British export Russell Brand is positioned for U.S. stardom as an actor, comedian, and writer.
-By John Bolster
Page 57:
On his newly acquired boyhood pet gerbil, which he lobbied for like some 11-year-old Jack Abramoff:
“How I adored that hard-won gerbil. Barney. A good solid, blokey name for the new totem of my happiness. I worshipped Barney the way primitive people worshipped the animals they hunted, seeing in the creature a connection to the natural and the divine. My devotion was swiftly rewarded when Barney, with scant regard for his gender, quite brilliantly had a litter of babies.”
Page 86:
On the early encouragement from his high school drama teacher, Colin Hill, when Brand was struggling to fit in:
“Colin Hill said I was good in drama classes. It’s just showing off, I thought, sanctioned showing off.… Oh my God, I’ve found a loophole. ‘Erm, Colin, you like this showing off, do you? You say I’m doing it well? I can also torment dogs and masturbate, do you have any classes for those?’ ”
Page 143: On auditioning for London’s Drama Centre, a school for dramatic arts headed by Christopher Fettes and Yat Malmgren:
“It was an intimidating atmosphere. Christopher was snooty. And Yat muttered mysterious things; he asked me what my favorite color was. ‘I like purple,’ I said. ‘Oh. Purple.’ He responded as if my answer had given him all the information he’d ever need on me as a person. ‘People who like purple are vain and are unable to cope with the adult world.’ A lucky guess.”
Page 216:
On buying heroin in Camden, an edgy, cosmopolitan section of London:
“The dealers keep the bags in their mouths. Then when you buy one they spit it into their hand and you have to put it directly in your mouth. Even though you obviously want the heroin, a little bit of you is thinking, Eugh! He’s had it in his mouth. After a while, though, you stop thinking that.”
Some things in life, such as Highland Park Single Cask No. 443 Scotch, or the sex appeal of Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, come armor-plated against hype. No matter how many times, or how strenuously, I tell you how incredibly good Highland Park is—and even if I piss you off in the process (likely)—your reaction when you try it would still be along the lines of, “Holy crap, that’s good Scotch. Wow. Is that real? Fuck, that is good stuff.” Guaranteed. I could in no way overhype that particular whisky.
Now, Russell Brand is just one man, and a big part of what he does (the film-career part) is highly collaborative, so it’s probably not fair to put him in this category yet, but let’s just say, for now, that we are fast approaching the day when he will belong there. If you have any doubt, go to YouTube and watch his audition for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the underrated 2008 comedy he nearly walked off with, despite being a relative unknown on these shores. His audition for the role—a small tour de force of improvisation—is as good as anything in the film itself. Or check out Brand’s clever, engaging memoir, My Booky Wook, which is already a bestseller in the U.K. and comes out here on March 10.
Flip to just about any page of this book, subtitled A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up, and you’ll land on an account of Brand’s struggles with addiction and coming of age that is witty or poignant or entertaining or, usually, all three. (We did just that; see sidebar.) He also writes a newspaper column on soccer (or football, as it’s known over there) for the Guardian, makes an outstanding talkshow guest, and was the Sun’s 2007 “Shagger of the Year.”
Actor, writer, stand-up, shagger of the year: Small wonder then that when we opened our recent chat with a simple “How are you, Russell?” the 33-year old Londoner said, “I’m on the precipice of ecstasy.” With a Comedy Central stand-up special also slated for this month, followed by a starring role in a Judd Apatow–produced film, Get Him to the Greek, and, possibly, the starring role in a remake of the Dudley Moore classic Arthur, Brand is also on the precipice of full-blown U.S. stardom.
Did you need to achieve success before you could write this book, and face some of the more difficult parts?
Yeah. I think it could only serve as a kind of a watershed, a line being drawn underneath years of incidental catastrophe, trivial cruelty, and…expertly undertaken misdemeanors.
How did you remember it all, since you were out of your head for most of it?
Well, for example, the terrible incident of claiming to have contracted HIV in order to get a week off work, I was reminded of that by a friend. I had completely forgotten that. Fortunately, when I was a using addict and a drunk, a lot of my conduct made for good anecdotes. A lot of the ones I didn’t recall, other people would. So I had a starring part in other people’s anecdotes. And I was able to reclaim that for my own purposes when it came to writing the book.
So you had to conduct interviews for your autobiography.
[Laughs] Very much, yes.
Can you give me a best bit that didn’t make it into the book?
