The latest edition of the Big Fish with Spencer Matthews podcast features an interview with James Buckley. Speaking to podcast host Spencer Matthew the Inbetweeners star talks about xchieving way more success than his talent should have allowed, t he lowest point in his life, whether there will be an Inbetweeners reunion, his success on message app Cameo and why he would never let his children watch The Inbetweeners.
Read an extract below and listen to the full interview on the Big Fish with Spencer Matthews podcast on Global Player now.
Discussing nearly missing out on landing the role of Jay in The Inbetweeners:
JB: I got a phone call from my then agent. She literally said something like ‘I've got some good news and I've got some bad news.’ The good news is that they're going ahead with The Inbetweeners, or Baggy Trousers as it was called then. I was like, brilliant, I’m going to be in a sitcom. Absolutely amazing. She went ‘bad news is that they're recasting. ‘
SM: How is the ‘good news’ good news?
JB: That's exactly what I said. I said ‘there's no good news here.’ I then got in touch with Damon Beasley, one of the co-creators of The Inbetweeners, and I said ‘I heard that that is going ahead, congratulations. And I know you guys are recasting, but if there's another part, I'd love to come in and do a job for you.’ He replied saying no, ‘we want you to be Jay. Did your agent not tell you this? We need to see you tomorrow to talk to you about this and we're going to audition a load of other kids at the time.’ If I'd never have sent that message and sort of hustled a little bit, I would’ve never turned up to the meeting the following day.
Responding to Spencer asking whether there will be an Inbetweeners reunion?
JB: You know, lot of people still ask if there's going to be some more Inbetweeners, and my answer is always the same. I always go look at me, look at a state of me, look how old and haggard I am, and I'm the youngest out of the boys.
SM: Would a kind of a reunion of you guys in the professional world not be something that everyone would love d?
JB: I'd love to do something different with the boys, but this was the one job in my life that ticked all the boxes. I loved doing it. I thought it was good. I'm proud of it. I got to do it with my friends. I had so much fun doing it and loads of other people loved us doing it as well.
Discussing his career and being typecast:
As far as my career and stuff like that, I've had way more success than my talent should allow. I've over excelled. If I never act in anything else again, I still feel like I've achieved everything that I set out to do. Right now, the thing that I concentrate on is my wife and kids. They're my favourite people in the world. I do really like them, which is handy because we spend a lot of time together.
I love that people are still crazy about that show [The Inbetweeners]. My life is, I walk down the street and complete strangers are pleased to see me, and that's because of The Inbetweeners and that's because of Jay. Now you talk about the typecast thing and it has its pros and cons. And I suppose it's my job to make an effort to try and break that mould and to try and maybe go down different avenues in my career and stuff, which I am open to. But I do think that, you know, being an idiot and making people laugh on television, I think that's what I'm good at. I think that's the only thing I'm particularly good at. So, it depends on how you feel about it personally.
Discussing his success on Cameo (the personalised celebrity message app):
JB: I have done tens of thousands, tens and tens of thousands, maybe 30, 40,000, something like that.
SM: You're a cameo millionaire.
JB: Yeah, yeah I am. I'm in the business of making people happy. I don't want to rip people off. I charge 40 quid. You know, two mates can go in 20 quid each for their other mate down the pub and I call him a bus w**ker and you know, take the p*ss out of him or something like that, and it makes a lot of people happy. But I am one of the most, if not the most, requested person on Cameo.
Discussing the lowest point in his life:
JB: I lost my best friend in my early 20s, just as The Inbetweeners was starting to become a thing, and that is something to this day that still confuses me. I still don't understand the timing of it, the fact that he was someone who I was really, really close to and who I enjoyed being with a lot. I don't laugh as much anymore now that he's gone and the fact that we were so young, and we were at the stage of our lives where you're just supposed to start making your way in the world. That was meant to be the beginning of our lives. We'd done school, we'd kicked around a little bit, signed on for a bit, worked on building sites, and he was a rifleman in the Army and he did a tour of Afghanistan. Absolutely fine, by the way.
He was a rifleman, so he wasn't there to be a mechanic or to be an engineer, his job was to basically be shot at, that was what he was, a professional ‘shoot at me’ person. He did a tour and came back absolutely fine. He was like right in the Helmand Province and came back absolutely fine and then there was an accident at home in his barracks, and he got hit by a car and he died. That to this day still really confuses me. It still really, really upsets me. I can be in a car on my own, I can hear a song that I remember me and him listening to while sitting there playing Championship Manager or something like that, and I'll just I'll break down. I’ll start crying.
Spencer asks James what the secrets to a happy marriage are:
JB: Just letting stuff go because it's really easy, it's so easy to have an unhappy marriage. You can do that really, really easily. People should not live together. People shouldn't occupy the same space that much. We need time on our own. Let loads of little stuff go, because there'll be loads of little stuff that annoy you when you live with another human being, sharing a bed with another human being. That's mental to me. Everyone should have their own bed. But you know, as I say, I let it go, I don't let it get to me.
SM: I was at my nephew's wedding recently and the priest, one of the first things he said was the secret to a happy marriage is having low expectations…
JB: Absolutely.
SM: I just thought actually it's really funny. I messaged it to my wife, who didn't find it very funny because I think she felt that I was saying that I had low expectations of her, whereas actually it was a stab at myself. So, darling, if you're listening to this, I was taking the piss out of myself, saying that you shouldn't have high expectations of me, not the other way around!
JB: That's absolutely true. Lower your expectations and then you can't be disappointed, because if Claire wanted to raise the bar, I would disappoint her four times an hour. That's not a sex joke, by the way, even though it sounded like it.
Spencer asks James if he’d let his children watch The Inbetweeners:
JB: I’d have child services, social services, turned up on my door if I knowingly let them watch The Inbetweeners. But also, I don't. I don't think they are interested in it. So, I don't. I don't think I've ever let them watch it. I wouldn't let them watch it. If they do, if curiosity gets the better of them and they end up watching it in the next few years, then that's on them, nothing to do with me. But also, I'm supposed to be their dad. You know I'm supposed to be respected. The last thing I want them to do is watch The Inbetweeners, because the tiny last bit of respect that I do have from them would go completely out the window. Because they'll be like, ‘what, we've got to take cues from this guy? He's meant to be our, you know, our sensei, the sage. He's meant to be this guy that guides us through life with pearls of wisdom, jumping on a car and f***ing shouting ‘friend’ at people!’ So, I can't let them watch it, because I'm supposed to be their dad and they'll never respect me after watching it.
Discussing having ‘Jay’ hair?
This is annoying. My hair was like this when I started doing The Inbetweeners and they did some like really weird bastardised bowl cut thing. It must look like that I’m just going ‘remember me? Look at the hair. You must remember me now!” Because I do have people going ‘cor and you’ve kept the hair the same as well.’ And I go ‘yeah well that’s just how I like to do my hair.’ I wish I had got it cut differently for The Inbetweeners. I wish I’d done a different cut for it.
