The Man In the Rubber Mask (15 page)

Eventually the rubber gave way with a thwack and Kryten's face was removed. I'm embarrassed about what happened next because I'm a man and men aren't supposed to, it proves I'm a sissy and a wet wimp and a complete and utter luvvie. I burst into tears. Craig put his arms around me and lead me out of the studio. In the corridor Chris gave me a big hug, as did Dan, and all I could do was blub.

In my dressing room, Craig kept his arm around me until the sobbing subsided and turned into laughter. The worst thing was, I knew why I was crying and I couldn't tell anyone. At that moment it felt like I had just been through a war with those three men, they had stuck by me, hour after hour, through all the smoke and explosions and screaming and laughs, the bad tempers, the hours of waiting and learning lines and standing in the queue in the canteen. All that time I knew that for some reason I had been chosen to go to America and make
Red Dwarf
there, and I hadn't told them. I felt like I'd cheated them, I felt like a heel.

This is the interesting dilemma with middle-class guilt-ridden liberals like me. You can't be a guilt-ridden member of the bourgeoisie unless you've got something other people haven't got. Then you can feel guilty about it and think that all people should have what you've got. You think that, you believe that, but you don't give what you've got away, that's too difficult. That can only be done by very few middle-class people. Like Gandhi.

So I was feeling guilty about going to America to be in the US
Red Dwarf
, but I didn't say, ‘No, I won't do it unless the others do it.' It was a very difficult decision to make, and as Craig put his arm around me in the dressing room of Shepperton Studios on 8 December, it was a decision I was still far from making.

 

Qantas flight QF47 rumbled along the runway, air brakes up, wing flaps down, and no doubt a lot of switch flicking going on in the cockpit. I was in the rear section, asleep. I was sitting alone, next to the window, I lifted the blind and was blinded, the light is so harsh and bright in Queensland.

I'd made it somehow. Only two days before I'd been weeping pitifully in the arms of Craig, now I was lifting my bag from beneath my feet.

‘This is Wanda saying we hope you had a pleasant flight and that you'll fly with Qantas again in the near future. Please remain in your seats until the Captain has switched off the seat belt sign.'

When the planners designed Brisbane airport they made one small mistake: they put the runway in one field and the airport building in another. Once the plane has landed it has to go along the ground for about a mile and a half, but it's a pleasant trip. You see all sorts of seabirds and bushes and funny-looking trucks driven by men in shorts with long socks.

I got through customs with no problem, I was sure I was going to be arrested because the year before I'd been given a speeding ticket at Kangaroo Creek, New South Wales – yes, it really was called
that – and
I'd forgotten to pay it.

Judy met me in the airport and we drove to her favourite air-conditioned Italian coffee house in Brisbane. We had both been busy all year, she was getting ready to go to Ethiopia to make a film for Channel 4, I was going to America, forever. That's how it seemed. We both felt our time together in Australia was precious. It might be the last time we were together for ages.

After two days, the phone started going.

‘Hi, Robert, this is Mark Ivener,' said a voice so beautifully controlled it was hard to believe it wasn't computer-generated. Mark Ivener sounded like Hal the computer in 2001 A Space Odyssey. No matter what was going on, he would always talk in the same lilting, soothing West-Coast accent.

‘I'm the attorney dealing with your work permit, do you have a moment to talk?'

A moment, I had all day. I had an attorney, I couldn't believe it. I could picture him in his
LA Law
-type office: the handmade suit, the Lamborghini in the underground garage, the huge house with the walk-around kitchen and the beautiful wife who did charity work. We'd all seen this man portrayed a thousand times in a thousand movies and TV shows. Mark Ivener, attorney, played by Kevin Costner. He gets the foreign actor the work permit, but then the actor moves into his life, his wife, his nightmares.
Visiting Performer
starring Kevin Costner, Michelle Pfeiffer and introducing, as the deranged mad man, Robert Llewellyn…

‘Getting you a work permit in the time allotted is going to prove to be quite difficult,' he explained ‘You will have to send me as much information about yourself as you possibly can.'

I was sitting in a suburban house outside Brisbane, twelve thousand miles from my flat. All I had with me was my little computer, a pair of shorts and some broken dark glasses. He wasn't kidding about it being difficult, but I don't know if he understood how difficult. Many Americans' grasp of geography outside their own borders is hazy at best, and sometimes astonishingly inaccurate. For all I knew Mark Ivener thought that as people spoke English in Australia it must be near England, or he may have thought I was Australian, or he may have thought I was an idiot.

