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Sunday 27 May 2012

A splendid lunch with Jimmy McNulty

In the first of an occasional series of interviews over meals, Deborah Ross talks to Dominic West about The Wire and the challenge to an Old Etonian of playing an American cop

So he sits at my table, and as he sits, all heads swivel, as they would — it’s McNulty!, in Hammersmith! I’m hoping all the other diners think he’s my date or something, but I doubt it, as I’m getting on a bit and am also having a fat day. I ask if he is struggling with the fame. He says no, not at all. He says, enthusiastically: ‘I love it! It’s great!’ Ruthie Rogers, the restaurant’s co-founder, who it turns out is also a huge fan of the series, sends over two champagne cocktails. At least I think they are champagne cocktails. I’m no expert. I can only tell you they are pink and nice. ‘It wouldn’t have happened six months ago,’ says Dominic. ‘Ha!’

The Wire. The Wire, The Wire, The Wire, The Wire. Ostensibly focusing on a drugs war in the port city of Baltimore, The Wire is most often likened to a big Russian novel, with its multiple, shifting storylines and — get this — 947 speaking parts. It’s actually everything I should hate: vast, complex, often impenetrable, spilling with violence and shattering language, you big-ass mother******; but the writing is so good it sucks you in, as do the performances, which are just such fun to watch. It is, apparently, Obama’s favourite programme, although we are not sure where he finds the time. (As it is, I’m worried he’s not walking that dog.) It’s Eminem’s favourite programme, too. ‘He has actually watched the whole thing four times,’ says Dominic. ‘I met him the other night and said: you’ve got to get out more.’

Dominic is 39 and did have some fame before The Wire; it hasn’t all come in one big whoosh. He co-starred with Sandra Bullock in the film 28 Days, for example, but that fame, he says, just doesn’t compare. ‘Before, people would come up to me, because they’d seen me in a Sandra Bullock film or whatever, and it was a different sort of person. Generally, the Wire people are... I don’t know how to say it... not more interesting, but more interesting to me, I suppose.’ Dominic enjoyed doing that film with Sandra Bullock, by the way. He isn’t about to sneer at that kind of thing now. He likes Hollywood. ‘It suits my more shallow and duplicitous self.’ And he likes Sandra. ‘She was great, although hungry all the time. She had her own gourmet chef who wouldn’t give her any food.’ Would you like Jimmy? ‘He’d be good to have a drink with, don’t you think?’ I do.

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