Danny Dyer and Ryan Sampson on their riotous new comedy Mr Bigstuff: ‘I’ve never claimed to be a hardman’

The duo play unlikely brothers in this Sky Max series set deep in the bowels of suburbia. They tell Ellie Harrison about the joys of making it – and whether there’s any truth to Dyer’s tough-guy reputation

‘God wanted’ their show to happen, according to one half of the pair (Sky)

Most people in Britain can spot a Danny Dyerism a mile off. The former EastEnders star and twinkly-eyed national treasure is famous for his playful, uniquely poetic turns of phrase on social media, whether it’s telling the proverbial “early bird” to “get back in ya nest, ya feathery little mug”, or saying Donald Trump seems like he’s “completely off his strange-looking nut”. So when writer and actor Ryan Sampson created his new Sky Max comedy Mr Bigstuff, with lines like “I’ve been on my trotters all day looking for a certain little twat with a nutty haircut”, there was truly only one man for the job.

But there was a problem: Dyer was nine years into his role as Mick Carter in Britain’s biggest soap, a schedule-swallowing commitment meaning he’d never be able to say yes if Sampson approached him. Then, a miracle happened. Just days after Sampson finished the script, he went out drinking with friends, drowning his sorrows about not being able to cast Dyer. The next morning, still half-cut, he walked past a newsagent and saw a front page proclaiming: DYER QUITS ’ENDERS. “When I saw the paper, in my state, I was like, ‘God wants this to happen!” he tells me now.

Sampson and Dyer are sat opposite me in a London hotel room, cradling a pair of preposterously small china espresso cups and saucers. Dyer had worked with Sampson very briefly on the comedy Plebs in 2013, but had no idea about the script he’d been cooking up. Today, he has his arm round the back of his co-star’s chair, and gazes at him like a proud dad. “I don’t know if Ryan had some sort of voodoo doll or something, because I obviously just woke up one morning, sprang out of bed and went, ‘I’ve got to leave EastEnders!’” He acts it out, bouncing bolt upright in his chair. “It was meant to be, baby.”

In person, as I’d suspected, Dyer has a gift for delivery; his first proper foray into comedy is long overdue. And it’s a riot. He plays Lee, an unhinged, tinny-drinking, ciggy-chaining man on the run, crashing into the life of his estranged brother Glen (Sampson), who is cut from a very different cloth. Glen works at a carpet shop and just wants to be left in suburban peace to enjoy his morning Yakult and breathable active wear. “Ryan’s character is different to him,” says Dyer, “but there’s not much in it for me and Lee. Well, other than the clobber, because he does wear some nutty gear.” (It includes a striking combo of stained vests, a Big-Lebowski-style cardigan and Jack Nicholson sunglasses. He also borrows Glen’s wife’s flowery dressing gown.)

The pair had a lot of fun on set. Especially filming a scene where they do a synchronised dance and play the spoons – an East End tradition. But they were feeling the pressure to get it right. “The stage directions were very elaborate,” says Dyer. “Like half a page. We both took it very seriously. And the spoons cut your fingers open. They’re naughty, those spoons.” How many takes did they do? “Weirdly not that many, because we were so adrenalised,” says Sampson. Dyer also relished the fight scenes – and the fact that, unlike on EastEnders, he was able to make them funny. “I liked rolling around on the ground and shoving grass in each other’s faces,” he says.

Mick Carter’s exit from EastEnders – in classic soap fashion, over the edge of a cliff – has been liberating for Dyer. “Being on a soap is a difficult discipline,” he says. “It’s relentless – multi-camera, no rehearsals, no talking about it beforehand, after maybe one or two takes you move on, you shoot 17 scenes a day, you might learn up to 30 pages a day. On a film, you’re doing four or five pages a day if you’re lucky. It’s a very different discipline, and especially with EastEnders, it’s very dark. You’re taking some really serious stuff, and you’re doing it pre-watershed. I did 1,100 episodes in that show, and I tackled some really important storylines that changed a lot of people’s lives.”