With copious use of the phone I managed to get friends in London to go to my flat, find my cuttings file, which was a joke, it wasn't a file, it was a box full of old bits of newspapers and magazines. They then had to send these, by expensive courier, to Los Angeles as soon as possible.

Then the phone started to ring again. It was Linwood Boomer.

‘Hi, Robert, this is Linwood speaking, listen, Rob and Doug tell me you're still not sure about doing the pilot. I'd like to hear why you're having this problem, Robert, maybe we can work something out.'

‘Yes, that'd be good,' I said. I explained, ‘It's kind of a heavy commitment.' I was referring to a section in the contract which dealt with how long I was under the control of Universal Television. Basically it was six years. They wanted me to sign something that would mean I may have to live and work in Los Angeles for six years!

‘Six years seems like a long time to me,' I said. ‘You know, in England we sign a contract for six weeks and we think we're going to miss a better gig.'

‘Sure, sure, I understand,' said Linwood. ‘But, you know, that part is a deal breaker.'

That was the term, deal breaker. That meant you could negotiate everything else, you could get a bigger limo, you could get a different make-up artist,
²⁹
you could get more money, that was easy. But sign for shorter than six years? No way.

‘When people buy you in Hollywood, they buy you, Robert,' said Linwood, jokingly. I thought, that's the sort of humour that scares the shit out of me.

‘I'll think about it and get back to you,' I said, and Linwood impressed on me the fact that getting back to him very soon would be very beneficial for the project, the people behind the project and quite a sizeable proportion of the population of Southern California.

I had been worrying about the six-year part of this deal ever since my agent first informed me, a few weeks earlier. I had spent a couple of hours on the phone to Nigel Planer, who I'd been working with earlier in the year. He was the only person I knew who'd been through the same thing.
The Young Ones
was taken over the Atlantic in the mid-eighties, and Nigel was the only member of the British cast to go. He had experienced a fairly hideous time, worried sick that he was going to have to stay there for six years with a group of people he hated, who managed to make
The Young Ones
into a sort of grubby Benny Hill show. He was hugely relieved when the pilot was a flop and he was released from his contract. I took it as a salutary warning. It was not an easy thing to decide.

I'd been through a similar experience on a lower level many years before, when I was still working with the comedy group, The Joeys. A BBC director had seen a show we were doing and asked me to go along to read for a part he was casting. I had no experience at that time, I had no agent, I didn't know the first thing about the BBC. I went along and met the writer, a charming man called Howard Schuman, who wrote
Rock Follies
back in the early seventies.

They wanted me to play quite a large role, looking back I suppose it was the lead, in a new BBC drama set in a pirate TV station. To cut a long story short, I eventually said no. It was interrupting the work I loved with The Joeys, and it was upsetting the group dynamics within the company. That's another way of saying we were dealing with professional jealousy in a mature and giving way. In fact, more importantly, I got the impression that the people behind the play just naturally assumed I'd jump at the part, like all actors would. Saying no was very hard. I felt physically sick afterwards, and I regret not working with Howard Schuman because I think he's good, but I was always glad I said no.

Now I was faced with the same decision, only on a bigger scale. Mind you, as I kept reminding myself, what a decision to have to make. Do I go to Los Angeles and get paid quite stupendous amounts of money doing a job I already do in England, live in a fab house in the hills, drive a Ford Mustang convertible to work every day, or do I go back to the rain and cold of recession-hit Britain?

Or, alternatively, do I work in Los Angeles, get mugged, get shot, go to an analyst, get ripped off, become a gym junkie, use steroids, pump up and turn into a sad sub Jean-Claude Van Damme and die of a heart attack while wearing a rubber head at the age of forty, or go and live on a farm in Gloucestershire with a couple of pigs and a dog and live 'till I'm ninety-seven.

In Brisbane, Judy and I went Christmas shopping at the Toowong mall. Judy comes from a big Catholic family who, although not approving of our non-married, living-together-in-carnal-sin-type relationship, are very friendly and accommodating. This was to be my first Christmas in Australia, Christmas lunch was to be under the house and out in the yard, not on the beach, but I wasn't complaining.

