When Fisherman’s Friends came out in 2019 with its tale of crooning Cornish trawlermen, the movie was lapped up faster than a clotted cream tea for its feelgood charm and humorous underdogs-come-good story.
And suave James Purefoy, once touted as the next James Bond, attracted new fans by singing gruff sea shanties in a cable-knit sweater as part of one of “the world’s oldest buoy bands”.
When it came to planning a sequel, James, 58, now an executive producer too, felt passionately his character could take on a deeper storyline and, using creative licence, this time explore themes of grief and mental health, between the crooning and comedy.
It was then that he was painfully forced into one of those inexplicable moments when life imitates art.
“My father died about a month before we started shooting,” reveals James – who plays Jim, a grumpy member of the Fisherman’s Friends village band who is grappling with the death of his own father, Jago (David Hayman).
"We had the funeral about a week before we started shooting. I arrived with that weighing me down somewhat. It wasn’t easy and it was confusing because those were the feelings that were very raw in me.”
The original film – a surprise hit – propelled the real-life Fisherman’s Friends on whom the film was based, from a life at sea to stardom.
Out of nowhere the band, from Port Isaac, were spotted by a holidaying Universal executive back in 2009, and to everyone’s astonishment a top 10 hit and album beckoned.
When we speak ahead of the sequel’s release on August 19, James is back in the Cornish village on holiday with his wife, director and producer Jessica Adams, and their three young children.
On the video call he shows me the turquoise Cornish sky through his open window, and, with seagulls filling his heavy pauses, admits the role was incredibly painful at times.
He says he never considered pulling out, but would have “preferred to use my imagination”, explaining what was especially hard, was the difference between his acutely raw grief, and Jim’s, a year on.
The two kept getting mixed as he began to cry when Jim wasn’t meant to.
“Grief goes through lots of stages,” he says. “It’s really raw, like an open cut on your arm, and slowly but surely that cut stops bleeding, and then it starts scabbing over.
“So my own feelings would sometimes rumble up in a take, and come to the surface in a way that wasn’t appropriate for the character. You would have to stop and say: ‘Can we just take five minutes here?’”
His father was 91 when he passed away in March 2021, a few years after the death of James’s mother.
The actor says he avoided depression simply because he talked about his feelings. He learned to do that from his mother and two older sisters, the “keystones in my life” who brought him up.
His parents separated when he was just four and his dad moved away from their home in Somerset.
“We didn’t see him perhaps as much as we should have done,” he admits.
What he was keen to examine is how Jim struggles to express himself, and how society still tells men to keep emotions in check.
“We don’t talk about things, you don’t cry like a girl, you have to man up,” James says.
“This might open the door to some blokes talking about things they might not have talked about otherwise.”
He is very keen to point out however, this is no tale of woe.
“We have me dressed as a fish finger,” he laughs (true, and a little psychedelic). And all the shanties, gags, songs and the sunshine. This is by no means a downer of a film.”
The sequel – Fisherman’s Friends: One and All – revisits the band to see how they have coped with fame.
It also charts the band’s legendary performance on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage – which was meant to be recreated at the festival itself.
“‘You’ll be able to play in Glastonbury in front of 80,000 people’,” James recalls being promised. “We didn’t go to Glastonbury because the pandemic hit. In fact we were in a field in Cornwall with 80 extras.”
You can’t tell, though. The actor, who has carved out a solid career with projects including A Knight’s Tale in 2001, 2004’s Vanity Fair, ABC drama Revenge, the role of Mark Antony in the 2007 BBC/HBO series Rome, and recently the Netflix hit Sex Education, is from landed stock.
He boarded at the prestigious Sherborne Prep in Dorset from seven years old.
James was bullied, and later caned, and has insisted he would never send his children away so young.
James found fame in his 20s, dated Gwyneth Paltrow and was twice linked to the role of James Bond. Today, he is sanguine but monotone about the missed opportunity.
“It was another job and it didn’t happen for whatever reason, you go on and do other things,” he says.
“And you do other great parts you wouldn’t have done if you had done Bond.”
He admits the fame side became a bit frenzied for a spell.
“I was invited to all the parties. I was once dubbed ‘party boy of the year’. That might have been the line that made me go ‘that’s probably not a good thing to be seen as’,” he admits.
He began to see a therapist, conceding this was probably “part” of the reason.
Of Bond he says: “I’m not sure you can sit quietly in the corner of a pub for 10 minutes without someone whacking a camera phone in your face. I suspect there may be people in my business that enjoy it, but I also suspect it’s a level of attention that can become aggravating.”
Fame is another theme explored among the Fisherman’s Friends.
Today, James admits those members he is friendly with still live normal lives in Port Isaac.
He has sung with them in the pub and around their homes, and often gone out on their trawlers (mercifully, he doesn’t get sick).
“I don’t think it bothers them that much, they just get on and do their thing,” he says. “I come here every year now and feel very welcomed.”
Then swiftly, like a true honorary Cornishman, he adds: “ I don’t want everyone to come here though. It becomes crowded!”
