4 Monday December 6 2021 | the timestimes2
I came from a
different era of
stand-up, before
the culture wars.
I’d say anything
Jack Whitehall is on the verge of Hollywood fame,
starring in family-friendly box office hits. It’s a long
way from his early comedy, he tells Ed Cumming
‘I
wish that first part of my
career, when I was finding
my feet and working out
what I wanted to say, didn’t
exist in public,” Jack
Whitehall says. “Sometimes
I catch a clip of myself back
then and I’m so
objectionable. I cringe at my voice,
which was this affected East End
version of myself. But also the nature
of the stuff I was saying. I punch down.
I’ll make crass jokes that I would
never make now.”
If he sounds worried, perhaps it’s
because he has a lot to protect. Over
lockdown the 33-year-old has quietly
ascended from British Saturday night
staple to the cusp of Hollywood
stardom — a bankable, family-friendly
international name at a time when
that is not a fashionable thing to be.
Jungle Cruise, the Disney film in
which he co-starred with Dwayne
“The Rock” Johnson and Emily Blunt,
was one of the biggest family films of
the pandemic, taking £160 million at
the box office. A sequel is under way.
This month Clifford the Big Red Dog,
in which Whitehall stars opposite a
10ft crimson CGI mutt, opened just
behind Eternals, the latest instalment
in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
which coincidentally stars his ex,
Gemma Chan. A sequel to Clifford
has been announced too.
This trajectory was not inevitable.
With his mockney glottal stops and
Charlie-from-Busted bouffant, the
teenage Whitehall who dropped out
of Manchester University after two
terms to pursue stand-up did not seem
Hollywood-bound from the start. It is
easy to imagine a parallel universe in
which he is still at the Live at the
Apollo and 8 Out of 10 Cats cruising
level of British comedian. Or has given
up entirely, fallen back on his safety
net of public school privilege and is
working as an insurance broker. Or
who has been cancelled for somepoorly chosen gag. Given his brash
early persona, the latter is perhaps
the most likely. Over a beer in
Amsterdam, he has the guarded
maturity of someone who had to do a
lot of his growing up in the public eye.
“It is terrifying to be doing these big
family movies for Paramount and
Disney, knowing that I came from a
different era of stand-up, before the
culture wars and historic tweets,” he
says. “When you’re 19 you don’t really
think much about what you’re saying.
You just say anything to get a laugh, so
you don’t have to stand up to silence
for five minutes.”
Material has come back to bite him
before. He was once splashed on the
front page of the Daily Mail for an
off-colour joke about the Queen.
Last year the BBC upheld viewer
complaints about jokes he made about
a dwarf friend at university. “Even
before that, I’d had an email from an
audience member about it,” he says.
“The following day I was, like, ‘I’m not
going to make jokes like that again.’
That was not the thought police or PC,
that was me realising that experience
must have been pretty horrible for herJack Whitehall, also
main, with James
Corden and John
Lithgow on The Late
Late ShowTo learn more about
the Ketel One Vodka
and Jack Whitehall
series, visit Ketel
One Vodka’s social
media channels and
@jackwhitehalland not wanting to do that again.”
Given the furore that has engulfed
some comedians, especially straight
white male ones, over their past jokes,
it makes sense for Whitehall to be
cautious. Any “land mine” from his
past, to use his words, could cause his
nascent Hollywood career to implode,
taking with it the other commercial
opportunities that his new status
affords. Advertising alcohol brands,
for instance, is almost a rite of passage
for film stars, and Whitehall is in the
Netherlands to film a series of online
videos for a luxury vodka brand, Ketel
One, based around making cocktails
with leftover foods.
Bizarrely, it’s not the first time he
has worked with old fruit peelings —
this year he volunteered with the Felix
Project, a London-based food waste
charity. “I also love drinking cocktails
and have a man crush on Stanley
Tucci,” he says, lest he come across
too prim. “I was obsessed with those
Instagram cocktail-making classes he
did during lockdown.”
But he is also trying to live a more
conscientious lifestyle, he says. “I try
to think, ‘Don’t be my dad,’ and bemore open-minded about things. The
food waste situation is terrible. But
I’m a bit behind the curve. In my last
Netflix [stand-up] show I had a whole
bit about milk alternatives. I was of the
opinion that milk was only milk if it
comes from a tit. Halfway through the
tour someone introduced me to oat
milk. By the end of the tour I was a
fully fledged oat milk drinker, but I
had to do it on the sly because every
night I was then going and doing this
war cry to the dairy-drinking
community, which by that point felt
wholly inauthentic. It was a depressing
insight into the hypocrisy of some of
my stand-up.”
Such are the contradictions for a
man with one foot in the world of
family entertainment but who relied
on his edginess to make a name for
himself. People who knew him at
Manchester or Marlborough College,
where he went to school, describe a
silly, mischievous entertainer, a gifted
cartoonist who adapted The League of
Gentlemen and Withnail & I for school
productions and gave hilarious tours
for prospective parents. Early stand-up
led to a presenting slot on Big Brother’sAfter my
last tour
I had run
out of life
experience
to mine