Mark Gatiss: ‘All my childhood dreams came true. There’s nothing left except James Bond’

Mark Gatiss was born in October 1966 in Sedgefield, County Durham. He is an actor, comedian, screenwriter, director, producer and novelist. He first found success as part of The League of Gentlemen, with whom he won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1997. The group went on to produce a much-loved BBC radio series before adapting the show for BBC Two, where it became a comedy sensation over three series. In 2005, the group released a film adapation and returned to the BBC for three specials in 2017.

Mark Gatiss went on to co-create and co-write the global TV phenomenon Sherlock, in which he also plays Mycroft Holmes. He has written nine episodes of Doctor Who and has appeared in the show twice. Other credits include London Spy, Game of Thrones, Wolf Hall, Mapp and Lucia, Nighty, Night, The Wind and the Willows, the Mission: Impossible series, Absolutely Fabulous, Operation Mincemeat and, more recently, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. He’s only no stranger to treading the boards, winning an Olivia Award for Best Supporting Actor after starring in the National Theatre’s Three Days in the Country. Among many, many more credits to his name.

In his Letter to My Younger Self, Mark Gatiss assures his 16-year-old self that things will work out, looks back on his desire to prematurely age and reflects on the highs of a stellar career.

I would give my younger self a cuddle and tell him it’s going to be OK. I had a very happy, normal childhood, but it’s a tough age, 16, isn’t it? You’re coming out of all that hormonal stuff and into something else, which is a step into the grown-up world. You start to slough off your childhood enthusiasms because they feel childish only to return to them years later when you think, ‘Oh, that was the happiest I ever was.’ So at 16 I was a bit confused.

I knew I was gay but had no experience other than major crushes on television stars and some boys at my school. I had no way of imagining how anything could actually happen. You just live with it. I would fantasise about magical EM Forster-like scenarios, which would never take place. Looking back, I now know a couple of my best friends were also gay, but it wasn’t that sort of environment. And maybe I didn’t fancy them.

My local youth theatre opened a window into the adult world. It was the Friday night-ness of it. For those few magical hours, it was so exciting. We would meet people three years older who felt like gods. You can never get back to that moment, because it’s the first intimation of it. When you look at old photos, you see a sudden step change from being on a family holiday grinning, to trying to look cool and they might be taken only a month apart.

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I used to burn with shame because I felt poor. Whenever we had a school trip, I would have a Tupperware box with a corned beef sandwich and a Club biscuit. Maybe an apple. Someone next to me would open theirs and it was a fucking cornucopia of everything Morrisons had to offer. These things never go away. But I know what was behind it – we just didn’t have much money. Talking to my mum not long before she died, she said: “We were just terrified of getting into debt.” I said to her, I’m so grateful.

I regret spending too much of my youth wanting to be older. I used to fantasise of having reunions while we were still doing stuff. It was the romance of coming back, like The Magnificent Seven, slightly weathered. The first wage cheque I ever got I spent on having a three-piece tweed suit made. I look back and think, what a cunt. I do! I should have been dancing my tits off to Yazz & The Plastic Population. What the fuck was I doing? People thought I was a pretentious idiot and I agree with them. It was just a weird desire to be to be older. What a fool.

I remember the beginning of punk and how frightened I was by it. Because I was 11, I remember being afraid about these anarchists. But shortly afterwards, I wanted to be cool like them. I loved X-Ray Spex and The Specials but my favourite was electropop – Ultravox, Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk. I still love all that. When I listen now, some of it is just Proustian, pressing buttons. But I think “Just Can’t Get Enough” is the greatest song ever written. I mean, it’s just perfect.

Television was a huge friend to me. I had one best friend for years and we were inseparable, David Clegg and myself. We’d get told off for talking about horror films instead of playing football. But I was devoted to television. Every now and then I meet someone who wasn’t allowed to watch ITV. Sometimes, heaven forfend, they weren’t allowed to watch television at all. They might as well be from Mars. I watched so much, and it was a huge osmotic process. I took in so much about history, science, film, sex, society. That’s what television still does at its best – it informs, educates and entertains.

The sliding doors in my life are utterly petrifying. If I hadn’t taken a year off after school, who knows where I might have gone. I then failed to get into two drama schools before going to Bretton Hall, where I met the rest of The League of Gentlemen. Persistence is key – but luck is such a huge part.  

I always wanted to write and act and was encouraged at school. I was in an advanced reading group when I was five and got a house point for pronouncing the word ‘subterranean’ correctly. Later, my heroes were all the comic actors – Ronnie Barker, Leonard Rossiter, Alistair Sim. I wanted to be in that world. How I got there was not exactly a mystery to me, but a cluttered path. I knew drama school was the way in but also knew I was not one of those actors who can just do anything. I’m not a song and dance man. I needed to find a more obscure way in… and that’s what happened.

