Between The Giggles and The Reels

The Inbetweeners Movie was the shock cinematic success of 2011. The film is reported to have cost £3.5 million to make, and went on to record the biggest ever opening weekend box-office for a comedy film in the UK, bringing in over £13.2 m.

Simon Bird, who plays the hapless, trouser-soiling Will McKenzie, recalls that weekend as a blur: “We were just totally flabbergasted. We thought fans of the show would want to see it, but it seemed to suddenly reach a whole new audience as well. They kept throwing figures at us about how many million pounds it had taken in. We didn’t have any concept as to what the figures meant. We didn’t know how good and how rare that was. It only really sunk in later.”
The film’s success caught both cast and industry insiders by surprise. The numbers showed a strange trend. The big cinemas in London and other urban hubs, which typically take in the most for a new film, didn’t record the highest sales. The real success came from suburban multiplexes, which was fitting – the suburbs are, after all, The Inbetweeners’ natural habitat.
The inevitable sequel sees the boys heading Down Under to meet-up with Jay, off on a gap year. By the end of the publicity trail for the first film the cast didn't seem particularly keen on a sequel. Nonetheless, here they are, three summers later, with The Inbetweeners 2. What convinced them to make another movie?
This question is fielded by Joe Thomas who plays (utterly) hopeless romantic Simon Cooper: “Frankly, since the first series we’ve thought: ‘Oh, that was fun but we won’t get to do this again’ and it’s always surprised us how well it’s done. We didn’t want to keep going unless the fans wanted us to do it, and unless we got hold of an idea that was strong enough. Eventually we got a script that we thought was fantastic. There was an appetite amongst the fans. We decided we’d go for it. We also just missed each other to be honest. We haven’t got any other friends, so there’s that as well.”
On meeting the cast most people comment on how different they are from their characters. This is probably down to the fact that they're so much older than their onscreen counterparts. Although best-known for playing TV’s cringiest teenagers, the average age is now 28.
Is it hard for a group of men with wives, children and mortgages to get back into the ‘Inbetweener’ frame of mind? Joe at 30 is the oldest member of the cast. He says age isn’t an issue, apart from having to slap on a little bit more makeup every time they film.
“Once we’re back together we all regress. It’s a bit like when you go home to your parents house and you start behaving like a teenager again. Frankly we should be more professional. If anything we’re probably too immature when we’re in our little gang.”
So, is it all fun and games on set, or does it get serious?
“It’s deadly serious. After we film we all go and do Shakespeare readings in our rooms. We divvy up the parts,” jokes Blake Harrison who plays the slow-witted Neil Sutherland.
The concept of taking filming seriously is laughed out of the room until Joe interjects, sounding just like his character Simon: “All joking aside, there’s a lack of professionalism within the cast. It’s by far the least professional show that I’ve worked on. But maybe that’s part of why it succeeds.”
The crew spent eight weeks filming in Australia and profess to enjoying the experience a lot more than the first film. They got the chance to travel around the country and were given more downtime. While their characters might regard an afternoon sitting around with a bottle of gin, a packet of crisps and some Drambuie as their idea of a good time, in real life the cast spent their free hours jet-skiing, playing crazy golf and sneaking in the odd wine tasting.
Damon Beesley and Iain Morris created the show and wrote and directed the TV series and the two films. The actors speak about the duo in reverential tones, and credit them with the show’s success. Joe describes them as possibly the world’s most immature people over the age of 40.
“A lot of people ask us whether the show is improvised because it’s so ‘bantery’," he notes. "But actually it’s not at all. Underneath all the messing there’s a rock solid script by Iain and Damon. That is the bedrock of the show’s success. We arrive late in the day, and the jokes have been made.”
Joe and his partner in crime Simon Bird caught the attention of the show’s creators when performing at The Edinburgh Festival. They've been working together since they met early in their first year at Cambridge University. They were both part of Cambridge’s esteemed comedy and drama group, The Footlights. The society’s alumni include Monty Python’s John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle, as well as Stephen Fry and comedy double-team and Peep Show stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb.
Simon Bird finds it hard to classify what he does as acting: “I think a lot of comedians find the idea of acting embarrassing. Having to seriously pretend to be something you’re not? It’s hard to get your head around that.”
Himself and Joe decided the best way to get into character was to draw on their own teenage experiences.
“You get this weird hinterland where you’re playing a heightened version of yourself. There is a distinction between how comedians approach it and how actors approach it. A lot of the time comedians don’t know what they’re doing on set. You have to go in and try and get the laughs whatever way you can. This was a real world show about a suburban teenager. I had recently been a suburban teenager. If I was playing a cat or something it would have been different,” says Joe.
The acting style and the profane dialogue are so naturalistic that fans often have a problem differentiating between the characters and the actors who play them. Joe points to a reccurring misconception they encountered down-under.
“Often when we were filming in Australia people would think that we were on holidays together," he recalls. "That would obviously not happen. I mean the characters are characters... they don’t go on holidays together in real life... they go on holidays in films! Today we are going around London as a group so we get a bit of attention. It’s all good. People are nice. We do a lot of photos but none of us mind that at all.”
There have been reports that this is the end of the line for The Inbetweeners. Speaking to the cast things sound far from black and white.
“Ultimately it’s about Iain and Damon and when they say they’ve run out of ideas, and they've said that they are out of ideas! But they've said that on numerous other occasions, to be fair,” says an unsure-sounding Joe.
At this point Blake comes in: “I can see us doing something else. Maybe a kind of Expendables style action movie together. I think that’s something that we would all really be good in. That would be much more believable, if we were playing spies, or soldiers, or mutants, rather than playing these geeky kids. I think we could do that and really pull it off.”
Watch this space...

The Inbetweeners 2 is released on August 8