MATT HOLYOAK FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. GROOMING: NATHALIE ELENI. HAIR: JODY TAYLOR. STYLING: GARETH SCOURFIELD. PREVIOUS P
AGES: BEN WEARS ROLLNECK BY PRIVATE WHITE VC.
ADAM WEARS BLAZER BY THOM SWEENEY, ROLLNECK BY THOMAS PINK. THIS PAGE: BLAZER BY PAUL SMITH, SHIRT BY THOMAS PINK, TIE BY DRAKES FOR KINGSMAN @MRPORTER. BBC, COURTESY OF ADAM KAYThere’s an obvious timely relevance to
the show that sealed the deal for Whishaw.
Although it’s set in 2006, its themes are
arguably more relevant in the pandemic
frenzy of 2022. “We wanted this to be a love
letter to the NHS,” he says. “I thought that
was important.” Kay agrees, describing the
institution as “our greatest achievement as
a civilisation”. His love is not blind, though,
and he feels a duty to reflect things as they
are. “I wanted to represent the NHS
honestly.” The show has as little time for
NHS bureaucracy as Kay’s diaries do. It
skewers inclusivity courses (“God forbid
we use old-fashioned language with old
people”) and it doesn’t airbrush race and
class tensions between patients and staff
and between doctors and everyone else.
Kay has a feel for the granularity of
uneasy relationships, brilliantly illustrated
by the consultant Miss Houghton, played
by This Country’s Ashley McGuire. “She’s
high-status working class, which is
relatively new in the scheme of things,” Kay
says. Privately educated Adam becomes her
punchbag in some of the show’s funniest
scenes. “It’s the NHS and it’s London —
there are no two bigger melting pots. That
helps it feel like a real place.”
Kay’s colleagues in the show are all
amalgamations of real people. His partner
at the time and his parents are also partial
inventions. Too close a reflection of the real
people “wouldn’t be fair. It’s not your story
to tell.” He completely disguised patients in
the book — “otherwise you go to prison”,
he says with a laugh. On the other hand the
environment in which his characters toil
needed to feel very real indeed.
Plan A had been to film in a disused wing
of a real hospital but, in 2020, any and all
disused wings suddenly became emergency
spillover. With the shoot delayed anyway,the production team built a ward from
scratch in an old university building in east
London. Every detail was so accurate, Kay
describes walking through it for the first
time as spooky. “The ultrasound machine
would be exactly the same as the one I used
back in 2006. You remember a patient, or a
time you f***ed up.”W
hishaw took pains in his
preparation too. He learnt
to play the piano for a
small but important
scene in which his
character returns home for a redemptive
conversation and a bit of Schubert with his
distant mother. He also had to learn a new
lingo — medical students pick up 5,
words during their training — and
familiarise himself with several obstetric
procedures (in full but, thankfully, using
prosthetics). When performing an
emergency C-section on camera he foundthe experience moving. “I was shocked,” he
says, “that a baby could be that tiny and live.
I’m sure people will watch and say no, that’s
not how it’s done.”
“No one will say that,” Kay says. “We
drove everyone to despair with my
insistence on absolute realism.” Rather
than general medical advisers, who might
instruct production teams on anything
from brain surgery to dermatology, Kay
insisted on having working obstetricians
on set. Prosthetics were built to exacting
specification. You can’t recreate an overrun,
understaffed labour ward with five extras,
he says. You need 60. “There are so many
medical dramas where doctors and nurses
watch and tut. I wanted them to watch this
and think, ‘That’s like my hospital.’ ”
They were both intrigued (or, as Whishaw
says, “terrified”) by breaking the fourth
wall, a device in which the character talks
directly to the audience. These asides
allowed Kay to bring his diaries’ hilarious
footnotes to the screen. (Sample: “The
doctors’ mess either refers to our
communal area with a few sofas and a
knackered pool table or the state of most
of my patients in the first few months.”)
Whether he’s playing Q to Daniel Craig’s
Bond, voicing a certain Peruvian bear in
the Paddington films or giving a Bafta and
Emmy-winning portrayal of the MP
Jeremy Thorpe’s lover in A Very English
Scandal, Whishaw’s career has been
nothing but varied. Yet he hasn’t done
outright comedy since Charlie Brooker’s
hipster satire Nathan Barley in 2005.
Why not? “I think I’ve got a sad face,” he
deadpans. “People just want me to suffer
and be in turmoil all the time.”Ben Whishaw had to learn about obstetrics
as Kay, left, insisted on “absolute realism”The Sunday Times Magazine • 13