Actor Eddie Marsan on the struggles of being a working class actor and the tyranny of toxic masculinity
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Channel 4 News
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2023
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
He is an actor who would be hard to typecast, but Eddie Marsan always plays the villain. “I think it has a lot to do with my upbringing”, he says, “there was a lot of violence, criminality and a lot of toxic masculinity.”
“I remember being afraid of white working class men. When you see Danny Dyer, Ray Winstone… they have an appeal to them, and I've never been able to do that. And it's because of my experience growing up within the white working class; there was always an element of fear.”
Today on Ways to Change the World, Eddie Marsan joins Krishnan Guru-Murthy to discuss his chaotic upbringing, lessons in Buddhist teachings, and how actors from privileged backgrounds can find success despite being “mediocre”.
Produced by Imahn Robertson
Warning: This episode contains offensive language
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Krishnamgaru Murphy and this is the |
| 0:07.7 | podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas and their lives and |
| 0:11.8 | the events that have helped shape them. My guest this week is in one of the big event |
| 0:18.4 | dramas of 2023 but he is one of our greatest British actors and sort of an export because |
| 0:26.8 | he's huge in Hollywood too and has worked with all the greats but his story is fascinating |
| 0:32.2 | because of where he comes from and his enduring links to where he comes from and his strong |
| 0:40.8 | beliefs and his strong ethics. Eddie Mus and welcome. Thank you very much indeed for coming |
| 0:45.4 | in. So the power is a show I feel we're going to be talking about quite a bit for a long |
| 0:52.0 | time because this is a book that's caused a huge amount of conversation and now it's this TV |
| 0:58.7 | event. I got to be careful not to do spoilers but so you tell us what it's about and what we should |
| 1:06.6 | know before watching it. Well it was written in 2016 by Naomi Alderman and there was a New York |
| 1:12.2 | Times bestseller, President Obama said it was his favourite book of the time and it's the story |
| 1:18.2 | about teenage girls suddenly developed the power to create electricity in their hands through |
| 1:25.5 | this thing called skin which is a new organ that they develop and they pass it on to older women |
| 1:30.9 | as well so women suddenly become physically more powerful than men so the whole gender power |
| 1:36.8 | dynamic changes in the world and it's not a really a film about the world will be better because |
| 1:43.4 | women have the power it's about the aspect of power it's about a study of power really it's |
| 1:51.2 | about how power corrupts and the goods you can do and the harm you can do really it provokes |
| 1:58.6 | fascinating discussion within the cast and within the writers it's a really thought-provoking drama. |
| 2:03.8 | And this is a female dominated production. Yes this is the right. All the writers, directors |
| 2:11.0 | and producers, female and it was great for me because when they came in and asked me the character |
| 2:16.7 | I played Bernie Monk was in the original book and Naomi had written his character Naomi's Jewish |
... |
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