There’s a story of me and my friend Matt Morgan going to Norfolk Broads on a barge. Norfolk is the Deep South of England—not geographically but ideologically. The people of Norfolk are the hillbillies of Britain. When we phoned ahead to rent the barge, the man thought we were a couple of homosexuals, and he wouldn’t let us have the boat. I had to ring back and say I was coming with my wife. But the guy recognized it was me and said, “All right, I look forward to meeting you and your wife.” So on the way there we had to meet a girl on the train and convince her to pose as my wife. We arrived at the dock, and when the man was telling me and the woman posing as my wife how to drive the boat, I was so overwhelmed with how brilliant my plan was going that I didn’t listen to any of the instructions. When it came to the next stage, when the “wife” had gone, me and Matt were left trying to operate the boat. It was a ludicrous experience, and we ended up out to sea. On a barge that was only designed to go four knots an hour. It was Withnail and I on the Norfolk Broads. Terrifying things happened—we slept in a windmill, lots of peculiar events took place.
You’ve been a household name in the U.K. for some time now. Do you relish the challenge of becoming more established in the U.S.?
Well, it is a challenge. It’s a bigger country; there are more people. Hopefully I’ll make it through films, which seems to be the way things are going. Because although I’ve been a comedian for years in the U.K., it wasn’t until I started to feature regularly in the tabloids that I became notorious nationwide. And that’s a difficult thing to overcome.
The next film I’m doing, Get Him to the Greek, has Judd Apatow producing and Nick Stoller directing, and I’m starring in it with Jonah Hill and a whole host of very, very exciting people who I’ve been very, very strictly instructed not to inform you of—but proper-like, “What, they’re in it?!”–type people. I’m very optimistic and excited about that movie. And with everything else that’s happening, I just feel that now I’m in a position where I can afford to concentrate on the work and try to stay out of trouble.
Do you see yourself exploring noncomedic roles in the U.S.?
Yes, but I’m very happy to play comedy roles at the moment. I think it’s wise to get established as what you are before you try to vary that idea in people’s minds. At the moment, a significant number of people don’t know who I am, so they’ll hardly be dazzled by me wearing a fake mustache, or talking with a lisp. But once everyone knows who I am, then I can say, “Well, look at this, I can pretend to be an Italian waiter.”
Is it true you’re going to be involved in a remake of Arthur?
Yeah. We’ve been offered that, by Warner Bros. We’re sort of working on it at the moment. With this kind of project, though, you’re working for a year in advance, aren’t you? But I love that film; I love Dudley Moore. And I really hope that it works out. If we can do a respectful and interesting remake, I think it would be really exciting.
Will you do a stand-up tour in the U.S., around your Comedy Central special?
Yes, I will. I love performing over here. I’ve performed in gigs in San Francisco, at a club called Cobbs where Dave Chappelle does a lot of gigs. Stand-up comedy is really important to me. It’s very immediate. It keeps you honed. I have no intention of giving that up. Eddie Izzard advised me early on in my stand-up career to pursue it because it gives you a kind of autonomy. And American audiences have loved my stuff so far, so I’m keen to do more.
How much do you tailor your material to the different audience?
Well, I don’t think Oh, I won’t do my reams and reams of Communist material because it’s, you know, an American audience. I don’t think it’s a wholly different sensibility, but one thing it has done is make me be more disciplined. Like in England, I’ve to some degree exploited the fact that I’ve got an audience of people who have come expressly to see me. They’ve already made up their minds that they love me. I can go on and show off, and just improvise for a couple of hours. But over here I’ve been very concise in what I’m doing. I’ve brought very worked-up material. But still, I think it’s a bit of a myth that audiences won’t understand you. I think if you’re funny, they’ll come with you anywhere. If you’re funny, you can get away with—not with murder, that would be ludicrous—but, laughing about murder.
You’ve performed for a whole range of audiences back home, including the queen. How did that go?
I very nearly got beheaded.
What happened?
Well, when someone gives themselves over to literally being God’s representative on earth, someone whose face lives on the stamp, and on pound notes, I find that kind of preposterous. It’s difficult to think of them as a person. It’s only when you start to think Well, she is a normal 80-odd-year old woman that you can properly give her some respect. But at least she didn’t heckle.
What did you say?
I hosted the equivalent of the Grammys in the U.K., the Britain Awards, and I made a joke about the queen. Actually, when I say joke, it was an acute social observation. I said, “You know that I love Her Majesty the Queen and I respect her, but if someone gave you an envelope and told you that inside was a photograph of the queen’s vagina, you would open it and have a look.” Right? And then it was, “Here with that envelope is … Joss Stone!” And she had an envelope, because it was an envelope for the nominees for an awards category. But there were some repercussions for that. People said I shouldn’t be allowed to say things like that. I pointed out that they were merely a bit anguished, and shouldn’t take life so seriously.
Do you get a rush from being on the edge like that?
Yeah, I love it. That’s what I enjoy most, I think. There’s a particular thrill when you know that you’re very close to the edge. And, of course, occasionally you will go over. I think that’s a necessary consequence of taking risks.
