Danny Dyer is working-class actor with royal blood in his veins, a tough guy in a pink dressing gown, a tearaway who’s embraced family life… He talks about where it all went right
It’s a beautiful day in Essex and I’m making myself at home with the Dyers. Theirs is a neat house on a hill, furnished in white and grey with a vast marble kitchen island and a bulldog called Debbie. And, no offence, but my God Debbie is large. The width and girth of a coffee table, she lumbers affectionately across the tiles towards Jo, Dyer’s partner of more than 30 years, elegant in white as she mourns a missing T-shirt, and their teenage daughter Sunnie, who sweeps through to grab a bottle of water on her way to college. Artie, who’s 10, is at school and their eldest daughter, Dani, is in Germany with her three children, aged three and under, there to support her footballer boyfriend Jarrod Bowen at the Euros. Builders sweat on the patio outside, the sun glints off shelves of awards. And there, in the middle of it all, grinning into a tiny coffee, is Dyer, calling everyone baby.
Dyer, Debbie and I stand in the awards alcove and with his pointing finger he takes me on a swift tour of his career. “I’ve nicked a few awards over the years I suppose,” he smiles. “I did really well, I can’t believe that.” There are National Television Awards won over his nine years on EastEnders, one of which he dedicated, in a choked acceptance speech, to his mentor Harold Pinter and children living in poverty, then there’s a framed photo of Pinter and an Attitude award he won for being a “straight ally” for his first soap storyline. He’s proud of that one. “I remember when they approached me about EastEnders and I thought, obviously I’m going to be coming in as a gangster or something like that. Alpha male, working class, anti-gay.” Then they said his first storyline would involve his son coming out to him. “They created this character for me who was an alpha male, but who wore a pink dressing gown. Somebody that is very protective, can swing a right hander, but will open up about his feelings.” The dog gives me a pointed look, as if to check I can tell he’s talking about himself.
This is set to be the year of Danny Dyer. As well as his TV comedy debut, in Ryan Sampson’s Mr Bigstuff on Sky, he’s starring in Disney’s glossy new adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals (“Wait until you see Danny,” co-star David Tennant said, “He’s brilliant.”) and a film about football hooliganism called Marching Powder. Today he’s wearing a large gold watch that glitters as he sips his coffee – in front of him now on the impossibly tidy kitchen counter are a baby’s dummy and white dice, into which I idly read some light symbolism. His family have left the room and he marvels briefly. “Me and Jo have been together since we were 13. Which just doesn’t happen, does it, now? It’s fascinating to me, still. When I look at her, part of me sees her back then, but then I also look at the pair of us and go, ‘Wow, we’re grandparents now.’ It’s been a mad old journey.”
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