A Class Apart comes to ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ One
Nathaniel Parker plays Anthony
Nathaniel Parker, the actor who plays Anthony, the conceited headmaster of a
prestigious private school in ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ One's gripping new one-off drama, A Class
Apart, recalls how tough his own boarding school experience was at the start.
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"I remember on my first night at boarding school, as a young boy, I sobbed and
sobbed and, to make matters worse, everyone else in my dormitory was sobbing,
too!"
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Fortunately, the young Nathaniel's life soon became a lot happier.
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"It was a
Quaker school, and it made me much more independent," recollects the actor,
who has won millions of fans as the suave Inspector Lynley in ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ One's hit
series of the same name. "The school gave me the ability to deal with my own
feelings and not to rely on other people all the time. You learned to stand up
for yourself and say what you believed in. Because of the Quaker influence,
you also learned how to help others. All in all, the school provided me with
so many invaluable lessons."
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The experience of such a school also stood Nathaniel in very good stead when
it came to portraying Anthony. The arrogant headmaster of the upmarket public
school, Haltham, sees an opportunity to further his career when he watches a
local news bulletin about Candy (Jessie Wallace). She is a single mother who
has chained herself to the gates of a good, local state secondary school in an
attempt to persuade the authorities to admit her son, Kyle.
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With his eye, as ever, on the main chance, Anthony bets his scheming deputy,
Charles, that he can turn Kyle from a failing "chav" into a respectable public
schoolboy at Haltham. But in taking on this ill-advised wager, and playing
with the future of a young boy, Anthony gets more than he bargained for from
both Kyle and his feisty mother, and unleashes a mighty culture clash.
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Nathaniel says that he instantly "got" the character of Anthony. "I
immediately understood him," reveals the successful, 44-year-old actor, whose
brother, Oliver, is a well-regarded movie director, responsible for such
critically acclaimed films as An Ideal Husband, The Importance Of Being
Earnest and Othello (in which Nathaniel played Cassio and his wife, Anna
Patrick, played Emilia).
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"Anthony starts off living very happily in that public school world. It's a
universe surrounded by walls – it's like existing within a bubble. He's been
at boarding school since the age of six and thinks, 'this is my world, I'm
very good at it. People come to me with their problems because I understand
it'. It's another version of Little Britain. But it is because of this very
arrogance that Anthony eventually comes unstuck…"
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Nathaniel, the proud father of two daughters and a keen rider who owns shares
in a couple of promising race horses, says he was delighted by the
experience of acting opposite Jessie, previously best known as the vibrant Kat
Slater in EastEnders.
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"She was fabulous!" beams the actor. "I had never met
her or even seen her act before but I was so struck by her when we started
working together. We immediately hit it off and developed a great relationship
in which we wanted to help each other."
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The actor, who has also starred in Bleak House, The Private Life Of Samuel
Pepys, Vanity Fair, Far From The Madding Crowd and Poirot, continues: "In
seven years on EastEnders, Jessie clearly learned a hell of a lot and, by God,
was she good! She has this incredible energy and sexiness that just blew me
away. One day, John Yorke, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ drama executive, came down on set, and I
said to him, 'Jessie should be doing the classics'. I was just bowled over by
her."
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Nathaniel, who will soon be seen in two Hollywood movies - Flawless, opposite
Michael Caine and Demi Moore, and Stardust, alongside Robert De Niro, Sienna
Miller, Ian McKellen, Michelle Pfeiffer and Peter O'Toole - is equally
enthusiastic about Tony Grounds, the writer of A Class Apart, who has, in the
past, penned such memorable dramas as When I'm 64 and Births, Marriages And
Deaths.
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"I've always wanted to work with Tony," beams the actor. "When I started
acting as a 14-year-old, Tony wrote his first play for our group. He was just
17, and my dad said to him, 'be a writer'. That changed Tony's life. He writes
really imaginative stuff, and I've been waiting for him to write me a part for
years. He would joke that he refused to do so until I admitted to dyeing my
hair!
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"So when I saw him at my older brother's 50th birthday party last year, I
showed him my greying hair, and a month later I got this script from him. I
was hoping for a gritty Ray Winstone/Mark Strong-type role, but it turned out
to be this ruddy posh headmaster! It's a great part, though."
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Nathaniel says Grounds has hit the topical nail on the head in A
Class Apart by tackling the issue of how to get your children into the best
possible school. "As a parent, it absolutely struck a chord. At the moment, my
wife and I are spending most of our waking hours talking about where our
daughters should go to school next."
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Finally, the myriad Inspector Lynley aficionados will be overjoyed to learn
that Nathaniel and his co-star, Sharon Small, have already shot two more
episodes and are hoping to make more later this year. "I think the series
works so well because it's based on novels written by Elizabeth George, an
American who has a very clear opinion about British society," Nathaniel
reflects.
"It's like the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's equivalent of Inspector Morse and does really well all
over the world. In fact, it's one of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's top-selling programmes right
across the globe. It must hit a chord."
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He closes with an anecdote that neatly sums up Inspector Lynley's global
popularity, as the show is dubbed into different languages around the world:
"We were shooting in Trafalgar Square in central London the other day and
people from all over the world were crowding round me. It was lovely, but
funny as well. Many of them said, 'it's amazing to hear your voice at last,
we've never heard it before!'"
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