The Fisherman's Friends are back on our screens in the joyous and heartfelt sequel Fisherman's Friends: One and All, again inspired by the real-life adventures of the titular band.
This time around, the world's oldest 'buoy band' from Port Isaac in Cornwall are dealing with the challenges of their newfound fame, attempting to navigate the pressures and pitfalls while working on their difficult second album.
Jim (Sex Education star James Purefoy) is struggling the most following the death of his father Jago (David Hayman) in the first movie. But can he put that aside as the Fisherman's Friends gear up for their biggest gig yet: Glastonbury?
Ahead of the release, Digital Spy spoke to James Purefoy about returning for the sequel, his Glastonbury disappointment due to the pandemic, flexing his vocal cords again and his words of advice for Imelda May, who makes her acting debut in the sequel.
Fisherman's Friends was a hit at the UK box office and remains a comforting watch, so can we expect more of the same second time around?
I think one of the strange things about the first film was it came out at a time when the country was pretty polarised at the time. We were just literally coming out of Europe and I think that argument had really damaging effects on a lot of families and communities.
It seemed to act as a kind of balm in a strange way. It focused right down on communities and families and friends, and those are the things that really mattered, the support and care of the people around you. So I suspect, if there's one good thing that Brexit has done [laughs], then it is that it made people go and see the first film.
I think people found it a bit like a comfort blanket, just enjoyed breathing a little bit and going and watching a film and going, 'Yeah, those are the things that are important in our lives'.
On this other film, Jim is going through a crisis. He's not sure he likes the fame, he's not sure he likes the attention, he's not sure if he likes being taken away from his boat, he's getting angry with his family, his friends and the band. He's behaving in a grumpy fashion, but actually deep down, it's because he's not dealt with or expressed himself about the death of his father in the first film.
We've got that happening in the middle of the film and then around it, there are the other stories of other characters, sea shanties, gigs and laughs and all the usual stuff that we liked from the first film. It's a slightly different film, but again we end up on a high.
As with the first movie, it's inspired by the real-life tales of the Fisherman's Friends. This time, it's their performance at Glastonbury. Were they on set to tell stories?
They're never far away when you're down in Port Isaac, they're always around one corner or the other. They're an amazing bunch of guys. They're lovely, lovely men, really beautiful people. They did play Glastonbury, they supported Beyoncé, which is so unlikely but a brilliant story. They played the Pyramid Stage which is just unbelievable, but it happened.
I would be lying if I didn't say when [the producers] came to me and said they want to do another one and we're going to do it with it ending up in Glastonbury, I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to get to play Glastonbury'.
The very idea that I could stand on that Pyramid Stage in front of 80,000 people appealed to my ego so appallingly well that I couldn't resist it. Of course, the pandemic happened and we ended up shooting it somewhere else. By then I was committed, but I would be lying if I didn't say that was a big part of the reason why I wanted to do the second film.
Is it possible that, like you said with the first movie, the sequel is arriving at the right time too? Jim is dealing with the loss of his father, and loss is something a lot of people have had to deal with over the past couple of years.
One of the great things that theatre, film and television does is it makes the viewer potentially feel less lonely and less alone with their feelings because they are watching other people go through what they've been through. They identify with those people and it makes them go, 'Oh God, that's how I felt... that's how I feel'.
So when we were writing and putting those scenes together, we were really aware that so many people had lost people and so many families had been torn apart by the pandemic and torn apart by Covid. We were really very delicate when we wrote those scenes.
I honestly think our film is the kind of film that a lot of people who don't go to the cinema very often will go and see this film. Quite often, they're people who don't go to the cinema very much and believe me, when people come up in the street to talk to me about it, they are not the kind of people that you think go to the cinema very often.
We were very aware when we writing it that we were writing those scenes for those people. We were writing to express what they were feeling and what they had felt during the pandemic about the people they lost. I hope that they feel that we are empathising with them through those scenes.
In the first movie, Jim is the classic stoic Cornish guy, but we get to see more of his inner self in this movie. Did it make it a more fulfilling experience for you to explore the emotional centre of Jim?
On this particular one, I'm an executive producer on the film so I was part of the discussion much earlier on than you would normally expect to be. You are really in on first scripts, first drafts, themes, ideas, what do we want to talk about in this film.
We were able to discuss those things really early on and get them embedded into the script in a much more rooted way than I would normally be involved in a script.
When you're playing somebody as tough and granite-like as Jim, you also want to know what's going on underneath that surface. You want to know that he has feelings, you want to know that deep down, there are things going on.
Even though you didn't know for sure there would be a second movie, did you keep up your singing after the first movie? Perhaps a weekend karaoke session?
[laughs] Bless your heart. I'm not a singer, I'm a growler. I say that absolutely, I don't really sing, I growl. Fisherman's Friends are good singers, proper singers, they do sing all the time and not just out when they're on tour or in the pub.
I make no pretence whatsoever. People have wanted to see me perform musicals in the West End, can you believe it? Just because they have seen this film. No, that is not what I do! I'm not a singer, let's just say it, right now. I can sing in the shower like anybody and that is where I am happiest.
I think one of the things about acting is to confront your fear. You'll often hear actors say this that when they're really scared about something, that's when they know they should do it.
The idea of singing on film just filled me utterly with terror. It's not my strong point and immediately you get that squeaky bum feeling, you go, 'Right, OK, going to have to do it'. You have to confront your fear sometimes and get on and do it.
Obviously, the more you rehearse, sing and practise, rehearse, sing and practise… the better you become at anything. Like I tell my kids, practice makes perfect. You end up becoming accomplished at something that you weren't accomplished at before, which is always nice having another string to your bow.
As well as the returning cast, the sequel brings Imelda May into the fold for her first acting role. Did you offer any acting guidance in return for some singing tips?
You can't teach an old dog new tricks. She couldn't give me a tip because I wouldn't know how to implement it and I would never dare give her tips. She doesn't act like a newcomer though, does she?
It was her first acting job, but she came at it with such great humility and freshness and heart, and anybody who's seen Imelda or knows Imelda, knows just what a proper good woman she is. There is no flashy ego. There was nothing like that. There was just the sense of somebody trying her best to do something new that she's never done before.
Film acting can be quite a challenge. Chris Evans is in the film, and I remember him arriving on the day and I could see that he was apprehensive. He was apprehensive because his thing that he does is off the top of his head, it's flying by the seat of your pants and he's brilliant at it.
But can you deliver a consistent performance? Can you do something where you stick to the script and have to do the same thing over and over again, but make very tiny modulations of difference between each take? It's a very different discipline and a different skill, as it was for Imelda.
She's a brilliant, incredibly soulful and beautiful singer, so doing this, again how still can you be? I've been doing this job 35 years now and one of the things that I always try and do over and over is simplicity. It's becoming simple with your choices so that they become very clear on screen.
I'm massively influenced by artists who, if you look at Picasso drawings, let's just say, the simplicity of the lines in those doves, for example. Simplicity of the boldness of that line, how simple it is and yet it is perfect on the page. There's no f**king around with it.
The simplicity of it comes in the experience of drawing that thing so many times that you can do it with six, seven strokes and it's creative and it's there. If I talked to her about anything, it was simply that: about being as simple as you can possibly and remove the extraneous. Think, be, that's it.
Fisherman's Friends: One and All is out now in UK cinemas.
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