Judy's departure to Ethiopia was looming, I was still sweating buckets trying to decide what to do. We went to a seafront motel in Yamba for a week. Yamba is a very quiet coastal town about four hundred miles south of Brisbane, in northern New South Wales. Judy's brother and wife were there on holiday.

We spent three days lounging around on the beach, going for walks along the riverbank, watching pelicans and dolphins. It was so new and clean and tidy, our hire car was quiet and modern and clean, the sea was clean, the shops were clean, it was just like
Home and Away
.

Then, on the morning of the fourth day, at about five-thirty in the morning to be exact, the phone rang. The voice of the motel proprietor came on, ‘Call for you from Los Angeles,' he said in his
Home and Away
-type accent.

‘Hi, Robert, this is Linwood, how's it going?' the super-clear voice on the phone asked. For a moment I thought, ‘My God, he's come to Australia to get me, he's in Yamba with a gun!'

‘Okay, Linwood,' I said, trying to wake up. ‘I suppose you want me to tell you my decision.'

‘Sure, Robert. That would be real good.'

I told Linwood how I was worried about living in Los Angeles, about being apart from Judy and my friends.

‘I don't think you understand, Robert,' Linwood explained patiently, ‘You are going to be very rich. If this series takes off, you more or less write your own ticket. You can pay for your friends to come visit, you can buy Judy a house in the hills to keep her happy. This is Hollywood, Robert. Stuff happens here.'

‘Yeah, but six years,' I said feebly.

‘Six years nothing. Do you know how much Ted Danson gets in
Cheers
?'

‘Yes, but I'm never going to be Ted Danson,' I said.

‘That's not the point, this is just to give you some idea of what you could get if the show is a hit. Ted Danson gets over one million dollars an episode. He does thirty-six shows a year. Robert, you are looking at the prospect of earning some serious money here. Not only that,' he continued with barely a breath, ‘I know you're really going to get on with the team we've got here. Some really great actors, really nice people who I know you're going to bond with. What it all adds up to, Robert, is being paid a heck of a lot of money for having a great time. Really, you should do it.'

‘I have to ask the woman I love,' I said, surprising myself at the expression. The woman I love rolled over in bed, looked at her watch and said, ‘Oh sign the fucking contract so I can get some sleep.'

‘I'll do it,' I said to Linwood.

‘You won't regret it. I'll get my people onto it straight away. We're gonna fly you here first class, you'll get a limo at the airport, you won't know what's hit you. It's gonna be great, Robert, believe me.'

I was, I have to say, starting to believe him. I went out on our
Home and Away
sun porch, breathed the salty air deeply and felt tingly all over. The sun was just coming up over the Pacific. I watched a dolphin surface behind a fishing boat that was chugging slowly into harbour, the air was still cool and fresh, but with that special sea tang. It was drop-dead beautiful as I stared out to sea. It was across this ocean that I was going to go and change my life, become an American TV star, wear a rubber mask until I was forty-one, earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. Be rich.

Later that day Judy and I walked along the ten-mile beach which stretches south from Yamba. The sun was beating down but the wind kept us cool. I stood with my feet in the Pacific and said the word ‘rich' over and over again. I had never been rich, I had earned money, sometimes more than the national average, but for the vast majority of my adult life I had lived on virtually nothing. Subsistence living. Now, suddenly, in my mid-thirties, I was going to be earning a huge amount of money, I was going to be living in a foreign country and everything I was used to was going to disappear.

I knew what real rich people were like, people with old money, seriously rich people don't appear in TV sitcoms, they don't appear at all. They live in old houses in the Home Counties and shoot pheasants. Seriously rich people earn millions of pounds a year doing nothing, because they've got billions of pounds in the bank. I struggled to get my potential richness in perspective.

Christmas in Brisbane was a family affair, all Judy's brothers and their wives and children, friends and relatives (rellies) sat under the house, out of the blazing sun. We had a surprisingly traditional English Christmas dinner, only cold, with salad. We had Christmas pudding and mince pies and there was loads of washing-up to do.

On New Year's Eve I flew to Melbourne and Judy flew to London to meet up with her film crew before flying to Ethiopia. I spent New Year's Eve with hundreds of Judy's friends in a warehouse party in Melbourne. She spent it in a plane waiting on the tarmac at Singapore airport.