Dominic West is the actor who plays the homicide cop Jimmy McNulty in the HBO series The Wire and if you don’t watch The Wire you are a big, big dummy, as it has to be the best thing on television ever. And if you do? Then you will know this: while one fully appreciates the programme’s epic exploration of urban decay and dark, difficult socio-political themes, when sexy McNulty takes off his shirt and has his way with a lady on the bonnet of some car, wey-hey! Only kidding. It’s the epic exploration of urban decay and dark, difficult socio-political themes that get me every time. You know that, right? Or, as I might say in The Wire-speak: ‘You feel me, yo?’ And as I might also add: ‘You come at the king, you best not miss.’ It makes absolutely no sense here, but I have always yearned to say it.
Anyway, we meet in west London, at the River Café, which he has chosen, because the whole point of this new series is that I do food and celebrities, eventually building up, perhaps, to one day doing food on celebrities — ideally, I would like to eat strawberries off Daniel Craig, or honey — but for the minute it’s Dominic West. Ah, here he comes... and you know what? Now I can see him up close, now I’m not distracted by the urban decay and the dark, difficult socio-political themes, I’m thinking: he’ll do. He’s dark and dishy with a naughty face and is quite naughty, I think. When I later put it to him that I rarely drink during the day because I know not drinking during the day is what saves me from becoming a full-on bag lady, he says, quite mournfully, ‘Oh, you so don’t know what you are missing.’
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.
Ah, Jimmy McNulty. Jimmy is a womanising, drunken, obnoxious but strangely lovable detective who is all tough, working-class Irish-American and therefore does not come from Sheffield and did not attend Eton, like Dominic. People are always shocked to learn Dominic comes from Sheffield and went to Eton but as I always tell them and will tell you now: guys, he was acting. It’s what he does. Still, I think it is reasonable to ask him why he thinks he was cast. So, Dominic, why do you think you were cast? ‘Because,’ he says, ‘I was cheap, I was available, and shooting started in two weeks.’ What did you make of the script for the first episode? ‘It didn’t make any sense at all.‘ (It doesn’t. The Wire people are special because they stick with it, yo.) He signed up for five years never imagining it would go past the pilot, as is mostly the way with these things. It eventually ran for five seasons and 60 episodes, between 2002 and 2008, but it was never a commercial hit and every season it faced being axed. ‘The critics saved us,’ he says. ‘They were so hyperbolic we couldn’t really be cancelled.’ He never really wanted the part, never expected it to last so long, and moaned, moaned, moaned throughout. ‘It’s so great,’ he says, ‘that, against all my better judgment and my wishes, I’m involved with this thing that is superior to anything I’ve ever done and now I’m inextricably linked to greatness.’ He can speak in long, deliciously articulate sentences like this. It’s probably Eton.
Whatever, we decide to drink to being inextricably linked to greatness. He orders the wine, because he’s the one who knows about wine. I’d read, even, that he is something of a wine connoisseur but he says no, not really, in his case it’s ‘just a synonym for being a drunk’. The waiter brings us the most delicious complimentary vegetable fritto misto (so scrumptious, I would even eat it off Michael Winner. Maybe.) The waiter then says there is only one Dover sole left — wood-roasted, with red and golden beetroot — would either of us like it held? I love eating with famous people. It’s making me happy. Dominic says yes, he will have the sole, so I choose the wild salmon with chilli, basil, fresh borlotti beans and rocket salad. I’d have had the beef, normally, but I always think fish is better when you are having a fat day. It makes you feel less of a fatty, somehow.
He lives in nearby Shepherd’s Bush and says he last came here when he and his wife-to-be, Catherine, were looking for a place to have a lunch with friends after they got married in the local registry office. Did they ever get married? No, they did not, because things kept getting in the way, like babies. ‘We keep having them,’ he says. Their latest and third is a boy, born just four days earlier. Alas, no, they are not thinking of calling him Stinkum Poot Wee-Bay Omar O’Bubbles West, even though it would have been so cool. ‘It’s probably going to be Francis,’ he says, ‘and he’s a sweetheart. He’s at the age when his cries aren’t too loud. We’ve probably got about two weeks.’ He also has a ten-year-old daughter from a previous relationship with Polly Astor, granddaughter of Lord Astor, and as for Catherine, he met her when she served him in Burger King — a Whopper. Only kidding. Catherine is Catherine FitzGerald, the former Co untess Durham, and daughter of Desmond FitzGerald, the Knight of Glin. You knew that, right?
He’s a Sheffield boy, like I said, born into a big Catholic family. He has six siblings and a mother, Moya, who was into amateur dramatics. ‘She loved it and played St Joan. I remember watching her being burned at the stake and my sisters being incredibly alarmed. When I was nine she got me to do The Winslow Boy and I haven’t done anything else ever since, really.’
His father, George, was big in plastics and manufactured vandal-proof bus shelters, which isn’t that sexy, but if you’ve ever stood at a bus shelter and thought, ‘I wonder why this hasn’t been vandalised?’, you probably have George to thank. I ask Dominic if he was brought up in an atmosphere of ‘one day, son, all these bus shelters will be yours’. He says no, not at all. ‘He was great like that, my dad. He wanted me to be a lawyer, was mildly disappointed when I said I wanted to be an actor but always rather liked the fact that I was an actor.’ Did he watch The Wire? ‘He died, unfortunately, but was around for the first couple of years, but he couldn’t handle the language, so he didn’t watch it really. My mum managed five minutes. My wife has managed ten minutes of episode one about five times and falls asleep.’ It’s those shifts at Burger King. They probably take it out of her.
He was dispatched to Eton at 13 and did not like it at first. He was homesick. Plus ‘I was always worried I was going to be transformed into a southern softie public-school twit but after two years I stopped caring about that because the transformation was complete. It had happened.’ It was weird, Eton. ‘Everyone was being their father. You get 17-year-olds behaving as if they are 60.’ He did not know either David Cameron or Boris Johnson, who were some years ahead, but he knew Boris’s brothers, Leo and Joe, very well. And? ‘They were complete bastards!’ Really? ‘Nah. They were great. Very bright, very funny, very talented family.’ Damn.
He went to Trinity, Dublin, where he studied English, then Guildhall to do drama, and does not appear to have been out of work ever since, although he insists he has. And what are you like, when not working? ‘I go to hardware shops and buy useless bits of ironmongery and then go home and pretend I’m a DIY expert. I will change all the window locks from brass to chrome. It’s that sort of obsessive behaviour to keep the hysteria and violence at bay.’
It’s been a fun lunch and then, when I pay the bill, I discover the cost of the wine has been knocked off. It’s great, food and celebrities. I’m never going to eat with anyone non-famous again. I might even shoot all the non-famous people I know, but that’s fair enough. The way I see it is like this: it’s all in the game, yo — all in the game.