Instead of writing the gay best friend, I wrote the straight best friend. I felt like I was flipping the trope on its head. Why would you say that's important to see? It's really refreshing to see a friendship between two men like this, one gay and one straight, on screen. I've been fully attached to people walking down the road.Īll the really embarrassing stuff is true. Every time I get with a guy that's got a septum piercing, one of my curls sort of attaches to an ear or it curves around… I've even had it in people's ear piercings before.īecause curly hair, it so just wants to cling onto something, and that's a hook. The nose ring thing is true quite a few times, to be quite honest. Watching the show, we kept thinking,"How much of this is true?" There’s some wild stuff in there, like when you drink the poppers.
#GAY SEX CLUBS EDINBURGH SERIES#
Just in a… I feel like I need everyone to watch it, series one, and I kind of almost want to leave it a bit ambiguous as to why I've done it. The second part of your question – it's almost something that I don't know if I'm ready yet to answer, if that makes sense? Not in a personal way. It's like me recounting these memories, and letting the audience in on what you know is a nostalgic set of memories being retold. So I wanted to use that narrative device in that way. Music, for me, is probably more of an inspiration than comedy. It felt like a really impactful device to do it in the room, and audience members were quite emotively reacting to it.Īnd also, if you think about it, nearly every pop song plays with that "you" pronoun all the time. So the audience were coming in, and the audience were the friend I was sort of talking to. "That character is so important to me, and I really wouldn't trust many people with him." I did an Edinburgh Fringe Show in 2017 called Happy Hour, which is the sort of basis of where Big Boys came from, where I addressed the audience the whole time as "you". I'll answer the first part of the question. I've been very lucky to be able to use people I've collaborated with before, and who are some of my best mates, you know?Ĭan you talk us through the narration device you used, and why it's specifically aimed at Danny? Whereas with Jon, there's not an ounce of doubt in my mind that he won't just deliver it flawlessly. That character to me is so important, and I really wouldn't trust many people with him.
I certainly feel that with Dylan playing Jack, and I really feel it with Jon Pointing playing Danny. I trust that they’re going to tell the story in a way that I’d love them to, and in a way that would elevate the writing, and make it better. What’s nice about me having known them all is that I really trust them all. Dylan, I'd known for a while through our friend, the "wee lesbian", Nicola. Was it surreal casting someone to play yourself in such a personal story? Because it all matters, whether Jack's struggling to be honest with his mum or to recover from the poppers he accidentally drank (!) at Fresher's Week.ĭigital Spy caught up with Jack to discuss all that gay stuff and more ahead of the Big Boys launch on Channel 4. Like Derry Girls, which also stars Dylan Llewellyn (aka the English fella), Jack's show veers from sad to hilarious in a heartbeat without ever trivialising the moments that matter. There's also a ton of absurd, laugh-out loud moments throughout these first six episodes, not to mention a whole lot of shagging. Set during his uni days, at a time when Jack would go on Gay Spy and look at "the naked gardener from Desperate Housewives," Big Boys takes a painfully raw, honest look at his coming-out story and how this intersected with grief over the recent death of Jack's father.īut it's not all sadness and trauma.
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"When I was in my late teens," says Jack Rooke," Digital Spy was clearly full of just gay guys writing about Big Brother." Now here we are, over ten years later, and Digital Spy is still writing about gay stuff, but we've moved onto Big Boys, a new Channel 4 comedy that's written by none other than Jack himself.