Actor and activist Rob Delaney on giving money to the poor, giving Starmer a chance and Deadpool
Deadpool & Wolverine star Rob Delaney was thrilled to talk to Big Issue about elections, blockbuster movie sets, saving the NHS, and the serious business of being a piece of handsome furniture
“Big Issue? Let’s go,” says Rob Delaney. “I read the Big Issue all the time. My kids read it. I’m thrilled.”
It’s been quite a week for Rob Delaney. Not only is he promoting Deadpool & Wolverine, the biggest movie of his career, by talking to his favourite magazine, but there has also just been a general election. For the first time since settling in the UK in 2014, Boston-born writer-comedian-actor Delaney is not living under a Tory government. How is he feeling? Is the mood music in the country noticeably different?
“It does feel a little bit different. Anything that gives people a little beacon of hope is always positive,” says Delaney. “I wasn’t telling people to go vote Labour this time, for a variety of reasons, but I’m entirely prepared to give Starmer and company at least a 20-minute grace period. Because if they succeed, we all win.
“I’m one of those people that sees a vote as transactional. I want people to get something. They’re going to ban new drilling and there’s the wealth fund. So there are some good ideas. But I want nurses to be able to afford to live within 40 minutes of the Central London hospital they work in and things like that. There are real issues with housing.”
Deadpool & Wolverine has taken over two floors of an expensive hotel ahead of the UK premiere of the summer’s hottest film, which brings megastars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman together at last alongside Delaney, The Crown’s Emma Corrin and Succession star Matthew Macfadyen. As he welcomes us, Delaney is as warm and charming as his screen presence suggests. But when it comes to politics? He’s not prepared to take any nonsense.
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Rob Delaney with Sharon Horgan in Catastrophe. Image: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
“Look, we’re in the Corinthia hotel right now… where I imagine most Big Issue interviews take place,” he jokes.
“But look around a neighbourhood like this one and you see the amount of money in this country is outrageous. The sheer square footage of empty flats owned by people who don’t live in the country – come on now.
“So when I hear [new chancellor] Rachel Reeves say, ‘there isn’t any money’… we’re not morons. There is money. Take it. Mint it. Make it happen. I’m not interested in equivocating or managing expectations. So say whatever you want. But make changes.”
Rob Delaney made his name as one of the funniest people on social media. When Twitter was in its infancy, it could be a place of joy and connection. There was a brief glimpse of a positive, interactive space for sharing ideas and jokes. And Delaney’s humour cut through better than anyone’s. That led directly to his big breakthrough. He met Sharon Horgan online and they co-wrote and co-starred in four seasons of the Bafta-winning comedy Catastrophe.
From there, his career has blossomed. Big-screen roles in Hobbs & Shaw (with Dwayne Johnson), Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning(opposite Tom Cruise), The Good House with Sigourney Weaver and long-awaited Christmas caper sequel Home Sweet Home Alone have established him as a reliable comedic presence in blockbusters.
Rob Delaney in Home Sweet Home Alone. Image: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
“Bonkers,” Delaney says, reflecting on his career trajectory. Now comes the third Deadpool film – the second in which Delaney plays Peter. “There’s a real earnestness to him. So it’s not the irreverence that is Deadpool’s signature, but there’s freedom to be weird and wacky and silly,” says the actor.
Its predecessor took $785m at the box office. Expectations are high.
“It’s bananas,” Delaney adds. But the weight of expectations around the movie weighed lightly on the creative team. It was fun, says Delaney, thanks to the tone set by the leading actors.
“Ryan’s Canadian, Shawn Levy the director is Canadian, I’m not sure where Hugh’s from… that’s a joke,” he says. “So the main people involved are really kind and funny and creative and collaborative. They have about 172 years of experience on film sets so they know what works. They want it to be the best that it can be, so they encourage taking chances and being silly and being bold.”
The lack of superstar ego is, says Delaney, the norm these days.
“By the time I was allowed to be on TV and in movies, bad behaviour was on its way out,” he says.
“I haven’t seen anything too horrific. The worst thing I’ve seen on set is an actor arguing with a director, being like, ‘I don’t know if my character would do that.’ I have to walk away. Because my answer to that is, ‘Your character would do that because the director just told you to do it. So do it five times.’
“You’re furniture,” he continues, exasperated. “You’re handsome furniture, you actor! Just do it.”
Deadpool and Wolverine are reluctant superheroes in the new film as they team up to save an entire historical timeline. Anyone who saw Wolverine die in the film Logan knows how complex it all is. But, typically, this is directly referenced in the film – which goes beyond meta into a whole new realm, biting the hand that feeds with gags about Disney, the MCU and how audiences will suck up the film’s extended run time.
