Robert Carlyle thought The Full Monty was going to be “a load of f***ing pish” when it came out in 1997, and he had a few doubts about bringing it back.
As he returns to the role of Gaz for an eight-part Disney+ series, the Scottish actor admitted: “I guess I’d lost sight of the film and what it was about, you know? I started thinking, ‘I don’t know whether this is going to work’.”
But Robert, 62, now feels the tale of hard-up, unemployed Sheffield steelworkers is relevant due to Britain’s present financial woes.
“Look what’s happened in 25 years: seven prime ministers, eight northern regeneration policies, f*** all’s changed. As soon as I saw that spelled out in the opening, I knew it would be OK,” he told Radio Times.
“How many years of austerity has it been? It feels like 55 years of Tory rule and people have been suffering. You see it in Gaz, his friends and family. There’s no doubt things need to change. People have had enough.”
Robert, who made the “pish” remark to Graham Norton in 2017, said the warm welcome he received in Sheffield soon calmed any jitters. “Several times, people came up to me in the street and said the same thing: ‘Thanks for coming back, Robert.’ Jesus, man, it was beautiful.”
The new series has been penned by the original writer Simon Beaufoy, and most of the cast are back, including Mark Addy, Lesley Sharp, Paul Barber and Tom Wilkinson.
Gaz is now a porter in a psychiatric hospital but has a few side hustles.
“Nothing is going to change Gaz,” Robert said. “He still has misguided schemes, and there’s a sadness to that, but he’s got a heart the size of a bus.
“There’s a poignancy to revisiting these guys in middle age. OK, late middle age!”
* The Full Monty will premiere in the UK on Disney+ on June 14.