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My first TV job was in 1991 followed immediately by another one. I thought I was fine but then didn’t work for two years. We put The League of Gentlemen together and did our first shows in 1994, then over Christmas 1995 we did five shows at the Tristan Bates Theatre [in London’s West End]. We were trying to get agents to come. I stayed with Jeremy Dyson in Leeds over Christmas and we watched the Paul and Pauline Calf Video Diaries. I remember saying, ‘Do you think we’ve left it too late?’ It felt like something new was happening. But The League of Gentlemen was our route in – a way of making a huge impact but also showing our versatility as performers.

There’s no such thing as a would-be writer. If you want to be an airline pilot, you’ve got to pass those exams. If you want to write, you can do it right now. It doesn’t mean it’ll be brilliant or that anyone will like it. But you could do it. Whatever’s sitting on your shoulder, kill it. Because it’s only fear stopping you. If you’re self-critical, get over yourself.

Writing and being in Doctor Who, making a worldwide success of Sherlock Holmes – it’s all my childhood dreams come true. I don’t think there’s anything left except James Bond, which I was obsessed with as a child. So many of my childhood passions have informed my career. They have become my career. The child is father to the man – in slightly superficial terms, I still bear the marks of the first half-dozen films I went to see. It’s amazing what influence they had. The first was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and that’s the inside of my head – the combination of whimsy and horror and oddness. Then Albert Finney in Scrooge, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Diamonds Are Forever, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Fiddler on the Roof. Between those is everything I love – a lot of ghosts, action, spies, dinosaurs and the child catcher. I mean, that’s everything.

We knew we were reinventing Doctor Who for a new audience. I remember distinctly 20 years ago at the launch of the new Doctor Who, standing in the Tardis and Russell [T Davies] coming towards me. I said, “Not now, I’m resetting the lateral balance code.” It struck me then that I’d always imagined being inside [1972 Doctor Who episode] “The Curse of Peladon”. But we can’t make that version. Otherwise you are trapped in amber. Nostalgia is such a trap. It’s partly the reason we are in the state we’re in politically, because it’s been so weaponised. Nothing’s as good as it used to be. There’s a whole generation of people shaking their fists because of the myth of the fucking golden age.

As Steven Moffat says, we got the keys to Baker Street for a while. It was ours, briefly. And it’s just the most amazing thing. It’s such a privilege, you have to allow yourself those moments of pride. Otherwise they’re gone – and they fly by. I think a lot about Sherlock – I haven’t seen any episodes for such a long time, and suddenly ages has gone by. But that was a time, wasn’t it? That was an epoch.

I’d like to reassure the younger me that there will be lots of fun ahead – but also an amazing lifelong relationship. As a teenager, and then for many years, I was in pursuit of something meaningful but didn’t have much luck. I was too eager to please, I would put someone off by being too eager for this to be The One. Up until recently, things got so much better for gay people. History was moving in the right direction. But now it’s scary again.

I didn’t know anyone who died of AIDS but knew plenty of people who had HIV. I remember how terrifying it was growing up in the shadow of those adverts. I didn’t withdraw but was very careful. I always have been in that way. It’s also easy to forget the casual homophobia. In a way, the great achievement is for a younger generation to not have to think about these things. Yet, at the same time, you want people to be aware of their history and what it took to get here. That’s the great triumph of It’s a Sin. It did more in five episodes than any number of lectures about the AIDS crisis. That’s the power of art, that’s what we’re here for. It’s why I’m so proud of Queers. When the BBC asked me to write and curate a series of monologues about being gay, I thought, “I would like nothing more on Earth.”

Doing Mission: Impossible was an amazing experience – but then, I’m not hanging off a plane. Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise couldn’t have been more welcoming. Amazingly, Simon Pegg had shown Tom Cruise The League of Gentlemen years ago – he’d said: “This is fucked up!” It was a privilege to be part of this massive machine. It’s terrifying at first, but screen out the scale of the film and you’re just in a room with some actors.

It’s difficult thinking about a day I would like to relive. Of course, my wedding day. But if I really could go back – I used to go home every Christmas. Then one year I didn’t. I spent Christmas with my partner and his family and just after that, my mum got ill. I realised that was the last normal Christmas I would have had. The next one was not normal. But you can’t tell, can you? I lost my mum 20 years ago and my dad four years ago – but I don’t think there’s anything I didn’t say.

What would I really say to my teenage self? Well, first of all, because I watched Doctor Who, I’d be terrified of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect [the fallout from a time traveller interacting with their past or future self]. But so much of the fantasy version of my future self has genuinely come true – in terms of my career but also my life and situation with my partner. I’m very, very blessed.

Mark Gatiss’s crime series Bookish is available on U&Alibi from 16 July on Sky, Virgin and NOW.

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