Danny Dyer on fame, therapy and working-class people in politics: ‘We need a f**king leader’

Danny Dyer is a natural salesman. “Lead the way, André, lead the way. And you get the readies, don’t ya?” the actor says to Big Issue vendor André Rostant as they walk along Charing Cross Road in Central London.

Most people passing by are paying little heed to the two men in matching red tabards as they arrive at their pitch. But one young woman does a double, triple and quadruple take. “Oh my god, it is him!” A few seconds later, Dyer makes his first sale of the morning. 

Dyer, who stars in Rivals, the upcoming Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s skewering of social class and the media in the 1980s, is selling the Big Issue magazine for the first time. It’s an enlightening experience. Here he is, one of the most recognisable people in the country, being routinely ignored by most of the people he encounters.  

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“It’s a real eye-opener,” he says later. “André warned me the tabard was like an invisibility cloak.  

“But there’s not a lot of money out there. People are struggling. And I always say that everyone you come across, there’s always something going on in their life. So it’s important to be kind and gentle to everybody for that reason. But when you’re standing in the middle of a street and people don’t even want to engage with you, it is an odd experience.” 

At times, Dyer looks a little lost as experienced vendor André hangs back to give him as authentic an experience as possible as a lone Big Issue seller. He spreads his arms wide, shrugging at his own powerlessness when even his famous face fails to make an impact on people rushing by.  

But Danny Dyer is as magnetic in person as he is on screen and stage. Before long, he has charmed a good number of Monday morning shoppers, workers and tourists into buying the latest edition. He signs some, poses for photographs with others (as long as they buy a magazine), calling André over with his card reader whenever someone tries the old “I haven’t got any cash on me” routine.  

He’s in his element, relishing each sale like a stage performer drinking in a curtain call. “I didn’t think I’d sell one, so I’m very happy. And the last geezer gave us a score. That felt really good,” Dyer says.  

“There’s a lot of very kind people out there and that gives me hope. It was just nice to be able to help André. He is a wonderful man. A very kind face, very gentle eyes. I didn’t ask too much about how he came to be selling the Big Issue, but he’s clearly been through some trauma and is still smiling and getting on with it. That shows a lot of strength.”  

Watching people respond to Dyer is fascinating. There’s an instant warmth. Perhaps they feel they know him already: nine years as a standout character in EastEnders will do that, not to mention 25 years on stage, screen and in the papers. Customers move straight in for a picture, hug or handshake without any hesitation. Dyer is comfortable with this level of fame now. But it took him a while.  

“I became very famous very quickly, and as much as it’s very intoxicating, it’s difficult to navigate,” he says. “You can go to drama school and learn all the techniques of acting but nobody teaches you about being famous. Giving away your anonymity is a huge thing. My first film, Human Traffic, came out in 1999 so I’m looking at 25 years. I’ve been famous longer than I’ve not been famous. It comes with perks. But it did fuck my head up.” 

Dyer eventually went to therapy in South Africa. “It was a place called Harmony. And it had a real old school way of breaking you down and getting rid of that ego. I learnt a lot about myself and the issues I had growing up,” he says. “I came from a broken home. I’ve dabbled in addiction, filling some sort of void where you need validation. So you drink or do drugs, anything to escape your own brain. I recognised it and did something about it, but I also had the means to do that.” 

Danny Dyer walks with a swagger. As he ventures out to sell the Big Issue, there are few signs of the nerves he professes to feeling.  “I’m still very much a working-class boy,” he says. “It always fascinates me – I’m in the supermarket and people ask me, what are you doing in here? We’ve got to eat! They have this idea I’ve got an entourage around me. That might be true of the Kardashians, but I just live my life normally.  

“People go, what are you doing on the school run? Erm, I’m picking up my child. I can’t get my head round it. I am better at navigating it now, but when my daughter Dani got famous and I’d start reading stuff about her, then the lion in me comes out.”  

Talk of family brings a huge grin to Dyer’s face. He revels in being a grandad at 47, helping Dani out with her three young kids.  

“I love cooking now,” he says. “I find it therapeutic. And even if it’s potato waffles for the kids, I try to plate it up like it’s à la carte. I make houses out of waffles – and it’s hard to get them to stand up – then have beans running through the middle like a river. I make sure I cook with love.” 

Dyer’s career is in a good place too. Rivals is a big budget romp of a drama with an all-star cast and something important to say about the class system, the media and politics. Jilly Cooper’s original novel does all this and more. It’s a bonkbuster with a message.  

Disney’s flamboyant series captures the style of the times. It also features perhaps Dyer’s finest screen performance to date – understated and subtle as self-made tech millionaire Freddie Jones opposite David Tennant’s deliciously vile media baron Lord Tony Baddingham, Aidan Turner’s hardnosed political journalist Declan O’Hara, Alex Hassell’s Tory MP Rupert Campbell-Black and Katherine Parkinson’s novelist Lizzie Vereker.  

“It’s working with the elite people I’ve always strived to work with,” says Dyer. “I’m well known for making low-budget movies. And I love it. But on this, everybody was so at the top of their game. 

“Cooper really captured something of the 1980s. New technology was coming in, there was an air of excitement and it was such a bright era for TV and movies and music. I’ve got such a love for it… It was my childhood. Nostalgia is such a fucking beautiful thing, you know?” 

