THE OMELETTE THAT BROUGHT ME TO BRITAIN!

Starring in new BBC comedy-drama The Outlaws, Oscar winner Christopher Walken tells how its creator Stephen Merchant’s appetite sealed the deal

Christopher Walken has pretty much done it all. He won an Oscar for 1978’s The Deer Hunter, played a Bond villain in 1985’s A View To A Kill, gained cult status for his extraordinary dancing in the 2010 video for Fatboy Slim’s Weapon Of Choice, and through appearances in films such as Pulp Fiction and True Romance has cemented a reputation as one of the greatest actors of his generation. Yet everything begins, he says, at his home in Connecticut – specifically in his kitchen, standing on his own, talking to himself.

‘The work I do on the scripts, you know, for a long time I stand in my kitchen, all by myself and try to figure it out. My process is to read over and over until it sounds right. Suddenly, it’s almost like talking to somebody you know: you believe them or you don’t. And when I start to believe myself, I think I’m on the right track.’

It was in his kitchen that Christopher

‘I still have to work out how to answer my mobile’

first read the script of Stephen Merchant’s The Outlaws, a new BBC comedy-drama set on a Bristol community service scheme. ‘It’s very good writing, you can tell that straightaway if you’ve been doing it for as long as I have,’ says Christopher, 78. ‘I stand in my kitchen and I read the lines out loud, and these were very good words.’ And it was in his kitchen too that he first met Stephen and was persuaded to take the role. ‘I sat down with him for a couple of hours. As a matter of fact I made him an omelette, and he ate the whole thing and asked me if he could have some more. And I thought, “Yeah, I like this guy. I’ve got to work with him.”’

The result is the new sixpart series on BBC1 in which Christopher plays Frank, a roguish American grifter who’s lived in the UK for the best part of 40 years and now finds himself in trouble with the law yet again. ‘He married an Englishwoman and has children and a life in England, but I’d say he’s barely assimilated,’ says Christopher. ‘He’s kind of a ne’er-do-well, I guess, a good man who’s goodthat’s hearted, good-natured, but he’s made a lot of mistakes. He probably has poor judgement, often in trouble with the law, you know?’

Christopher brings exquisite deadpan timing to conman Frank as he moves back in with the daughter he abandoned decades before and bonds with his strait-laced grandson (as well as mentoring him in the fine art of relentless womanising). The comedy couldn’t be more fish out of water – the New Yorker in Bristol, the inveterate crook trying to fit into a family. The show’s set in Bristol because where Stephen Merchant is from. His parents were community service officers there, which inspired this genre-busting caper about the community payback scheme that throws together people from all walks of life, from a kleptomaniac straight-a student (Rhianne Barreto) to a young man caught up in county lines drug crime (Gamba Cole) and Merchant’s geeky lawyer who finds himself doing community service after getting into a bit of bother. When their worlds collide at the rundown community centre the team have been tasked with renovating, they suddenly find they have more in common than they thought.

And talking of worlds colliding, you don’t get culture clashes much bigger than Christopher Walken rocking up in pandemic-stricken Bristol. He’s an actor from a different era, one before streaming, and yet here he is on a Bbc/amazon co-production. His raspy American drawl is highly distinctive, yet this is a comedy full of ripe Bristolian vowel sounds. How did that happen? ‘Look, I’m an actor, it was a good job, I’m a fan of Stephen Merchant’s and I got to come to England. I’ve been in England many times in my career – not Bristol – but I’ve always enjoyed myself here. So it was just a good job,’ he says.

He filmed two series of The Outlaws in two separate stints this year. The first coincided with the Bristol riots in March, the second with Euro 2020 in June. ‘First time I was here there was a lot of noise outside, that was a disturbance, and second time there was a lot of noise outside again,’ he laughs. ‘But I think that was the soccer.’

When he arrived on set the other actors stood in awe. ‘I was majorly