Christopher Eccleston: "Masculinity shouldn't be contingent on other people's oppression"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

Born in Salford in 1964, Christopher Eccleston made his name in dramas like Cracker and Our Friends in the North. His films range from Shallow Grave to GI Joe, with recent TV jobs including HBO’s The Leftovers and Peter Bowker’s The A-Word.

Most famously he played the ninth Doctor in Doctor Who, which he doesn’t discuss outside conventions – his “no Blue Box” rule.

Next up is his role as a cult leader in the new Netflix drama Unchosen.

What was the appeal of playing a cult leader?

What attracted me to Mr Phillips was Unchosen’s writer, Julia Geary. There’s a great trend in drama at the moment for antagonists who are toxic, white, apparently heterosexual, late-middle-aged men. Thankfully, Julia gave him dimension and placed him in a story of tragedy involving the loss of his son and alcoholism. It’s a gift of a role because of the awkward questions it asks of our audience.

Do audiences want to understand villains and their dimensions?

I’ve had this argument in Hollywood regarding one-dimensional villains I’ve played. It doesn’t make the heroes look smarter taking on villains like that. It makes them look stupid. What Julia understands is something that so many people in television and film, in their arrogance, will not accept – that audiences are much brighter than we are.

Is TV being dumbed down?

Historically there would be programmes that I watched when I was young where I would feel patronised – Love Thy Neighbour or whatever – but there was a lot where I felt I was being respected. The likes of the Plays for Today and The Naked Civil Servant. But with the erosion of the writer’s culture to almost writing by committee, I’ve heard stories about some of the idiotic – and sometimes downright hateful – assumptions about the audience’s intelligence today. A lot of people in television think the audience is stupid.

Why do cults appeal?

We yearn for certainty, though we know that the tragedy and beauty of life is that there are no absolutes. When you’re making TV or film, it does become somewhat cult-like. You’re working with the same people six days a week, 12 hours a day, and you’re all obsessively trying to get everything right.

You once said you were insecure in your masculinity as you hoped all men were. What did you mean?

Going into the arts, leaving my background and my class, made me question the certainties around my masculinity I was given as a child by society. Masculinity is in crisis, and it seems it’s particularly white, working-class boys who are being neglected, left to rot by governments and targeted by the far right. So, as an ex-working-class, white boy, I try, if I can, to address some of those things. Masculinity shouldn’t be contingent on other people’s oppression.

Your departure from Cracker, in which your character bleeds out while giving a “statement of a dying man” over his radio, is a landmark moment in British TV. How did it happen?

They wanted me to sign for three series but I said I’d sign for one, see how it went. When it went well, I said I’d go back, but I wasn’t going to hang around and support Robbie Coltrane, bless him, for three series. That handed Jimmy [McGovern, who wrote it] a provocation. Nowadays, major characters are killed off constantly, but it had never been done before he did it in 1994. I don’t think either of us could have imagined the effect that it would have, but back then there were four channels and we were getting 13 million viewers. If it’s a brilliant performance, it’s for one reason and one reason only: the writing.

You’ve worked with Jimmy a lot.

Without Jimmy McGovern, I wouldn’t have a career in television. I did Cracker, a film called Heart, Accused… And I did Hillsborough, which is the most important thing I’ve ever done. It provoked questions in Parliament and got me over my silly guilt that being an actor isn’t a real job. I will always want to work with McGovern and I’m hoping that one day he’ll employ me again, maybe in an old people’s home.

You played Nicky in the state-of-the-nation drama Our Friends in the North – why don’t we see ambitious series like that any more?

State-of-the-nation dramas are possible – look at the success of Adolescence – but I don’t think we have those visionary, politicised, poetic people who want to make them now. People like Michael Wearing [who produced Boys from the Blackstuff and commissioned Our Friends in the North], Kenith Trodd [Dennis Potter’s producer] and Tony Garnett [This Life].

As an avid reader, do you worry that reading is in decline?

From a family of readers – my mum’s 94 in April and still a reader! – I do worry. But I have two children and they are both voracious readers. We spend so much time in bookshops. Hopefully we’ll get these new measures from the Government about restricting social media for children as that would be a very positive thing

Is there a question you wish you were asked more often in interviews?

I wish more people would ask about failure. I interviewed my hero Alex Ferguson once and the first thing I asked him was about losing. I mean, why ask him about winning? Him aside, losing is what the majority of us spend our lives doing.

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Unchosen is released on Netflix on Tuesday 21 April.

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