Public perception of TV and film background artists changed when Ricky Gervais put them at the centre of the action. His affectionate portrayal of the hopes and dreams of Andy Millman in the 2005 show Extras gave overdue attention to a vital group of performers taken for granted by audiences.
But being part of a crowd is the essence of this kind of work, so the past few months have been especially cruel. Britain’s ranks of “supporting artists”, as they are known in the industry, have all been laid off, and prospects of a return to work remain distant. This month, insurance permitting, some drama productions are starting up again, with plans for reduced numbers of actors back on set. The use of hired extras, however, will be problematic for much longer.
“I am really missing it. We’ve been left with nothing and will probably be the last people back. It is really sad,” says Stacey Lynn Crowe, 34, a part-time singer who has survived the past few years financially with regular walk-on work on several shows, including the BBC daytime drama Doctors, where she often appears as a police officer.
Crowe, from Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, is signed up with three agencies, including Alan Sharman’s Birmingham-based AS Casting, and has worked recently on Peaky Blinders and Father Brown.
“Being on set is what I’m used to now, and I sometimes have a line to say. There’s an on-set etiquette that’s quite subtle. Basically, you have got to be yourself. Someone new might get a bit excited and get too near the camera. Directors don’t like that,” Crowe says.
Sharman has tried to support his many dependent background artists during the bleakest of possible periods in the industry. “People don’t see it as a proper job, but it is. We’ve been trying to encourage them to communicate between themselves,” he says. “A lot of them know each other. They are hearing the same bad news as everyone else in the industry and trying to keep their morale up. Shows will come back, but they will work in a new way. Crowd scenes are going to be well down.”
Sharman praises the collegiate way his regulars have reacted. “They are like family because they work on the same shows. Many of them are full-time, though others have jobs as well. Some have found a creative way through it all, but there was certainly a lot of excitement when we heard about Coronation Street going back.”
Tony Gerrard, manager at Ray Knight Casting at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, has a similarly protective view of his workforce. “People make light of it as a job, but this has been very hard for them,” he says. “For some it is almost a hobby, but others see it as a profession. There’s a skill to it. We are hoping that CGI and special effects, which are being used instead in film now, won’t come into television so much.”
For Dave Price, a switch to working as an extra four years ago marked a big turning point in his life, and one he has fully embraced. “I’d been ill and they had to build me a new heart. I had my own marketing and PR business, and the doctors said if I did more of the same I would be lining myself up for an early grave. So I stopped,” says the 61-year-old from Sutton Coldfield.
If Price’s bearded face is familiar it might be because he stood next to Robert Carlyle’s prime minister as his putative chancellor of the exchequer in the Sky drama Cobra this January. Price has also recently appeared with Carlyle in the BBC serialisation of HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds.
“It’s a strange business. I tend to do about 80 days’ work in a normal year, and I’m still popping up all the time on the telly. That’s because it was all filmed before lockdown.” He recently spotted himself in the costume drama Belgravia and in Sky One’s Agatha Raisin mysteries, starring Ashley Jensen, who first came to fame playing an extra, Maggie Jacobs, alongside Gervais.
Price has also worked on Coronation Street and Casualty, but the growth of his white beard altered his fortunes. “It is very much about your look in this business,” he says. “If you stand out, you tend to be used more sparingly. But then if you do get picked, you are more likely to be featured and perhaps get a line.”
Price is a member of the union Bectu, and his annual income is too low for him to claim lockdown government support. Luckily, his wife has been able to keep working. “Even in normal times you don’t know when you are going to be paid, so it is difficult to run a mortgage. It is a labour of love, really, and I am totally missing it.”
Crowe has found adapting to a slower pace difficult. “With my singing at the weekends, I am usually going at 100 miles an hour,” she says. “But it has all stopped. Equity are giving grants, but it’s not enough.”
For now, she is cheered by recalling happier days. Like the time in November she took a supporting artist job at the last minute, knowing nothing about it. “It was a sunny day in the countryside, and I had to dress as a Belgian peasant woman. Then one of my favourite actors, John Malkovich, walked through the door, dressed as a priest,” said Crowe, who ended up working with the film star all day on the BBC’s recent version of Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders.
“We had to learn an old French prayer to say in church, but I was so starstruck, for once, I kept forgetting the words and laughing. He was nice about it.”