Rob Delaney had the best view of anyone of Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman working together.
“It’s such a small thing. But when Wolverine gets frustrated with crazy, flamboyant Deadpool, it’s funny every single time,” he says.
“It’s a tiny facial expression or a grunt from Wolverine. But you believe it. Because Hugh Jackman just so is Wolverine and Ryan so is Deadpool. They’re inhabiting characters they know so intimately that the little grace notes they do between each other are very, very funny. It’s probably agonised over, but they make it look easy.”
Rob Delaney with co-stars Ryan Reynolds, Emma Corrin and Hugh Jackman. Image: Doug Peters / Alamy Stock Photo
For Delaney, this is the secret of good acting. And he cites Tom Cruise as the master.
“Big, big admirer of Tom Cruise in a lot of ways,” he says. “But particularly with acting, because he just so fundamentally believes whatever he’s doing. If he says a blue alien with horns is going to smash through the wall in three minutes, he believes it. And thus you, the audience, believe it.
“I’m more interested in an actor really believing what they’re doing than whether they got their Geordie accent perfect, you know? That’s the type of make believe I’m interested in – when somebody, in a really childlike way, really believes the game.”
Ryan Reynolds, of course, is as well-known in the football game these days as co-owner with Rob McElhenny of the mighty Wrexham FC.
“It’s an incredible story. They are having a great time and doing a wonderful thing,” says Delaney.
“It is shining a light into a corner of the world that people don’t know about. There’s real utility and value to what they are doing there.”
“Being in the public eye is not good. Nor is it bad,” he says. “It’s like you have the keys to a big crane truck. And you could use that to drive to a construction site and help build a school, or you could use it to run over a family having a picnic. So you want to use it wisely.”
Rob Delaney has used his platform to campaign for better funding for the National Health Service in this country. He wrote a beautiful, moving depiction of love and grief and the health service in his 2022 memoir A Heart That Works – in which he talked about his young son Henry’s death from cancer in 2018.
There was no plan to talk about Henry or his death in this interview. Delaney is here to promote his new film. It’s a comedy. There should be no expectation that he excavates his trauma in ever y interview he conducts.
But the personal and the political intertwine in complex ways. When asked how he first got a grasp on British politics, he recalls the years his family was reliant on the brilliance of people working in the NHS. And how his political outlook was shaped and reinforced by seeing the public, free-at-point-of-use principles of the NHS up close.
“I wouldn’t overstate my competence or my grasp on politics,” says Delaney, who lives in London with his wife Leah and three sons.
“But where I might offer a little useful perspective is that I went from a lower tax bracket to a higher tax bracket at the same time my son Henry’s health was failing, and then he was dying, and then he was dead. So I started making more money and finding new opportunities to become a class traitor, but at the same time I was finding out the limits of what money can do.
Image: Big Issue
“Money can solve a lot of problems. It’s great. It should be handed out Robin Hood-style to poor people all day long. But when I was learning about what it can and can’t do surrounding my son’s illness, I was also seeing nursing staff who have to take three buses to get to work because they can’t afford to live anywhere near the hospital. And that was very educational for me.”
Whether he is considering the recent election or thinking about the future of the NHS, Henry is always on his mind.
“I don’t know how to not talk about my son, Henry,” he adds. “Don’t know how to do it. Miss him. Need to think about him. Talk about him.
“I’m thinking about him all the time, so if I don’t release a little steam and talk about him, then I would go crazy.
“And I’m in the public eye, right? So if I’m going to talk to you, I’m gonna talk about him. Particularly talking to Big Issue – because it wouldn’t surprise me if a larger collection of people who are homeless are bereaved parents than in the regular world. Because it’s the type of thing that can lead you down a path that winds up in homelessness.
“People who currently have roofs over our heads have to realise only a few things happening to us separates us from somebody selling the Big Issue.”
Talking openly doesn’t come without a cost. But there is a relief and a release in practising what we might call radical openness – a refusal not to talk about important or difficult things, a refusal to bottle up feelings. As philosophies go, says Rob Delaney, it’s not a bad one.
“Sometimes I wish it wasn’t, but honesty does seem to be the best policy that I’ve yet to discover. I’m always searching for others.
“But being honest about how you feel is a good way to survive the things that are difficult.
“Be real. Live longer. Have less ulcers in your belly because you don’t tense up with bullshit.”
He pauses, maybe remembering his kids read Big Issue, and cracks another big, warm smile. “You can abbreviate that to BS. I’m sorry!”
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