Larry Lamb says filming Gavin and Stacey was ‘relentless’ hard work – because each scene took 60 takes.
The actor, who played Gavin’s dad Mick Shipman in the hit comedy series, said the gruelling filming would push the cast to the point where “everyone ran out of that room screaming”.
The famous Indian takeaway scene in the award-winning show took 12 hours to film, Lamb said.
Lamb said in comparison EastEnders was a “piece of cake” as scenes only needed “one or two goes at it” and there would be a lot more laughs on the set of the soap opera.
Speaking on the What If? podcast, the 74 year old said: “When you’ve done all of those episodes and all that number of episodes together, all mixed in with whats going on at Eastenders, it all becomes this kind of amazing blur.
(Image: Getty Images Europe)
“I’m sure there were things that were really funny in there but what you remember is the relentless, relentless work of doing comedy on screen.
“I mean doing Eastenders is just a piece of cake compared with the comedy.”
He added: “It’s a different medium altogether because you’re doing multi camera stuff in a studio with Eastenders and when you’re doing comedy, comedy is a different vibe altogether because the comedy has got to be right.
Providing insight into what life was like on the BBC set, he explained: “With Eastenders a lot of the time you’ve got one or two goes at a scene and you’ll have it. [With Gavin and Stacey] you’ll do six, seven, eight, nine goes at doing a scene and then you’ll have to do it from every person’s point of view.”
(Image: BBC/GS TV Productions Ltd/Tom Jackson)
Larry also opened up about the takeaway scene that sees James Cordon – who plays Smithy on the sitcom – famously order “a chicken bhuna, lamb bhuna and prawn bhuna, mushroom rice, bag of chips, keema naan and 9 poppadoms”.
The soap star went on: “So like if there are 10 of you in the room by the time you’ve had like four or five goes at every person’s point of view you would have spent 12 hours working on one of those famous scenes like when everyone’s ordering Indian food.
“That [scene] went on to the point where I think everyone ran out of that room screaming because you’ve got to do it over and over again.
“The reason it works so well is because of the way they cut the thing together, whereas when they do Eastenders it can be violent, it can be really super energised and whatever else, but they’re covering it with five or six cameras so you do it twice and you’ve got it all, that’s it, done.
“Whereas you do a Gavin and Stacey [scene] 60 times to get it right.”
When it comes to selecting his favourite place of work Larry said there was no competition.
“Comedy’s hard. Comedy’s really, really hard. No comparison.
“In all honesty we used to have a lot more laughs on Eastenders than Gavin and Stacey because most of the time people are threatening murder and people are having hysterics in the corner,” added Larry.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
