The Real Diary Of Adrian Mole...by Stephen Mangan
Date: Thursday, June 06
Topic:
The real diary of Adrian Mole
By Stephen Mangan
31st August 2000
Meet Leicester celebrity and best-selling author Sue Townsend to audition for Adrian Mole. Sue is partially sighted so we go nose to nose as she examines my face with a magnifying glass.
The real diary of Adrian Mole
By Stephen Mangan
31st August 2000
Meet Leicester celebrity and best-selling author Sue Townsend to audition for Adrian Mole. Sue is partially sighted so we go nose to nose as she examines my face with a magnifying glass.
‘Adrian’s a bit of a geek’, she says, ‘the actor playing him can’t be good-looking.’ I get the part.
12th October 2000
My dark brown, curly hair is deemed too Mediterranean and not East Midlands enough, so I’m given highlights at a swanky Mayfair hairdresser. I emerge from the foil dreadlocks some hours later with bleached copper hair, while my dark, bushy eyebrows have been left in their natural state. I look like the bastard child of Anne Robinson and Groucho Marx.
13th October 2000
Go to large costume warehouse in Kilburn with designer Aideen Morgan to assemble Adrian’s wardrobe. Sharp suit, handmade shoes, beautiful fabrics – these are all denied me. A costume assistant is there solely to wrestle from me anything looks vaguely attractive. Trousers must under no circumstances reach the shoes, socks must be white, and nothing must match. Adrian Mole is not a pulling part.
Michael Caine is in the next cubicle being fitted for a film. I toy with the idea of going next door and showing with my ‘hilarious’ impersonations of him (‘spears at me’, ‘bloody doors off’ etc.) but decide against it. I’m about to play a bit of an intellectual; it’s time to start acting like one.
20th October 2000
Session with dialect coach. Adrian was born in Leicester but has spent the last seven years or so living in London. Spend the next four hours being taught an accent that sounds suspiciously like Birmingham. No, insists the coach, that’s the accent of a man who was born in Leicester but has lived for seven years in London. The voice coach is Australian.
21st October 2000
Spend all day practising accent.
22nd October 2000
First day of filming. I am quietly terrified. Stroll around trying to look relaxed and confident as if I spend all my time heading all-star casts in major adaptations of loved modern classics.
The director, Sandy Johnson, the producer, Sarah Smith, and Sue gather round to hear my accent.
‘That’s Birmingham,’ they chorus, ‘completely wrong – just do a Leicester accent please Stephen. Right quiet on set, we’ll go for a take.’
Mercifully all I have to say in this first shot is ‘Ned Sherrin’.
At lunch interviewed by a journalist who asks if I think my Mum (who died in 1991) helped me land this part ‘from beyond the grave’. Try to remain calm.
After lunch I'm in a scene involving being screamed at by Keith Allen while standing next to a lap dancer who has a 12-foot python round her neck. I swear the snake keeps looking at me and licking its lips.
Last scene of the day is between Adrian and Pandora. Since early adolescence Adrian has worshiped her – he keeps a Pandora scrapbook, he obsesses constantly about her – they’ve known each other for 20 years.
‘Stephen, this is Helen she’s playing Pandora. Right quiet on set – we’re going for a take.’
Originally published on ABC Tales (a href="http://www.abctales.com)
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