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Nick Moran talks to Jed
Novick about how he's survived overnight stardom as his new
play, Four Nights in Knaresborough opens
 "This idea that someone
can be a great stage actor and a terrible film actor - I won't
mention any names, but to me that just says that they're a
fuckin' terrible actor."
But what about the romance, the
smell of sweat on the stage…? "Bollocks. There are an
awful lot of very good stage actors who are very good film
actors and it's all getting a bit exposed. I think there's
been a lot of lardy, hollow, shouty, middle-class pointless
buffoons who've got knighthoods who've been very bad actors
and that won't happen again. You get someone like Malkovitch
who's got one of the best stage presences I've ever seen and
he's also a fantastic screen actor. So are Peter O'Toole or
Richard Harris. If you can do it you can do it."
Nick Moran has just done Look
Back In Anger at Bristol Old Vic and his new film The Three
Musketeers. "I'm Aramis - and that's a pretty big number.
That's a big Hollywood number, huge budget blockbuster with
Tim Roth, Stephen Rea, Catherine Deneuve" opened on 3,000
screens across America, so I guess he'd know.
I've only been with Nick for a
few minutes, but already it's clear that it's probably
unnecessary to say things like, "Look, just say what you
mean. Stop beating around the bush." Thin and full of
contained energy, Nick - you'll know him from Lock, Stock And
Two Smoking Barrels, but we'll get on to that, is in London
rehearsing his new play Four Knights In Knaresborough due to
open at the Theatre Royal on October 22, but he's had a bit of
a tough week. "It's been a bit of a mad week. I've just
wrapped on this film BJX, Baby Juice Express, which I've
written, produced and starred in and the only way to make it
all work was if I was spending the day rehearsing the play
until six and then being picked up from rehearsals to do the
night shoots six till six in the morning, then getting two
hours sleep and coming back and doing the rehearsals again, so
I had five days of that."
And it's about?
"It's about sperm smuggling."
Oh yeah. Personal experience?
"Nah, it's based on an American story. We've done what's
basically a Mel Brooks movie, a post-modernist, black
slapstick piss take of the comedy gangster genre. The comedy
gangster genre." We got there faster than I thought.
Talking to - or about Nick - and the conversation is going to
go to Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, which I guess is
why we're here. It was Lock Stock that took Nick up the
ladder, that made him A-list.
Lock Stock wasn't just a
popular film. It defined a time, a mood and was integral to
the triumph of style over substance that was Cool Britannia.
Smug, self-satisfied and narcissistic, it swept New Labour
into power and fooled a nation into thinking that Oasis was
interesting. Did you get invited to the infamous Downing
Street party Tony Blair held to show how cool he was?
"No, but I did meet him. It was a fantastic period. I got
flown to Cannes, went to a load of Grand Prix's… just
unbelievable."
Far be it for us to indulge in
scurrilous gossip, but there's an idea that Nick played the
game. Hanging around with Denise Van Outen and probably
someone out of All Saints. He was voted "Most Stylish
Man" by GQ and things don't get much more shallow than
that.
"Yeah, I sort of
over-indulged for a bit. I was like a kid in a sweet shop with
a ten pound note. 'I'll have one of them, one of them and one
of them.' I'd be out a lot, going to a load of things."
And hands up to anyone out there who, given the same choices,
wouldn't have bought that All Saints record, who wouldn't have
done the kid in a sweetshop bit? "I probably had about 15
months when my feet didn't touch the ground - but even in that
time I was lucky enough to have made a couple of good films.
but I'm pretty sorted now. It takes a lot to get me out of the
house." Not got your own stool at The Met Bar any more?
"Nah, none of that. But that was a laugh - I mean, look,
I used to work as a relief dustman and suddenly I'm getting
invited to meet the Queen, things like that.
"Well, yeah, fair play. I
did go to a polo match with the Queen and I did meet the Dalai
Lama. Looking back, I didn't fully understand what was
happening, or fully appreciate the connotations of what I was
doing. But there's very few English people who know what it's
like to be lead in a No.1 film.
"With the best will in the
World I tried to keep my feet on the ground and I might have
made a few mistakes, but look, I'm here now having bangers and
mash in a pub in South London. I haven't been in The Priory, I
haven't got a tattoo. I haven't got any puncture holes in my
skin, you know, so obviously I didn't do it all too much and I
came out of it relatively intact."
