"Ello darling.” Slumped into a couch in London’s Soho Hotel, Danny Dyer makes sure you know he’s there with a signature greeting. Today, the man tabloids like to call ‘The English Colin Farrell’ is in chipper form despite the horizontal pose.
He might well look pleased. At 29, he’s old enough to have built a reputation through movies such as The Football Factory, The Borstal Boy and The Business, but he’s still young enough to land cheeky pup roles. Looking at him in fact, you’d be hard pressed to say he had aged a single hour since his breakthrough role as e-gen hero Moff in Human Traffic.
For his latest outing he plays a similarly minded upstart in Severance. This darkly absurd comedy-horror sees an office-bonding trip in Eastern Europe go predictably awry when the group are picked off one-by-one in increasingly grisly fashion. Danny, armed with unhealthy amounts of magic mushrooms, becomes the unlikely Final Boy of the hour.
“I can’t really compare this to any other film, and that’s not me being arrogant,” he grins. “The key for me was it was fucking funny and it was fucking frightening. Like Shaun of the Dead is a fucking work of genius but it’s not scary. You always feel safe watching it. This is more like Evil Dead maybe, but where that film is weird funny, Severance is just fucking funny. And it’s so on the mark. We weren’t sure how the bits with the airplane and bloody stump would play and we’ve ended up getting standing ovations. And the irony is we had to fight to keep those scenes in.”
The shoot entailed four weeks in Hungary and four weeks in the Isle of Man. Danny is in little doubt as to which was the creepier place.
“Bloody Isle of Man,” he says, with a roll of the eyes to heaven. ”What a fucked up place. There are lots of horrible little towns where everyone looks like they’ve been doing their cousins for generations. Then when you go into the woods there are waterfalls and some really untouched land but it was a lot more eerie than I thought it would be. They’ve really detached themselves over there. They get all uppity because we’re mainlanders. Well, you can have your rock, I can’t wait to get off this fucking island, mate. They still birch and they have their own money and their own laws, and they all sat round thinking, ‘We have our own rock so let’s have a flag. I know, let’s have three Wellington boots.' What kind of flag is that?”
Happily, Hungary was a bit more accommodating but still pretty rustic by anyone’s standards.
“Half the crew was Hungarian and none of them really talked English so there was a bit of a divide going on,” recalls Danny. “For breakfast they would have stew with mashed potato and we hated that but they loved it. Then when we got to the Isle of Mann, we’d have bacon and stuff and they thought that was well strange. But in their country we had to behave ourselves. We stayed in a big castle in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a bowling alley in it. Very odd place. On your days off all you could do was go to the forest. But at least it helped us bond.”
Plus, he didn’t need a scholarly visit to his local library to figure out how to act on ‘shrooms.
“No, though, fucking hell, I had not taken mushrooms in a long time. You know, they’re a buzz but they are not good for the brain. You’re always aware on most trips, but not on mushrooms. I remember my mate ran home kicked his mum’s door down and told his mum he was stabbed. That’s the time you have to stop.”
Weirdly, Mr. Dyer owes much of his career to his youthful chemical misadventures. Born in East London in 1977, he was cast in Prime Suspect 3 after being spotted in his local Sunday School. Small television roles in Cadfael, A Touch Of Frost and Soldier, Soldier would follow, but he first came to mainstream attention with Human Traffic, landing the lead because he was the only actor at auditions who admitted to taking ecstasy. He says his wilder days are behind him, but his associations with certain subcultures have held him in good stead. To date, he’s essayed a football hooligan, assorted naughty boys and provided voice work on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
A lad’s lad, he shocked fans recently with a candid admission to Attitude magazine. “It’s sweet if you like a bit of cock,” he declared. “I’ve had me moments, you know. I’ve had me fucking moments.” Suddenly, stories began to emerge that Boy George was stalking the actor – that Danny had led him on. What’s all this about then?
“You know what, baby?” he smiles. “I am not gay. I have nothing against gay people. I have just finished doing a documentary about football hooliganism, so I was walking around the country talking about naughty subjects to naughty people, and I don’t think there are many actors can do something like that and be on the front of a gay magazine. I must say it was a very good interview. I came across quite articulate for once. I got a bit of stick about it, saying I come from East London, but I think gay people can look at me now and think he’s alright. I am a bit of a sex fiend and I have been a bit naughty but everyone loves sex and you live and learn. I also think you should try everything once. I am not saying you have to have a cock up your arse, but you might enjoy it if you do. I got an email from Boy George about that stalking story. He was not happy, and I don’t want to kick a man when he is down and he has all the aggravation in America. He never was stalking me. That was bollocks. He just had a bit of a thing for me. He saw me in a play and I was in a gay role and he wanted to get to know me. Nothing doing, but he is a good man and I wish him all the best.”
Well said, sir.