Danny Dyer describes how there was always an ’80s ballad playing during his early years. His life in Custom House, East London soundtracked by his mum’s favourites, Alison Moyet and Lisa Stansfield or maybe Spandau Ballet. And all the parties with “people having a smooch on the dance floor.” So is Dyer a dancer? 

“It depends where I am, who’s watching and how many pints I’ve had. But We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off by Jermaine Stewart – that’s a good one to bounce to.” 

It also features in Rivals. Maybe Dyer will bust a move in his Farah trousers. 

Freddie Jones is one of the few working-class people in Rivals. Then, as now, the media was largely run and staffed by people from privileged backgrounds.  

“My character is the wealthiest one in it, but he’s very working class,” says Dyer. “He has a social climber of a wife, Valerie, who wants to hang about with aristocrats. But he’s not into it. He knows the only reason Lord Baddingham (David Tennant) wants to talk him is because he is rich.” 

Dyer is generous about the cast. He talks of his nerves about sitting in the room and doing the read through with so many huge names.  

“I knew I could do it. But I was shitting myself,” he says. “I was petrified.  

I’d always admired Katherine Parkinson. I’d heard what a lovely man David Tennant is and I’ve got to say, he’s a Rolls Royce. Aidan Turner’s another one – they do their homework, prep, prep, prep. And I’m the same.”  

And how was the boss? How was Jilly Cooper? 

“That was a bit daunting,” grins Dyer. “But she was lovely. She gave the green light for me to play Freddie, who is her sexual fantasy, in a way. Because Lizzie is based loosely on her. So I was quite flattered. There’s definitely still a glint in that woman’s eye!” 

Getting Jilly Cooper and David Tennant’s seal of approval means a lot to Danny Dyer. Despite the years of success, he’s still grafting and still fighting for recognition.  

 “I’ve got a wealth of experience but I’m still very ambitious,” he says. “I’m still looking to get an opportunity to do something completely different.” 

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Why hasn’t this happened? Is there an element of classism in the way Dyer has been pigeonholed? 

“I’ve spoken about classism quite a bit. It’s something I’m very much aware of and I’ve felt since I got thrown into the industry,” he says. “I had nobody to talk to about it because no one’s ever done this in my family. They were all so proud of me when I got my first job in Prime Suspect 3. One of the first scenes I did was with Helen Mirren and David Thewlis. They were my drama school.  

“I worked with Mark Rylance on a thing called Loving and was fascinated by this man. I studied him. I watched him. I worked with Daniel Craig and Cillian Murphy on a film called The Trench. We’re like magpies, actors. We nick stuff and get inspired. But then I started to do a bit of theatre and realised I’ve got a very working-class accent. And I sensed I wasn’t taken seriously.” 

Danny Dyer has a direct way with words some politicians could learn from. While people in power talk about a broken social contract or inter-generational inequity, Dyer says simply “it’s fucked up”. And he’s not wrong.  

“What career do you take as a young person?” he says, more animated than at any other time in our conversation. “You can work your bollocks off but you are not going to get on the property ladder. A lot of people dread the alarm going off to go out to work in a job they hate. If you still can’t get a roof over your head, what are we trying to strive for? 

“We are not on the planet for long. The formula was that you get a job, raise enough money, maybe meet someone, get on the property ladder or have kids and pay for that house to leave a legacy. I can see why young people aren’t inspired.”  

He was ready, he says, for political change. But Dyer doesn’t see much evidence of it so far. “The Tories are such fucking arseholes that Keir Starmer got in not for what Labour were saying but because the Tories fucked it up so much,” he says. 

“And I don’t like this man. I don’t trust this man. He got the job handed to him on a plate. So what are you going to do to show us you’re different? And he’s gone straight in on pensioners – I find that fucking fascinating. This is meant to be a working-class party. We need more working-class people in politics.” 

Lisa Nandy’s talk of re-centring arts in the school curriculum has been noted.  

“I’m someone who had fuck all for most of my life. Single parent family, living on a council estate,” he says. “But I was lucky enough to find something in school that I loved, which was drama. Now there are no avenues for working class kids to be creative.  

“In my industry 6% of people are working class. I was lucky. I used to go to WAC Arts in Kentish Town on
a Sunday. It was free, so I could do drama workshops and one week, agents came down and I got picked out. All because I had this place to go.  

“Now I bounce out of bed to go to work. But everybody should have an opportunity to be who they want to be. There will be brilliant artists out there who’ve never picked up a paintbrush. No wonder this generation are angry and disenfranchised.” 

Starmer’s deputy also wins the Dyer seal of approval.  

“Why Angela Rayner’s not leading things I don’t know,” says Dyer. “When she speaks, I listen.  

“The whole country needs to be inspired. We need a fucking leader. And we haven’t had a leader in a very, very long time. The last supposed leader was the twat David Cameron. And when the shit hit the fan, he left. That’s not what leaders do. Since him, we’ve had nobody. So it’s a worrying time. We did need change. But I don’t feel anything’s changed as of yet.” 

It brings Dyer back to his morning with André on Charing Cross Road. “That’s why it’s such a brilliant institution and a brilliant publication, the Big Issue,” says Dyer. “Because you’ve got to give people hope in this world. And that’s what you do. You give people opportunities and you give people hope.”

 Rivals is available from 18 October exclusively on Disney+.

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