Omid Djalili on titillation and his latest farce

The way to make a farce seem fresh is to make sure the titillation still shocks, says Omid Djalili, between rehearsals for his return to the West End stage
Veronica Lee25 April 2012

Most people know him as that loud comic who does those annoying television ads in a Middle Eastern accent or the one who happily does a spot of belly dancing on stage when his fans call for it — so his casting as a posh Establishment figure in Sean Foley’s revival of Joe Orton’s social satire What the Butler Saw may seem unlikely. But off-stage Omid Djalili is self-deprecating, quietly spoken and indeed rather posh, as befits someone born into the comfortable classes of Chelsea.

Djalili is returning to the West End after his 2009 debut as Fagin in Oliver! but Orton’s farce, first performed in 1969, couldn’t be more different from the family musical. Dr Prentice (played by Tim McInnerny) is a priapic psychiatrist interviewing a new secretary. He asks her to undress but is interrupted by his wife (Samantha Bond), her secret lover who is blackmailing her, a nosy policeman and finally Djalili as Dr Rance, a senior psychiatrist carrying out an inspection of the clinic. Cue much confusion, rapid exits, actors in their undies and — famously — Winston Churchill’s missing penis. I won’t spoil the play for anyone who doesn’t know it.

Dr Rance turns out be as sex-obsessed as everybody else around him in Orton’s risqué farce, contemporaneous with Oh! Calcutta! and Carry On films, but unlike other cast, er, members, Djalili doesn’t display his wares. “I’d gladly do it but I don’t think anyone wants to see a hairy middle-aged man naked on stage,” he says, before remembering there is in fact a group of people who would pay to see him get down to his smalls. “I’m told I’m big on a ‘bears’ website,” he says, laughing. “It’s for fat, bald, hairy men who find other fat, bald, hairy men attractive.”

How does he feel about that? “I’m flattered that a picture of me looking jowly with my top off makes some men go, ‘I’ll ’ave a bit of that!’” But before anybody thinks the happily married father of three has turned, he explains that “someone’s Facebook picture of me sunbathing ended up on the website”.

This may be only his second West End outing but Djalili, 46, is no theatre novice. After an education at Holland Park School (“the socialist Eton”, where Tony Benn sent his children) and the University of Ulster, where he studied English and theatre, he acted for two years in the late Eighties on the London fringe and then spent five years in the former Czechoslovakia (he still speaks Slovak and some Czech), with his wife, Annabel Knight, a writer and performer. “We did Ionesco and Berkoff,” he says, and is immensely proud that the late Vaclav Havel, the playwright and first president of the Czech Republic, was a fan.

Djalili is clearly passionate about theatre — he talks knowledgeably about productions past and present in London — so I ask whether he feels he took a wrong turn going into stand-up. “Oh no,” he says. “I like the variety of my career. I’m concentrating on theatre at the moment but I’ve started gathering material for my next show, which I plan for 2014 or 2015.”

He started as a stand-up in the mid-Nineties and was nominated for the prestigious Perrier Award in 2002, and used to start his stand-up show speaking in a heavy Middle East accent, but has since dropped that portion of his act. “It was a club comic’s trick to get noticed when I started but it’s become less relevant as my career has progressed,” says Djalili. He has rarely visited Iran, the country of his parents’ birth, since the 1979 revolution, and as a British Iranian is these days understandably weary of discussing how his comedy career faltered for a spell after 9/11. “I’m first and foremost a Londoner,” he asserts, “but, yes, I do feel a certain responsibility to say we’re nice people really.”

He says doing stand-up has helped his acting. “You have to be thick-skinned — you come off stage and another comic will say that was shit, so you change it next time. So as an actor when a film or theatre director says something doesn’t work, it doesn’t hurt because you just want to get it right. To me it’s constructive criticism but I see actors sometimes crushed by it.”

Comedy certainly brought Djalili plenty of television and film work — his CV is now extensive, both in the UK and Hollywood — and includes appearances in Notting Hill (1999), Casanova (2005), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) and Sex and the City 2 (2010); in the US, he acted alongside Whoopi Goldberg for two years in her sitcom Whoopi. He also starred in The Infidel (2010), one of the most successful British film comedies of recent years, in which he played an East End Muslim who discovers he’s adopted, and Jewish — “It’s gone to more than 60 countries and I’m still getting residuals.”

He co-produced The Infidel, so might his next move in a varied career be behind the camera? “I don’t have the chops to direct. I know what works, but not as a director. But I like the idea of production, of seeing how things are brought together, and I learned a lot from The Infidel. And at this point in my career I know a lot of people who may have some money to invest. But you have to jump through so many hoops to make a successful film, and the tiniest thing could make it collapse. I mean you would think Heath Ledger as Casanova would be a high-grossing film but it got an R-rating [in the US, which restricted the number of screens on which it was shown], just for the sake of not taking out one or two [nude] scenes.”

Talking of nude scenes, I ask Djalili if there’s a danger that What the Butler Saw, even with actors in their underwear, will appear dated to a modern audience.

“It’s one of the craziest plays I’ve ever read, and the comedy is razor-sharp,” he says. “It’s important to bring out the madness of it and we ramp up those moments so the titillation is still quite shocking. On another level it’s an ironic look at the British obsession with tits and bums; I think people will be surprised by how modern it feels.

“It’s a great British piece and I think it’s fantastic timing that we’re opening during the run-up to the Olympics,” he adds. “It’s brilliant we got them and now that we’re seeing the posters up it feels real. London is the best city in the world and I’m very proud to be a Londoner. I really want the Games to be a success so people have a good impression of our city.”

I remind Djalili, who lives in East Sheen, that there’s also an election in London next week. Has he any thoughts on it? “Boris Johnson has been hilarious,” is all he’ll proffer, guardedly. “But I haven’t got space in my brain for it right now. It’s full of tit-and-bum British farce.’

For the record, Djalili was talking about the play.

What the Butler Saw is at the Vaudeville Theatre, WC2 (0844 482 9675, whatthebutlersawtheplay.com) May 4-August 25.

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