So closely was Nick associated with that sharp dressed, cocky
hooligan image that it was a bit of a surprise when he wasn't
in Guy Ritchie's inferior follow-up, Snatch. Again, ask around
and there are some fairly bitchy gossip stories knocking
about. How much airtime you give to gossip, I don't know, but,
even in his post-sweet shop phase, it's clear that Nick's got
a bit of a gob on him. Full of an all-consuming ego, you can
imagine he might have said things, done things, which in the
cold light might not have seemed wise. Dissing the director's
girlfriend? Winding up the ex-footballer hard man to an almost
physical degree? It's just stories but the phrase 'he had it
coming' was heard more than once. Nick's take on it all is
more considered.
"It's pretty simple. You
can't have exactly the same cast. It's not a soap opera. Guy
is quite a phenomenal man and he did this thing where he got a
load of American film stars over, the ones that he wanted not
the b-list ones you get given. Quite superb. Well done to
everybody." How very mature. Disappointing for Johnny
Scurrilous hack, but very mature. I look at Nick and Nick
looks at me and eats his bangers and mash.
"Do the work and
eventually everything will be OK. If you're getting a hard
time in the press, well just do the work and everything will
be alright. I'm very proud of almost everything I've done.
I've never done a pound note job, keep your head down and
think of the money. Even the Barclays commercials I did, well
Tony Scott was directing them and I could turn around and say
to
myself well I worked with Tony Scott for two weeks. Yeah,
alright."But there's nothing that's lucky about this.
People said I was lucky to get the break in Lock Stock. Well,
I'd been preparing. It was like someone offering a squaddie
out in a pub or some sort of ninja. I'd spent ten years
preparing for my big break so when we were actually out
filming it everyone was like 'Who's this guy? He's really
good.' I didn't know it at the time, but Guy got quite a bit
of flack for that. People were saying 'What's Guy done? He's
cast some nobody, some bloke he's seen in a couple of
adverts.' But it was all preparation so when the break came, I
was ready. It wasn't like being in fuckin Hear'Say. I didn't
get it cos of a fuckin national poll or any of those mutants
they stick in that fuckin bubble in, what is it? Big Brother?
Consistently working, improving my abilities at my chosen
profession, that means I can take this in my stride."
And right now taking it in his
stride means South London not LA, bangers and mash not sushi
and a Winnebago a mile long, darling. "One of the things
I can do with the little bit of clout that I've got is
introduce theatre to a new demographic, people who've never
been to a theatre in their lives, I can get them to go and see
John Osbourne's Look Back In Anger or Four Knights by a writer
they've never heard of. 'Nick Moran from Lock Stock.' "
"It'll get a bit of
coverage on the side of buses or in local newspapers and that
means more people will get to hear about it. A quest? I
wouldn't say anything so grand or noble as that, sounds like
I'm some sort of geezer on a mission to save British theatre,
but I think we can call it a good thing."
Four Knights in
Knaresborough
On Christmas Day 1170, four
knights left Henry II's household in Normandy and travelled to
Canterbury. In the early evening of December 29, they murdered
Thomas a Beckett, the archdeacon of Canterbury, the chancellor
of King Henry and the most influential man in England.
Did Henry know about it? Was he
party to the act? Who knows. But once the deed was done, the
assassins were alone.
Crazed with the madness of what
they'd done and faced with a country that wasn't best pleased
with them, they holed up in Knaresborough Castle.
"I think this is the best
gig in town, basically. It had already been done once and had
been well-received and when I read the script I thought this
could be very good" said Nick.
The first play by
teacher-turned-writer Paul Webb, Four Nights… it's the story
of the four knights who bumped off Thomas a Beckett in
Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 - the same story that gave TS
Eliot the idea for his play, Murder In The Cathedral - but
Webb's versions is funnier. But forget the historical setting,
four Nights… is firmly rooted in the laddish,
expletive-laden present.
According to Variety, Four
Nights intermittently raises pressing concerns about notions
of loyalty, justice and sexuality only to deflate them just as
quickly under an onslaught of alternately camp and gross
badinage.
Produced in London with Jonny
Lee Miller in the lead, it was described by critics as
"funny, febrile and fascinating - try to imagine a
medieval version of Reservoir Dogs."
copyright New Insight 2000
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