The writer Jez Butterworth recounted recently that he grew up about “10 miles and 10 years” apart from James Corden, the star of his anticipated new TV series Mammals, “but we actually met at the Met Ball…”
Though a world away from the St Albans and High Wycombe of their youth, they hit it off immediately at the glitzy New York gala in 2019. “It was really weird,” Butterworth says. “Straightaway there was this complete tuning in to Herts/Bucks borders in the mid-Eighties. You know what it’s like when you meet someone who you just sort of know that it’s going to work?”
The pair became increasingly close friends, and Butterworth sent the pilot script he had written for a TV show to The Late Late Show host. The response came just 20 minutes later. “I read it and wrote and said, ‘I’d kill to be in this,’” Corden says. “That was it really.”
The result is the six-part Mammals, which lands on Prime Video later this week, a twisty, tricksy show that explores modern relationships; it’s about love, loss, grief and betrayal and delights in constantly wrongfooting the audience. As well as Corden, it stars Sally Hawkins and Colin Morgan.
“The original idea was this: what if you had a story that was about relationships, sexual and emotional, but the motor of that story was plotted and paced like a thriller,” says Butterworth, who has won Olivier awards for his acclaimed plays The Ferryman and Jerusalem.
“I was using all the skills I’d learned and all the craft I’d learned writing plays, but also writing Hollywood movies [he was a writer on Edge of Tomorrow and worked on Bond films Skyfall and Spectre, among others]. I threw them all up in the air and tried to create something that had the purpose and the velocity of a thriller.”
Mammals is also funny and while he doesn’t try and write jokes, he says, his tendency to find the humour in the absurdity of everyday life filters through.
Corden plays Michelin star chef Jamie, who is trying to launch a new restaurant (some critics pointed to the timing of the role with glee, given he recently hit the headlines over an incident in a restaurant, for which he apologised, over being “ungracious to a server”). His world begins to fall apart when he learns shocking secrets about his pregnant wife, Amandine, played by Melia Kreiling.
Despite the humour, Mammals is also a dark drama, which puts its lead through the emotional wringer. Some will see the role of Jamie as a surprise choice for Corden, who is better known for his comedy, from Gavin and Stacey to One Man, Two Guvnors, and latterly as a chat show host in the US.
But he didn’t take a conscious decision to do drama. “I don’t think I looked at it and thought, ‘People can see me in a different way.’ Really the doing it is the reward. You don’t really think past that. You think, if I can work with Stephanie [director Stephanie Laing], Jez, this cast – it would be a thrill to spend this summer in London doing such a thing. Anyone who looks at my career will see I’ve never had a plan.”
In fact, he revealed that the situation is a complete reverse from a period early in his career, after roles in Shane Meadows’ TwentyFourSeven and then in Mike Leigh film All of Nothing. “I remember talking to my agent saying, ‘I think I can be funny, but no one will ever see me for any comedies ever.’ And then I wrote a comedy [Gavin and Stacey] and became a late-night talk show host, and people say, ‘Was this a conscious decision to do such a thing?’
“For me it’s always the people. That’s it. That’s all you can be led by,” he adds. “I Just couldn’t pass it up.”
One of “the people” on this show was Hawkins, a friend of Corden’s since they appeared together in All or Nothing in 2001 (“It’s wonderful that some people will be seeing the creative actor genius side for the first time here with Mammals,” Hawkins says of him).
She also worked with Butterworth on The Winterling at the Royal Court in 2006. “I felt extraordinarily lucky when James said Jez was writing this piece, and said, ‘Okay I’m in. I just loved it.’”
She plays Jamie’s sister Lue, who is descending deeper into a secret fantasy world, causing cracks in her marriage with Jeff (played by Morgan). The script was, she says “like nothing else I have ever read or known. Jez’s writing is always like this. He just is a very special and transformative sort of visionary”.
She adds, “You want to be involved in everything he does. It’s so beautifully rich and overlapping and I just go with it. It’s all there. It’s like Pinter, Miller or Chekhov when he just leaves these little hooks. It’s beautiful, funny, brilliant and complex.”
Corden and Butterworth’s partnership proved crucial. After the star was cast, Butterworth set about writing the next episodes and says Corden “came back with fantastic, and really insightful and sometimes game-changing input”.
But director Stephanie Laing says the show has a “unique Butterworth tone! To me, it’s a mix of Ang Lee and the Coen Brothers. That’s basically it.”
One quirky moment, early in the pilot, is a cameo from Tom Jones. At the premiere of the show at the London Film Festival last month, a member of the audience asked why he was cast. Butterworth responded with a smile, “If the story is about monogamy versus not monogamy – you can see where I’m going with this... Tom Jones is the patron saint of the away game,” which brought the house down. The writer added, “I had no idea he could do it, but of course he could do it, we could have used any of his takes. He’s a complete natural and understood the material in his bones.”
Butterworth first wrote the pilot episode in 2015. “I did what I always do, which is put it in a drawer, and got it out a lot later, five years later. Because I like to know if something’s going to be good in five years’ time. It’s a great way of time proofing things.”
He says that when an idea comes to him, if it gives him goosebumps then he will pursue it, but even if it does, “I won’t ask myself why.”
Once on board, Butterworth shaped the character with the star in mind. “This happened with Mark Rylance on Jerusalem – there’s a point where you meet and you go, “Right, I’m making this suit for you. We’ll work out how it looks together and what we want it to be.
“It’s very inspiring. I look to be inspired.”
Corden says that Jerusalem had a profound affect on him before meeting its author. “I just remember watching that play, and it was like someone had lifted up a rock and gone, ‘This is what England actually is.’” He doesn’t get starstruck by many people, but that night at the Met Gala was different. “Jez might be the only person that I’ve ever gone up to and gone, ‘Hello, I’m James, it’s just an absolute honour to meet you.’”