There’s one he’s particularly proud of – where Mick’s son Johnny comes out. “I put my arm around him and go, ‘And? I love you.’ Roll the credits,” says Dyer. “It was really quite a brave thing to do, because soap doesn’t usually do that. Usually, there’s this big drama around it and someone has to die because they’ve come out as gay. But it was so simple. A lot of men messaged me and said that they’d come out the next day. So I’m proud of EastEnders, but when you’re on it, they own your arse.” He admits it was hard to quit, given he has “three kids and three grandchildren and a mortgage and all that bollocks”, but the actor, who’s worked repeatedly with Harold Pinter and starred in Andrea Arnold’s Oscar-winning short film Wasp, feels he had to. He still has “hunger and ambition”.

In sync: Sampson and Dyer in ‘Mr Bigstuff' (Sky)

Dyer is chuffed that something as “f***ing funny” as Mr Bigstuff is his first big project after Albert Square. And while he’s known for being amusing simply for being Danny Dyer on shows from Who Do You Think You Are?  to Good Morning Britain, this is his first chance to do scripted comedy. “It’s important to take the piss out of yourself,” he says of his panel and talk-show appearances. “I am in on the joke, you know, and that’s why I think I disarm a lot of people who want to attack me. I don’t take myself too seriously in any way, shape or form. And I’m not shy to say how I feel. When you go on things like 8 Out of 10 Cats, you’re set up. I know I’m set up, because they’re gonna take the piss out of me for the way I speak, but there’s a way of disarming them quite early.” Sampson is nodding. “He’s got a way with a one-liner,” he says.

Mr Bigstuff sneaks in some meaning alongside all the – as Sampson calls them – “knob jokes”. Glen and Lee are essentially orphans – having lost both their parents. “I wanted to make something about broken families, because I lost my mum a few years ago, and it was obviously horrible,” he says. “We were so close to her. But then this extra thing happens when you lose someone who is the lynchpin of your family, and I didn’t see this thing coming, which is that you all spiral off into different directions, because they were the fixed point that you were all orbiting around, and now you don’t know how to interact with each other.”

Dyer starred as Mick Carter in ‘EastEnders’ for nine years (BBC/Kieron McCarron/Jack Barnes)

He also wanted to interrogate modern notions of masculinity. Partly because it’s something he’s grappled with as a 5ft 4in gay man. “If you’re a man who’s quite short and then also gay, it feels like you’re excluded from the conversation about masculinity,” he says. “And I’ve been watching people going about doing it in different ways, sometimes quite performatively. So I wanted to write about these two brothers who are approaching what they think is the way to be a man, in polar opposite ways. Glen has gone about it in this cookie-cutter, nice-guy template. And Lee’s gone for this maverick, swaggering, aggressive lifestyle. And both of them are suffering from it.”

Masculinity is an important topic for Dyer, too, who recently made the Channel 4 documentary How to Be a Man. “It’s so complex,” he says. “And at the moment, I feel the media are creating spaces for people like Andrew Tate to pop up. There’s a lot of suppression with being masculine, especially in young boys… And, you know, what is the perfect man?” He starts to list off qualities on his fingers. “A man who can build you a cupboard, a man who can protect ya, a man who will cry at TheNotebook, who will throw you around the bedroom like a caveman.” He sighs. “But then some men are accused of being too feminine, and they get friendzoned by women.”

Over the years, Dyer has earned a reputation as being quite the opposite – a “hardman”. It’s a reputation rooted in his early film roles, such as hooligan Tommy in 2004’s The Football Factory. But Dyer rejects the moniker. “I’ve never really claimed to be a hardman,” he says, arguing that it’s “a bit of a myth” created by the media. “But it’s my persona, maybe – I give off vibes of ‘I’m a hardman’ and I’m not.”

He softens. “You speak to my kids and anyone that knows me, I’m a cloud. My kids say I’m a big, cuddly cloud. That’s what they call me. Papa Bear and all that. I guess I do come from a very working-class background, and where I’m from, you have to know how to fight from a young age, or you will be terrorised. But this ‘hardman Danny Dyer’ thing? It’s always been a revelation to me.” Dyer puts his hand on his chest, all mock sincerity. “I’m a sensitive little soul. I’m just a little actor, trying to make his way in the world.”

He gives a butter-wouldn’t-melt smile, and tells me to “watch my nut” on my way out.

‘Mr Bigstuff’ is available on Sky Max and streaming service NOW from 17 July