be a star in the very first location. “That wasn’t the career path I’d laid out for myself, if there was a career path at all.”
As president of Footlights at Cambridge, where he fulfilled his Inbetweeners co-star Joe Thomas and his production partner Jonny Sugary food, he intended to operate in funny one day however pictured it would be off electronic camera.
“When I was directing I knew straight away this is something I feel like I’m good at, which I never feel like when I’m acting,” he says. “Some days I think, ‘I really nailed that scene, but there are other people who could probably do it.’”
Being cast in The Inbetweeners when he was 23 was for that reason a surprise; its slowburn success an even larger one. “We were all new to the job of working in TV so that experience bonds you together for life,” he says. “Not necessarily as best friends but in a brotherly relationship. That bond can’t ever be broken.”
Like The Workplace or Fawlty Towers, The Inbetweeners did not outstay its welcome: simply 3 series and 2 motion pictures. “There are lots of people out there who loved the show and wish there was more of it,” he says. “We should have done more, probably, at the time.” Numerous fans wish for a reunion – what takes place when teenage morons struck midlife? – however Bird does not.
“The idea of an Inbetweeners reunion is a terrible one,” he says strongly. “I’m sure that quote will be played back to me when we do a Netflix special in five years’ time. The central conceit of that show is that teenage boys are idiots. To rehash those jokes with those characters as old men wouldn’t work as well. It would feel sad. The reason it was successful and relatable is that everyone knows what it’s like to go through school. People really saw their own lives in The Inbetweeners. Whenever people talk to me about it, it’s always to say which of their friends are Jay, Simon, Neil or Will.”
The Inbetweeners is typically held up as an example of a comedy that couldn’t be made today, due to the salted credibility of its teen name calling. We made fun of the happily offending Jay however, let’s be truthful, with him, too. Does Bird believe that’s true?
He thinks twice. “It’s a thorny old area to wade into.”
Oh, go on, pitch in.
“I think it was already outdated when we made it.” He mentions that the program was implied to be embeded in 1990, when authors Damon Beesley and Iain Morris were teens. E4 demanded making it modern however the jokes didn’t alter.
“The dialogue already felt somehow out of time but I think you just about got away with it back then. There’s been a bigger shift from 2007 to now in the way teenagers talk than there had been between the 1990s and 2007. They probably have a lot more respect for each other. The reason it wouldn’t be made now is because it wouldn’t be an accurate representation of how teenagers talk.”
Has Bird discovered the regular singing contrasts in between Rishi Sunak and Will, which is to state Simon Bird?
“I’m not on social media but my wife certainly informed me that it was out there. Whenever there was a budget, the ‘briefcase wanker’ meme took off. My wife told me about his voice specifically. It’s not something I can recognise personally.”
More on Television Interviews
Bird’s moms and dads are both financial experts so I think that’s another connection.
“Yes, and we have our multi-billion pound fortune in common, too,” he deadpans.
Comedy popularity is a blended true blessing. The Inbetweeners introduced Bird like a rocket – the very first motion picture had the most significant ever UK opening weekend for a funny – however it likewise boxed him in. Subsequent endeavors, consisting of the First World War comedy Chickens and misbegotten panel program The King Is Dead, tumbled. Luckily, there was Friday Night Supper, which ran for a years. When you play a family for that long, you begin to feel like one, so the death of Paul Ritter due to a brain tumour last year was a real shock.
“That was very unexpected and painful,” says Bird. “And muddied by the fact that he literally played my dad. He was a father figure in more than one way. Paul was a very private person. I found out in the last few weeks of his life that he was really ill, so I had a chance to write to him, but it was totally out of the blue.”
For much of his tenure on Friday Night Supper, Bird was developing Days of the Bagnold Summer, adapted from a graphic novel by his wife. The couple’s second movie, about which Bird will reveal absolutely nothing, is also a long journey.
“I work very slowly. My wife works quite slowly as well. But also films cost a lot of money to make so it’s right and proper that it should be a long process. It’s got to be worth making.”
In the meantime, he directed the first series of Ellie and Natasia, the joyfully strange sketch show by Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou from Stath Lets Flats.
“Directing a sketch show is a dream job because you have to learn how to work in all these different styles,” he says. On a good day, he would ruin takes by laughing out loud.
Bird also has a production company with Jonny Sweet, People Person Pictures, which is involved in an NDA-shrouded show for “a major streaming platform” and the film Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. Even when Bird takes centre stage, it’s unorthodox. During lockdown, he filmed his first ever stand-up special, Debrief, to an empty theatre.
“I feel more comfortable behind a camera than I do in front of it and I feel more comfortable in front of a camera than a live audience,” he says. “I had the opportunity to deliver a stand-up set that couldn’t be heckled. I enjoyed the awkwardness of it.”
For all his uneasyness, Bird is eager to stress that he is not unthankful for the comedies that made his name. “I’m lucky that I’ve been in two shows that have captured… No, I’m not going to say that.”
Was he ready to state “captured the nation’s imagination”?
“I might have to kill myself if I use that phrase,” he recoils. “I went into TV to be in sitcoms that people watched and liked. I feel like it happened too quickly – The Inbetweeners happened before I’d had the opportunity to find my own voice comedically – but ultimately I’m grateful it happened. The fact that I think it has also stopped me being able to find other roles to play means that I’ve been forced to explore other avenues that feel like a natural fit for me. Now that I direct as well, which takes over your life, I can enjoy acting more than I did in the early days. It’s so much fun. I’m just relieved that I don’t have to have meetings about the budget at lunchtime.”
It’s good to see Bird in a comedy once again, regardless of the hairstyle.
Everybody Else Burns is out on Channel 4 in late January
