Robert Carlyle on Toxic Town, Brexit and playing Begbie again

The acting legend talks Trainspotting spinoffs, fame and starring in the new Netflix drama Toxic Town

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Much has changed for Robert Carlyle over the last twenty years, but one thing remains the same: “I walk out in that street right now, and someone will go, ‘Hey, Begbie!’” he says.

“I mean, it actually depends on the age of the person. For older people it’s Hamish Macbeth.” For others, no doubt, it’s Gaz from The Full Monty, or Rumpelstiltskin from Once Upon A Time.

Most of them are frenetic, on-the-edge livewires, unlike the real Carlyle: calm, considered and thoughtful. One of the UK’s most prolific actors, he has a list of credits to his name that most would envy. And soon, he’s adding Toxic Town to his list.

The Netflix show, which is out tomorrow, tells the horrifying true story of the industrial town Corby. Once a steel-working centre, it made headlines for a different reason in 2009: when a case came to trial alleging that toxic waste from the old steelworks had caused birth defects in tens of local babies.

Factor in an all-star cast, including Jodie Whittaker, Aimee Lou Wood and Rory Kinnear, and what you have is a recipe for something very hard-hitting indeed.

“No, there's no real sympathy for politicians”

Robert Carlyle

Carlyle himself plays Sam Hagen, a Corby town councillor turned reluctant whistle-blower in the case. In the show, Sam is the rare kind of politician: a grassroots one, who stands up for what’s right, rather than helping to cover up the toxic waste disaster like his boss, the fictional Roy Thomas (Brendan Doyle).

Carlyle himself is no stranger to stepping into the shoes of politicians – after all he’s also played the Prime Minister, in the Sky series COBRA, which sees him struggling to respond to all manner of extreme, nation-ending threats.

Has playing Sam given him more sympathy for what they do? “They know what they're getting into,” he says with a smile. “I mean, listen, who would want to do it? Certainly, not me. No, there's no real sympathy for politicians.”

But then, if there’s anybody who has lived experience of how their policies impact people’s lives, it’s Carlyle. Born in Glasgow in 1961, he grew up in a working class family and worked as a painter and decorator before pivoting to acting relatively late in the day, at the age of 21. After graduating from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, he founded a small drama company, and eventually caught the eye of director Ken Loach.

Party time: Ewen Bremner, Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle as Spud,Renton and Begbie

Channel Four Films

He built a solid career off the resulting work – Loach’s film Riff-Raff, followed by a turn as serial killer Albie Kinsella in Cracker, then detective Hamish Macbeth – but his star really exploded in 1996 and 1997, when he starred in the two films that made his name: Trainspotting and The Full Monty.

Both of them were set in towns that had been gutted by deindustrialisation – as has Corby. And it’s something Carlyle says he can relate to: he describes going back to Sheffield to film The Full Monty’s sequel show in 2023 and being greeted by people in the street. “Oh, Robert, thanks for coming back,” he remembers them saying. “Because it's theirs. All over the world, people know about Sheffield because of that film. They feel very close to it.”

The thing about fake news and all that, I think is really, really damaging

Robert Carlyle

The Corby we see in Toxic Town is similar, especially when you consider the reason the council approved the clean-up operation in the first place: to bring jobs back to the area. “There's a lot of straight black and white in this show, but there is a kind of grey area in there, I think. Corby Borough Council, they weren't doing this thing that transpired deliberately,” he says.

“The people there could see the steel industry in its death throes. See towns, the length and breadth of the country, vanishing, becoming ghost towns… it’s a world that I understand, that I come from myself. I can understand trying to maintain something to hold onto. What else would there be for them? Nothing.”

The disconnect between the North and the South is evident in towns like these – and in the seeming lack of interest the government had in Corby until the case went to court and caught the eye of the media.

But, as Carlyle puts it, “there always has been a kind of a distrust [of the South] from the North. There's a big divide in the country.” That became more obvious when he moved to Vancouver for work. “You don't see it quite so much [from the inside]. When you're away, you go, ‘Oh my God, what's going on over there?’”

One example he cites is the Brexit referendum, which was infamously won on a razor’s edge. “It’s been a sad thing to see… I don’t know if we’ll ever recover from that.” Certainly, the outlook for the country right now isn’t good. As Carlyle puts it, “I don't think people are optimistic. They were for about a month.”

“What I think is sad,” he adds, “[is that] there's been a distrust in politicians, and of course, in the distrust in the people in your profession,” – he waves his hand at me. “[People] not accepting journalistic news as fact. The thing about fake news and all that, I think is really, really damaging. And the disrespect for police. So many of these institutions have been really shaken. And I think we're seeing the effects of that.”

Robert Carlyle as Gaz in The Full Monty

Disney+

Carlyle knows a thing or two about that, too. After rocketing to fame off the back of The Full Monty and Trainspotting, his private life became dogged by the tabloid press. The result was predictably traumatic.

“Sometimes there are unscrupulous journalists,” he says. “There were more of those in the Nineties when I was coming through, who made up stuff.” Things got so bad that he couldn’t even read the headlines about his own life.

“I mean, I'm not daft, I know what happens when you do something that's successful and recognised. But I just wasn't prepared for that amount of intrusion in my life, particularly with the tabloids back in the day. Because it was disgraceful, some of the stuff that was [being written]. Stuff with my past and my mother and all that kind of stuff, which was really upsetting.”

“I was probably temperamentally ill-suited to [fame], to be honest, because it drove me mad”

Robert Carlyle

After those turbulent early days, his relationship with fame has mellowed. “It took a long, long time to get used to,” he says reflectively. “Really, I was probably temperamentally ill-suited to it, to be honest, because it drove me mad. I just couldn't handle it. I mean, I never wanted to do this to be famous. I was a theatre guy.”

That said, Trainspotting still follows him around, as does it famous theme song, Born Slippy. “It's like a theme tune, which is bizarre. Back in the day, when the film was out… I’d go a club, they’d play it. Isn’t that strange? I’d be in a club, and Born Slippy comes on. I loved it. It could be worse.”

It might indeed, especially as Carlyle is focussed, among other things, on the new Trainspotting spinoff and a return to Irvine Welsh’s universe. The TV series, which is called The Blade Artist, is based on one of Welsh’s novels, and Carlyle describes the production process as “still ongoing.”

In it, he plays an older version of Begbie, who has moved to California and married his art therapist from prison (“It’s more common than you’d think!”). Begbie’s skill with a knife has been redirected into sculpture, and surprisingly, he becomes a minor celebrity when one of his pieces is bought by somebody famous.

Unsurprisingly, as Carlyle describes, things soon start spiralling. But the bonus is, getting back into character for him is easy.

“You’ve got to be careful, because you've got the same guy. But then again, you're not really the same guy. You're like, 40 years older, so you get a little bit of leeway,” he says. “But it’s a pleasure doing it the second time round. I loved it. What actor gets the chance to do that to the sequel 20 years later?”

Toxic Town is streaming on Netflix

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