“This was the first time my wife had met a seat filler. It was fish-out-of-water vibes.”
Producer Mark Herbert won the outstanding British Film Bafta for This Is England with writer/director Shane Meadows at the 2008 ceremony.
The pair had been nominated in the same category three years earlier for Dead Man’s Shoes, losing to Pawel Pawlikowski’s My Summer Of Love. Herbert and director Chris Morris previously won the best short film Bafta in 2003 for My Wrongs 8245-8249 & 117, and Herbert went on to win TV Baftas for miniseries This Is England ’88 and This Is England ’90 (shared with Meadows, Jack Thorne and Rebekah Wray Rogers). He won a Primetime Emmy last year for miniseries Adolescence.
In 2008, you were nominated alongside Atonement, The Bourne Ultimatum, Control and Eastern Promises. Did you fancy your chances?
No, we were up against some pretty big hitters. We had prepped ourselves for it not being our night, which is why I had booked a flight to go to Berlin film festival at 8am the next morning.
Do you remember who presented the award?
Sylvester Stallone. You forget where he’s at now with the whole US politics, but back then, he was Rocky, he was Rambo to us. I grew up watching him. So we were like, “Oh my God.” And then he said our names, and we were surprised and overwhelmed and proud and shocked. We went up and my first words were, “Bloody hell, Sylvester Stallone.”
And what about your speech?
The way we divided our roles, I thanked everybody. I would get the technical things in, and then hand over to Shane to say something really funny and warm. I’d be the straight man. I’d be the Wise to his Morecambe.
What are your big memories of the night?
When we won for My Wrongs, it was Odeon Leicester Square. This was at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, and it was grand. Also, my wife had come, it was a bigger thing for us. We had the most amazing night, like going backstage and doing all this crazy press. And this was the first time my wife had met a seat filler. She had gone, “You can’t sit there, that’s my husband’s seat,” after we had gone up to get the award. And he’s like, “No, I’m a seat filler.” It was complete fish-out-of-water vibes.
After the awards, all the winners have the photograph taken, and that year there was No Country For Old Men and these amazing film stars with their trophies, with me and Shane. And then we all got on the bus with, like, Javier Bardem to go to the meal at Grosvenor House in Mayfair. The photograph took about an hour, so you’re just desperate for a drink and to see everybody else. At the dinner, they had place mats and cushions themed for the films, but by the time we got there, everyone had nicked them.
Did you make your flight to Berlin?
The thing about the flight, we were showing [Chris Waitt’s] A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures in Berlin, produced by Mary Burke. They made these condoms to promote the film that had ‘sexual failure’ printed on them, and they’d given out too many. So before the big public screening, which was when I was getting out there, Mary ordered another 150 condoms and got them delivered to the Warp office.
After the ceremony, my wife was staying in London and didn’t want to take the Bafta trophy. I had some luggage in the hold, and in my flight bag I had a toothbrush, toothpaste, a Bafta and 150 condoms. I got stopped at security in Stansted, and they took it all out – the Bafta is heavy and you could do some damage. I’d been up till 4am, and only had two hours’ kip. There were a lot of people in the film industry on the same flight, and I’m stood there holding everyone up while security is having their photograph taken with the Bafta.
What impact did the Bafta win have on Warp?
Even before the Bafta, This Is England had elevated us a little bit more into that other, bigger thing. The Bafta was an amazing sort of full stop to that success of This Is England. Actually, going to Berlin the day after the awards, I had some amazing meetings. It’s classic, you win a Bafta, and some of the meetings that were a maybe suddenly become a tick.
Where do you keep your Bafta awards?
I’ve got two in my office at home, one in my downstairs toilet with the Emmy, and then my mum’s got the other one. She borrowed it two years ago, and she seems to have commandeered it.
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